Posmysz, Zofia

Zofia Posmysz – A literary biography
 

Zofia Posmysz (born 1923), was a prisoner in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from 1942 to 1945. From 1943 onwards she worked in the kitchen and as a scribe in the food camp, survived the death march to the Ravensbrück camp and was finally held in the camp at Neustadt-Glewe. After being liberated on 2 May 1945 she decided to return to Poland.

Because Zofia Posmysz kept the books for her guard Anneliese Franz in Auschwitz, she had open access to pens and paper. She wrote her first poems in the camp. The notebook in which she secretly wrote them was smuggled out of the camp and saved. Now it is one of the exhibits in the Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau [State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau].

As a witness of the trials against Nazi criminals Zofia Posmysz wrote an article entitled Znam katów z Belsen [I know the executioners from Belsen] (“Głos Ludu”, 30.9.1945): this marked her press debut. The brief descriptive text ends with the following summary: “In the final analysis no crime, no form of trickery, was alien to them”. The article did not appear under the author’s name but under her camp number “7566”. In the following years Zofia Posmysz dedicated all her work to her experiences in the camps. 

For most of her professional life Zofia Posmysz worked in radio. In 1952 she began work in the education department of the First Programme of Polish Radio Corporation. In 1958 she was appointed head of the documentary reports department. At the same time, she was the co-author of a series of radio plays entitled W Jezioranach [In Jeziorany]. During this time listening to the radio became a highly popular activity. Leading Polish directors and actors were engaged for documentary work and for radio plays. Documentary reports at the time were not recorded but written and then read in the studio. Zofia Posmysz used her experience in radio to hone her literary style. 

During a stay in Paris Zofia Posmysz heard a voice in a group of tourists that sounded uncannily like that of her camp guard, Anneliese Franz. With reference to “The Passenger”, the thought of how she would have reacted to such an accidental meeting inspired Zofia Posmysz to dedicate her writing to the theme of Auschwitz.

I no longer dream of the camp. Since I began to write about it I have been liberated from my dreams. For sure, I was afraid of falling asleep after the war. At the time these nights were extremely strange because I not only dreamt of terrible things but also of apparently banal events: that I lost my job as a writer [Translator’s note: of official log books in the camp], that I was forced to work in the fields. I did not know how this would ever end. The nightmares were terrible and I used to wake up at night full of fear. All this changed when I began to write.[1]

[1] Zofia Posmysz in an interview for “Tygodnik Powszechny” (No. 5/2015).