Short stories
Medallions
Medaliony
Zofia Nałkowska · 1946
Opening lines
Tego rana byliśmy tam po raz drugi. Dzień był pogodny, majowy, chłodnawy.
That morning we were there for the second time. The day was fine, a May day, rather cool.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from wolnelektury.pl
Synopsis
Short narratives drawn from depositions gathered after the war: the visit to the anatomy institute where Professor Spanner made soap from human fat, and the testimony of his preparator; a woman who escaped from a deportation wagon, wounded on the track, whom passers-by hesitate to help; a cemetery keeper who, while watering her flowers, hears the voices of the neighbouring ghetto; adults and children at Auschwitz. The witnesses speak with a terrible calm, and the voice that reports comments on nothing.
Context
Written in 1945 and 1946 from what the author had seen and heard as a member of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, at the sites of execution and before the witnesses, the stories appeared with Czytelnik in 1946, under the epigraph “People have prepared this fate for people”. The title refers to the broken medallions on the graves of a bombed cemetery. Long read in schools, the book has also been debated: Henryk Grynberg reproached the epigraph with universalising the extermination of the Jews.
Who it is for
A short book, about fifty pages in the English edition, quick to read and harrowing.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the major texts of post-war Polish literature and as a masterpiece of anti-fascist literature.
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