A forgotten testimony from the liberated Warsaw. Vasily Grossman on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Abstract

Prefacing the first ever publication of V. Grossman’s essay In memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [Pamyati vosstaniya v Varshavskom getto] (1948) in the Russian language, the article recollects the circumstances and reasons for the piece to have been kept from publication and defines its relevance in the author’s legacy. The work is analyzed in the context of the problems of a literary testimony. The researcher points out that Grossman wrote the story using a special writing strategy, where numerous meanings incompatible with official Soviet culture are incorporated by means of an uncontrollable symbolic subtext, decipherable with certain ‘keys’ created throughout the narrative. In this case, such a ‘key’ is provided by the character of the stocking knitter ofŁodź. The story and the editor’s corrections are reconstructed from an archived, typed manuscript. Also included in the publication and supplied with comments are V. Grossman’s answers to the questionnaire distributed by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to several cultural workers in 1946 ahead of the first Victory Day anniversary.