Stanisław Grzesiuk (; 6 May 1918, Małków, Łęczna County – 21 January 1963) was a Polish writer, poet, singer, and comedian. He is notable as one of the few public figures to use and promote the singing style and dialect of pre-war Warsaw after their near extinction in the aftermath of the 1944

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...

Life

Stanisław Grzesiuk was born 6 May 1918 in Małków near

Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...

. Early in his life his family moved to

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

's borough of Czerniaków, a distinct cultural area populated mostly by factory workers and other

working poor The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...

. After graduating from a local trade school he started work as an electro-technician for various enterprises. After the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

he was arrested by the Germans in 1940 and sent to

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

as a

slave worker Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. However, on 4 April of that year he was sent to

Dachau concentration camp , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

following an attempted escape. He was later transferred to Gusen I (Mauthausen) and would spend almost five years there until the camp's liberation by the

American army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

. Liberated on 5 May 1945, he returned to Poland. Although he survived the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

, his health never recovered and Grzesiuk suffered from serious

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...

, which eventually killed him. After the war, Grzesiuk started documenting his pre-war and wartime experiences. In 1958 he debuted with ''Pięć lat kacetu'' (''Five Years in Concentration Camps''), a striking description of his stay in Nazi Germany during the war. The following year he published ''Boso, ale w ostrogach'' (''Barefoot but with spurs''), a description of the pre-war life of Czerniaków, one of the most colorful boroughs of Warsaw. After its publication he became known as the chronicler of life of pre-war Warsaw in numerous songs, including the street ballads for which he became best known. Grzesiuk gained wide popularity as a singer during this period and played a prominent role in various Warsaw traditional-song groups, as a

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music ...

, singer and

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

player. In the 1960s he started his work on yet another novel, ''Na marginesie życia'' (''On the Margin of Life''), documenting his struggle against tuberculosis, as well as the Polish post-war welfare services. Stanisław Grzesiuk died 21 January 1963 in Warsaw. His last book was published posthumously the following year.

Sources

* Stanisław Grzesiuk: ''Boso, ale w ostrogach'', ''Na marginesie życia'', ''Pięć lat kacetu'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Grzesiuk, Stanislaw 1918 births 1963 deaths People from Łęczna County Polish male writers Polish songwriters Polish atheists Mauthausen concentration camp survivors Dachau concentration camp survivors 20th-century Polish male singers Polish World War II forced labourers 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in Poland