In 1994 I had the opportunity to travel to Poland and meet Joanna, the penpal with whom I had been corresponding for five years. I planned to spend a week with her, travelling around Poland, and she asked me if there was anything I particularly wanted to see. My father had a book from WW2 called A Soldier's Album in which were featured photos of the liberation of Auschwitz. I was fascinated and horrified by these photos, and visiting Auschwitz while I was in Poland was unequivocal. When I asked Joanna if we might go there, she said of course, and would you like to meet my friend Zofia, who was imprisoned there? And that is how I ended up meeting Zofia Grochowalksa Abramowicz, a Polish Christian who was captured at the beginning of the war when she was taking information to Lithuania as part of the Resistance, and spent four years imprisoned at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz.
Zofia asked me to tell people her story, and as a result of our meeting, I have come to possess originals of poetry that she wrote while a prisoner at Auschwitz, in agricultural camp Rajsko. Since meeting her I have been working on her story, having the poems translated, and trying to figure out how best to honor my promise. The first step happened a few weeks ago, when I emailed the producers of American Public Media's "The Story" and asked whether they would be interested. They were, and last week I had an interview with Sean Cole, and it will be broadcast this coming Tuesday.
Zofia's poetry is an expression of being a prisoner, of missing her husband, of being sure that Poland would survive and rebuild as a nation. Although there is much poetry written by former prisoners about their experiences in the camps, there is little to no poetry, except these, which were written while a prisoner. Her own words are the best way to present her story, and I'm deciding how to do that. But in the meantime, I will share some of them here.
These poems were translated by Brian Arden, with whom I have lost touch. I am looking for him, as he is the very talented writer who put Zofia's poems into such beautiful English, and I want to be sure he gets credit for that.
The Fragrance of Lindens
The fragrance of lindens has awakened my heart,
Frozen and faded from the grayness.
The fragrance of lindens has infused my heart,
Indifferent in its exile.*
Once again it so beats and pounds
Invoking the image of my country cottage
And again the memory lives
Of how things were in distant years.
My tiny house veiled by an orchard
Along the banks of a silvery lake
Pear trees chat in muted counsel
And the fragrance of lindens by morning . . . by night
Into water's depths sinks a scarlet sun
While a wave rocks a small craft
Fragrances flow, sweet and honeyed
I hear the whisper of your heart.
And when darkness ignites the stars
Shadows trail in mist, above the meadow
An aroma, as of a censer, flows from afar
These are the lindens, the blossoming lindens.
* Brian Arden says that this phrase translated literally means "Indifferent among foreign lands," referring to her heart. As she is speaking metaphorically here, we chose to go with the alternate meaning of the Polish, which is "exile."
