Barbara Milewski:	I will begin by launching directly into the talk that I've prepared for today. And I will be showing you a number of examples. But I will also be playing you musical examples. And I will be toggling between my PowerPoint and a number of musical examples that I have on my desktop. So, if something goes wrong, I really did try. I'm gonna apologize in advance.
	Last year, during a sabbatical leave, for which I am ever grateful to the college, I traveled to Poland to gather materials for a book I am writing that is devoted exclusively to the topic of unofficial music-making in the camps, at the Nazi camps, that is. At present, no such critical study exists. Moreover, the few scholars who are aware that music of this sort was created in camps other than Theresienstadt tend to misunderstand the conditions that fostered it. Specifically, the ability or inability of prisoners to engage in music creation is commonly attributed to group affiliation, be it national, political, or religious. Such constrained views of victim groups, however, obscure the fact that prisoners often had rather more complicated roles, relationships, and identities in the camps that allowed for greater interaction and the possibility to participate in shared musical life.
	Categorical approaches, whatever the motivation, are, to be sure, not unique to Holocaust and World War II research. But the urgency to undue simplifying claims here, I think, is greater. For at stake is the memory of countless victims for whom we must now somehow speak. In this respect, my aim is also to recover the unique identities of three former prisoners, who at three different camps contributed invaluably to preserving a degree of humanity and culture in a landscape that severely challenged both: Alexander Kulisiewicz at Sachsenhausen, Jozef Kropinski at Buchenwald, and Krystyna Zywulska at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In doing so, I hope also to share further light on the Nazi camp universe, keeping in mind all the complexity, intractability, and historical messiness that that word implies. But for now, a few words about Zywulska and her camp creations
	Krystyna Zywulska is best known as the author of "Przezylam Oswiecim," "I Survived Auschwitz," her candid and moving account of life and death in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Published in Poland in 1946, Zywulska's memoir represents one of the earliest and most significant contributions to Polish literature on the Holocaust. Less known, but no less important, are Zywulska's songs and poetry created during her imprisonment. These works have laid dormant in neatly labeled folders in the Alexander Kulisiewicz archive at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for the last 15 years. Some have been tucked away, further away, and longer still in the archives of the Auschwitz Museum in Oswiecim, Poland.
	Their neglect is at least two-fold. Musicologists until very recently have demonstrated a bias against non-professional utilitarian music, deeming songs creating ordinary prisoners in the camps as aesthetically inferior to so-called art music. Prisoners' songs, like those of Zywulska's have also endured marginalia status because they challenge the persistent notion that prisoners were victims solely acted upon by their Nazi oppressors. A historical canard that has risen from the desire to honor the dead and a fear of undermining the enormity of the tragedy of the Holocaust.
	Yet these remarkable works, like those of other prisoners in numerous Nazi camps, offer valuable insight into the daily experiences and cultural activities of prisoners in captivity. Sensitively reflecting simple truths and an insider's perspective on camp events in the process of their unfolding. They are in the essence of things critical reportage, the stuff of historical documentation. As importantly, perhaps moreso, they also reveal the unlikely birth of a literary and satirical talent. A prisoner-turned-writer in the crucible of death.
	In this respect, Zywulska's camp creations also affirm art to have been, for some prisoners at least, a fundamental aspect of their humanity. A natural means to satisfy the life of the mind or comfort the heart. At times, Zywulska's creative process relies on parody song, the fastest means of generating a new musical work. In other instances, she plays the folk poet, responding spontaneously to the perverted system of the camp, out of an inner need to bear witness. Still at other times, her work is outwardly directed. It serves to distract and console her fellow inmates by retaining a measure of normalcy. Today, I'll focus on three musical examples that demonstrate the ways in which Zywulska adjusted imaginatively, poetically to the changing needs of her camp environment.
	There she is.
	Krystyna Zywulska was born Sonia Landau in Lódz, Poland either on September 1st, 1914 or May 10th, 1918, depending on which sources you consult. And here begin the most basic questions concerning Zywulska's identity. Raised in an atmosphere shared by many urban Polish-speaking assimilated Jews, Zywulska's upbringing was decidedly secular. Though the family preserved some traditions around the Jewish holidays, they did not attend services at synagogue or keep kosher. Fellow writer Stefania Grodzieńska, a close friend of Zywulska's already before the War, recalls that Zywulska's mother spoke Yiddish and that she occasionally prepared savory traditional foods, such as Cholent.
