Women Heroes of World War II: Grazyna Chrostowska - Article Example

?First Last Number Grazyna Chrostowska Grazyna Chrostowska was born to Michael Chrostowski and Wanda HeronPomianowska, on September 20, 1921 at Lublin Leaning 5th Street in Poland (Grazyna Chrostowska). At school, Grazyna exhibited great interest in Humanities by writing prose and poetry, taking interest on film and she also tried acting on theatre (Grazyna Chrostowska). She also wrote for a youth magazine called The Sun. Grazyna was not the only one in her family who fought against the Germans; her father and sister (Grazyna Chrostowska) were members of the underground movement as well. Her father was a notable member of the Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza or KOP which is the Border Protection Corps in Poland (Grazyna Chrostowska). At age eighteen, Grazyna became a member of the movement and wrote for its publication Poland Lives. Embarking on the activist movement at such an early age would make way for the young poet’s literary works to be known to the world. Germany was known during World War II to launch a “Lightning war” or blitzkrieg on its enemies. Grazyna’s homeland was not spared from the simultaneous bombardment of aircrafts, tanks and soldiers on foot (Grazyna Chrostowska). Advised by allied forces France and Britain not to devise war plans against Germany to prevent sparking the rage of the Nazi forces, however, despite the neutrality Poland demonstrated, the Germans launched their attack. It was during the struggle with Germany that Grazyna along with her father and sister Apolonia became active in the movement defending the borders of Poland. Underground movements were formed since the much needed help from allied countries France and Britain in defending the borders of Poland against the Germans and the Soviet was nowhere in sight and eventually became hopeless. Poland surrendered to the Germans after much effort on defending their land. After some time towards the end of 1941, concentration camps were built across Poland one of which was located at Ravensbruck where Grazyna will be detained. Unlike other Polish women who fought secretly and openly the horrors brought on by the Germans, Grazyna was not fortunate enough to flee the country and elude arrest. On May 18, 1941, while she was with her father visiting her imprisoned sister Apolonia, Grazyna and her father were arrested by the Germans (Polish Poetry in Ravensbruck). On September 23, 1941 (Polish Poetry in Ravensbruck), Grazyna was transferred to the concentration camp for women of Ravensbruck. At the camp, Grazyna became detainee number 7714. Purchased by the Germans with the sole intention of transforming the land into a concentration camp, Ravensbruck was exactly located in the lake district of Mecklenburg between Berlin and the Baltic (Saidel 12). The camp was intended to imprison women and use them as labor slaves. Grazyna experienced days of hard labor in the camp as she worked for the manufacturing of materials used for soldiers’ boots (Grazyna Chrostowska). However, the original purpose for the women’s camp predictably became a living hell for the incarcerated females. Inhumane treatment of the women at the camp later worsened as they became test subjects for medical experiments, some were put to death simultaneously by gas while some just starved to death (Untitled Article). Survivors of the concentration camp described their daily lives as well as the tortures they went through in the camp. Some of the afflictions underwent by women at Ravensbruck were the ice room, the beatings and attack by dogs and lashings on bare skin. For Grazyna and other prisoners at Ravensbruck, a day at the concentration camp would start at the sound of sirens and end on the same note. The first siren sounds off at 4 A.M. which serves as an alarm; the women were then given food for the morning after which the roll calls will be performed by the senior in the cell block. After the roll calls everyone was off to work until noon when the women would have their lunch break. Work resumes after lunch break and continues until 5 in the afternoon. Women at the camp subsist only on a piece of bread which was rationed in the morning, soup for lunch and dinner. The meager meals would have not compensated for the hard work the Ravensbruck women performed all day which may have caused several detainees to die of starvation. After dinner, women were allowed to go back to their barracks for their free time for which they can use to write their letters. On these instances, Grazyna probably had her chance to write her poems. Some of the poems she had