Voices in the Darkness

Julian Stryjkowski

1956

No one paid any attention to Aronek. He took a piece of bread from the cupboard, chose the largest carrot, and went to the neighbors.

At the widow Gitel’s it was warm and clean. From the ceiling hung a large lamp with a blue shade. The shade turned pink from the flame.

“It’s smoking!” shouted Gitel. “Shlomcia, turn the wick down, for heaven’s sake…

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Creator Bio

Julian Stryjkowski

1905–1996

Julian Stryjkowski was born Pesaḥ Stark in Stryj (present-day Ukraine). He changed his name shortly after World War II and became one of the leading Polish Jewish authors of the postwar period. Although he was initially affiliated with the Zionist group Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir, Stryjkowski joined the Communist Party in 1934. During the war, he worked as a journalist for a communist newspaper in Soviet-occupied Lviv. In 1966, Stryjkowski left the party in response to rising censorship and antisemitism. His writings, which often examined the decline of the shtetl and increasing secularism, were banned until 1978, with the easing of intellectual censorship. In 1993, Stryjkowski publicly disclosed his homosexuality, which was also described in his semiautobiographical Milczenie (Silence).

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