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Born 1914 Warsaw Occupation poet
lyricist
journalist Died 8 May 1943, Warsaw, Poland | ||
W adys aw szlengel poeta nieznany backstage
Władysław Szlengel (1914 – May 8, 1943) was a Jewish-Polish poet, lyricist, journalist and stage actor.
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Biography
He was the son of a Warsaw painter who worked preparing advertising posters for cinemas. In 1930 he graduated from the Merchants’ Assembly Trade School of the City of Warsaw. During the school years he discovered talent for rhyming for the first time. He published his texts in the student newspaper, but soon established relations with a number of dailies and weeklies.
Szlengel would write only in Polish. By 1939 he was one of the most recognizable lyricists in Poland as an author of several popular songs, having published as well satirical articles in the weekly Szpilki and political in Robotnik and Lviv-based paper Sygnały.
The writer took part in a defence of Warsaw in 1939. Later he moved with his wife to Białystok, city at the time occupied by Soviets. There he started a job as the director of the local Miniature Theatre. He returned to Warsaw in 1940. On November 16, 1940, Waliców street where he lived was made a part of the Warsaw ghetto.
He became an organiser of cultural life in the district of Ghetto. In his poetry Szlengel described everyday experience and suffer of Jews, but didn't avoid irony. Many of his poems document the Holocaust, including Umschlagplatz procedures, transports to Treblinka extermination camp and circumstances of Janusz Korczak's death. During the stay in Ghetto he inefficiently sought for a possibility of hiding on the Aryan side and collaborated with Oyneg Shabbos.
He and his wife died during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, executed by the Germans after being discovered in the bunker at Świętojerska Street 36, where they had a hiding place.
