Literary Images of the Holocaust. ‘The Passenger’ by Zofia Posmysz

The exhibition informed visitors of the life of Zofia Posmysz and made them familiar with her works that were inspired by her experiences in the camp. The presentation comprised the first Polish publications on the camps and gave insights into the literary abilities of the author. The centre of the exhibition was devoted to her most famous work, the novel Pasażerka (The Passenger) published in 1962, and the many adaptations like the legendary film made by Andrzej Munk (1963), and the worldwide celebrated opera with music by Mieczysław Weinberg (composed in 1968 in the USSR and premiered in 2006). 

Zofia Posmysz was imprisoned in the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1942 to 1945. She worked in the kitchen there and also kept the books in the foodstore, survived the death March 2 the concentration camp in Ravensbrück and ended up in the camp at Neustadt-Glewe. After liberation on 2 May 1945 she decided to return to Poland. 

After the war Zofia Posmysz worked as a writer and publicist. She worked on correcting the articles in the newspaper “Głos Ludu”, wrote texts and longer reports for the press and finally worked for years as an editor in the Polish radio broadcasting company. Zofia Posmysz wrote radio plays, films scenarios and theatre plays for television. In addition, she participated in discussions with young people. Bearing witness to the Holocaust was the most important message in her writings. The author could do this most comprehensively in her novels which thematised her personal experiences in the camps. 

The focus of the exhibition with the works in which Zofia Posmysz took the camps as her theme: the novel Pasażerka [The Passenger] (1962), which brought her the most fame; Wakacje nad Adriatykie (1970) [Holidays on the Adriatic Coast], a volume of short stories entitled Ten sam doktor M. (1981) [The same Doktor M.] and Chrystus oświęcimski (2008) [The Christ of Auschwitz].

The radio play Pasażerka z kabiny 45 [The Passenger in Cabin 45] was written in 1959 and the novel version Pasażerka [The Passenger] three years later. During a stay in Paris, she heard a voice in a group of tourists that sounded uncannily like that of her camp guard, Anneliese Franz. This event awoke the past and throw up questions about possible meetings between the victims and their persecutors. This moves the author to deal with the theme of switch in her writing. As a result, Andrzej Munk talked Zofia Posmysz into writing a film scenario with him. The action of the film “The Passenger” takes place on line travelling from America to Europe. The events in the camp are portrayed from the perspective of the former German guard. Unfortunately, due to the sudden death of the director, only the part of the film dealing with the camp was completed and “The Passenger” was to be his last uncompleted work. Subsequently the film was completed in 1963 by a team headed by Witold Lesiewicz. Jean-Luc Godard called it “the best film ever made about the war, because it was incomplete and remained uncompleted”. 

An opera based on the novel “The Passenger” was written in 1968 to the music of the well-known composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996), with a libretto by Alexander Medwedew. Its first performance was in Moscow in 2006.

The exhibition showed “The Passenger” as an important voice in the discussion about how to understand the roots of evil. In particular it emphasised the power of different media to tell stories. It enables visitors to follow the changes in the author’s work. In the course of time, she returned to describing wartime experiences in a realistic way. 

The message behind the exhibition was completed by an excerpt from a film interview directed by Anna Maria Potocka in 2016, entitled “The Guard Franz”, in which Zofia Posmysz talked about her time in the camp in Auschwitz. Following the project entitled “Wilhelm Brasse. Photographer. 3444. Auschwitz 1940–1944“, this film was also produced by the Muzeum Sztuki Współczesnej w Krakowie MOCAK [The Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków MOCAK] and is part of a documentary series featuring the testimony of survivors. 

The exhibition was part of a supplementary programme to accompany the premiere of the opera “The Passenger” in the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen (28/01/2017).

Magdalena Mazik, August 2017

Further documents:

A film on the exhibitions in the MOCAK dedicated to the author Zofia Posmysz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fylyDOkFP4