The Warsaw Ghetto Poet—Zionist? Revisionist? ŻZW Member? On the Ideological Context and National Outlook of Władysław Szlengel

Abstract

This article discusses the cultural and ideological representation of the Jewish Polish poet Władysław Szlengel in historical and historiographic research. The author maintains that while many researchers have described Szlengel as universal, cosmopolitan, sympathetic to assimilation, with socialist leanings, or, at least, apolitical or indifferent toward the national issue, the “Warsaw Ghetto poet” in fact had firm Zionist-Revisionist leanings before the war, and was connected to the Betar-founded¹ Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) underground during the war and Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Thus, the author presents evidence and quotations previously unexplored in the field, which shed new light on the life and works of Szlengel.

Your whisper, my brother, is louder

Than the roar of the English lion.²

Introduction

By analyzing testimonies and literary texts, I aim to prove Władysław Szlengel’s ideological affinity to Zionism,³ particularly its Revisionist⁴ movement, and challenge current scholarship, which portrays him as assimilationist, socialist, or apolitical (see figure 1). I will present first-person testimonies describing Szlengel’s connections with Revisionist entities and his part in the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. One example is the testimony of Ziuta Hartman,⁵ a Revisionist underground (ŻZW)⁶ combatant⁷ who, according to Szlengel, played a major part in a fundraiser organized by the ŻZW prior to the last Passover in the Ghetto. In addition, character testimonies connect Szlengel to acts of bravery, such as the testimony of Menahem Mendel Lifshitz, a combatant of the Armia Krajowa (Homeland Army), the national Polish underground.⁸ Lifshitz testified that Szlengel remained in the Warsaw Ghetto even though he could have found refuge in a safe house on the Aryan side.

Szlengel’s literary contributions, notably his poetry, are almost all that remain of his writings and communications. By analyzing a previously underresearched selection of his poetic texts, I reconstruct his general ideological thoughts and more specifically uncover evidence of his nationalist views. Specifically, I will analyze four poems: “To General Haining,”⁹ “The Song of a Hero,”¹⁰ “Ghosts at Evian,”¹¹ and “The Arab Ultimatum.”¹²

Within the wider field, Szlengel is arguably representative of the biases in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto, in that scholars—until a recent resurgence of interest in the last two decades—have largely ignored or underresearched the ŻZW, despite its great significance in the uprising. This article contributes to new scholarship that attempts to reexamine the ŻZW and its personalities to repair this lacuna in the historical narrative.¹³

Władysław Szlengel: Biography and family

Szlengel was born in Warsaw in 1912 where he spent his childhood.¹⁴ His father, Maurycy, was an artist, who created theatrical scenery.¹⁵ A number of researchers¹⁶ have concluded that the Szlengel family members were assimilated, secular Jews, given the nature of his father’s work, the family members’ ongoing use of non-Hebrew names, the fact that Szlengel was sent to an economics and trade school¹⁷ with secular Jewish characteristics, and that photographs of Szlengel show that he dressed according to the style of the Polish urban-bourgeois class.¹⁸ The Szlengel family, however, was neither a fully assimilated family nor one disconnected from its Jewishness, as evidenced by the fact that his father created scenery specifically for the Yiddish theater,¹⁹ and that the announcements of his parents’ deaths²⁰ were published in the Zionist Jewish newspaper, Nasz Przegląd,²¹ and Yiddish press.²²

Student and poet

Szlengel spent his childhood in Warsaw. In 1930, Szlengel finished school and apparently chose not to continue his academic studies (see figures 2 and 3).²³ In the decade prior to World War II, when in his twenties, Szlengel gained fame both within the Jewish community and outside as a Polish-language playwright, screenwriter, and lyricist.²⁴ His work was notable for being entertaining and lively, with biting sarcasm and some cynicism. Many of his works were set to music, recorded, and became dance songs.

Apart from his work as a lyricist, Szlengel also wrote artistic poetry on political, national, and social topics. Szlengel published his poems only in Polish. When he completed his studies in 1930, he began to publish his first socially inspired poetry²⁵ in Nasz Przegląd, a newspaper that would be the main (although not sole)²⁶ platform in which Szlengel published. Overtime, his poetry would adopt a conspicuously Zionist dimension.

Until the outbreak of war in September 1939, Szlengel’s status was that of a popular poet, lyricist, and playwright who was in demand both among Polish Jewry and Polish society in general.²⁷ Though he married before the war, there is little to no information about his wife, not even her name.²⁸

Activity during World War II and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

According to Szlengel’s autobiographical poetry,²⁹ he participated in the defense of Warsaw against the Nazi invasion. Afterward, Szlengel and his wife, like hundreds of thousands of other civilians,³⁰ left the city and headed eastward.³¹ They reached Soviet-occupied Bialystok, where Szlengel managed the Miniature Theater,³² a theater troupe that performed in the Soviet-occupied territories. After some time he and his wife moved to Lvov.

