The number of absurdities, coincidences, strokes of luck and blows of misfortune that befell Izolda Regensberg, a Jewish woman living in Warsaw during the war and the heroine of
Hanna Krall’s new book, exceeds all the norms. Her husband was arrested, and as she loved him in a truly romantic way, she decided to rescue him. From that moment on her entire life was dedicated to her husband and her efforts to save him. She escaped from the Umschlagplatz, survived Pawiak prison with a Polish identity, ended up doing forced labour in Germany as a Pole, ran away from there, smuggled tobacco into Vienna, was interrogated (and tortured) by the Viennese Gestapo for alleged collaboration with the Polish underground, and was transported to Auschwitz as a Jew. After being selected by Dr Mengele, she ended up in a camp at Gubin, from where she escaped, and in an effort to regain her “Polish” identity went back to forced labour by confessing to her previous escape. As a runaway she was then sent back to Auschwitz… The train taking her to the gas chamber stopped just after leaving the station, and at that very moment Auschwitz was liberated. She was victimised as a Jew, a Pole and a woman. She survived because of her love, and because none of the cruelties of the Holocaust could surprise her. That is how Candide would have behaved if he had been a Jewish woman during the Second World War – he’d have done his best to find a pattern to the inevitability of what was happening. So did Izolda: like Candide with a yellow armband she defends the rationality of fate, insisting throughout that everything that was happening had to happen in order for her to rescue her beloved husband. So she was right to search the world over for a writer whose narratorial abilities were on a par with her life story. She was expecting a tale full of “emotions, love, loneliness and tears”, but as usual Hanna Krall wanted to write about “more than that”. The final version is a compromise; the heroine describes her emotions and her frantic race against the war and the Holocaust, while the writer, alternately condensing her account and faithfully recreating her conversations, throws us into the middle of an incredible story. The heroine cannot see the world beyond her beloved husband, while the author allows us to see why this love was so unusual. If we wish to remain loyal to Izolda, just like her we should treat the camps, denunciations and cruelties as commonplace evil, and regard her love as the only truly incomprehensible thing. It won’t make the Holocaust go away, but it will make it a tiny scrap less forceful. Przemysław Czapliński
There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
