Zofia Kossak-Szczucka
Encyclopedia
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (ˈzɔfja ˈkɔssak ˈʂt͡ʂut͡ska; 10 August 1889 – 9 April 1968) was a Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 writer and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 resistance fighter. She co-founded the wartime Polish organization Żegota
Zegota
"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....

, set up to assist Poland's Jews in escaping the Holocaust. In 1943 she was arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

, but survived the war.

Writer and activist

Zofia Kossak was the daughter of Tadeusz Kossak
Tadeusz Kossak
Tadeusz Kossak was a Polish activist, freedom fighter, and a plenipotent of a country estate in Górki Wielkie from 1922. In 1907 Kossak was arrested by the Imperial Russian authorities for protesting against the foreign occupation of Poland...

, who was the twin brother of painter Wojciech Kossak
Wojciech Kossak
Wojciech Kossak was a Polish painter and member of the celebrated Kossak family of painters and writers...

. She was also a granddaughter of painter Juliusz Kossak
Juliusz Kossak
Juliusz Fortunat Kossak was a Polish historical painter and master illustrator who specialized in battle scenes, military portraits and horses...

. She married twice, and kept the name Szczucka from her first marriage (second time with Zygmunt Szatkowski in 1925). In 1924 she settled in the village of Górki Wielkie
Górki Wielkie
Górki Wielkie is a village in Gmina Brenna, Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland. It has a population of 3554 . It lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia and was first mentioned in a written document in 1305....

 in Cieszyn Silesia
Cieszyn Silesia
Cieszyn Silesia or Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered around the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by the Olza River. Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic...

. She was associated with the Czartak
Czartak
Czartak was a regional literary group in Poland, founded by Emil Zegadłowicz. Its most famous member was Zofia Kossak-Szczucka.Czartak's program may be described as a mystical naiveté that joined a love of nature with a disgust for modern civilization. Czartak's writers were fascinated by...

 literary group, and wrote mainly for the Catholic press. Her best-known work from that period is Conflagration, a memoir of the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

. In 1936 she received the Gold Laurel (Złoty Wawrzyn) of the Polish Academy of Literature.

Kossak-Szczucka is regarded as one of Poland's best historical novelists, alongside Henryk Sienkiewicz
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz was a Polish journalist and Nobel Prize-winning novelist. A Polish szlachcic of the Oszyk coat of arms, he was one of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 for his...

 and Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was a Polish writer, historian and journalist who produced more than 200 novels and 150 novellas, short stories, and art reviews He is best known for his epic series on the history of Poland, comprising twenty-nine novels in seventy-nine parts.As a novelist writing about...

. Her historical novels include Beatum scelus (1924), Złota wolność (Golden Liberty, 1928), Legnickie pole (The Field of Legnica, 1930), Trembowla (1939), Suknia Dejaniry (Dejanira's Gown, 1939). Best known are Krzyżowcy (Crusaders, 1935), Król trędowaty (The Leper King, 1936), and Bez oręża (Blessed are The Meek, 1937) dealing with the crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...

 and later Francis of Assisi
Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St...

, translated into several languages. She also wrote Z miłości (From Love, 1926) and Szaleńcy boży (God's Madmen, 1929), on religious themes.

During the German occupation of Poland, Kossak-Szczucka worked in the underground press: from 1939 to 1941 she co-edited the underground newspaper, Polska żyje (Poland Lives) and in 1941 co-founded the Catholic organization, Front for the Rebirth of Poland (pol."Front Odrodzenia Polski"), and edited its newspaper Prawda (The Truth). In the underground, she used the code-name Weronika (Veronica).

Despite already being the target of an intensive Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

 search, she exposed herself to the added danger of helping the Jews. Her motivation was moral, humanitarian and patriotic. She regarded the Germans' actions, she said, as an offense against man and God, and their policies as an affront to the ideals that she espoused for an independent Poland.

"Protest"

In the summer of 1942, when the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...

 began,
Kossak-Szczucka published a leaflet entitled "Protest," which was printed in 5,000 copies. In the leaflet she described in graphic terms the conditions in the Ghetto, and the horrific circumstances of the deportations then taking place. "All will perish," she wrote. "Poor and rich, old, women, men, youngsters, infants, Catholics dying with the name of Jesus and Mary together with Jews. Their only guilt is that they were born in to the Jewish nation condemned to extermination by Hitler."

The world, Kossak-Szczucka wrote, was silent in the face of this atrocity. "England is silent, so is America, even the influential international Jewry, so sensitive in its reaction to any transgression against its people, is silent. Poland is silent... Dying Jews are surrounded only by a host of Pilates
Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilatus , known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate , was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus...

 washing their hands in innocence." Those who are silent in the face of murder, she wrote, become accomplices to the crime.

Kossak-Szczucka saw this largely as an issue of religious ethics. "Our feelings toward Jews have not changed," she wrote. "We do not stop thinking of them as political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland." But, she wrote, this does not relieve Polish Catholics of their duty to oppose the crimes being committed in their country.

"We are required by God to protest," she wrote. "God who forbids us to kill. We are required by our Christian consciousness. Every human being has the right to be loved by his fellow men. The blood of the defenceless cries to heaven for revenge. Those who oppose our protest, are not Catholics."

Kossak-Szczucka also saw the issue as one of national honour. "We do not believe that Poland can benefit from German cruelties," she wrote. "On the contrary... We know how poisoned is the fruit of the crime... Those who do not understand this, and believe that a proud and free future for Poland can be combined with acceptance of the grief of their fellow men, are neither Catholics nor Poles."