We learn from the testimony of Menahem Mendel Lifshitz that in Lvov, following its takeover by Nazi forces on June 30, 1941, Szlengel was caught and imprisoned in the Nazi labor camp Janowska.³³ Later he was released with the help of Polish acquaintances, who hid him and his wife in Lvov.³⁴ According to Lifshitz, in the second half of January 1942, these acquaintances and Lifshitz (who smuggled Szlengel and his wife onto a train), helped the couple return to Warsaw.³⁵ The couple managed to return to the family’s apartment at 14 Waliców Street in the Ghetto.³⁶

In the Ghetto, Szlengel continued his artistic activities. He led the popular avant-garde performance The Living Newspaper³⁷ at the Sztuka (Arts) Club at 2 Leszno Street, and appeared together with other Jewish artists. His poems were widely publicized in the Ghetto, and he was known as the “Warsaw Ghetto poet.”³⁸

Emanuel Ringelblum noted in his review of writers in the Ghetto that Szlengel was a member of the Jewish police, but resigned during the “Great Action” of July 1942 in which the Jewish police took an active part:

The poem “Farewell to three hats” describes the farewell of the young poet [Szlengel] to his three hats—the student’s cap, the soldier’s beret and the policeman’s hat. He … describes the “Aktion” of the elimination of the Jews of Warsaw, in which, as a policeman, he was forced to participate. The poet is unable to reconcile himself to assisting the Germans in the act of annihilation and bids farewell to the policeman’s hat. However, there were few such policemen.³⁹

It is unclear whether Ringelblum bases this fact on the poem alone or on other sources. After the “Great Aktion,” like all Jews in the Ghetto who were not members of the Judenrat or the Jewish police, Szlengel had to obtain a workshop certificate to be considered an essential worker and avoid deportation or death. He acquired a worker certificate for the Brushmakers’ workshop and moved there together with his wife, who was categorized as “wild”—or in the Ghetto without permission (e.g., a worker’s certificate, and therefore was forbidden to live in the Ghetto)—to a house at 34 Świętojerska Street⁴⁰ inside the Ghetto.⁴¹ From this apartment, and while working in the factory, Szlengel continued to write what he called “document poems,” poems that were duplicated on a copying machine and distributed widely in the Ghetto.⁴² His poems at that time testify to his support of the Jewish underground and armed Jewish resistance.⁴³

In the uprising of April 1943, Szlengel found refuge in the bunker of Shimon (Szymek) Katz, who headed an armed underground group.⁴⁴ The bunker was at 36 Świętojerska Street, a building adjacent to Szlengel’s residence, where a group of ŻZW combatants from the Brushmakers were also located. On May 8, 1943, during the suppression of the uprising by the Germans, the bunker at 36 Świętojerska Street was discovered.⁴⁵ Apart from Avraham Neiberg’s indirect testimony on the death of the poet and his wife on this day, there is no first-person testimony about the circumstances of his death.

Portrayal of Szlengel in research

In Poland, several articles have appeared over the years regarding Szlengel’s poems. These articles examine his poems on the Holocaust, which he wrote from the Ghetto as a poetic record of historical events, and as an attempt to follow the Jewish consciousness during the extermination.⁴⁶ In Israel, the only academic article dedicated to Szlengel is Ruth Shenfeld’s “Władysław Szlengel veshirato begeto varsha” (Władysław Szlengel and his poetry in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1987). In this article, Shenfeld analyzes Szlengel’s work before the Holocaust, describing it as socially sensitive, and notes his use of “Yiddishisms” (i.e., motifs from Yiddish folklore).⁴⁷ Shenfeld notes, however, that though, “[Szlengel] represented a large part of the Jewish intelligentsia in Poland, which did not completely assimilate and wanted to retain its national uniqueness and its affinity to the Jewish public and its affairs, [they did so] without … deep involvement in specific Jewish culture, in Yiddish or Hebrew.”⁴⁸

Shenfeld further analyzes Szlengel’s poem “Sukkot.”⁴⁹ This poem, however, seemingly contradicts her statements about the poet’s lack of involvement in Jewish culture, as in this poem he proves his knowledge of classic Jewish subjects and his personal affinity to them. Shenfeld sums up her discussion of the poem as follows:

The poem ends with an almost Zionist declaration. In the future, when he returns to his home (i.e., the land of Israel), the poet will be able to celebrate the Sukkot holiday with true joy and remember the days of wandering in foreign countries: “But today? … Sir, sitting in sukkot is unsafe/it is my lot daily.”⁵⁰

It is unclear why Shenfeld describes Szlengel as only “almost Zionist” and not definitely Zionist. It is true that Szlengel belonged to the Jewish Enlightenment in Poland (Haskalah), but this group was not exclusive to socialists or assimilated Jews. Rather, this group also incorporated national or national-liberal Jews, including members of the Revisionist movement. Arguably, Szlengel belonged to this latter movement, as will become clear later in this article.

