9 III 1917, Kiev — 1944, KL Plaszow (Kraków)
Zuzanna Ginczanka was a poet who chose to write in Polish. She made her début at the age of 14 and immediately became an important figure in Polish literary life.
She was born in 1917 in Kiyv as Sara Polina Gincburg. She grew up in Rivne, a town in Volhynia (today’s Ukraine) to a middle-class, Russian-speaking family. She chose to attend a Polish high school and became fascinated by the poetry of the Polish writers Julian Tuwim and Bolesław Leśmian,. Zuzanna Ginczanka made her début in 1931, while still a high school student, with the poem Uczta wakacyjna (‘A Vacation Feast’) which was published in the school newspaper. Three years later, her poem Gramatyka (‘Grammar’) received an award in the Young Poets’ Competition announced in Wiadomości Literackie (‘Literary News’), an important social and cultural weekly published in Warsaw. In 1936, she began to collaborate with the satirical weekly Szpilki (‘Pins/High heels’). In the same year, she published her only book of poetry, O centaurach (‘About Centaurs’).
Zuzanna Ginczanka’s youthful poems were passionate and sensual, full of references to physiology and biology. They can be interpreted as a sign of rebellion against the bourgeois lifestyle around her. Her work alluded to the myths and traditions of the Far East, ancient Germanic culture, Mediterranean countries, and Jewish culture.
Zuzanna spent the first years of the war in Lviv (today’s Ukraine). Because of her noticeably Semitic features, she had to disguise her origin and stay in hiding. Threatened and denounced by Chominowa, a caretaker of the building she lived in, she decided to escape. Arriving in Cracow, she wrote the poem Non omnis moriar in which she immortalized her tormentor Chominowa. Zuzanna Ginczanka was arrested by Gestapo. She was shot in 1944 in the Plaszow concentration camp.