The Notebook with the Poems from Auschwitz / Häftet med dikterna från Auschwitz / Zeszyt z wierszami z Auschwitz

How is it possible that poems were written in the Auschwitz camp? Who wrote them? How did they survive? – these and other questions are answered by the publication entitled “The Notebook with the Poems from Auschwitz”.

It turns out that the prisoners wrote poetry in the camp, memorizing it or writing it down illegally on loose sheets of paper or in notebooks. It was their “silent cry,” and at the same time, a prayer and a kind of testament – wrote Joanna Ziembińska-Kurek in her preface to the publication of the “Notebook”.

The poems in the “Notebook” were written down by an Auschwitz prisoner, Bożena Janina Zdunek (née Musiewicz), who lived in Sweden after the war. The entries were made in the camp and for this reason the “Notebook” is unique in the collection of the Auschwitz Museum. It was donated by Bożena Zdunek's son, Prof. Bogusław Adam Zdunek.

If a poem was found on a prisoner, it resulted in severe punishment. The specific situation in which the works were created, the fear of exposure, death of the author — they all make it very difficult if not impossible to determine the authorship of many poems written in the extermination camps – explained Joanna Ziembińska-Kurek. We know, however, that the authorship of some works can be attributed to Krystyna Żywulska and Tadeusz Borowski.

The publication includes a reprint of the original “Notebook" and texts of poems in Polish, English and Swedish, as well as introductions and historical and biographical studies in these three languages.