Wiera Gran

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Wiera Gran (1946)

Wiera Vera Gran (born April 20, 1916 in the Russian Empire , † November 19, 2007 in Paris ) was a Polish singer and actress . Born as Weronika Grynberg , she was also known as Vera Gran and Mariol .

Life

In the early 1930s Gran sang at Café Paradiso in Warsaw on Yiddish . She made her first record in 1934 under the pseudonym Sylvia Green with the song "Grzech" (sin) by the composer Adolf Kurc . While most of her pre-war recordings are interpreted in Polish , she sang in Yiddish in the 1939 film On a hajm ( Without a Home ) with Israel Schumacher .

From 1937 she was married to Kazimierz Jezierski, a doctor and from 1945 an officer in the Polish State Security Service MBP .

Gran was interned in the Warsaw ghetto during the German occupation and performed in the Sztuka café during this time. Her performances were enthusiastically received and reached a large audience. On August 2, 1942, she escaped from the ghetto and was the only one of her family to survive the Holocaust .

After the end of the war, she sang on Polish radio and appeared in concerts and cabarets with artists such as Stefan Rachion and Mieczysław Fogg . In November 1950 she emigrated to Israel, resigned her Polish citizenship, although she did not receive Israeli citizenship. In February 1952 she moved to France. She appeared in Maurice Chevalier's Alhambra and in a benefit concert with Charles Aznavour . In the mid-1950s she had developed an extensive French repertoire with which she performed worldwide until the 1970s. In 1969 she performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City , and in 1970 at the renowned Salle Pleyel in Paris . A tour planned in Israel in 1971 had to be canceled after protests that rose after their arrival.

Gran spent the last years of her life withdrawn and bitter about never-ending, though never proven and purely rumored allegations of collaboration with the Gestapo during the period of occupation in the Warsaw ghetto. She died in Paris at the age of 91. Her final resting place is in the Jewish cemetery of Pantin , northeast of Paris.

Some of her best known songs are “List”, “Wir tańca nas porwał”, “Gdy odejdziesz”, “Trzy listy”, “Fernando”, “Cicha jest noc”, “Varsovie de mon enfance”, “Ma Patrie” and “Mazowiecki” wiatr ".

Allegations of collaboration with the Nazis

After the war, Wiera Gran was accused by Marek Edelman , Jonas Turkow , Adolf Berman and others of collaborating with the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto and later outside the ghetto on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw in the Hotel Polski case . Marek Edelman (2nd in command of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ) stated in his testimony on May 5, 1945 that he had been informed about the collaboration between Wiera Grans and the Gestapo . He also knew that the Polish Home Army had already pronounced a death sentence on her, but Gran could not be found and therefore it was not carried out. This information was confirmed by Irena Sendler in a 1983 statement to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw . In 1947, Wiera Gran was charged in Poland for collaborating with the German occupiers during World War II. The case was tried in the Court of the Central Committee of Polish Jews ( Sąd Obywatelski przy Centralnym Komitecie Żydów Polskich ) and Gran was acquitted.

Although several Polish courts exonerated Gran from the allegations, this stigma has never been shaken. After leaving for Israel in 1950, Pessach Bursztajn , Jonas Turkow and Adolf Berman again accused her of collaborating with the Gestapo in Warsaw. In 1971, an unknown person in Tel Aviv made an affidavit about Gran's collaboration with the Nazis in Warsaw. This document is in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In 2010 Marek Edelman retracted the accusation he had made immediately after the war and exonerated Gran. The Polish journalist Janusz R. Kowalczyk considers resentment to be the source of the unproven allegations of collaboration. The artist Diana Blumenfeld , who was also in the Warsaw ghetto, had reason to feel left out. Between 1939 and 1942 Gran sang (to the piano accompaniment by Władysław Szpilman ) in a prominent café that was only frequented by privileged circles in the ghetto, while such opportunities were not available to the singer Blumenfeld. Blumenfeld was the wife of Jonas Turkow, who was one of those who publicly accused Gran on several occasions.

The doubts about Władysław Szpilman's attitude expressed by Gran in her autobiography should not be quoted, according to the aim of the trial of the son Szpilman at the Hamburg Higher Regional Court and a Warsaw District Court in 2013.

Discography

1938

1939

1942

  • Jej pierwszy bal (Szpilman, Szlengel)

Autobiography

  • Sztafeta oszczerców: autobiografia śpiewaczki . W. Gran, Paris 1980

literature

  • Agata Tuszyńska : The singer from the ghetto. The life of the Wiera Gran . Translated from the French by Xenia Osthelder. Insel, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-45817574-2
  • Bernard Mark: Fighting and Destroying the Warsaw Ghetto . ZIH, Warszawa 1959, p. 206.
  • Ryszard Marek Groński: Proca Dawida. Cabaret w przedsionku piekieł . Muza 2007.

Web links

Commons : Wiera Gran  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guilt and Rumors . taz.de. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f [1] Janusz R. Kowalczyk: Wiera Gran, April 20, 1916 - November 19, 2007 (Polish), Culture.pl, April 2013, accessed on May 29, 2019.
  3. ↑ "Oskarżona Wiera Gran" Agata Tuszyńska, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2011
  4. ↑ "Oskarżona Wiera Gran" Agata Tuszyńska, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2011, p 159
  5. ^ Letter v. Irena Sendler to the ZIH, p. 1 (PDF; 2.6 MB)
  6. ^ Letter v. Irena Sendler to ZIH, p. 2 (PDF; 2.7 MB)
  7. ↑ Wiera Gran uniewinniona. Express Wieczorny, January 18, 1949
  8. ↑ Agata Tuszynska: The singer from the ghetto: Explain, speak, don't hide your face . FAZ. Retrieved July 10, 2013.
  9. ^ Wiera Gran: Strange Saga of a Warsaw Ghetto Singer . Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Oskarżona Wiera Gran" Agata Tuszyńska, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2011
  11. ↑ http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn519051
  12. ↑ Gerhard Gnauck: Legends of the Ghetto in Front of Court , Die Welt , October 2, 2013, p. 25
personal data
SURNAME Gran, Wiera
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grynberg, Weronika (maiden name); Gran, Vera; Mariol; Green, Wiera
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish singer
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 2007
Place of death Paris