On March 9 (22), 1917, Zuzanna Ginczanka (real name - Zuzanna Polina Ginzburg) – one of the most striking figures of the Polish lyric poetry of the interwar twenty years – was born in Kyiv.
Almost immediately after the birth of the child, the family of Simon and Tsetsiliya Ginzburg (nee Sandberg) left Kyiv and went to Rivne, where Zuzanna’s grandmother, Klara Sandberg, lived.
It was here, in the center of Rivne, the future poetess’s childhood passed. After the parents divorced, her grandmother played a major role in the upbringing of the girl. She managed to deal with both her granddaughter and a small family business – a store, which was located on the ground floor of Sandberg’s house.
Zuzanna visited and successfully graduated from T. Kosciuszko Polish gymnasium combining teenage entertainment with her first poetic debuts in Polish (Unlike parents, who mainly spoke in Russian, the girl wrote and talked in Polish mainly).
In 1935, Zuzanna went to Warsaw, where she entered the university. The beginning of student life coincides with the wave of anti-Semitism that swept the country. And the metropolitan university did not escape this shameful phenomenon. According to the Zuzanna Ginczanka biographers, the girl with an expressive oriental appearance leaves her dream to become a teacher precisely because of discrimination and hostility from the radical part of the student body.
In 1936, Zuzanna Ginczanka’s first poetic collection – “About the Centaurs” (“O centaurach”) - saw the world. At that time, the poetess was already a famous figure in Polish poetry. Her poetic debut – the poem “Fullness of August” (“?Żyzność sierpniowa”), published on the pages of “Illustrated Daily Courier” (“Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny”), – took place at the age of 16 years. At the time of moving to Warsaw, Zuzanna already had the title of laureate of the Young Poets’ Honorary Competition, organized by the country’s leading literary publication – “Literary Bulletin” (“Wiadomości Literackie”). Among the bunch of friends of “Shulamite”i, as her literary colleagues called her, there were well-known not only in Poland, but also beyond its borders Witold Gombrowicz, Kazimierz Brandys, and the literary patron was the unrivaled star of Polish poetry - Julian Tuwim.
The outbreak of World War II caught Zuzanna and her friends on vacation in Rivne. The very first steps of the Soviet occupation authorities demonstrated the danger of social status for the granddaughter of the owner of a private store. That is why, already in the autumn of 1939, Zuzanna moved to Lviv, where, with the patronage of her acquaintances, she got the position of accountant assistant at the local Sanitary Bureau. Despite the non-poetic nature of the work, the poetess did not leave creativity. Having received a membership card of the Soviet Writers’ Union of Ukraine, Zuzanna Ginczanka wrote her own poetry, translated works of Ukrainian and Russian literature into Polish.
Two years of German occupation (1941-1942) Zuzanna Ginczanka spent in a building on ulica Jabłonowskich (now 8a Shota Rustaveli St.). During one of the raids in the autumn of 1942, Zofya Khomin, the housekeeper of the house where the writer was hiding, extradited her to the police, directly stating Zuzanna’s Jewish origin. In a happy manner, the poetess managed to escape directly during escort to the prison. The poetess splashed out the tragic experience of betrayal in the poetry “Non omnis moriar” (“Not all of me will die”) – perhaps, the most piercing poetic work about the Holocaust and despair from human meanness and betrayal.
Non omnis moriar – мої багатства гожі,
Луки моїх скатертин, фортеці шаф важенних,
Широкі простирадла, дорогоцінне ложе
І сукні, яскраві сукні залишаться після мене.
Хоч нема спадкоємця у мене достоту,
Хай же речі єврейські твої руки віднайдуть,
Хоміново, львів’янко, вправна жінко сексота,
Хижа стукачко, матере фольксдойча.
Твоє, хай твоїм і послужить, бо навіщо – комусь-то?
Мої рідні – не лютня, не порожнє імення.
Пам’ятаю про вас. Коли йшла ота муштра,
Пам’ятали ж про мене. Згадали ж про мене.
Хай же друзі мої, при бокалі засівши,
Поминають мій скін і свої також статки:
Килими й покривала, полумиски грішні –
Нехай п’ють цілу ніч, а як світляна латка
Зблисне в небі, шукати йдуть злота і перснів,
У диванах, матрацах і в килимах перських.
О, з яким же запалом візьмуться до праці!
Віхті кінського волосся й сіна найперше,
А затим подушок й перин оболоки
Пристануть до рук, ніби крила, а зранять, як терня,
То кров моя зліпить пір’їни із пухом вологим
І окрилених раптом у янголів оберне.ii
Translated by Yaroslav Polishchuk
Non omnis moriar. My grand estate—
Tablecloth meadows, invincible wardrobe castles,
Acres of bedsheets, finely woven linens,
And dresses, colorful dresses—will survive me.
I leave no heirs.
So let your hands rummage through Jewish things,
You, Chomin’s wife from Lvov, you mother of a volksdeutscher.
May these things be useful to you and yours,
For, dear ones, I leave no name, no song.
I am thinking of you, as you, when the Schupo came,
Thought of me, in fact reminded them about me.
So let my friends break out holiday goblets,
Celebrate my wake and their wealth:
Kilims and tapestries, bowls, candlesticks.
Let them drink all night and at daybreak
Begin their search for gemstones and gold
In sofas, mattresses, blankets and rugs.
Oh how the work will burn in their hands!
Clumps of horsehair, bunches of sea hay,
Clouds of fresh down from pillows and quilts,
Glued on by my blood, will turn their arms into wings,
Transfigure the birds of prey into angels.
Translated by Nancy Kassell and Anita Safran.
It became obvious that in the future it was impossible to stay in Lviv. Having received with the help of friends false documents in the name of Mariia Danilov, the girl moved to Krakow, where she lived until May 1944, when a fateful combination of circumstances and, according to some sources, another betrayal, led to the arrest and further detention. We still do not know the exact date of the poetess’s execution and the place of her burial.
The memory of her short and at the same time bright life is stored on the pages of her contemporaries’ memoirs and rare biographers. Only 100 years after her birth, in 2017, Zuzanna returned to her native Ukraine. Thanks to a literary critic, translator, professor Yaroslav Polishchuk, Ginczanka`s poetry spoke to readers in Ukrainian. Therefore, everyone can plunge into it, simply by visiting the Museum’s library and picking up a collection of poems by Zuzanna Ginczanka.
i Shulamite – beloved girl of the biblical king Solomon, character of the book “Song of Songs”
ii ii The poem is quoted by edition Non omnis moriar /Zuzanna Ginczanka „Wiersze”/ Zuzanna Ginczanka “Poems”: in Polish and Ukrainian/ Foreword: Yaroslav Polishchuk. / Afterword: Krzysztof Wilman, Izolda Kiec. / Yaroslav Polishchuk, Kristina Piotrovska, Izolda Kiec, Krzysztof Wilman. – Lviv, 2017. – p. 91