The last two lines, moreover, give voice to the catastrophic sonorities that will forever remain the signature trait of Ginczanka's poetry, often couched in sanguinary imagery as they are here:W gałęziach gruszy zawisł wam księżyc, jak choinkowe złociste czółno, a w wargach malin milczą legendy o sercach, które skrwawiła północ — —[21] The Moon stranded in pear-tree branches like a golden pirogue on a Christmas tree, on lips of raspberry the legends fall silent of the hearts bloodied by a midnight's decree — —

[23] Ginczanka's poem, which opens boldly with a punctuation mark (a left parenthesis), deals with parts of speech, describing each in a poetic way beginning with the adjective, then taking on the adverb, and ending with a philosophico-philological analysis of the personal pronoun ("I without you, you without me, amounts to nought"; line 30) —a pokochać słowa tak łatwo: trzeba tylko wziąć je do ręki i obejrzeć jak burgund — pod światło[24] for words freely do love incite: you just take them in hand and assay like burgundies — against the light To this period belongs likewise Ginczanka's poem "Zdrada" (Betrayal; though the word can also mean "treason") composed sometime in 1934.

[28] Thus for example, her frequenting of the Mała Ziemiańska café, the renowned haunt of the Warsaw literati where with gracious ease she held court at the table of Witold Gombrowicz, was memorialized in her poem "Pochwała snobów" (In Praise of Snobs) published in the satirical magazine Szpilki in 1937.

[29] (The co-founder of the magazine in question, the artist Eryk Lipiński, who will play an important role in salvaging her manuscripts after the War, will name his daughter Zuzanna in memory of Ginczanka.

[41] For Stanisław Piętak, one of the most distinguished Polish poets of the Interbellum period, to meet her in the street was an experience akin to encountering a star break away from the heavens above and land straight on the pavement next to you.

[42] (There is evidence that while outwardly she received all the adulation with gracious warmth, the attention she generated weighed heavy on her mind; she reportedly confided in a female friend (Maria Zenowicz), "I feel like a Negro", sc.

[46] Józef Łobodowski, perhaps the most serious contender for her hand between 1933 and 1938, dedicated to her several poems published in Wiadomości Literackie and later in the Polish émigré press, as well as devoting to her one of his last collections of poetry, Pamięci Sulamity ("In Remembrance of the Shulamite Woman"; see Bibliography), with a valuable autobiographical introduction.

[47] While the poet Jan Śpiewak, of all the Polish littérateurs, could claim an acquaintance with Ginczanka extending over the longest period of time (having been a resident of Równe contemporaneously with her, as well as having shared her Jewish background and her status as a Volhynian settler hailing from the lands of the former Russian Empire), it is the subsequent recollections of Łobodowski that will strike the most intimate note among all the reminiscences published after the War by those who knew Ginczanka personally, betraying an undying love and affection on his part carried over an entire lifetime.

Writing in February 1936 to the editor-in-chief of the literary monthly Kamena, Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski, Bocheński excoriates the well-known poets Tuwim and Pawlikowska while at the same time stating the following: One of the most distinguished modern Ukrainian poets and the one most hated by the Soviets, Yevhen Malanyuk (1897–1968),[53] then living in exile in Warsaw, on being first introduced to Ginczanka's poetry by Julian Tuwim ran breathlessly into the editorial offices of the Biuletyn Polsko-Ukraiński with the news of the revelation from a new "excellent poetess".

[54] Ginczanka did not hesitate to lend her art to the furtherance of a social cause, as shown in her poem "Słowa na wiatr" (Words To the Four Winds), published in the Wiadomości Literackie in March 1937, whose message impugns the honesty of the country's authorities and industrial groupings in making promises to render assistance to those in need during the difficult winter period.

the remaining winter pages in the tear-off calendar on the wall, and the money to be saved) as she accuses the potentates of stalling for time in the hope that the cold spell will pass and they will not have to make good on their pledges.

[56] In March 1938 Polish press carried an announcement of another radio drama authored by Ginczanka jointly with Nowicki, Sensacje amerykańskie ("American Sensations"), on the theme of Sherlock Holmes's journey to America, broadcast by Polskie Radjo.

[57] As observed by attentive readers such as Monika Warneńska, Ginczanka had prophetically foreseen the onset of the Second World War and the annihilation that it would bring with it, but expressed it all in poetic touches so delicate that their true import might have been missed before the event.

