Teresa Janina Harsdorf-Bromowicz was born in 27th January 1912 in Zielona near Kamieniec Podolski, from 1938 wife of Zbigniew Bromowicz. She received a Master’s Degree in Polish and Romance studies at the Jagiellonian University; in 1933, from 1933 till 1939, she taught in secondary schools in Nowy Sącz and was active in scouting. During the Second World War, under the German occupation, she took part in secret teaching and distribution of the illegal press, assisted in transferring it to Hungary, and collaborated with the Home Army. Arrested by the Gestapo in August 1944, she was imprisoned in Nowy Sącz and the Montelupich prison in Kraków, then she was transferred to the camp in Ravensbrück where she stayed until the end of the war. After a short stay in Sweden as a refugee, she returned to Poland in October 1945 and settled permanently with her husband in Zakopane. She became a Tatra Mountains guide and wrote poems and memoirs about the Tatra region. Teresa Harsdorf-Bromowicz died on 21st August 2003 in Zakopane.
Roll-call It's us—this forest of striped clothes. Suddenly at roll-call They grew up in the square, We stand, human reeds, mute, Deaf, erect, waiting. Above our heads, In a blinding blue heat, A hawk, a wild will to murder, Cuts through the sun, And on its wings, death spans. Yesterday they took them out. In the rows now, there are no gaps; A new forest of striped clothes Has grown up in their place. There, behind the walls, The chimney with its mouth Wide-open and blackened, And over there the smoke, Black as the flying hawk, And on its wings weighs, And carries up the death. There is dead silence. In a forest of striped clothes, Still, death's roll-call goes On its morbid spree. Who will die today, Maybe you, maybe me? Ravensbrück, 1945
Return Life goes on. Life has come to pass for us. Time does not want to fly. On the wings of the wind; Time has stopped On that one day As a meteor falling from the flight. It's hard to come back. It is not easy to get through the moments that have run without us. It is usual. And we still want To welcome it and say goodbye. Time has folded its wings, Like a butterfly. On that day, it sat down. We can find "then." We don't know How to find "today." It's hard to come back. Getting out from under Stony memories' rubble, Looking for life in pale streams, In scattered sparks of light. Time stood too long. Now we have to go back to life. Lift ourselves out of the tomb corridors. Find our own born content. And in the life Of what has gone ahead, We want to be ourselves. Ravensbrück, 1945