Henryka Łazowertówna

The poem deals with the subject of a child struggling single-handedly to keep his family alive in the Ghetto by smuggling provisions from the "Aryan" side at the risk of his own life.

[12] Zamknięty pokój ("A Closed Room") was – in the words of the writer and a stern literary critic Karol Wiktor Zawodziński (1890–1949) – a manifestation of a particularly subtile poetic talent and an extraordinary intelligence, both struggling to break free of the magic circle of subjectivism and onto the rough and tough ferment of the world (zamęt życia).

[13] Politically speaking, Henryka Łazowertówna was known for her left-wing sympathies, a point on which she differed – in the opinion of Józef Łobodowski – from another famous poet of her generation, Zuzanna Ginczanka.

[9] Also unlike Ginczanka Łazowertówna was not a woman of extraordinary physical beauty, but she possessed charm and grace which, coupled with her simplicity of demeanour and straightforward attitude, made her in the eyes of those who knew her personally the embodiment of femininity.

[17] Indeed, the hostility obtaining between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in Poland receives an eloquent treatment in Łazowertówna's own fictional short story Wrogowie ("The Enemies"), published in 1938 – sixteen months before the outbreak of the Second World War – where she tells the story of two child hawkers of pretzels, the one Jewish the other Gentile, who with great animosity towards each other aggressively compete for custom until common misfortune counsels them to join forces in the cause of common good (see Works in Prose).

[15] During the Nazi Germany's Invasion of Poland in September 1939 part of Łazowertówna's Warsaw apartment in the ulica Sienna, which she shared with her mother, was destroyed in the strategic bombing conducted by the Luftwaffe, but it was found possible to make the remaining quarters habitable again.

[15] As observed by Władysław Smólski (1909–1986), who visited her often during the first year of the War, the drama unfolding around her proved for Łazowertówna an opportunity to rise to the occasion displaying unhoped-for reserves of determination and strength.

[22] Łazowertówna had apparently no illusions that she needed outside help in order to survive: already in February or March 1940 (many months before the creation of the Ghetto), she enlisted the services of Ludwik Brandstaetter, the father of the well-known writer Roman Brandstaetter, in approaching a mutual Polish poet-friend with a request for assistance with resettlement in Krakóww, a city which she believed would offer her anonymity and hence greater security.

[24] Between July and September 1942, the Nazis undertook the so-called Großaktion Warschau, the mass deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto population, who were murdered in the gas chambers at Treblinka extermination camp, some 84 kilometres (52 mi) to the north-east.