	There was family music-making. Zywulska's mother sang beautifully while her father played mandolin. At times Zywulska's would join them, improvising at the piano. In a 1992 interview, literally a deathbed interview, with Polish scholar Barbara Engelking-Boni, Zywulska described these musical moments as her "fondest memories." 
	Zywulska considered herself a Communist, less perhaps out of conviction than a desire to be in step with the predominant political orientation of Lódz's youth in the interwar period. As she explained to Engelking with characteristic wit, "I was the sort of Communist who thought, for example, that if my stockings sag like this around my ankles then I am a really big Communist. The more dirty and unkempt, the better a Communist I am. When [Bolak 00:07:16], her first fiance, "came into my life and brought me three pairs of silk stockings, something in me broke. He said, 'You'll see, if you put them on and you don't like them, you won't wear them.' I had pretty nice legs, and when I put those stockings on and looked at them, I thought, oh, damn."
	After completing a Polish-language Jewish gymnasium in Lódz, Zywulska began law studies in Warsaw in 1938. She was, according to her own account, entirely unconcerned about the anti-Semitic climate at university. Following the Nazi occupation of Poland a year later, she returned home to be with her father, mother, and [inaudible 00:08:00] sister Basia, who was eight years younger. As the Nazi persecution of Jews in Lódz grew more violent, following the city's incorporation into the Third Reich, Zywulska returned to Warsaw hoping to arrange documents that would prevent her family's relocation to the Lódz ghetto.
	Though her attempts to help them failed, they somehow managed to get out, making their way to Warsaw, where they were eventually relocated to the ghetto there in 1941. Weighing the chance of survival against the certainty of deportation or death by starvation, Zywulska daringly walked out of the ghetto with her mother, in broad daylight, on August 26th, 1942. By that time, her sister was already on the "Aryan side." Her father she left behind so as to have a better chance of survival, a decision that tormented her until her dying day. And I can tell you that some 20 years later in 1963, Zywulska published her account of the Warsaw ghetto in a another book called "Pusta woda," "Empty Water," in part to address the burden of guilt she felt for abandoning her father.
	On the "Aryan side," she assumed different identities and joined the Polish resistance. Eventually as Zofia Wisniewska, she provided aid to Jews in hiding and to at least one German deserter by counterfeiting identity cards and documents with a Polish gentile friend also named Zosha, a brunette who would later be sent with her to Birkenau. To the Nazi authorities who sought Zywulska's capture, she was known only as blond Zosha.
	June 21st, 1943 she was arrested and taken to the infamous Gestapo headquarters on Szucha Avenue in Warsaw. Under interrogation, she assumed the fictitious identity of Krystyna Zywulska so as not to implicate her fellow conspirators. From Szucha she was transported to Pawiak prison, also in Warsaw, then two months later to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was registered in the camp on August 23rd, 1943 as a Polish political prisoner, number 55,908.
	Though, according to her own account in Przezylam Oswiecim, she had never before written poetry, in Birkenau Zywulska began creating verses at first in order to endure the endless roll-calls to which prisoners were subjected. Fellow inmates, eager to learn her poems, memorized and disseminated them beyond an immediate circle of friends. From among the many accounts that corroborate the impact of Zywulska's creations, actress Nadia [Zarembinksa 00:10:47], a fellow survivor writing in November, 1945 recalls "Krystyna's poems became very popular. They were recited everywhere, literally during every free moment. In the latrine, while digging ditches, during return marches from the fields, but naturally [she says in a parenthetical] only when the authorities were not close by. And in our bunks in the evening, when it seemed that a person was already so dreadfully tired that all she could do was collapse stone-heavy and fall asleep. Even then, whenever it happened that a new verse came, you lifted your head, the tiredness flew away, and you listened, or you copied it down."