Since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 writers have been puzzled about what they see as Kossak-Szczucka's contradictory views. On the one hand she is described as a nationalist and an anti-Semite, something she did not in fact deny. On the other hand, she made a genuine appeal to the Polish national conscience to come to the aid of the Jews as well as risked her life by becoming involved in practical work to save at least a fraction of Polish Jews from the Germans. She co-founded Provisional Committee to Aid Jews
Provisional Committee to Aid Jews
The Provisional Committee to Aid Jews was founded on September 27, 1942, by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. The founding body consisted of Polish democratic Catholic activists associated with the Front Odrodzenia Polski, Polska Organizacja Demokratyczna, Związek Syndykalistów...

 (Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom), which later turned into Council to Aid Jews
Zegota
"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....

 (Rada Pomocy Żydom), codename Zegota
Zegota
"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....

, an underground organization whose sole purpose was to save Jews in Poland from Nazi extermination. In 1985 she was posthumously awarded Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....

 title.

About the 1942 "Protest" by Kossak-Szczucka, Robert D. Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska wrote in the introduction to Rethinking Poles and Jews: "Without at all whitewashing her antisemitism in the document, she vehemently called for active intercession on behalf of the Jews—precisely in the name of Polish Roman Catholicism and Polish patriotism. The deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto precipitated her cofounding of Zegota
Zegota
"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....

 that same year—an Armia Krajowa (AK, Home Army) unit whose sole purpose was to save Jews."

Later career

While Kossak-Szczucka is generally credited with galvanising a united front in the struggle to help Jews, she and others were already involved in this work, either as party activists or as individuals. The aim after 1942 was to unite all these forces and link them with the resources of the Home Army (AK) and to get funds from the government-in-exile in London and other sources.

In 1943 Kossak-Szczucka was arrested, but the Germans did not realise who she was. She was sent first to the infamous Pawiak
Pawiak
Pawiak was a prison built in 1835 in Warsaw, Poland.During the January 1863 Uprising, it served as a transfer camp for Poles sentenced by Imperial Russia to deportation to Siberia....

 prison and then to Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

. There she was held in the concentration-camp not the adjacent extermination camp where Jews were sent. She was released through the efforts of the Polish underground and returned to Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

. In late 1944 she participated in the Warsaw Uprising. At the end of the War, a communist regime began to establish itself in Poland under Soviet supremacy. In June, 1945 Zofia Kossak was called in by Jakub Berman
Jakub Berman
Jakub Berman was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Berman first became a prominent communist in prewar Poland. Toward the end of World War II he joined the Politburo of the Soviet-formed Polish United Workers' Party...

, the new Polish Minister of the Interior, a Jew. He strongly advised her to leave the country immediately. This was for her protection, for the Minister knew what his government would do to non-communists, and he knew from his brother, Adolf Berman
Adolf Berman
-Biography:Born in Warsaw under the Russian Empire , Berman attended the University of Warsaw, where he earned a PhD in philosophy...

, what Zofia had done to save many Jews. So he saved Zofia's life. Zofia escaped to the West, but returned to Poland in 1957, after the end of the stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 period.

Kossak-Szczucka published Z otchłani: Wspomnienia z lagru (From Abyss: Memories from the Camp) 1946, describing her experiences in Auschwitz. Dziedzictwo 1956-67 is about the Kossak family, and Przymierze (Alliance) 1952 has biblical themes. Kossak-Szczucka also wrote books for children and teenagers, including Bursztyn 1936 and Gród nad jeziorem (Castle at the Lake) 1938.

In 2009, the National Bank of Poland
National Bank of Poland
Narodowy Bank Polski is the central bank of Poland. It controls the issuing of Poland's currency, the złoty. The Bank is headquartered in Warsaw, and has branches in every major Polish town...

 issued a coin commemorating the work of Kossak and of two other women in helping Jews (see Żegota
Zegota
"Żegota" , also known as the "Konrad Żegota Committee", was a codename for the Polish Council to Aid Jews , an underground organization of Polish resistance in German-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1945....

).

Zofia's daughter, Anna Szatkowska
Anna Szatkowska
Anna Szatkowska was a World War II member of the Polish Home Army which she joined at the age of 16 to help in liberating Warsaw from German occupation. She served as first-aider...

, who lives in Switzerland, has recently written a book about her experience during the Warsaw Uprising.

Works

See also

  • Polish culture during World War II
    Polish culture during World War II
    Polish culture during World War II was suppressed by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Policies aimed at cultural genocide resulted in the deaths of thousands of scholars and artists, and the theft and...

  • Polish Righteous Among the Nations
    Polish Righteous among the Nations
    Polish citizens have the world's highest count of individuals awarded medals of Righteous among the Nations, given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved Jews from extermination during the Holocaust...

  • Juliusz Kossak
    Juliusz Kossak
    Juliusz Fortunat Kossak was a Polish historical painter and master illustrator who specialized in battle scenes, military portraits and horses...

  • Jerzy Kossak
    Jerzy Kossak
    Jerzy Kossak was a Polish realist painter specializing in military scenes; son of painter Wojciech Kossak and grandson of painter Juliusz Kossak — a third-generation artist from a well-known and sought after family of painters, writers and poets.Jerzy Kossak was a prolific painter of mostly...

  • Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
    Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
    Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, née Kossak , was a Polish poet known as the Polish Sappho and "queen of lyrical poetry" of Poland's interwar period...

  • Magdalena Samozwaniec
    Magdalena Samozwaniec
    Magdalena Samozwaniec née Kossak was a Polish writer. The Kossak family is known for many artists including her father Wojciech Kossak, her brother Jerzy and sister Maria.- Stories by Magdalena Samozwaniec :...

  • Kossak
    Kossak
    Kossak is the surname of the 4 generations of notable Polish painters, writers and poets, descending from the historical painter Juliusz Kossak. The family includes:* Progenitor, Juliusz Kossak , Polish painter from the partitions period...

  • List of Poles

External links

Foundation of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka
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