Polish graphic artist Marian Kolodziej was taken to Auschwitz the day the camp was liberated. He survived the horrors of the concentration camp, worked as a set designer and became a celebrated graphic artist. For 50 years he remained silent about the horrors he endured during the Holocaust. Then one day he determined to draw his story. The resultant works are now on display in Budapest at an exhibition organised by the Polish Institute.

Marian Kolodziej was taken to Auschwitz on the day the concentration camp was liberated. Although he was one the lucky few to survive the horrors of Auschwitz, for 50 years, his experiences at the camp was nowhere to be found in the works of the theatre and film set designer.

Due to a severe illness, however, at the beginning of the 1990s he decided to follow the words of the great Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert: “You have not survived simply to live. You have little time, a testimony must be given.”

Kolodziej began to draw his personal experience from the camps. As he put it: the photographic plates of memory led us to the labyrinth of horror in the hell of Auschwitz.

The “Photographic Plates of Memory: Labyrinths by Marian Kolodziej” exhibition, organised by the Hungarian-Polish Institute is open to visitors until 30 June at Budapest s Platan Gallery.