	Among the most popular was "Wymarsz przez bramçe," "March Out Through the Gate," which first sarcastically records the reality of marching out to labor details beyond the camp, then calls on her fellow inmates to persevere, presenting them with a vision of liberation day, when she and her comrades will finally have a chance to take revenge.
	And this is the text for "Wymarsz przez bramçe." And what I'd like to do is have you follow along with the English translation for those of you who don't speak Polish or read Polish. What I will do is read to you the Polish so that you can get a sense of how very musical the language is that she has selected.
	[poem in Polish 00:12:17]
	It is a powerful, empowering poem, and it is easy to understand why so many women would have risked their lives to recite or write it down, even with its left-leaning message. The poem does nothing less than cunningly usurps control of the Nazi's very own sadistic, ubiquitous deafening march to deliver a potent message of revenge. It is a march turned against its master. Its rhythmical words a bold reclaiming of the camps' acoustic space.
	But "Wymarsz" could not have been written were it not for an earlier Zywulska poem "Apel", "Roll Call," that in large part saved her life. A well-positioned "older" prisoner named Wala Konopska, camp number 13,156. And here's the only picture I have unfortunately of Wala. She survived the dearth march, but died very tragically just a couple of months later. So, an older prisoner named Wala Konopska heard the poem and, so struck by its honesty and insight, sought out its author, offering protection to a near-death Zywulska by placing her in a sauna, the central shower and disinfecting building where Zywulska registered prisoners. It was an indoor commando. So Wala Konopska, who was an older prisoner, meaning someone who had been there much longer, had one of the better positions in the camp and was able to place prisoners who she felt needed protection. 
	Unfortunately, Zywulska soon fell sick with typhus and found herself in the camp hospital. Once more, Konopska intervened giving her illegally obtained, so-called heart medication. Something that Zywulska refers to as [zhaksta nasten zova 00:15:07], likely a shot of glucose or adrenaline, which all but insured her survival. In a questionnaire returned to the journalist Alexander Kulisiewicz in 1965, Zywulska explained, "If I survived typhus it was only thanks to an injection I alone received in the barrack during my so-called night of crisis. Wala Konopska obtained the heart injection and it was determined that I, as a camp poet, would get it."
	By that time, Konopska, who worked in the [Auf Nomobuyo 00:15:43], a branch of the [inaudible 00:15:46] or camp gestapo, knew Zywulska was Jewish. The camp command had called Zywulska in for questioning during the first phase of her illness with typhus. But Konopska was determined to save her camp poet, conspiring with fellow [inaudible 00:16:01] worker Leon Kupa, who was also a part of the camp's AK underground organization, to destroy Zywulska's interrogation records.
	And AK stands for Armia Krajowa, which is the Home Army in translation. This was the dominant Polish resistance movement during the War. They had their own network also within certain camps.
	After Zywulska survived the worst of her illness and was released from the hospital in February, 1944, Konopska placed her in the Effektenkammer commando. Her poet, for the time being, would continue to write.
	Work in the Effektenkammer, the storage facilities for personal affects confiscated from arriving prisoners, was considered among the best in the camp. Prisoners assigned to this type of labor squad were safeguarded against harsh physical work outdoors and had ample opportunity to illegally obtain food, clothing, and other valuables. After April, 1944, when they were relocated to B2G camp, they lived together in less crowded barracks, were allowed to wear civilian clothes under their uniforms, of course, to keep warm, and were released from both roll calls and selections. Yet for all of their privilege, the Effektenkammer workers, located directly adjacent to crematorium 4, could not escape the sight, screams, and stench of the relentless, daily mass killings taking place just a few yards away.
	And here I'm going to show you a map of the Birkenau camp. And just so that you can orient yourself, this broken line here is the arriving platform, the [errunka 00:17:49]. This is where the prisoners first came in by train. And they walked the length of this. This was predominantly Jews, of course, intended for immediate murder were to walk this way and up this path. Stuff was confiscated in the sauna, and they were taken directly to the gas chambers and crematoria.
	Zywulska when she first got to the camp was located here in B1A [Bet Ainz Ah 00:18:25], which was where the women's barracks were. This was another part that was also women, but from all of the women who Zywulska knew and whose testimonies we have, they were all located in here. This was also one of the camp hospitals located in one of these barracks in this row here.