Regarding the quality of Szlengel’s poems, Shenfeld says that “he was not a great or very original poet.”⁵¹ In this way, Shenfeld concurs with Emanuel Ringelblum, who maintained in his opinion that “Their [his poems’] artistic level was not of the highest [quality].”⁵² Similarly, Israel Gutman belittles the artistry of Szlengel’s prewar poetry, but goes further than Ringelblum by also diminishing its impact during the war: “The Polish Jewish poet Władysław Szlengel, who previously wrote lyrics of minor value, wrote a few poems of suffering and rage during his time in the Ghetto.”⁵³ By comparison, Havi Dreifuss does not criticize the quality of Szlengel’s writing or belittle his artistic importance or the extent of his writing. Like Shenfeld, however, she also distances Szlengel from Zionist ideology, and describes Szlengel’s social circle as far from politics and nationalism.⁵⁴ Dreifuss’s approach is similar to that of Magdalena Stanczuk, who wrote a comprehensive account of the poet, “Władysław Szlengel—an unknown poet,” and defines Szlengel as “a combatant poet who fought with his pen,” but says that he was killed “without a gun in his hand, not in the ranks of the ŻZW or the ŻOB.”⁵⁵

On the other hand, it is clear that Samuel D. Kassow did not necessarily see Szlengel as someone totally disconnected from politics, national issues, and Jewish pride. He ascribes Szlengel to the Jewish Polish intelligentsia, which adopted Polish culture, but did not assimilate and was “torn between genuine Jewish pride and love for Poland, which never truly accepted them.”⁵⁶ Szlengel was not disconnected from Jewish religious, cultural, national, political, party, or underground affiliations, as most researchers assert, as will become clear through the evidence below.

Szlengel and Revisionism: prewar ideological connections

Applying a historical and literary analysis, this section will examine Szlengel’s national stance before the outbreak of war. This interdisciplinary approach will not include his significant and definitively nationalist poems, which Shenfeld has already analyzed (“Sukkot,” “Nihil novi,” “Airplane,” etc.),⁵⁷ but will briefly review some of his previously overlooked nationalist poems from the prewar period, which relate to three historical events in that period: the Shlomo Ben-Yosef affair, the Evian Conference, and the Arab ultimatum.

The Shlomo Ben-Yosef affair

Szlengel’s attitude to the Shlomo Ben-Yosef affair is the strongest evidence of his support not only for a Jewish national approach, but also for the Revisionist maximalist worldview.

On April 21, 1938, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, an Etzel⁵⁸ activist from the Rosh Pina Betar group, and two other members of the underground, Avraham Shein and Shalom Zurabin, threw a hand grenade at an Arab bus on the Rosh Pina-Safed road. The three acted on their own initiative and in opposition to the movement’s policy and the instructions of their direct commanders. It was retribution for one group member’s death, David Ben-Gaon, who was murdered with several other Jews during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. The trio’s attack failed as the grenade they threw did not explode or cause any damage.

They were tried: Zurabin was declared insane, and Shein and Ben-Yosef were sentenced to death. Shein’s punishment, however, was commuted to imprisonment due to his young age. On June 29, 1938, Ben-Yosef was hanged and became the “first martyr” of the Jewish underground movement. His name became a highly loaded symbol among Zionist Jewish youth in Palestine and worldwide during that period.⁵⁹ Before his sentence, the leadership of the Yishuv tried unsuccessfully to avert the decree, as will be seen below.

Immediately after the sentence was pronounced, Szlengel published his poem “To General Haining.”⁶⁰ General Robert Hadden Haining, who at the time was the commander of the British forces in Palestine, had been sent there in order to overcome the Arab revolt and the general unrest that followed. Haining signed Ben-Yosef’s sentence. Nasz Przegląd published Szlengel’s poem on June 26, 1938. In it Szlengel addresses Haining directly and protests vigorously against the sentence, while calling Ben-Yosef “my brother” and purposefully increasing the font size to emphasize his call to Haining, to reflect his increasing cry that seeks to tear down Haining’s indifference. Below are selected excerpts from the poem:

The poem shows that Szlengel deeply identified with Shlomo Ben-Yosef, while expressing his support for the Jewish rebellion and opposition to the rule of the Mandate. He addresses the British general directly: “You had no-one to rebel against.” Through these words, Szlengel expresses what he believes was the British’s and the world’s basic lack of understanding of the problems that Jews faced, and the former’s corrosive attitude toward Jews. As in the proverb “the well-fed does not understand the hungry,” Szlengel explains that as a citizen of a sovereign nation, the general is unable to understand the rebellious Jewish soul, which lacks a national home. He sees Ben-Yosef’s hanging as a desperate attempt to frighten and deter the Jewish public from fighting for a nation, without understanding the extent of their despair. He ends his poem with the promise: “This death will not set an example; no man’s hand will tremble”—a declaration that the execution will not discourage the rebels. This poem is significant because it is indicative of Szlengel’s worldview, which rejects policies that restrain Zionism as the policy of the Haganah (mainstream Zionist military organization), and supports the Jewish rebellion in Mandate Palestine.

