He died in the Auschwitz extermination camp on February 18, 1943, after being injected with phenol in the heart.
Just before her execution, she was photographed by a prisoner named Wilhelm Brasse, who later spoke out against the executioner who had struck her in the face before taking the picture, as evidenced by the bruise on her lip. The photo shows the face of a terrified young woman who didn’t even speak the language and had just lost her mother a few days earlier. She was one of approximately 250,000 children and young people murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The original black and white photograph, preserved in the Oświęcim Memorial, was later colored by Brazilian photographer Anna Amaral, who was moved by Czeslawa’s image and wanted to share it in color with the world.