	Initially the Effektenkammer was located in one of these three barracks. And then in '44 it got moved to this whole complex here, called B2G [Betz Va Geh 00:18:58]. And this was in camp lingo referred to as [Zjejinka 00:19:03], which is confusing because Zjejinka is also the Polish word for Birkenau. But to the camp inmates, Zjejinka referred only to this segment of the camp. And this was devoted exclusively to mass killing.
	Now, to give you a sense of orientation, she literally did live in a barrack that was yards away. This is Crematorium 4, Crematorium 5. This was the barrack that women lived in. And all of these barracks were parts of the Effektenkammer. The men's Effektenkammer were located in one these barracks. So it was the only section of the camp where women and the men lived in barracks that were not separated by barbed wire. All of the personal affects were stored in this row of barracks, to give you an orientation. The only thing that separated these barracks from these two crematoria was just a simple barbed wire. So that's just a little bit of orientation to give you a sense of just how isolated this Effektenkammer commando was from the rest of the camp.
	And the work that they were doing, while it allowed them extraordinary privilege relative to other prisoners, was probably one of the most horrifying places to be located in the camp. Precisely at the time, by the way, that the greatest amount of killing happened at Birkenau. The period from the early part of '44 to the very end of the summer, beginning of September, was when the Nazis brought in the most amount of transports and killed the most amount of people at Auschwitz in any given time. And then as they had to retreat, starting in the fall of '44, they abandoned the camps, other things happened. But it was by far the most horrifying and relentless time to be anywhere near this section of the camp because you were daily exposed to mass murder.
	Zywulska also could not escape the constant fear of her Jewish identity being discovered by her fellow inmates. Though this mattered none to Wala Konopska, it was not at all clear to Zywulska that her fellow workers in the Effektenkammer commando would be as sympathetic. As Zywulska recalls, "I was afraid. I was not only a Jew, but then I was also a communist, nothing could be worse, right? And all my girlfriends were from the AK, the Armia Krajowa. I thought that they knew that I am a Pole; that they didn't know that I'm a Jew. And that fear made me take care that no one would know. I had to scheme, think what I will do, what I will come up with." 
	Lifelong friend and fellow survivor [Vanda Marisangyi 00:21:57] states that already in the camp she knew Zywulska was Sonia Landau, "in the camp such things had absolutely no meaning among girlfriends."
	Another friend and fellow survivor Anna Palarczyk explains, "Somehow we knew about this, I'm not sure how, but no one talked about this. She was Krysia, and that was it."
	[Advarda Shenderpaviksi 00:22:21] who worked with Zywulska in the Effektenkammer also claims she somehow knew that Zywulska was Jewish, but that such distinctions among girlfriends did not matter at all. She also added that no one spoke about the reasons for anyone's imprisonment because there was always the fear that someone might be an informant.
	Thus, it is clear that for everyone involved there was a great deal of risk associated with Zywulska's identity. Otherwise Zywulska's girlfriends certainly would have let her know that she had nothing to fear about her Jewishness, that her secret was safe with them. But for Zywulska, there was also the impossible condition of witnessing the mass murder of fellow Jews at close range, and the private fear of being found out to be one of them. A double horror shared only by a number of other Jewish inmates who had found themselves in similar circumstances.
	It was under these circumstances that Zywulska wrote some of her most provocative poems. "Wycieczka w nieznane," "Excursion into the Unknown" is one such work. Written during the summer 1944, it very poignantly juxtaposes the peaceful sounds and images of nature and life beyond the camp with the grotesque, death-ridden environment of Birkenau. Like other works by Zywulska, "Excursion into the Unknown" rapidly spread through the camp, finding its way eventually to Auschwitz 1. There, inmate Krzysztof Jazdzynski, presumably moved by the content of the poem and wishing to preserve it, set it to music, modifying when necessary Zywulska's text to fit the alternating melodies of the international hits "Santa Lucia" and "Gloomy Sunday."
	While Zywulska's dark, ballad-like poem of an astonishing 154 lines effectively registers with characteristic irony and sarcasm the approach of innocent victims toward the gas chambers and crematoria of Birkenau. And here she casually, but deliberately, identifies those victims as Jews. The musical setting significantly enhances the text's provocation.
	Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a recording of this work. Though there is material to suggest that at least one fragment once existed in the Kulisiewicz archive. Instead, I will play for you two covers of these songs. The first, "Santa Lucia," recorded by Enrico Caruso in 1916 and reissued on Victor Records in 1931. The second, [inaudible 00:24:56], the Polish language version of Hungarian [foreign language 00:25:01]. A very, very popular song as we all know from knowing "Gloomy Sunday" even in English. In Poland it was recorded and popularized by [Michitzwa Fug 00:25:11] during the summer of 1935.
	I will ask that you follow along with Zywulska's text, which I've abridged so that you may hear how it scans to the music. But first, I feel like I have to provide you with a bit of information on "Santa Lucia" and "Gloomy Sunday" in order to better understand the associations that may have inspired [Yazincki's 00:25:34] musical choices.
	"Santa Lucia," a traditional Neapolitan song first popularized during the later 19th century, celebrates the picturesque waterfront area of Santa Lucia in the Bay of Naples. Boats on the water sail softly driven by gently breezes and illumined by the moon. The image is serene and the boatman, who the singer's voice represents, moved by the beauty of it all invites people to take a turn in his boat for better to enjoy the evening.
	Laszlo Javor's 1933 Hungarian text for "Gloomy Sunday," loosely translated into Polish by [foreign name 00:26:11] expresses it in altogether different sentiment. While it too is an invitation, it is not an invitation to delight, but rather to grief. One so resonant that only death by suicide can silence it. "Gloomy Sunday" and "Santa Lucia," then, musically depict the two opposing calls of Birkenau to which Zywulska's unwitting guests are responding. The one, truthful and morbid; the other, a beautiful sinister lie. In this respect, the scenic detail of the two songs selected by [Yazincki 00:26:48] only serve to enhance the rich pictorial quality of Zywulska's stark documentary ballad.
	And, I'm going to show you the text now. It is a very, very long poem that alternates in [Yazincki's 00:27:05] musical version of it. It alternates Zywulska's text between "Santa Lucia" and "Gloomy Sunday." "Santa Lucia", "Gloomy Sunday." So it creates this sharp contrast about what's reality and what's a lie. It begins with "Santa Lucia," and this is the text where you see my brackets ... is where the music you'll here doesn't scan to the text. So you have to omit wherever I've bracketed as you're listening to the song and the melody. Also, there are repeat signs to indicate that last verses are repeated ... so follow along to music. And then what I'll do is, I will play for you the very end of the poem, which ends on "Gloomy Sunday," and you can see how that scans to the music as well.
	[Santa Lucia song 00:27:55]
	Now, let me play for you the following, this is the end of the poem to the tune of "Gloomy Sunday."
	[song 00:30:55]
	Other verses by Zywulska were from their inception conceived for singing and for consolation. "Wiazanka z Effektenkammer," "Medley from the Effektenkammer," among the lengthiest compositions to survive the camps, is a string of 54 song fragments set to an array of Polish folk songs and prewar popular tunes. Typed on seven pages, decorated with multicolored drawings by fellow inmate Zofia Bratro, and signed by 72 prisoners, Zywulska's "Wiazanka" was presented as a name-day card to block Kapo Maria Grzesiewska on September 8th, 1944. Corresponding melodies are indicated at the head of each of Zywulska's songs, and according to archival sources the entire "Wiazanka" was also performed for Kapo Maria by four inmates including Zywulska. The inscription on the title page affectionately reads: "For our dear Maria on her name day, from all of those with whom she shared the good and the bad, and whom she helped to endure, as a memento."
	Although time does not allow a more thorough examination of this remarkable document, a brief perusal reveals an extensive repertoire of internationally popular tangos, fox trots, and waltzes, well-known Polish folk melodies, as well as tunes and texts borrowed from Polish patriotic and scout songs. In this respect, it is a detailed record, a summary if you will, of prewar popular music culture in Poland essentialized into snapshot form.
	And here I'll give you the first page.
