Królestwo za mgłą – Zofia Posmysz’s Camp Fairy Tale

Abstract

The author analyses the novel Wakacje nad Adriatykiem (Holiday on the Adriatic, 1970) and an extended interview Królestwo za mgłą (The Kingdom Behind the Mist, 2017) with Zofia Posmysz – a prisoner of Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Neustadt-Glewe, who stylized her concentration camp memories as a traditional folk tale, thus commemorating the fairy tales told by her camp friend Zofia Jachimczak, who did not survive Auschwitz. The author introduces the concept of a camp fairy tale. In the first part of the article, she analyses the elements of folk fairy tale in Posmysz’s texts (space, time, characters, magical objects). In the second part, the author outlines a definition of a separate prose genre – a camp fairy tale, characterized not only by the adaptation of folk fairy tale motifs to concentration camp realities, but also by the fact that this fairy tale, originally told in the concentration camp, is narrated or written down from memory and recounted to listeners by a former prisoner who gives a testimony of life and death in the camp.