Print | A A A | Report a bug | 34 648 296 charts | 69448 photos | 900 video | 115 audio | 2265 towns

 

 
 

News

2010-09-14

An unfinished story

Ilustracja
A mechanic from Cracow discovers war drawings of a “child prodigy”.

Last fall, Gerard Piasecki stumbled upon a school notebook, which seemed to come from the pre-war period. Gerard Piasecki is a maintenance technician from Cracow. He found the notebook among the paraphernalia taken from his parents’ house in Wieliczka, demolished ten years earlier. He showed the find to his friend Grzegrz Kopeć, a documentarian from Cracow. Kopeć passed it on to the reporters of Gazeta Wyborcza. A worn-out cover, signed “Ryszard Apte 1939-1940”. Loose pages with drawings in pencil and feather inside. Dark, more symbolical than literal, scenes directly associated with war and Holocaust. German uniforms, crosses, skeletal bodies, barbed wires. On one of the pages – a table of contents. Titles of individual figures and the title of the whole cycle: “Niepokój” (“Anxiety”). It’ s an extremely interesting discovery. Artistic visions of Holocaust created at the time are so rare that any find of this sort is a sensation. – says Anda Rottenberg, former manager of Zachęta (National Art Gallery) in Warsaw. – I saw the pictures and I must say that they made me completely helpless both as a critic and as a spectator. I’m thinking of showing Apte’s “Anxiety” during the great exhibition in Warsaw next year.

Ilustracja
For a year, Reporters of Gazeta Wyborcza were trying to find out who the author was and what happened to him. They managed to establish that family of Ryszard Apte belonged to the cream of society. Father Henryk was a valued lawyer and a prominent member of “Solidarność” (“Solidarity”) Masonic Lodge. Mother Amalia run an artistic lounge on the corner of Bracka and Gołębia. The son played a few instruments, gave breathtaking piano concerts, spoke Polish, German and English. In a magazine for children and youth “Window to the world” (“Okienko na świat”), he published his epigrams and illustrations to short stories. Moreover, he published his more serious poems in an adult “Nowy Dziennik” (“New Daily”). He was a top student in Hebrew Gymnasium, the only school the certificate of which guaranteed admission to all national universities. His friends admired his talent.

In the fall of 1939, the Apte family, as many other Jews from Cracow, moved from the German Cracow to the Soviet Lviv. Rysiek was a student, he probably was a candidate for Komsomoł (the Communist Union of Youth), he continued to learn playing the piano, he was writing and painting. He eagerly visited the Ossolineum reading-room, cafés and concert halls.

In August 1942, being young and healthy, Ryszard was taken to the labor camp in Stalowa Wola. He left the notebook with drawings in the attic. He worked in a Polish steelworks renamed and changed into a branch of Herman Góring Werke. Conditions in the camp were no better than in Auschwitz. Famine, diseases, SS-men and cruel Ukrainian guards, the omnipresent death. After a few weeks, Apte, half-dead, decides to run away. Another musician from Cracow named Greschler accompanies him. After work, the two of them (probably) hide in the back of the factory. At night, they cross the fence and rush to the forest growing along Sandomierz, Zamość and Lubaczów. Unfortunately, their escape ends with capture and death.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archive