	It is also an intimate account of lives lived in Birkenau. [Youzefa Drebnik 00:35:17], mother of seven children, mentioned here. [Irena Arhofska 00:35:22], who showed affection for a prisoner who was bald, here. [Nella Yaraswafska 00:35:29], otherwise known as [Sawachinska 00:35:32], creator of culinary surprises dreamed up from stolen bits of food, mentioned here. And Zywulska, self-described writer of situational verse, mentioned here. [Vanda Romik 00:35:53], who was a philosopher on love. And of course, Maria Grzesiewska the kind-hearted dedicatee. These women and many others, prisoners all, were allowed for a moment to be vibrant individuals, not merely numbers.
	Here, I'm going to play you a fellow survivors from the Effektenkammer commando. [Irena Vishnyeska 00:36:22] at 94, and [Alina Dobreska 00:36:24] 92 sing one of the couplets about finding a bit of hanky-panky behind the storage sacks to the tune of a well-known Polish 19th century soldier's song called [Biziya Shilvaha 00:36:36].
	And I'm going to play it for you now. I'm going to do this funny slow thing where I'll give you a blow-up and a translation.
	[singing 00:36:51]
	They're remembering one of the boys who Zywulska liked, like oh [Vutsek 00:37:34]. She's writing about [Vutsek 00:37:34].
	Okay. I just wanted to give you a little picture of Irena and Alina I took of them in Alina's garden last summer when I was still in Poland. And they sang for me the verse of the couplets that they remembered from the "Wiazanka".
	And here, too, let me just go through very quickly and show you the final three pages of this "Wiazanka." You can see the extraordinary detail. And each one of those couplets is about another prisoner who they worked with in the Effektenkammer commando. And there is the sort of promise of getting home finally.
	Zywulska's texts in this medley depart dramatically from the sober reportage of "Excursion into the Unknown," the urgent need there to psychologically process mass murder. So light-hearted and playful are these short characterizations of Zywulska's Effektenkammer friends, that one could mistake them for something created in an entirely different setting than a death camp. Indeed, after the war, Zywulska herself was reluctant to disseminate the work, wary of the possibility that uninitiated readers would draw the wrong conclusions about life as a prisoner in Birkenau. 
	She tried to explain the frivolous nature of her medley in a letter to Kulisiewicz written in 1976: "Based on medley from the Effektenkammer, written in haste and created in circumstances that were absolutely exceptional, it is easy to imagine Auschwitz an idol. You get the sense at times that the text was written at a boarding school for young ladies. The medley was for me an exchange of gratitude, a way to make myself and others believe that freedom will come. We had no idea by what miracle, and what that word meant, we only wished to find ourselves beyond the barbed wire. A naïve sentimental expression of our longings and one of many attempts to disconnect ourselves from the realities of the camp. Illusions for us were indispensable even if expressed in the most primitive form, so that we could stand hell. Out of this and other factors arose my attempts to find some sort of an island where our melancholy thoughts could be 'anchored' with the help of escaping to familiar [shlager 00:39:58] refrains."
	Written in haste in order to meet the localized demand for an escapist name-day celebration, the shifting texts of medley register kaleidoscopically the everyday world of the Effektenkammer. But they also lead consolingly to visions of future happiness, to life after captivity. In its overt sentimentality and its wonderful moments of humor, the medley powerfully records the optimism and encouragement Zywulska shared with her fellow inmates. An energy both Alina and Irena in their interview with me confirmed emphatically as they astonishingly recalled from memory their favorite couplets written so many years earlier.
	Toward the end of 1944, Zywulska also composed one other parody song that I am aware of called "Marsz o wolnosci," "March of Freedom." For the song's music, Zywulska borrowed the tune from a popular Soviet mass song, "Moskva mayskaya," "Moscow in May," composed by Dmitry and Daniel [Pokras 00:40:59] in 1937. The duo, by the way, was also responsible for the melody that would become the partisans' hymn of the Jewish partisans of Vilna. The original text was written by Vasily Lebedeva-Kumach. Presumably, Zywulska first encountered this song before imprisonment.
	I will play you, now, a fragment performed by [Buchikoff and Nachayev 00:41:24] and recorded around 1937. You can follow along with an English translation of "Moskva mayskaya."
