The theme of Jews in hiding during the Holocaust, together with the inexpressibility of the Holocaust experience itself, is one of the central themes in Hanna’s Krall work.

From the volume of reports, Hipnoza (1989), the reporter’s attention has been consistently focussed on the subject of the Holocaust. In subsequent works, there is also a veiled autobiographical thread – a girl with a Jewish appearance, interrogated at one of the Polish police stations by a Polish “blue policeman”. She knew the Christian prayers very well. Her mother did not look Jewish, but had not managed to master the life-saving prayers. Fortunately, a pre-war neighbour arrived at the station. Her outraged cries were lifesaving, “What? My sister is Jewish? What a rubbish! [..] I’ll show you! Jadziu! I brought your documents”. This was Maria Ostrowska-Ruszczyńska, in 1968, honoured with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

The first book of her articles, including Na wschód od Arbatu (Heading East From Arbat), is a record of the reality of the then USSR, where she spent three years. She focussed on seemingly trivial details, “smuggling” (Mariusz Szczygieł’s term) touching conclusions regarding the reality. At the same time, she endowed her characters with great tenderness (e.g. Women in Lilac and, especially, the chapter Ta smutna wierność).

Already then, Hanny Krall’s characteristic writing style had consolidated – sparse in form, listening to the rhythm of the characters’ statements, saturated, yet reduced to a minimum, with the narrator’s presence – masterfully observant and extracting significant details, formulating surprising punchlines and full of irony.

Hanna Krall on the Extermination of the Jews – a Guide to the Reports and Stories

In 1975, Hanna Krall travelled to Łódź in order to collect material for an article about one of the factories. So, “by accident and out of boredom”, as she perversely commented, she began working on her most famous book – about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the main heroes of which was cardiologist Marek Edelman. The book was published in 1976, initially in parts in the “Odra” monthly (after might battles against censorship by its publisher Zbigniew Kubikowski). It has since been translated into several dozen languages, In Poland, it is still compulsory reading for the Matriculation examination. It is also an inspiration for many people around the world – most recently (May 2022), the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was photographed with a copy of Zdążyć przez Panem Bogiem (To Outwit God).

Following the introduction of martial law, Hanna Krall left “Polityka”. She was doomed to operate in a publishing niche. (She was published in, among others, “Wiadomościach wędkarskich” – “Fishing News”). Some of her works were published in other circulations.

In democratic Poland, Krall has already published nine more books. They include collections of literary articles such as Dowody na istnienie (Evidence of Existence) (1995) and Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki (There is No River There Anymore) (1998) and larger documentary works, such as Wyjątkowo długa linia (An Exceptionally Long Line) (2004) and Król kier znów na wylocie (Chasing the King of Hearts) (2006).

The following is a kind of guide to her works, which includes the theme of Jews in hiding or helping them. They are worth reading in order to better learn of the author’s work and not to view it only through the prism of the famous publication Zdążyć przez Panem Bogiem (To Outwit God).

**The micro-story Sublokatorka (The Sub-Tenant) (1985) – Hanna Krall’s autobiographical foundation**

This pocket-sized book, illustrated by Franciszek Maśluszczak, depicts a pale and big-eyed girl. In its narrative, it refers to Krall’s personal wartime and post-war experiences. The author compares the war stories of two girls, who “train” in the light and in the dark. One’s family contains heroes, while the other’s has victims. Sublokatorka, published in 1985 in Paris, serves as a foundation for Krall’s further works. She focusses on events on the periphery of the Holocaust – not in the death camps, but on the “Aryan side” where, to survive, you had to pretend to be bright.

The image of a girl, kicking a pebble along the pavement so that no one would see her dark, frightened eyes, a sub-tenant in one of Warsaw’s apartment, is a representation of the fate of many Jews in hiding. The novel is told in the second person. The recipient of a girl in hiding:

“Grandpa would never have ventured into the maid’s room alone – with one exception. Apart from that, you were not allowed to pee between three-thirty and four. Grandpa had a very regular stomach and used the toilet immediately upon arriving.”

**“The River Divides the World into Two Parts – Good and Evil” – from the collection of articles entitled Taniec na cudzym weselu (Dancing at Someone Else’s Wedding) (1993)**

The heroes of this collection include children born during or just after the war who, as adults, must confront shocking facts about their origins. The article Ta z Hamburga (She from Hamburg) tells of a dramatic love triangle:

“One summer day, she returned home with some shopping, There was a jacket hanging in the entrance hall – her husband had come home from work a little earlier. The door to the Jewish woman’s room was locked.
One autumn day, my husband said, 'Regina is pregnant’.

She put down her knitting needles and straightened out her work. It was the sleeve of a sweater.

‘Listen’, whispered her husband, ‘so that you don’t accidentally think of something stupid. Are you listening to me?’
I listened to him.
‘Because, if something happens’, leaning over his wife’s head and whispered directly into her ear, ‘if something bad happens to her, the same will happen to you. Do you understand me?’
She nodded her head. She understood him and took the knitting needles in her hands.”

The German occupation continues. Jan brings home Regina, a Jewish woman, who had miraculously escaped death. Fascinated by Regina, he cheats on his wife Barbara. Regina, wishing to survive, agrees to the unwanted sex and becomes pregnant. Barbara pretends to be pregnant. Helena is born. The situation among the characters is filled with shocking ambivalence. The saviour becomes the persecutor, creating unhappiness for all those whom he holds dear, and for himself also. Only years later will academic works be written on this topic, which will based on extensive historical source materials. They include work by Justyna Kowalska-Leder (2019) and Jan Grabowski (2016).