On July 1, 1938, two days after Ben-Yosef’s execution, Szlengel published another poem about Ben-Yosef, “A Song of a Hero” (see figure 4). It appeared in two newspapers simultaneously, Nasz Przegląd and Tygodnik Żydowski, a Zionist weekly in Polish. The poem shows Szlengel’s absolute support for Ben-Yosef and his actions. This support is in line with Revisionist views, particularly the maximalist movement. Excerpts from the poem read:

When Szlengel writes, “Your whisper, my brother, is louder, than the roar of the English lion,” he is likely alluding to the Israeli Revisionists’ underground, and their fight against British Mandate rule. During this period, the mainstream leadership of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel claimed that it was necessary to cooperate with the British. Szlengel, in this poem, expresses himself directly and firmly against this approach. Through the line “In the holy grave of Rosh Pina” (one of the first Jewish settlements, located in the north of Israel), Szlengel uses religious and nationalist imagery to venerate this act of rebellion, unequivocally showing that he viewed Ben-Yosef’s act of militant activism as supremely important, and revealing his familiarity with Revisionist terminology.⁶³ That terminology frames Jewish national goals in Israel as a genuinely sacred religious endeavor. Furthermore, in 1939, Shlomo Skolsky, a senior Revisionist writer, expressed sentiments similar to Szlengel’s on the same subject—Ben-Yosef’s tomb in Rosh Pina—thus demonstrating shared ideological beliefs:

Arguably, it is significant that Szlengel chose to devote two poems to Ben-Yosef, and even referred to him as “my brother.” Given the tumultuous Arab revolt in Palestine, Szlengel could have focused on other events, no less tragic—during the revolt over five hundred Jews were killed, including well-known figures, such as the watchman Alexander Zaid, who was murdered on July 11, 1938. Therefore, Szlengel’s choice to focus on the controversial figure Ben-Yosef, who was a maximalist Revisionist icon, is likely deliberate. Through the following quotations, I will connect the attitudes of senior figures in the Zionist leadership to this incident, in order to understand the ideological stance of the Revisionist movement, toward this affair.

On July 10, 1938, after Ben-Yosef was executed, a discussion on the issue of restraint took place in London between Zeev Jabotinsky, the head of Betar and Etzel, and Eliyahu Golomb, one of the heads of the Haganah. Golomb strongly opposed glorifying Ben-Yosef’s name, saying to Jabotinsky:

But all this [i.e., the attempt of the Zionist leadership to save Ben-Yosef from death sentence] was also because one should not relate to a member of the Jewish community that fights against terror in the same way as a member of a community that supports terror [e.g. the Arabs] and also for various political reasons. However, I do not think that veneration of Ben-Yosef is justified.⁶⁵

Similar opinions had also been voiced previously by David Ben Gurion who was openly disgusted by Ben-Yosef’s actions:

I am capable of being shocked by the existence of hanging in the world, but I am not shocked precisely by the hanging of a Jew in Palestine. I am ashamed of the act that caused the hanging.⁶⁶

In contrast, Jabotinsky withdrew his initial opposition to the act. In an unusual step, he retroactively ordered Ben-Yosef’s act, and sent a letter of condolence to the members of Betar in Rosh Pina, in which he stated his aspiration to venerate Ben-Yosef. He, like Szlengel, drew upon religious imagery: “We will make a tower from his gallows, a temple from his grave, a civil religion from his memory.”⁶⁷

From this we learn that despite the attempts of the Yishuv’s leadership to annul Ben-Yosef’s death sentence, they did not see fit to glorify his name or actions, in contrast to the leadership of the Revisionist movement. It seems therefore that Szlengel supported Ben-Yosef’s actions, and unlike Jabotinsky he praised him from the beginning, describing the Jewish nation as “[a] nation that is proud of its son.” This pro-national activist reaction mirrors the maximalist wing of Revisionist Zionism, who later withdrew from the Etzel and founded the Lehi organization,⁶⁸ like Avraham “Yair” Stern and his friends.

Additionally Szlengel’s reaction to the Evian Conference and the Arab ultimatum proves his consistency and support for the pro-national Zionist, and arguably the Revisionist, viewpoints.

The Evian Conference

On July 8, 1938, following the Evian Conference,⁶⁹ Szlengel published “Ghosts in Evian” in Nasz Przegląd. In this poem, he fiercely attacks the hypocrisy of the nations of the world, which, in his opinion, met solely to clear their consciences, and offer empty humanitarian gestures for refugees from the Nazi regime.

Szlengel’s poem “Ghosts in Evian” delivers a scathing critique of the representatives at the Évian Conference and their indifference to the plight of Jewish refugees by evoking the spirit of Émile Zola’s decrying of the Dreyfus Affair, “J’accuse” (I accuse). By contrasting the tranquil administrative proceedings of the conference with the looming brutality of Nazi persecution, Szlengel exposes the stark contrast between the delegates’ inaction and the impending catastrophe faced by Europe’s Jewry. He condemns the moral failings of these nations and compels the reader to confront the bitter and painful reality of the mass persecution of the Jews.

