What I Read to the Dead (Co czytałem umarłym)

Abstract

About the Author:Władysław Szlengel (1912–1943?) was born in Warsaw to a family of Polish Jews. In 1930, he graduated from the Warsaw Economic School of the Merchant’s Guild, and throughout the following decade published lyrical poems and satirical pieces in the press expressing his opposition to antisemitism, which was on the rise in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. He also wrote song lyrics and skits for Warsaw cabarets. After the Germans took Warsaw in September 1939, he got through to the Soviet-occupied Polish territories, staying first in Bialystok then Lviv, returning to Warsaw in 1941. He soon ended up in the local ghetto, working at the Café Sztuka where he took the stage to perform his satirical account of ghetto life Living Diary (Żywy dziennik). In the final period of the ghetto’s operation, when it already had been turned into a labour camp, he delivered his texts during literary evenings for a select few. His fate is unknown. He was last seen on 8 May 1943 during the Ghetto Uprising, and was probably killed when the Germans discovered the shelter where he was hiding, or after being transported to the Treblinka death camp or a concentration camp such as Bergen-Belsen.