The first sentence of Thomas Mann’s biblical epic Joseph And His Brothers is: “Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?” So many documents regarding the Ravensbrück camp, the only concentration camp exclusively for women, are lost forever, and whatever is available for historians is open to interpretations. Indeed, doing research on a topic, even in not so distant past, we deal with the “deep well.” I hope that the following presentation of some fragments of the two memoirs will give a reader a glimpse into an intellectual and spiritual struggle not merely for physical survival but also for preserving the human dignity of two heroines incarcerated in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.
Their names are Karolina Lanckorońska and Wanda Półtawska nee Wojtasik. Both wrote memoirs about their experiences in the Ravensbrück. Karolina Lanckorońska was a respected professor at university; Wanda Półtawska just applied to university when the war broke out. As far as similarities and differences go, both memoirs’ publications were delayed, yet for different reasons. Karolina Lanckorońska’s memoir was addressed to English-speaking audiences immediately after the war. As two English publishers explained to her, the fragments of her memoir were too anti-Russian. Then again, it was not published a couple of years later because, as another English publisher explained, some memoir’s parts were too anti-German. Eventually, meant to be published after Karolina Lanckorońska’s death (she died in August 2002), the memoir, edited and with a preface by Lech Kalinowski and Elżbieta Orman, was published in 2002 in Poland by ZNAK publishing house. Wanda Półtawska’s, on the other hand, was written for her reasons, only to be kept in her drawer for sixteen years, with no intention to be published at all. Still, there are fundamental similarities between those memoirs. Both were written immediately after the war in 1945 and describe facts and feelings freshly preserved in memories of both authors. The memoirs selected and translated by Jaroslaw J Gajewski. Sources of the following fragments are:
Lanckorońska Karolina. Wspomnienia Wojenne: 22 X 1939-5 IV 1945. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2002
Półtawska Wanda. I Boję Się Snów. Częstochowa: Edycja Świętego Pawła, 1998