A month after the publication of this poem, in September 1938, representatives at the Betar movement’s third international conference declared their support of military activism and Zionism, citing too their loss of trust in the world’s conscience. A young, promising Betar member named Menachem Begin, soon to be appointed Commissioner of Betar Poland, steered the movement into a more proactive direction: “The world’s conscience has stopped reacting…. The League of Nations has lost its value…. The “partner” [UK] sends the best of our people to the gallows and to prison [the hanging of Shlomo Ben-Yosef].”⁷¹

Haaretz newspaper, for example, which at that time represented a centralist Zionist approach, had placed hope in the Evian Conference, arguing that it, “has a great moral value. The opening session itself appeared as a strong demonstration against persecution in different countries.”⁷² When the conference ended, Haaretz summarized it positively reporting that “[p]ublic opinion and the general press note with satisfaction the decision that was taken at Evian: to make an effort to settle the refugees from Germany and Austria and those who have not yet left the Nazi hell.”⁷³

Jabotinsky, on the other hand, as head of the New Zionist Organization,⁷⁴ sent a letter to the members of the British parliament in which he expressed his dissatisfaction with the conference’s conclusions. He argued that the fact that the Jewish refugees were not allowed to immigrate to Palestine will “[p]rove fatal to all such schemes, will vitiate them from the beginning, and will result—probably almost at once—in provoking new catastrophes in areas holding six or seven times more Jews than Germany and Austria together.”⁷⁵ Indeed, like Jabotinsky, as a reaction to the conference’s decisions, Szlengel published his poem “The Jungle Books”⁷⁶ in which he satirizes the notion of resettling Jewish refugees in Africa, a proposal that emerged in the conference. Through vivid imagery, Szlengel juxtaposes the traditional Jewish customs and practices of the shtetl with what he believed were the unfamiliar and often harsh realities of the African landscape. Though arguably a reductive portrayal of the continent, his depiction of Jews hanging a Mezuzah on a cactus and lighting Shabbat candles in straw huts highlights the cultural and environmental incongruities of such a resettlement plan.

The following section will explore Szlengel’s ability to identify with and advocate for not only European Jews but even Eastern Jews in Islamic countries.

The Arab ultimatum

In October 1938, in the middle of the Arab revolt, Nabi el Azme, an Arab nationalist and the head of the Arab Committee for the Defense of Palestine in Damascus—with the encouragement of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was in Damascus at the time—sent Chaim Weizmann, the chairman of the Jewish Agency, a warning.⁷⁷ Nabi el Azme stated that if unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine continued and if Jews did not remain a minority in the land, Arab countries would attack their Jewish communities.⁷⁸

The Jewish Agency’s official response: “The threat of bloodshed will not frighten us. Our people derive their strength from persecution and slaughter.”⁷⁹ Similarly, Davar—the newspaper of the Jewish workers of Palestine and the organ of the General Labor Federation —published the reaction of the orientalist Menahem Kapeliuk, which included turning a cold shoulder to the Jews of the Muslim countries, while accusing them of betraying Zionism and expressing a willingness to sacrifice them on the altar of Zionism:

I am sure that none of us will be deterred by this outstanding threat of a general massacre of all the Jews who live in Arab countries, although the heart of every Jew will certainly tremble for the fate of these wretched people, who have already lied in their souls by placing a barrier between them and Zionism, and by financially supporting the Arab movement against Zionism, and nevertheless have not yet found favor in the eyes of our enemy, and moreover the sharp sword has been lifted above their necks. Our heart is with these wretched people, but we are sure that they themselves will not agree to sacrifice the entire nation at the price of their safety.⁸⁰

On October 15, 1938, just prior to the publication of Kapeliuk’s reaction, Szlengel published his poem “The Arab Ultimatum”⁸¹ in Nasz Przegląd. In it he expresses his concern and strong support for Jews in Muslim countries, who faced the threat of pan-Arab violence during the Arab uprising. Szlengel’s reaction to the Arab ultimatum completely differs from that of Kapeliuk. Defending Jews in Muslim countries, Szlengel expresses a connection and affinity with these communities. Below are the main points of the poem’s message:

In this poem Szlengel laments the fact that Jews lack arms and thus lack the ability to aid their brethren in distress. Later in the poem he again declares the uselessness of diplomacy and his lack of confidence in the world’s conscience, and calls for a widespread national awakening—advocating physical force to save the persecuted and threatened Eastern Jews. Mirroring the Revisionist movement, he envisions for his “Semitic brethren” this general awakening and rising up:

Szlengel’s use of the expression “the iron fortress” may allude to classic Revisionist images such as Jabotinsky’s image of the “iron wall,” which describes the need to build a Jewish military force that could withstand the Arabs.⁸² Alternatively, it could allude to the Betar oath:

Or the will of Samson in Jabotinsky’s novel Shimshon, who commands his people “to gather iron,” meaning military ammunition.⁸⁴ Given these potential inspirations behind Szlengel’s poem about Jewish-Arab relations in the Middle East, it is possible that this poem further indicates his ideological closeness to the Revisionist movement.

