Holy Week
Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American Studies Series
Series Editor: John J. Bukowczyk
Framing the Polish Home: Postwar Cultural Constructions of Hearth, Nation, and Self, edited by Bożena Shallcross
Traitors and True Poles: Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880–1939, by Karen Majewski
Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979, by Jonathan Huener
The Exile Mission: The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish-Americans, 1939–1956, by Anna D. Jaroszysńska-Kirchmann
The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made, by Mary Patrice Erdmans
Testaments: Two Novellas of Emigration and Exile, by Danuta Mostwin
The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Piłsudski’s Poland, 1926–1935, by Eva Plach
Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, by Jerzy Andrzejewski
SERIES ADVISORY BOARD
M. B. B. Biskupski, Central Connecticut State University
Robert E. Blobaum, West Virginia University
Anthony Bukoski, University of Wisconsin-Superior
Bogdana Carpenter, University of Michigan
Mary Patrice Erdmans, Central Connecticut State University
Thomas S. Gladsky, Central Missouri State University (ret.)
Padraic Kenney, University of Colorado at Boulder
John J. Kulczycki, University of Illinois at Chicago (ret.)
Ewa Morawska, University of Essex
Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University
Brian Porter, University of Michigan
James S. Pula, Purdue University North Central
Thaddeus C. Radzilowski, Piast Institute
Daniel Stone, University of Winnipeg
Adam Walaszek, Jagiellonian University
Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University
Holy Week
A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Jerzy Andrzejewski
Introduction and Commentary by Oscar E. Swan
Foreword by Jan Gross
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
www.ohio.edu/oupress © 2007 by Ohio University Press
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
14 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1
Cover image: Still from the motion picture Wielki Tydzień (Holy Week). Courtesy of Andrzej Wajda
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Andrzejewski, Jerzy, 1909–1983.
[Wielki Tydzień. English]
Holy Week : a novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising / Jerzy Andrzejewski ; introduction and commentary by Oscar E. Swan ; foreword by Jan Gross.
p. cm. — (Ohio University Press Polish and Polish-American studies series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8214-1715-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8214-1715-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8214-1716-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8214-1716-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Warsaw (Poland)—History—Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943—Fiction. I. Swan, Oscar E. II. Title.
PG7158.A7W5413 2007
891.8'537—dc22
2006024584
Publication of books in the Polish and Polish-American Studies Series has been made possible in part by the generous support of the following organizations:
Polish American Historical Association, New Britain, Connecticut
Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish American Studies, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut
The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, Inc., New York, New York
The Piast Institute: An Institute for Polish and Polish American Affairs, Detroit, Michigan
Additional support for this book has been provided by the Richard D. and Mary Jane Edwards Endowed Publication Fund, University of Pittsburgh
Contents
Acknowledgments and Notes on the Translation
Note on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Introduction: Jerzy Andrzejewski’s Holy Week
Afterword: Andrzej Wajda’s Film Holy Week
Foreword
AS A BRILLIANT NOVELIST and prose writer, Jerzy Andrzejewski is a rare specimen in the firmament of Polish literature, which abounds in extraordinarily talented poets. Two of his contemporaries, Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980 and 1996 respectively, and while Andrzejewski lived, there was an aura of expectation that he would be awarded a Nobel as well.
Andrzejewski’s literary career spanned the entire short twentieth century and a gamut of ideological positions. Just before the war in 1939, he received the much-coveted Young Authors’ Prize of the Polish Academy of Literature for a collection of short stories and his novel Mode of the Heart (Ład serca), and he was hailed as a rising star of Catholic literature. Shortly after the war, his novel Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament) was widely admired as an artistically brilliant portrayal of the new political era that had dawned in Poland with the accession to power of the Communist Party. Later this book was turned into a cult film by director Andrzej Wajda and gained international acclaim. Andrzejewski was lionized by the new regime, and his intellectual