Reading Korzeniewski

Barbara Osterloff

Abstract

This article discusses the volume Było, minęło... Wspomnienia [Gone is gone... Memoirs] (Warsaw 2020), comprising twelve texts by Bohdan Korzeniewski, with a foreword by Anna Kuligowska-Korzeniewska and an afterword by Andrzej Kruczyński. Open to the generic diversity of autobiographical writing, the book arranges individual texts according to the chronology of the events they recount. Its great meta-theme is the genealogy of Polish intelligentsia: the image of a generation for whom World War I, the revolution, and Poland’s regaining of independence were formative experiences, one that entered adulthood in independent Poland and was raised with a sense of mission. Bohdan Korzeniewski (1905–1992) describes his younger years in the interwar period, his experiences during the war and occupation (in the outstanding “Auschwitz diptych”), and the post-war years. Although it brings together known texts, written in the second half of the last century, the volume shows that they are worth re-reading, especially for their literary value. Korzeniewski’s memoirs read like a fascinating autobiography (and self-creation) of a Polish intellectual, an eyewitness to the history of the 20^th century, who gives us an account of his struggles with the world and with himself that together form a record of human existence.