Furthermore, even though Szlengel himself was in danger of persecution and the threat of war loomed in Europe, he demonstrated genuine concern for the international Jewish community, including Jews in majority Arab countries and Mandatory Palestine. Calling for a sense of mutual responsibility and collective defense he wrote: “Fires from the east and west, will not consume the strong will of the nation.”⁸⁵

As is clear from the examples above, even before World War II, Szlengel expressed firm support for Zionism and venerated the memory of Ben Yosef. Arguably, Szlengel’s ideological stance is consistently Zionist, with a willingness to support, or at least lean into, Revisionism.

Szlengel’s affinity to resistance, Jewish heroism, and the ŻZW underground in the Ghetto

In this section I will analyze Szlengel’s poem “Five Minutes to Midnight,” which he composed during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Additionally, I will also examine three previously under analyzed testimonies that directly connect Szlengel to the ŻZW underground and Jewish resistance in the Ghetto.

Five Minutes to Midnight

While confined in the Ghetto period, Szlengel wrote a number of poems that supported and encouraged Jewish resistance. In “Five Minutes to Midnight” he describes himself as part of a group of combatants on a rooftop, waiting for the order to open fire, with the aim of avenging Jewish blood. As he writes in one stanza:

The poem’s form and content follow Adam Mickiewicz’s poem “Ordon’s Redoubt.”⁸⁷ Mickiewicz was a Polish national poet regarded as a visionary of modern Polish nationalism and an inspiration for the Zionists of the Revisionist movement.⁸⁸ One line in Szlengel’s poem, “From despair and sadness—rise to action!” presents a call to arms that echoes the ŻZW’s revolt proclamation poster in January 1943: “Prepare for action! Be alert!” in the middle of which was the sentence, “An end to despair and to lack of faith!”⁸⁹ Thus these two lines, at the very least, demonstrate a similar desire for rebellion and action, using the same words and terminology

The testimony of Ziuta Hartman

Ziuta Hartman was one of the last surviving ŻZW combatants. During the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, she was part of the Brushmakers’ factory. In her testimonies,⁹⁰ as well as the testimonies of others,⁹¹ there is a fundraising evening for the Ghetto children, which took place at the end of March 1943, before the last Passover (in retrospect) of the Ghetto. The star of the evening was Szlengel, who read his poems. At the height of the event, the light suddenly went out, and armed masked figures who presented themselves as ŻZW combatants burst into the hall and gave Szlengel 10,000 or 20,000 Zloty⁹² as a donation. In a later 2001 testimony Hartman again alluded to this episode: “In the scope of my work in the ŻZW, we also helped to look after abandoned children and orphans, with food, clothing and housing. One day we organized a literary evening in which the poet Władysław Szlengel participated.”⁹³ And again in 2011, Hartman expanded on this account for the creators of the film Venizkhor et kulam?:

The poet Szlengel. I had something wonderful with him in the Ghetto. He spoke to our souls. So I said to Avraham [Rodal] that something needs to be done, so we decided on the spot that money needs to be given to Szlengel for the children of the Ghetto, and the Betar members collected 20,000 zloty and brought them to a festive evening with Szlengel. Szlengel began to speak and said that our future is such and such [not so bright] … and they said to me beforehand, “Don’t be alarmed, something will happen here that the Betar members will do. Look at the wall, not opposite,” and I heard Avraham’s voice saying, “Hands up,” to everyone, and he gave the package of 20,000 zloty to Szlengel and said to him “This is the gift from the Betar combatants to the orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto.”⁹⁴

From these testimonies, we learn that the fundraising evening was in fact a ŻZW production and that there was a connection between the ŻZW and Szlengel. Avraham Rodal, who recruited Hartman to the ranks of the organization, was one of its senior members and one of the commanders of the Brushmakers.⁹⁵ His brother Arye (Leon, Leib) Rodal, was considered deputy to the ŻZW commander, Paweł Frenkiel.⁹⁶

Ruth Shenfeld, who recounted this event, reached the conclusion that “this episode testifies to the moral standing of Szlengel among the public in the Ghetto.”⁹⁷ In addition, Hartman’s testimonies show Szlengel’s relationship with ŻZW senior commanders. The next testimony connects Szlengel to an act of national heroism, and portrays him as an active partner in the resistance.

The testimony of Menahem Mendel Lifshitz

An anthology of Szlengel’s poems from the Ghetto period, What I Read to the Dead, contains a poem called “A Page from the Diary of the Action—August 10, 1942.“⁹⁸ In this poem, Szlengel describes the famous march of Dr. Janusz Korczak, at the head of his group of orphans, to the Umschlagplatz (deportation holding areas) and his refusal to leave them, despite holding a false identity card⁹⁹ that would have allowed him to hide on the Aryan side.¹⁰⁰ Szlengel ends the poem with an appeal to Poles, or perhaps to the world:

Arguably, to Szlengel, Korczak deliberately chose death, and to symbolically sacrifice his life for his nation. He connects Korczak’s martyrdom to Westerplatte, a Polish military transit depot that became famous as the site of the first battle of the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The battleground had become a point of Polish national pride, and thus Szlengel’s poem connects to his Jewish-Polish national worldview, and specifically his support of Revisionism, advocates the importance of national honor.¹⁰²

According to the aforementioned Menahem Mendel Lifshitz and Armia Krajowa, Lifshitz recalled that, like Korczak, Szlengel had also refused offers to go into hiding on the Aryan side of the city. He testified:

Szlengel wrote in Polish magazines, including the popular magazine about movies [presumably Kino] in which the well-known movie actor Adolf Dymsza took part.

