Anna Banasiak "Zieleniak ’44"

projects

The series called Zieleniak ’44 is a story about intergenerational trauma, based on events that took place during World War II, and more precisely during the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 in the Ochota district in Warsaw.

Showcasing the graduates of the Sputnik Photos Mentoring Programme 2023/2024. More photos will be on display at the exhibition

in Warsaw, starting 26 April, 2025.

Between August 5 and 20, 1944, Zieleniak, which served as a marketplace in peacetime, became a transit camp for the displaced civilians. In the testimonies of survivors, it appears as a place of brutal murders and, above all, rapes committed on women and girls by the RONA units (a Russian division of the Waffen SS).

Most of the women who experienced that hell on earth at Zieleniak as girls have never spoken to anyone about what really happened there. They have lived to a ripe old age and now are slowly dying a natural death. They are the heroines of my story, but not only them. I also want to talk about their daughters and granddaughters – because as the next generations, they are capable of returning to what happened there, restoring memory, dignity and respect for the women murdered and raped at Zieleniak.

The aim of this project is to raise awareness of the effects of intergenerational trauma, as well as the healing processes. The presented artworks comprise collages and photomontages created from photographs taken today in the neighborhood of the aforementioned Zieleniak marketplace, but also photographs, documents, and children's drawings retrieved from the family archive.

Today, life goes on at the Zieleniak marketplace. It is the best place to go shopping every day. And you can find everything there, including memories of what happened in August 1944. In the context of intergenerational trauma, my project poses a question: Is it possible to hide all this pain and suffering of the past deep inside and carry on as if it never happened?