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).

Zofia Posmysz’s works dealing with the camps

 

Pasażerka [The Passenger]

In 1959 Zofia Posmysz wrote a radio play with the title Pasażerka z kabiny 45 [The Passenger in Cabin 45]. A year later she wrote a television play based on the original. In addition, Zofia Posmysz co-authored the scenario for the film “The Passenger” with the director, Andrzej Munk. Work on the film was then interrupted by the death of the director in 1961. The discussion on the future of the incomplete film inspired Zofia Posmysz to write the “Passenger” in the form of a novel. The book appeared in 1962. It was translated into several languages. 

The events of the novel “The Passenger” are told from the perspective of the former German concentration camp guard. The action takes place aboard a liner taking a married couple, Lisa and Walter, from Europe to America. Lisa believes that she has spotted amongst the passengers the former prisoner Marta who worked in the group for which she was responsible. She is so shocked that she reveals her past to her husband, whilst attempting to deny any responsibility for her deeds. 

In the part of the film of “The Passenger”, shot by Andrzej Munk, the words take second place to the images. When the director died, he had only shot the sequences in the camp. When work on the film resumed under the leadership of Witold Lesiewicz, photographs and commentaries were used to replace the missing scenes. When the film was awarded the critics’ prize, FIPRESCI, at the Cannes film Festival in 1963, Jean-Luc Godard remarked that it was “the best war film ever, because it is incomplete and remains uncompleted”.

“The Passenger” has also got a musical history. In 1968 Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996), whose close relations died in the camps, composed an opera based on the book with a libretto by Alexander Medwedew. The USSR Ministry of Culture regarded their work as an example of “abstract Humanism” and banned any performance of the opera on ideological grounds. The first concert performance of the opera in Moscow only took place in 2006, after the death of the composer. Weinberg’s music was celebrated as a masterpiece. The first full production of the work, directed by David Pountney, took place as part of the Bregenz Festival in 2010. In the production of “The Passenger” the authenticity of the events was not overshadowed by the music and the performances. The opera was subsequently produced in Warsaw, London, Karlsruhe, New York and Tianjin. The critic of the “New York Times” described it as a “story with a moral, which avoids any didactic”. 

 

Wakacje nad Adriatykiem [Holidays on the Adriatic Coast]  (1970)

The story [Holidays on the Adriatic Coast] is based on the memories of my friend Zosia in Kraków, a violinist and the protagonist of my novel. She came from a very cultivated house, her father was a student of German literature […] She regarded the camps as if they were phenomena from the Nibelungen saga, from Wagner’s operas, with mythical knights and maidens. When she glimpsed a guard on horseback she said: “Look, the woman on horseback is Brunhilde”. When describing the camp as a colony of deaths head knights, I was somehow making use of her fantasy.[2]

The novel “Holidays on the Adriatic Coast” is an attempt to find a literary language for the theme of the camps. The novel is written in the form of an internal monologue where the narrator remembers her time in the camps. It is an apologia for friendship which was even possible in Auschwitz. In the novel Zofia Posmysz recalls a person named Zofia Jachimczuk who worked with her at the start of her time in the camp. Zofia Jachimczuk was a graduate from the Music Conservatory in Kraków. She refused to play in the camp orchestra, something which did not improve her chances of survival. She died in 1943. The new edition of the novel was published by the Kraków publishing house Znak in 2017. It also published a lengthy interview with Zofia Posmysz in a book entitled Królestwo za mgłą [The Kingdom in the Fog]. 

 

Ten sam doktor M. [The same Doktor M.]  (1981) 

In Auschwitz I met people of which I can without a doubt say that they were saints. In my opinion this is the sole theme of value on which I can still write.[3] 

The moral imperative in the literary works by Zofia Posmysz, bearing testimony, often consists of her memories of the people who offered her help and support in the camps. In the title story “The same Doktor M.” of the work, which consists of three tales, the author portrays one of her fellow prisoners, Janusz Mąkowski, who was a doctor in the camp hospital where Zofia Posmysz was taken during a typhus epidemic. She only survived thanks to her stay in the hospital.

 

Chrystus oświęcimski [The Christ of Auschwitz]  (2011)

We sat bent over the book, heads together, in defiance of the rules that were inconceivable in this place, which only appeared in the memory of another world. We did not say a word to one another, the presence of the Kapo Berta kept us on the alert. Two swift looks at the teacher revealed a face with strict, imposing features, deeply bedded, alert, but also with loving eyes. And also, the number on her striped clothing: 329.[4]

In the camp Tadeusz Paolone taught Zofia Posmysz how to keep the books. This led to a close friendship between the two. After three days he gave her a small medal of Christ engraved with the year 1943. It had been secretly made by prisoners in the Auschwitz workshop.

Tadeusz Paolone was a captain in the Polish army who was shot in October 1943 following a plot in the camp. To this day the medal has been zealously guarded by Zofia Posmysz, first in a shoe in the camp, amongst closely folded locks of hair or, when inspections were particularly strict, even in her mouth.

The story was published by the International Young People’s Meeting House in Oświęcim/Auschwitz in Polish and German, where Zofia Posmysz is a regular guest, leads workshops and meets up with young people here. 

 

Do wolności, do śmierci, do życia [Freedom, Death and Life]  (1996)

At the start we went on foot from Germany to Pozen. First I climbed into a train. Our group was gradually scattered. I arrived in Kraków via Katowice. Needless to say they were goods trains. My parents had a house in Prokocim. At night I climbed out of the train at the station in Bieżanów [on the edge of Kraków]. From there I followed the railway tracks. It was night and I was alone. Fear was my predominant emotion. When I arrived, a light was shining in the house, my mother was not yet asleep. I encountered her sitting on a stool in front of the fire. She was baking potato fritters on a baking tray, the poor woman. There was no fat. Mother looked at me in disbelief and said: “How you have grown”. My younger brother began to cry. An 18-year-old boy who was crying. I’ve never forgotten that.[5]

The book “Freedom, Death and Life” completes her memories of the war. It takes up a rare theme– regaining freedom, returning home and taking up a new life. Zofia Posmysz spent the last weeks of the war in the camp at Neustadt-Glewe. The German guards abandoned the camp before the arrival of the American army on 2 May 1945. In this very realistic, autobiographical story, Zofia Posmysz concentrates on the dramatic experiences of a group of prisoners who decide to return home by foot on a long, dangerous march.

 

Magdalena Mazik, February 2017