A Reading of Ashes (Odczytanie popiołów)

About the Author: Jerzy Ficowski (1924–2006) was a poet, children’s author, songwriter, essayist, prose writer, translator, and expert on Romani culture (in 1948–1950 he wandered with Polish Romani people). During the Nazi occupation, he stayed mainly in Warsaw and continued to study in clandestine schools. As a soldier of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) he fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and was held prisoner in Gestapo jails and war camps. After the war, he studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Warsaw. He started writing in 1942, making his literary debut in a 1946 issue of the magazine Dziś i Jutro with the poem To Blue Birds (Ptakom niebieskim). However, he had previously written about the Holocaust as an eyewitness. Manuscripts of his poems from 1943–1948, including the cycle Seven Poems (Siedem Wierszy), In the Former Ghetto (W byłym getcie), Jehovah, and Smile in the Oratory, are kept at the Krasiński Library in Warsaw (Kuczyńska-Koschany, 2017, pp. 338– 350). His first volume of poems, Tin Soldiers, was published in 1948. As a signatory of Memoriał 59 (1975, against changes in the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic), and a member of the opposition Workers’ Defence Committee, Ficowski was officially banned as a writer in 1976–1980.