Bidspirit auction | Władysław Broniewski – “To the

Władysław Broniewski – “To the Jews of Poland” – Broniewski’s Poem of Solidarity with Polish Jewry at the Height of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – Printed Postcard - WŁADYSŁAW BRONIEWSKI – ŻYDOM POLSKIM (Pamięci Szmula Zygielbojma) – Władysław Broniewski – “To the Jews of Poland” (In Memory of Szmul Zygielbojm). Printed postcard featuring Władysław Broniewski’s poem dedicated to the Jews of Poland, in memory of Szmul Zygielbojm. Poland, ca. 1943. A postcard featuring the renowned poem “To the Jews of Poland” by the Polish poet Władysław Broniewski. Broniewski wrote the poem in May 1943, while the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was still taking place and following the news of the suicide of Szmul Zygielbojm – the Bund representative in the Polish government-in-exile in London, who took his own life in an attempt to awaken the conscience of the world to the extermination of European Jewry. Text of the poem: ״From Polish cities and towns no cries of despair are heard anymore, They fell, like a battalion of fighters, the defenders of the Warsaw Ghetto... I dip my words in blood, and my heart in bitter tears, For you, O Jews of Poland, a wandering Polish poet. Not men, but blood-soaked dogs, not soldiers, but executioners, Came to strike you down, your wives and your children, To suffocate you with gas in chambers, to consume you with lime in railway cars, And to mock the defenseless and terrified as they lay dying. But you raised a stone, to hurl it at the gunner Who aimed his cannon to destroy your home to its foundations... Sons of the Maccabees! You too know how to die, To take up the struggle that began in September, without a shadow of hope. This is what must be engraved, like an epitaph, in Polish memory: Our common home was destroyed, and the blood of our brothers was shed, The execution wall binds us together; Dachau and Auschwitz bind us together, Every nameless grave and every prison bar. A common sky will shine above us over ruined Warsaw, When we bring to a victorious end our long years of blood-soaked toil: Every man shall receive freedom, a piece of bread, and his rights, And one race shall arise, superior to all: noble human beings״. This poem is regarded as one of the earliest and most powerful texts in the Polish language written in real time about the extermination of the Jews and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Broniewski himself was not Jewish, and in the poem he addresses the Jews of Poland directly, presenting their fate as part of the shared catastrophe of Poland under the German occupation. 9×14 cm. Very good condition.