Ginczanka's poem, deceptively insouciant — almost ebullient — in tone while it considers the uncertainty as to whether the Spring might pass under the shadow of war or alternatively under the spell of love, employs the metaphor of the fork in the road where either of the two divergent arms, though ostensibly very different and having the opposite direction "at odds" with the other, does in fact lead "to the last things" (do spraw ostatecznych; line 28).

[59] Thus, in a twist on Robert Frost's famous poem, it makes no difference here to take "the one less travelled by": Na maju, rozstaju stoję u dróg rozdrożnych i sprzecznych, gdy obie te drogi twoje wiodą do spraw ostatecznych.

The grandmother Klara Sandberg's ground-floor business (pharmacy store) in the town's main street was immediately expropriated, while their second-story living quarters were in large measure requisitioned for Soviet officials, squeezing the owners (including Ginczanka) into a single servant's room.

These developments forced upon Ginczanka the decision to leave Równe to try to find accommodation in the much larger Polish city of Lviv, situated 213 kilometres to the south-east and likewise occupied by the Soviet Union.

Before departure, the grandmother packed all the family heirlooms and valuables like table silver into her luggage, both as a means of preserving her ownership of the movable property and to provide for Ginczanka's future dowry.

She narrowly managed to avoid arrest by Ukrainian forces targeting Jewish population of the city, being shielded by her Nansen passport which, unfamiliar to them, impressed them sufficiently to spare her.

My grand estate—Tablecloth meadows, invincible wardrobe castles,Acres of bedsheets, finely woven linens,And dresses, colourful dresses—will survive me.I leave no heirs.So let your hands rummage through Jewish things,You, Chomin’s wife from Lviv, you mother of a volksdeutscher.May these things be useful to you and yours,For, dear ones, I leave no name, no song.I am thinking of you, as you, when the Schupo came,Thought of me, in fact reminded them about me.So let my friends break out holiday goblets,Celebrate my wake and their wealth:Kilims and tapestries, bowls, candlesticks.Let them drink all night and at daybreakBegin their search for gemstones and goldIn sofas, mattresses, blankets and rugs.Oh how the work will burn in their hands!Clumps of horsehair, bunches of sea hay,Clouds of fresh down from pillows and quilts,Glued on by my blood, will turn their arms into wings,Transfigure the birds of prey into angels.

With the invasion by Nazi Germany of the Eastern Borderlands of Poland on 22 June 1941, an area previously occupied since 17 September 1939 by the Soviet Union, the situation of the Jewish population once again changed dramatically for the worse, the Holocaust being already in full swing at that time.

In Równe, Ginczanka's grandmother and her closest relative in Poland, Klara Sandberg, was arrested by the Nazis and died of a heart attack induced by the horror of impending death while being transported to a place of execution at Zdołbunów, barely 17 kilometres away.

[70] Here her most frequent visitor was Janusz Woźniakowski, but she also maintained close contacts with the noted painter, Helena Cygańska-Walicka [pl] (1913–1989), the wife of the art historian Michał Walicki, Anna Rawicz, and others.

[71] Because even on rare outings in the street Ginczanka was attracting the unwelcome attention of passers-by with her exotic beauty, she decided to change her hideaway by moving to the (then suburban) spa locality of Swoszowice on the southern outskirts of Kraków, where she joined up with a childhood friend of hers from Równe, Blumka Fradis, who was herself at the time hiding there from the Nazis.

[73] Zuzanna Ginczanka frequently changed hiding places, the last one was in the apartment of Holocaust rescuer Elżbieta Mucharska; located at Mikołajska № 5 Street in the heart of Kraków Old Town.

[74] The Stopkas, who were themselves incriminated by the clandestine messages in question, managed to get the Gestapo to leave without arresting them by bribing them with bottles of liquor and — gold coins, "which disappeared into their pockets in a flash".

She yelled, spat at them..."[74] Wodzinowska-Stopkowa then ran breathlessly to the residences of all the other people named in the "kites" written by Woźniakowski, arriving in each case too late, after the arrests of the individuals concerned.

[78] Ginczanka, who was at first detained in the notorious facility in the ulica Montelupich, was very afraid of torture (for which that prison was infamous), and to stave off attacks on her body she affected a particular concern for her hair, which she would repeatedly touch during interrogations to make small corrections to her locks, etc.

Zofja Chomin's defence before the court were to be her words, intended to refute the charge of collaborationism: "I knew of only one little Jewess in hiding..." (znałam tylko jedną żydóweczkę ukrywającą się...).

[102] In 2015, the Museum of Literature in Warsaw hosted an exhibition Tylko szczęście jest prawdziwym życiem (Only Happiness Is Real Life) devoted to the works of Ginczanka.