Wladyslaw Szlengel

Poet, journalist, and actor Wladyslaw Szlengel was born in Warsaw. In the 1930s, he emerged as an up-and-coming poet and songwriter who wrote, exclusively in Polish, on Jewish themes, antisemitism, and the worsening political situation. Szlengel played a major role in the cultural life in the Warsaw ghetto. His poetry was widely copied and declaimed while his The Living Newspaper, with its witty parodies and satires of ghetto life, became a mainstay of the nightly shows at the Sztuka Café, which also featured the best singers, actors, and pianists. As conditions worsened in the ghetto, Szlengel’s searing poetry touched many themes: fear of death, anger at the Jewish police, Jewish bitterness at Polish indifference to their plight, and, in January 1943, exaltation at the first outbreak of Jewish armed resistance. Szlengel was killed during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in May 1943.