Saturday, August 20, 2022

Zofia Posmysz, Auschwitz Prisoner # 7566, Resistance Fighter and Author, Dies

 








From her New York Times obit 

 "Her writing career began when she was hired as a newspaper reporter and editor. She didn’t seek a byline for her first article, an account of the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Instead, she signed off with her identification number at Auschwitz: 7566."

While on assignment in Paris in 1959, she walked in the Place de la Concorde among tourists, many of them speaking German.

“Suddenly, someone appeared behind me,” she recalled long afterward on “Stories From the Eastern West,” a Polish podcast. “It was the voice of my overseer. All this time she’s been living a peaceful life in Paris.” She quickly realized that the woman was not, in fact, her former guard at Auschwitz, but that moment “just wouldn’t leave me alone,” she recalled.

It spawned her best-known work, “The Passenger in Cabin 45,” later titled “The Passenger.” It was released as a radio play in 1959, a novel published in 1962 that was translated into 15 languages, a motion picture, in which she collaborated on the script with the director, Andrzej Munk, and an opera.

The opera was composed by the Polish-born Mieczyslaw Weinberg, who was Jewish and had lost his parents and a sister in the Holocaust, while the libretto was written by Alexander Medvedev, a Russian. It was conceived in the Soviet Union and completed in 1968; the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich praised the opera, but it was banned by the Soviets.

A listing of Ms. Posmysz’s survivors was not immediately available. She was married. Her father was shot and killed by Germans during the war ...

From Wikipedia

Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka[1] (née Posmysz; 23 August 1923 – 8 August 2022) was a Polish journalist, novelist, and author. She was a resistance fighter in World War II and survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück concentration camps. Her autobiographical account of the Holocaust in occupied Poland, Passenger from Cabin 45, became the basis for her 1962 novel Passenger, subsequently translated into 15 languages.[2] The original radio drama was adapted for an award-winning feature film, while the novel was adapted into an opera of the same name with music by Mieczysław Weinberg.[3]

Early life

Posmysz was born in Kraków[4] and lived there until the invasion of Poland in 1939.[2] During the occupation she attended clandestine courses and worked at a cable factory. She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942, at age 19,[4] charged with distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. She was kept for six weeks at the Montelupich Prison in Kraków.[2] After prolonged interrogation she was moved under escort to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.[5] Relegated to arduous work at a penal company in Budy, she was saved twice by the camp doctor, Janusz Mąkowski. On 18 January 1945 Posmysz (prisoner number 7566) was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp and from there to the Neustadt-Glewe satellite camp, where she was liberated on 2 May 1945 by the US Army

Postwar life

After World War II, she studied at the University of Warsaw, and worked for the broadcaster Polskie Radio in the culture section.[6] In 1959, she wrote a radio drama, Pasażerka z kabiny 45 (Passenger from Cabin 45), based on her memories from the time spent in Nazi concentration camps.[4] The play was produced in the same year by the Polish Radio[7] featuring Aleksandra Śląska and Jan Świderski. It was adapted for television by Posmysz in 1960. The show was directed by Andrzej Munk and featured Ryszarda Hanin, Zofia Mrozowska, and Edward Dziewoński in the leading roles. The Passenger from Cabin 45 was innovative and unusual in the genre of Holocaust literature, because it depicted a loyal SS Aufseherin, Annelise Franz, in charge of Posmysz's work detail at Auschwitz,[8][9] who nevertheless exhibited basic human behaviour towards prisoners.[2]

The screenplay for the film was written by both Posmysz and Munk in 1961.[3] Munk died in a car crash soon thereafter.[10] Posmysz did not participate in the making of the film, which was released in 1963.[3] Instead, she focused on writing a novel derived from her autobiographical memory.[4] The book was published in 1962 as Pasażerka.[2] The events in the book take place on an ocean liner, 16 years after the war ended. The former SS Aufseherin, Lisa Kretschmer, travels with her husband in search of a new life. Among the many passengers, she spots Marta, her former inmate, whom she used to feed and protect from dangerous labour. While at Auschwitz, Lisa was assigned to a new post of duty, and offered Marta to take her from the camp to detention in a less dangerous place, but to no avail. In the end of the novel, she learns that Marta recognized her also.[3] Notably, in the original radio drama, the titular 'Cabin 45' was Posmysz's compartment number on a train to Auschwitz; an ocean-travel served as literary device of story within a story.[5] No English translation of The Passenger novel exists.[11]

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the memorial for Auschwitz in 2006, she was among the surviving inmates greeting him.[4] In 2015, Posmysz was among 19 Auschwitz survivors reporting for a documentary by Der Spiegel titled The Last Witnesses (Die letzten Zeugen).[12]

Posmysz died in Oświęcim on 8 August 2022, at the age of 98.[4][13][14]