This is also the volume in which Krall deals with the history of murders, committed on Jews, by local Polish populations in the Polish provinces. The central character of Portret z kulą w szczęce (A Portrait with a Bullet in the Jaw) is a survivor of Bełżec, Thomas (Tojwełe, Tomek) Blat. Every year, he comes to the village of Przylesie on the Wieprz River in order to meet farmer Marcin B. who, when hiding Blatt and his companions became uncomfortable, decided to kill them. Blatt survived, but was left with a bullet in the jaw after the failed murder.

“Why exactly are you keeping this bullet?”, Blatt was asked by his friend and saviour, with whom he found himself after escaping from Marcin B.’s farm. ‘I know’ thought Blatt. I lose everything. If I took it out, I’d lose it. With it in my jaw, I always know where it is”.

That bullet is like a reproach to the Polish conscience. Krall’s hero questions society’s indifference towards the extermination of the Jews and demands the remembering of its nameless victims:

“Hanna Krall’s great theme”, commented Ryszard Kapuściński, “is the fact of a man entangled in the atrocities of history, caught up in its crushing mechanisms. However, this history is not some terrible and, at the same time, an elusive and undefinable abstract. It has the form of a specific and definable relationship of man to man […] It is not ‘historical turmoil’ or ‘ghosts of war’, but about specific people murdering other equally specific people”.

**A Righteous Pola – from the collections Hipnoza (Hypnosis) (1989) and Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki (There is No River There Anymore) (1998)**

Apolonia Machczyńska, known as Pola, appears for the first time in Krall’s accounts in the piece Narożny domy z wieżyczką (Corner Houses with Turrets) (in Hipnoza). Apolonia has red-blonde hair and two children. She was pregnant was she was murdered for giving shelter to twenty-five Jews in her granary in Kock. Director Krzysztof Warlikowski, fascinated by Apolonia Machczyńska, juxtaposed her story with characters from ancient tragedies. The play A(pollonia) is preformed regularly at the Teatr Nowy in Warsaw.

In the story about Machczyńska, there is “significant detail” typical of Krall’s work – a woman dramatically seeking help, while all inhabitants have locked themselves inside their homes and her shoelace has come undone. Trailing behind her, it is a metaphor for her inexorable fate – if she does not attempt to survive, Apolonia will die.

Ten years later, Krall returned to her story. In the volume Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki (There is No River There Anymore), she also focussed on the actual murderers of Apolonia and the Jews in hiding – the Germans. They constituted the 101^st Reserve Police Battalion. In his famous publication, historian Christopher Browning describes them as men too old for the front, so they were given the task of exterminating Jews.

For several hours, the pregnant wife of one of the policemen watched as Jews from Międzyrzec were herded into wagons: “Until all that was left on the pavement were bundles biscuits, children’s bodies and feathers flying from torn pillows”. Apolonia was murdered by a policeman from that same battalion. As testimonies indicate, he knew her, had helped her and perhaps had deeper feelings for her:

“Ich kann nicht – and lowered his weapon. […] He lifted his rifle, but couldn’t do it! [...] Until they pointed a revolver at him, ‘And now?’”

**A Semi-Queer Collection – Dowody na istnienie (Evidence for Existence) (1995)**

This collection consists of stories about incomprehensible, miraculous and bizarre phenomena, whose heroes are Jews in hiding:

“Working as a reporter has taught me that [...] things, which cannot be explained, really happen. After all, life on earth is also real and cannot be logically explained”, the author stated in one of her interviews.

The spirit of his brother (Dybuk), who disappeared in the Warsaw Ghetto, entered the life of Adam S. A group of Jews in hiding strangles one of their number, an elderly man who endangered them with his constant coughing. A miracle occurs and his paralysed wife stands up, goes to the police station and reports everyone (Fotel). Halina S. dreams of her friend, the famous composer and pianist Andrzej Czajkowski (Hamlet). In her dream, he asks his friend to die because, after his suicide, he is bored without her. Krall reconstructs Andrzej’s fate – a Jewish boy in hiding during the war.

“You lived at Monika’s. There was a wardrobe in the room. […] A chamber pot was placed inside it. You found it by touching and learned to pee without making any noise. Clothes were cleared. There was darkness in the closet, a chamber pot and you...”

This account is probably one of the first in Polish literature in which the hero’s homosexual orientation is openly described.

**On Fragility – Biała Maria (White Maria) (2011)**

This begins with the story of a married couple who were to become the godparents of a Jewish girl. In this way, they would save her life during the war. However, citing the eighth commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”, in the end, they did not become godparents.

It is a work with a complex narrative form, self-referential and, at the same time, a dialogue between Hanna Krall and director Krzysztof Kieślowski, who often drew inspiration from his friend’s work.

In Biała Maria, Hanna Krall leaves readers in doubt, in the laborious reconstruction of the story being told. It is a work with a concise format, “ever closer to silence”, as Wojciech Tochman said. The reader must find the truth on his or her own. “And even so, it will be only one of the variants of reality which are available to us. The truth is understood, here, as a possibility”, commented Krzysztof Kąkolewski, theoretician and practitioner of this form of storytelling.

* * *

In 2023, Hanna Krall became an Honorary Ambassador of the social and educational ”Daffodils” campaign organised, since 2013, by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Based on her work Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem (To Outwit God), a moving educational film was created and premiered during the commemoration of the 80^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Joanna Król-Komła, ed. Mateusz Szczepaniak, kwiecień 2024 r.

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The Hiding of Jews During the Holocaust In the Work of Hanna Krall

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