	[singing 00:41:37]
	Sure, write a tune. I love that. Sorry, that's my inner Communist coming out. Okay.
	And now, I'll play for you a fragment of Zywulska's camp version, remembered and performed by survivors [Taniswava Gonskova 00:42:53] named "Lampart." Like I said this is just a fragment that she remembered for Kulisiewicz before he died. He was interviewing survivors and having them sing their songs. This comes from the Kulisiewicz archive.
	[singing 00:43:13]
	Given that Zywulska's parody of the song follows closely the sentiments and images conveyed in the original, bewilderment prompted by an awesome architectural landscape, the crimson of a Kremlin sunrise, and the crimson of blood, the permanence and comfort of home in the refrain, it seems likely that she wrote it to meet an immediate demand for music that could provide communal uplift. Just a few months later, "March of Freedom" was sung by prisoners, including Zywulska, during their forced evacuation from Birkenau. Zywulska escaped from this so-called death march on January 18th, 1945.
	The exact number of Zywulska's camp poems and songs remains uncertain, but at least 32 complete texts survive. All are invariably marked by a vivid realism, some also by a quality of direct and sober reportage. And while sarcasm and irony prevail, Zywulska's compositions seldom lapse into despair. Rather, they most often exude life, specifically Zywulska's own will to live, and deliver a powerful message of resistance.
	That several of these creations have survived in numerous variance with alternate titles and accompanying music is a testament to their widespread popularity and the profound impact they made on the inmate populations of Auschwitz and Birkenau. [Vanda Marisanyi 00:45:38] and Anna Palarczyk, Irena Vishnyeska, Alina Dobreska, and [Edvarda Povitsky 00:45:42] all confirm that her works were highly prized.
	After the war, Zywulska remained in Poland, married Leon Andrzejewski, a prominent official of the Urzad Bezpieczenstwa, the Communist Secret Police, and she had two sons, one who turned out not to be Leon's. Her postwar life was as extraordinary as her wartime survival and certainly merits its own detailed discussion. But so as to hit the basics in the time that is left. She worked as a writer, mostly of satire, contributing pieces to the magazine Szpilki and fashioning satirical monologues commissioned by illustrious Polish actors such as Alina Janowska as well as directly for Polish Radio. She was also a successful songwriter. In 1968, her "Zyje sie raz," "You Live Once," music by Adam Markiewicz, became an instant hit in Poland when it was debuted by the Polish chanteuse Slawa Przybylska, another Holocaust survivor incidentally.
	While it is easy to understand the appeal of the song, the timeless narrative of love, love lost, and perseverance nonetheless, of swirling intoxicating triple-meter waltz matched artfully to the repetition of the turnaround Zyje sie raz, a fabulous voice, to know its author's life is to understand and appreciate the song's meaning that much more deeply. Its poetic candor is nothing less than a natural continuation of a verse style that Zywulska gave life to in Birkenau. It is Zywulska's credo, one formed by a life of risks taken over and over again.
	Here is the beginning.
	[song playing 00:47:30]
	Isn't that amazing? I'm in love with Slawa Przybylska. I love her voice. I got to meet her too. That was very exciting. Okay, sorry.
	In 1970, Zywulska moved to Düsseldorf to be with her sons, who had earlier emigrated to the West as a result of the 1968 anti-Semitic campaigns in Poland. Asked by Barbara Engelking near the end of her life whether Krystyna was her true name, she replied, "In my life, when it comes to such topics, there is nothing 'true,' my dear." But in truth, she was "Zosia," the diminutive of Zofia, not Sonia. And she was that to family and friends from before the war. "Krysia" to her friends who survived Birkenau. They loved her all the same.
	She died on August 1st, 1992, buried in Germany as Zofia Zywulska Andrzejewski. Those who had been closest to her, both family and friends, remember Zywulska as a woman who loved to laugh, sing, and jest. Perhaps befitting a woman endowed with such optimism and spirit, as well as a gift for pictorial description, in the last decade of her life, without training and with impressive success, Zywulska took up painting, fulfilling a life-long desire.
	Thank you.