Work and legacy

Posmysz went on writing continuously for over 30 years and wrote her last published book at the age of 73. She is best known for her 1959 autobiography Passenger in Cabin 45 (Pasażerka z kabiny 45) which led to a television play and film The Passenger by Andrzej Munk, who was one of the most influential artists of the post-Stalinist Poland.[7] The director died during the screening in 1961, but the film was completed by his assistants, directors Andrzej Brzozowski and Witold Lesiewicz,[1] and first released in 1963.[3] The novel by Posmysz became the basis of the libretto by Alexander Medvedev for Mieczysław Weinberg's 1968 opera The Passenger, Op. 97. Suppressed for more than 40 years, it was first staged at Bregenz Festival on 21 July 2010, followed by the same production at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw.[15][16] The opera by Weinberg premièred at the Lyric Opera of Chicago on 24 February 2015,[17] with soprano Amanda Majeski as Marta.[18] Die Passagierin [19] was staged by the Frankfurt Opera in March 2015 with Leo Hussain conducting.[20]

The novel Pasażerka was translated into 15 languages,[2] including German as Die Passagierin by Peter Ball, published in 1969 by Verlag Neues Leben [de] and as Book on demand (third ed.) in 2010.[11][21]

Thank you to Jerzy for commemorating Zofia Posmysz 

10 comments:

  1. Jan Grabowski, 2015, The Holocaust as a Polish Problem. https://www.academia.edu/24713627/Poland_and_Polin_New_Interpretations_in_Polish_Jewish_Studies?email_work_card=view-paper There is a long list of nations, who have bigger problems with the Holocaust. Grabowski's aggression makes any discussion in Poland difficult or impossible. I belive that the Holocaust victims deserve respect, they should not be used instrumentally by neither Grabowski nor his opponents.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sophie was guilty. https://www.academia.edu/4508626/The_Theology_of_Nazi_Anti_Semitism_in_William_Styrons_Sophies_Choice?email_work_card=view-paper

    ReplyDelete
  3. UCL Holocaust Education informs about German crimes against Poles. The Poles meant probably Polish citizens, Jews including. Ethnic Poles and Jews were murdered together at the beginning, later the Jews were isolated in gettos. https://twitter.com/UCL_Holocaust/status/1561629258568683520?cxt=HHwWgMC-va3igqwrAAAA

    ReplyDelete
  4. 2009 "Poland and Jews after the Holocaust" http://psa.sa.utoronto.ca/files/2009/11/double_memory.pdf Obsolete, but it is a short summary.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sophie's Choice, next step. But when clarifying what enabled the Nazis to commit their genocidal atrocities, he underscores the role of Christian anti-Semitism. The most obvious example, especially insofar as it illuminates the Nazis' version of Christianity, is Sophie's father.
    3
    A "practicing Catholic" and a "superconservative [univer-sity professor] in a faculty of right-wingers" (259), he is the logical product of Poland's "entrenched religious hegemony" (269), which is described as "authoritarian and puritanical in spirit" (269). We
    get most insight into his specific version of Christian anti-Semitism
    through "his magnum opus" (261), which is ominously titled "
    Poland's Jewish Problem: Does National Socialism Have the Answer? " (261). https://www.academia.edu/8368037/Nazi_Children_Christian_Anti_Semitism_and_the_New_Atheist_in_William_Styron_s_Sophie_s_Choice Not a German Professor, a Polish one. Is it possible that some Americans understand that the USA failed to prevent the Holocaust and move the responsibility to vulnerable Poles? The responsibility of German people is obvious, why is the Polish proxy needed? Sophie could have been German. She would have been Kapo in Auschwitz.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" is used in English secondary schools https://holocausteducation.org.uk/research/the-boy-in-the-striped-pyjamas-in-english-secondary-schools/ 35% teachers use the book or the film. The book and film are flawed as a resource.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have neither seen this nor read the book. But I assumed it was promoting the current version of WW2, given the amount of applause it has received.

      Delete
    2. The book is criticized by experts but still massively used in Holocaust education.

      Delete
  7. Oliver Sears attacked Poland already in 2019 and has not learned anything since that time https://www.currenteventspoland.com/commentary/Anti-Polinism-is-racism.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For sure Oliver Sears knows who is a safe target.

      Delete

Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
These themes include the false and damaging stereotype of Poles as brutes who are uniquely hateful and responsible for atrocity, and this stereotype's use in distorting WW II history and all accounts of atrocity.
This blog welcomes comments from readers that address those themes. Off-topic and anti-Semitic posts are likely to be deleted.
Your comment is more likely to be posted if:
Your comment includes a real first and last name.
Your comment uses Standard English spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Your comment uses I-statements rather than You-statements.
Your comment states a position based on facts, rather than on ad hominem material.
Your comment includes readily verifiable factual material, rather than speculation that veers wildly away from established facts.
T'he full meaning of your comment is clear to the comment moderator the first time he or she glances over it.
You comment is less likely to be posted if:
You do not include a first and last name.
Your comment is not in Standard English, with enough errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar to make the comment's meaning difficult to discern.
Your comment includes ad hominem statements, or You-statements.
You have previously posted, or attempted to post, in an inappropriate manner.
You keep repeating the same things over and over and over again.