written while in captivity were I Would Wander (Wedrowalabym), The Stones (Kamienie), The Foreign Land (Obczyzna), Outside the Window (Za Oknem Wiatr), Outside the Bars in the Sun (Za Krata W Sloncu), Snow (Snieg), To Wladka (Wladce), The Dream (Sen), Moments (Chwile), The Casual Sketch (Szkic Przygodny), Thoughtfulness (Zamyslenie), The Tiny Room (Maly Pokoik) To Kasia and The Inquietude. The poem The Inquietude was written eight hours before Grazyna was executed. Judging from the title alone, the poem shows a restless Grazyna contemplates home, thoughts of what the future has if she survives the gruesome camp as well as the fears of what hardships lay ahead or if her life would be spared by the cruel captors. In the first stanza, Grazyna likened the distressed feel of her day to Frederic Chopin’s music. The term “inquietude” was used by Theodore Kullak, a composer, to describe Chopin’s music. Kullak described Chopin’s etude as “peculiar” and “restless” (Huneker 142) thus the term “inquietude”. The disquieting quality of the day affects not only the poet but the birds as well as Grazyna described them to represent that she was circling places at the camp to try to find comfort and hope in her temporary home just like the birds were circling around their nest, a temporary home before the birds would migrate to another place. The next stanza expresses the writer’s burst of emotions; a mixture of fear, homesickness, melancholy and uncertainty are exuded by the lines that say: Quietness in the nature, warmth is like before a storm.  From the West, low, dark clouds flow.  Waylaid fear strikes into the heart.  Homesickness, homesickness…  Succeeding stanzas of Grazyna’s poem directly described her agitation as she walked around the place in hope of finding something that can bring her hope or at least relive the life she once had outside the camp such as the smell of spring time, the profound sentiments usual to artists like her and the calmness that love can bring. Grazyna however, failed to recapture the feeling of being free from the brutality and the comforts of home and love as she states in the lines: “I am walking, unable to find, keep changing and returning. Somewhere far a way, village hamlets are left behind.” In the last lines of The Inquietude, the poet seems to have an intuition of her impending death as she grew more distressed. The lines: “Clouds flew to the East,” suggest that she knew a major change was about to happen to her life while the dark trees that may look menacing and had stood winds and stillness were swayed by inquietude can be likened to the writer’s character. Grazyna was fierce enough to fight with her writings and obviously menaced the Germans because they considered her and her works as a threat thus incarcerating her. Grazyna was unfazed by the blows she had experienced while fighting for her country and during the time she stayed at Ravensbruck camp, but at that moment that she was sensing that her inevitable death was nearing, she was distraught. Her agitation probably may not be entirely because she was about to die but possible due to the worries she had in mind of the state of the country she will be living behind. On April 18, 1942, eight hours after Grazyna finished writing the poem, she and Apolonia were executed by a firing squad. The 21 year old Grazyna had left her beloved Poland in the hands of the beastly warring Germans who had devastated her country and murdered not only Polish Jews but other Jews from neighboring countries as well. Although Grazyna bid farewell to her country at such a young age and in conditions that were extremely unfavorable, the poet activist from Lublin did not leave without a fight and left her poems while in captivity tell the tales of the Nazi’s monstrosities to her native Poland. Works Cited Atwood, Kathryn J. Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011. Print. “Grazyna Chrostowska.” Ravensbruck. Web. 27 November 2011. http://tajchert.w.interia.pl/grazyna_chrostowska.htm Huneker, James. Chopin: the man and his music. Reprint. Plain Label Books. Morrison, Jack Gaylord. Ravensbruck: everyday life in a women's concentration camp, 1939-45. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000. Print. “Polish Poetry in Ravensbruck.” UTORweb. University of Toronto. Web. 25 November 2011. http://individual.utoronto.ca/jarekg/Ravensbruck/GrazynaChrostowskaPoetryEnglish.html Saidel, Rochelle G. The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. London: Terrace Books, 2006. Print. Untitled Article. Ravensbruck. Web. 25 November 2011. http://individual.utoronto.ca/jarekg/Ravensbruck/Executions.html Read More