I told him that I had met Dymsza on the Aryan side, and he was prepared to find a hiding place for him and his wife. Szlengel’s reply was that he did not intend to abandon the Ghetto and he would remain with everyone. Afterward he showed me his works…. I don’t remember his works by heart, but he was active and served as an example. I wish to preserve his sacred memory here.¹⁰³

From his testimony, it is clear that Lifshitz viewed Szlengel with great respect, and as someone who sacrificed his life to remain with his community; arguably he viewed him as a martyr. As the next testimony will reveal, Szlengel fulfilled this role, in one of the last acts of resistance in the ŻZW bunker with the Brushmakers.

The testimony of Avraham (Leon) Neiberg

In April 1943, during the uprising, Szlengel hid in his work colleague’s bunker located in the Brushmakers’ workshop. His colleague, Shimon (Szymek) Katz,¹⁰⁴ headed an armed group at 36 Świętojerska Street,¹⁰⁵ near his apartment building. From crosschecking the testimonies of Ziuta Hartman¹⁰⁶ and Avaraham Neiberg, a young Warsaw Jew who recorded his experiences during the war in a diary, it can be concluded that a group of ŻZW combatants who operated in the Brushmakers’ section were in that bunker. This included the ŻZW commanders and combatants of the Brushmakers’ section: Avraham Rodal, Heinik Zamesz, Jozek Lopata, Jozek’s wife Reina (also a member of the ŻZW), Dr. Josef Celmaister, underground’s doctor, and of course Ziuta herself. ¹⁰⁷

Katz’s bunker wasn’t the nearest to Szlengel’s house, as the ŻOB, including section commander, Marek Edelman, were using the bunker at 34 Świętojerska Street.¹⁰⁸ Szlengel chose to be in the more distant bunker for ŻZW combatants and not the one in his own apartment building. This choice may indicate his affiliation to the ŻZW. This is how Neiberg, who spontaneously joined the ŻZW combatant forces, describes the bunker at 36 Świętojerska Street:

For only three days I held out in S. Katz’s shelter and today [May 8, 1943], the shelter was discovered and destroyed….

Yesterday the poet W. Szlengel still wrote his poems, in which he sang of the heroism of the Jewish combatants and mourned the fate of the Jews…. This morning at 9:00, the Germans began to drill into the ruins…. Through the hole that was created they threw tear gas sticks into the shelter and removed the stunned Jews from inside…. Szlengel did not know yesterday that this was the last time that he would recount the story of the brave warriors. And perhaps the manuscript [apparently Szlengel’s anthology of his poems What I Read to the Dead, which actually mostly survived]¹⁰⁹ Will not survive for posterity.¹¹⁰

According to Neiberg’s testimony, during the uprising Szlengel was in the bunker with the ŻZW commanders and combatants and he was occupied with writing about the heroism of the combatants in the uprising. Arguably, he was an active underground poet, offering spiritual and cultural support to the fighters.

From these testimonies Szlengel was close to the members of the ŻZW underground and the organization’s combatants, and helped them raise funds for social and cultural endeavors. He wrote to incite the Jews to rebel, glorified the heroism of the combatants in his poems with the aim of encouraging them, and chose to be with them even if it meant his own death.

Comparison between Katzenelson and Szlengel

In this section I will compare the work of Itzhak Katzenelson and Władysław Szlengel, two senior Jewish poets in the Warsaw Ghetto, who were affiliated with the Jewish resistance and the uprising.

Itzhak Katzenelson (1885–1944) was known as a public figure, a renowned educator, and one of the greatest Jewish poets of the period. Katzenelson’s artistic style was classical. Before the war he was known as an optimistic but naive poet; however, during the war he decried the Holocaust. By comparison, Szlengel wrote in the style of the younger generation of Polish poets. He was influenced by Julian Tuwim, and his style was modern and biting. Ziuta Hartman characterized Szlengel’s work as “humor of the dead,”¹¹¹ and Hillel Zeidman describes Szlengel as part of a group of young poets who “go to death with a smile on their faces.”¹¹²

Politically and ideologically, Katzenelson was connected to the Dror movement, and its members regarded him as representing the movement’s cultural spirit. For example, Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman, Anielewicz’s deputy, describes Katzenelson as someone who encouraged the ŻOB combatants to rebel and sacrifice themselves, stating: “Itzhak Katzenelson, personally, did not have a pistol and did not fire even one shot, and did not kill one German. But what he did was rebellion.”¹¹³ The movement valued his contribution so strongly that senior members in the ŻOB arranged work permits for Itzhak Katzenelson and his son in order to protect their “cultural asset.” Thus, Zuckerman posits:

