Jewish Issues in the Polish Literature of Exile in the USSR

Abstract

This article only intends to draw attention to the question of the ‘Jewish strand’ in Polish emigre literature during the Second World War, that is, in literature testifying to the fate of about one and a half million Polish citizens, who were deported into the depths of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war. This chapter of contemporary Polish literature includes more than 50 books published mainly in the West, few of which have been translated into any other language. (Inny świat by Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski is one of the rare exceptions). Most of the authors are people, who, as a result of the Polish-Soviet Pact of 30 July 1941 (Sikorski-Maisky), were able to leave the camps, prisons and places of exile, and, after reaching the West with General Anders’s Army, were able to testify about their experiences and express solidarity with those who had remained. These testimonies of a moral and documentary significance similar to the later Gulag Archipelago were consciously and systematically hushed up by Western governments and public opinion.