POST SCRIPTUM English__ Feb 2021

Izolda Kiec about Ginczanka
Eryk Lipiński, Caricature of Zuzanna Ginczanka (owned by Izolda Kiec).
POST SCRIPTUM
After the war, Julian Tuwim wrote
to Zbigniew Mitzner: “Every day I remember
those who died, every day I sigh for them,
especially for my poor friend Ginczanka ...”
And Gombrowicz to Piętak: “Please, tell me
when and how poor Gina died. Why are you
saying that she was tortured? “
Jan Śpiewak, Kazimierz Wyka and Juliusz
Wiktor Gomulicki started preparations for
publishing selected poems by Zuzanna
Ginczanka. Julian Przyboś published her last
poem in Odrodzenie – which soon became
evidence in the trial of Zofia Chominowa,
an “informer”, accused of handing over
Jews to the German police. However,
the deliberations of the Szczecin Writers
Convention in 1949 were not favourable
for Zuzanna. She was called “Tuwim in
a skirt”, a bourgeois poet, an epigone of
the Scamandrites. It was decided to forget
about her. And it was only in the 1990s that
Zuzanna returned to our literature and the
awareness of readers. All of Ginczanka’s
works were published, including manuscripts
saved by Eryk Lipiński, who liquidated
Zuzanna’s Warsaw apartment in September
1939. The poet’s monograph was published,
and numerous artistic works inspired by her
biography and poetry.
The last traces of Zuzanna Ginczanka are
her demands for food and clothing that she signed,
sent from prison to the Polish Welfare Committee
of Krakow-City. The last one dated April 18, 1944. There
are many indications that the poet was moved in the
last transport of prisoners from Krakow to the Płaszów
camp and shot there on May 5, 1944.
After the publication of the first
selection of Ginczanka’s poetry in 1991,
Wacław Oszajca said, not completing his
thought: “without poetry, the life of this
young girl ...” Let me finish the sentence:
without poetry, the life of this young girl
would not be remembered. Zuzanna
Gincburg would be one of the millions,
anonymous, deprived of a name, individual
features or individual history, just a victim
of genocide. Did she sense the drama of her
own death and the power of her poetry in
the beautiful yet tragic Bird’s glow, when
she wrote: “and behind me, a streak of raw
poems mark my trace”? [IK]
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