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[THE JANOWSKA CONCENTRATION CAMP] Literatura w obozie [i.e. Literature in the Camp]

Borwicz, Michał Maksymilian

Item #2595

Kraków: Drukarnia I pod Zarządem Państwowym, 1946. 76 pp.: ill. 23 × 16 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Tear of the spine with a small fragment missing. Otherwise in good condition.

First edition. Design of the edition by Karol Ferster and Abba Fenichel.
Michał Maksymilian Borwicz, born Maksymilian Boruchowicz (1911-1987) was a Polish poet, prose writer, and journalist of Jewish descent, he wrote in Polish, Yiddish and French. He has lived in Lviv in the 1930s and until 1942, when he became a prisoner (pseudonym “Ilian”) at the Janowska concentration camp in Lviv. In September 1943, he managed to escape from the camp thanks to the help of friends from the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) active in the “Żegota” Council for Aid to Jews. After escaping from the camp, he joined the partisans under the pseudonym “Zygmunt.” At his request, in October 1943, his friends also rescued 12-year-old orphan Janka Hescheles from the camp. In 1945 he has shortly lived in Kraków, before moving to Paris. The book tells the story of life in the Janowska camp through the love to literature. It describes literary
gatherings, debates, competitions held by prisoners, provides an overview of the songs and poems performed there, and details the process of creating manuscripts and attempts to smuggle them out.

Price: $650.00