It can be said that Hehalutz saved him—as a person, as a poet, as a sensitive soul, from the claws of despair, revived him. From now on he was in contact with Jewish youth in the underground that was preparing for battle. Here [in the underground] he felt the pulse and taste of life.¹¹⁴

It seems that similarly to Katzenelson, Szlengel also received help from a secret entity. At the beginning of his anthology of poems, What I Read to the Dead, Szlengel thanks his beneficiaries and savers, and says that the reason for this help was their appreciation of his works. He keeps their identity secret:

I dedicate them [my poems] to the people who I could rely on in the hours of total chaos and storm. To those few, who were able in the turmoil of the events, in the dance of change, death and protection to remember not only family, not only connections, not only money—but, that it was necessary to save the last few Mohicans, whose sole property or weapon was words. To those whom my cry in the night reached.¹¹⁵

David Roskies relates to Katzenelson and Szlengel as poets who “crossed the lines” from men of ideas to men of action and active resistance:

In fact, the line between the “Alternativa” [the resistance in the Ghetto] and the “onlookers” [the passive public in the ghetto] and the existing activity of self-help in the community and armed resistance was one that was often crossed by those writers themselves, many of whom also appear as fighters and partisans. Katzenelson, who was too old to go to battle, served as a resident poet for the Dror movement in the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and similarly the Polish poet Władysław Szlengel, placed his poems at the disposal of the cause.¹¹⁶

Roskis bases his assessment on Bernard Mark’s summaries about the writers and poets of the Warsaw Ghetto. Mark argues: “In the last period of the Ghetto, Szlengel underwent an impressive evolution, in which he distanced himself from the facile circles he had initially been close to and joined the resistance.”¹¹⁷

Therefore, it is clear that the poets Katzenelson and Szlengel were in fact members of the resistance and the underground themselves. Considering the fact that the ŻOB and the ŻZW did not join forces, it can be cautiously assumed that if Szlengel was indeed an underground member, he was a member of the ŻZW.

Another important difference is in the attitude of researchers and Israeli commemorators toward Katzenelson, the “Holocaust poet” and Szlengel, the “Warsaw Ghetto poet.” While Katzenelson has been researched in many academic articles and commemorated in the names of five streets in Israel, the name of a Holocaust museum (Lohamei Haghetaot), and other ways, Szlengel is underresearched and underappreciated in Israel. This could supposedly be attributed to the fact that Katzenelson wrote in Hebrew and therefore received special recognition on the part of Hebrew speakers in Israel; however, Katzenelson wrote his poems mourning the fallen of the Jewish nation in Yiddish. Therefore, one cannot ignore a potential connection between the lack of research and commemoration of Szlengel’s work and the lack of research and commemoration for the ŻZW in Israel.

Summary and conclusion

On a historical level, I have focused on different instances in which Szlengel was directly or indirectly connected to the ŻZW—his participation in a cultural evening organized by ŻZW members; his presence in the bunker during the uprising alongside ŻZW commanders and combatants; and Neiberg’s testimony about Szlengel’s last day, according to which he continued to write his poems to encourage the fighters until the end. Arguably the latter example shows that Szlengel may have been the ideological organ of the ŻZW fighters just as Katzenelson was the ideological poet of Dror and the ŻOB. From this we even learned that the ŻZW underground had a social and cultural dimension to its activities.

On a literary level, this article proves that Szlengel’s artistic work had a Revisionist nationalist character before the war. His prewar poems, such as “To General Haining” and “Song of a Hero,” are written with an arguably Revisionist maximalist approach, in the spirit of Polish national romanticism with Jewish national leanings. Furthermore, in his poems from the period of the Ghetto, such as “Counterattack” and “Five Minutes to Midnight,” Szlengel describes himself as a member of a group of combatants. He writes through the point of view of a fighter lying in ambush on the roofs, who shoots and arouses the people to fight for their lives. Even though it is possible that his work may reflect what he heard from the combatants and he himself might not have fought, his work encompasses outright calls for rebellion.

Additionally, from testimonies, both historical and literary, one can at least question the assumption that Szlengel was politically unaffiliated, did not have a clear national position, and was not connected to that underground. Moreover, I posit that in his last years he was a poet with a clear Zionist-Revisionist political orientation and practically connected to the ŻZW.

Yossi Suede is a researcher of Israeli history specializing in the Beitarite underground movement in the Warsaw Ghetto. He is currently completing his PhD dissertation at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. His research focuses on the ideological underpinnings of the Beitarite movement, its resistance activities within the Warsaw Ghetto, and its legacy in postwar Israel. He has presented his research at various academic conferences.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem which enabled me to carry out this research. I wish to thank the organizations that helped me to acquire different items that I relied on in writing this article, and especially the National Library in Jerusalem, the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv, and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. I wish to thank the researchers who helped me with the article, including Dr. Yechiel Weizman, Prof. Havi Dreifuss, Dr. Avichai Tzur, Dr. Amir Peleg, Dr. Udi Label, Yisrael Medad, Dror Bar-Yosef, and Matan Shefi.

Footnotes