Zofia Posmysz

Zofia Posmysz, Krakow 2007

Zofia Posmysz (married Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka ; born August 23, 1923 in Cracow ) is a Polish editor and author.

Life

At the age of 18, Zofia Posmysz was arrested by the Gestapo in Krakow in 1942 while distributing leaflets, interrogated for weeks and then deported to German concentration camps. After two and a half years in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (women's camp, agricultural command), she was taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she was liberated by the US Army on May 2, 1945.

After the war she studied in Poland ( University of Warsaw ) and worked as a culture editor for Radio Poland . Her radio play Pasażerka was published as a book in 1962.

She created the radio play Pasażerka z kabiny 45 (The Passenger from Cabin 45), which served both as a template for Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger and for the screenplay for the film Pasażerka (The Passenger) by Andrzej Munk . The film's director died in a car accident in 1961 while filming. The film was completed by his staff and premiered in 1963.

In 2015 she was one of 19 survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp , whose story was included in the comprehensive cover report The Last Witnesses in the German news magazine Der Spiegel . Eight different portraits of survivors, designed by the photographers Sara Kewkowicz and Dmitrij Leltschuk , were selected and printed as covers, one of them that of Zofia Posmysz.

Zofia Posmysz, Krakow 2007

Quote

"Auschwitz never left me."

Works

Works published in Polish:

• Znam katów z Belsen… (1945) (I know the executioners from Belsen)
• Pasażerka (1962; filmed in 1963 by Andrzej Munk )
• Przystanek w lesie (1965, short stories) (Stop in the forest)
• Cierpkie głogi (1966, screenplay, filmed in 1966 by Janusz Weychert) (Bitter rose hips)
• Mały (1970, screenplay, filmed in 1970 by Julian Dziedzina) (The Little One)
• Wakacje nad Adriatykiem (1970), (Holidays on the Adriatic Coast )
• Microclimate (1975), (microclimate)
• Drzewo do drzewa podobne (1977), (The tree, resembling another tree)
• Cena (1978), (The Prize)
• Ten sam doctor (1981), (same doctor)
• Wdowa i kochankowie (1988), (The widow and the lovers)
• Do wolności, do śmierci, do życia (1996), (To freedom, to death, to life)

Published in German:

• The Passenger , translated from Polish by Peter Ball, reprinted from New Life Publishing in 1969; as Book on Demand 3rd edition 2010
• Vacation on the Adriatic (1985)
• Christ of Auschwitz (2011)

Honors

• 1964 - Award - Knight's Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta (German: Order of the Rebirth of Poland, second highest civil award in Poland)
• 1970 - Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta
• 1976 - Award of the Radio and Television Committee for success in the field of radio plays
• 2007 - Witold Hulewicz Prize
• 2008 - Prize of the Minister of Culture "for significant achievements in promoting Polish culture"
• 2012 - Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon
• 2015 - DIALOG Prize of the German-Polish Society Federal Association
• 2020 - Order of the White Eagle

reception

• Her novella Pasażerka also served as a model for the libretto by Alexander Medvedev for the opera The Passenger , op. 97 by Mieczysław Weinberg ; which premiered on July 21, 2010 at the Bregenz Festival or in the Wielki Theater (Wielkiego Opera Narodowa) .

literature

• Maria Anna Potocka: Zofia Posmysz. The writer 7566, Auschwitz 1942–1945 , Göttingen: Wallstein 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3482-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Zofia Posmysz in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Zofia Posmysz: In the morning the rabbi sang a kaddish, a prayer for the dead . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 2015, p. 50-69 ( online ).
2. ↑ International youth meeting place in Oświęcim / Auschwitz : Federal Cross of Merit. August 2, 2012, accessed June 18, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Auschwitz survivor and author Posmysz awarded the highest Polish Order , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, published and accessed on January 25, 2020.