Władysław Szlengel, Zuzanna Ginczanka

Even in the 1982 third edition of Postwar Polish Poetry there is no poem of Władysław Szlengel.

Yes, he was annihilated in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and so is a poet of the Shoah.

But the 1943 poem of Czesław Miłosz places a "New Testamenr Jew" as one of the "uncircumcised" before the burning ghetto.

The volume was "Poetry" and not "Poets".  And yes, in a land and language of poets, some as much Lithuanians as Poles, so many were lost, so many were in Vilnius, so may poems burned on notepaper, in notebooks ... and this collection focussed on poetry after 1956.  But it is organized by poet.  There were poems they had no claim to write.  At least one of those poems should be present: just as Leopold Staff opens the collection proper, a properly "postwar" entry is missing (compare the long entry hallway into Yad Vashem museum.)  Post-disasters, if you will, require something of what is other, alter.  Poles are very clear about this: some poets were and are emigré poets ( and remain so, even if buried on Polish soil.)  They are other than those who remained within the nation.

Could a new 4th edition (not expanded, but corrected) open with excerpts from a text such as "Co czytałem umarłym"  ?  Perhaps preferred: "Rozmowa z dzieckiem" (Conversation with a Child") or excerpts from "A Page from the Deportation Diary".

Were we to say, in 1982, that this was a "Jewish" poem?  By 1982, did not a poem in translation of Paul Celan or Nelly Sachs merit a place among "Postwar Polish Poetry"?  What had been the price of nations and ethnicity and mother-tongue?

Why after 1989-1990 was it not an issue to release a 4th edition?  Not even after the death of Miłosz?

In a nation where today some 30 myriad* of Jews pass unwittingly as "Poles", what was that "postwar" poetry that was "Polish" by 1982 ?

Was not the TSS Stefan Batory still arriving in Montreal from Gdynia in 1982 ?  When I met Miłosz at a post-Nobel reception at McGill Univeristy, I wanted to speak to him of the anti-Semitism among the Polish arrivals and how it was even among the newly arrived from Vietnam, percolating into a community from those explaining the "English" situation in Montreal.  There he stood at the University of some of Canada's great Jewish poets - what could be more fitting?

The word "Jew" may be a hapax legomenon in the collection (based on Google Books search) but I have to ask: where is the poem for the brief frenzied Pogrom that occurred after the liberation - an event sparked by a classic blood libel ?  Is that poem in a notebook, on notepaper in a box in some archive waiting for the internet?

I would propose a corrective to University of California Press for any e-book edition of this classic of modern Polish poems in translation.

* perhaps on the order of 300,000 in a population exceeding 30 million (almost forty.)

Dates of uprisings: the powstanie w getcie warszawskim of 1943 was followed by the powstanie warszawskie of 1944.

Note on myriads of the good, the just and the victims: of some few millions of altruistic Polish rescuers/non-collaborators who actively saved or passively helped to save tens of thousands of ethnic and religious Jews on Polish territory, over 6000 [of possibly 100,000 such heroes on wartime Polish soil alone] have been named "righteous among the nations", including Czesław Miłosz.  The loss of some six million residents of Poland must be weighed when assessing the stories told by children arriving in Iran, stories of those traitors, the "Jewish intellectual", the "Jewish intelligentsia", the persisting Żydokomuna canard spread by propagandists - children who, if they survived, heard as adults anti-Zionist propaganda from Soviet rulers.

See: Katyn and Jedwabne massacres, Kielce pogrom.

Warsaw, Jan. 1945 aerial photograph

terms: Żyd Żydowskich Żydówka Rabin Synagoga Hebrajski Jidysz Tora Talmud Talmudyczne Całopalenie masakra rzeź jatki ubój pogrom Holocaust Syjonistycznego Syjoniści antysemitą antysemitami

To be clear: 1956 was chosen for the new openness.  But was it not the moment to translate from Hebrew into English for at least one Pole who, a Jew, had escaped, survived ?  Today we might turn to Lillian Boraks‑Nemetz for a poem for children - the missing children.  It is not the fault of poets that four major extermination camps were on Polish soil: but the new openness also helped foster an enormous lie which required correction by more than historians.  This collection should be re-issued with one major addition.

Clarification: Ajzyk Wagman is not that poet: he was in the Soviet Union.  The poet Saul Wagman may have committed suicide in the Soviet Union in 1943 (see the poem by Adam Ważyk in the collection.)

Antoni Słonimski: his great grandafther was Abraham Sztern.

Jan Brzechwa  [Jan Wiktor Lesman]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Brzechwa

Anatol Stern was no longer active as a poet by 1956 (having returned to Warsaw in 1948.)

Bolesław Leśmian may be the missing poet of this collection, but he died in 1937.

Jan Brzechwa  [Jan Wiktor Lesman] might be the contributor for a children's poem from his 1937 book.

Stanisław Jerzy Lec is absent from the collection although he, too, was briefly a postwar Polish diplomat.

Mieczysław Jastrun was baptized; his grave is not in a Jewish cemetery nor does he address us as a Jew.

Did Julian Tuwim leave nothing suitable in his papers (died 1953.)

Another possibility: Roman Brandstaetter.

My nomination: Zuzanna Ginczanka [Zuzanna Polina Gincburg], denounced and executed, 1944.  Her work failed to be "rehabilitated" in 1956 and by 1982 may have been unknown to women studying at Berkeley under C.M.

• 1936: O centaurach
• 1953: Wiersze wybrane
• 1991: Udźwignąć własne szczęście

See: role of Julian Tuwim in her decision to write in the Polish language.
Possible resource: Maciej Woźniak (poet)

Her Non omnis moriar, as translated by Nancy Kassell and Anita Safran and which may not have appealed to CM.  Perhaps something from 1942 or early 1943 is among his papers ... something distributed by hand.