Földvári Books

We Were in Auschwitz - Bound into Prison Uniform, Inscribed by Krystyn Olszewski

Borowski, Tadeusz; Nel Siedlecki, Janusz; Olszewski, Krystyn; (Girs, Anatol)

Byliśmy w Oświęcimiu. 6643 Janusz Nel Siedlecki, 75817 Krysytn Olszewski, 119198 Tadeusz Borowski. [We Were In Auschwitz. 6643 Janusz Nel Siedlecki, 75817 Krysytn Olszewski, 119198 Tadeusz Borowski.]

[Munich]: Oficyna Warszawska na Obczyznie, 1946. First edition. Presentation copy, inscribed by Krystyn Olszewski, one of the authors. Numbered. In publisher’s cloth, designed by Anatol Girs, cut from concentration camp uniform, a badge of the political prisoners mounted by sewing on the front panel. 212, (4) p. Brown stains on the badge. Pages yellowed due to acidic paper. Otherwise in fine condition.

Extremely scarce inscribed copy of a book widely regarded as the first published account of the realities of Nazi concentration camps, and one of very few copies bound in cloth cut from original striped concentration camp uniforms.

The initiator and publisher of the book was Anatol Girs, a leading Polish graphic artist and publisher, and a survivor of Auschwitz and the Dachau–Allach concentration camp, where he was liberated. After liberation, Girs founded the publishing house Oficyna Warszawska na Obczyźnie in Munich. Its first publication was Imiona nurtu (1945), the first officially published book by Tadeusz Borowski. The present book is the third publication of Oficyna Warszawska, dedicated to the American Seventh Army, and written by three young Polish former inmates of Auschwitz: Janusz Nel Siedlecki, Krystyn Olszewski, and Borowski. Byliśmy w Oświęcimiu (We Were in Auschwitz) is among the earliest accurate descriptions of Auschwitz. Girs acted as a mentor to the authors and, according to Borowski’s wife, exerted “an enormous moral and intellectual influence” on Borowski.

Girs also designed the book’s cover. Besides the regular issue—bound in prison-striped hard paper and bearing a printed, numbered camp badge of Janusz Nel Siedlecki (no. 6643)—a very small number of copies were bound in cloth cut from original concentration camp uniforms, with a fabric camp badge sewn on. Two variants of these exceptional bindings were exhibited in 2002 at Yale University in the exhibition Anatol Girs: Book Designer, together with Girs’s personal copy bound in leather cut from an SS officer’s coat.

The present copy is inscribed by Krystyn Olszewski to a certain Alexander, “after the first attempt of friendship” (Olkowi po pierwszej próbie przyjaźni), Warsaw, 20 September 1948. Olszewski (1921–2004) was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Pawiak, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Dachau. After the war, he returned to Poland, studied architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, and later worked as an urban planning designer in Warsaw, Baghdad, and Singapore.

Byliśmy w Oświęcimiu is generally described as a collective memoir by the three former prisoners and contains early versions of texts later developed in Borowski’s Pożegnanie z Marią (1948; Farewell to Maria). Borowski’s biographer Tadeusz Drewnowski argued in his 1962 study, however, that the book is largely Borowski’s work, noting his substantial co-authorship and editorial shaping of the contributions of his fellow prisoners.

Tadeusz Borowski (1922–1951) was a Polish writer and journalist. He was involved in underground organizations during WWII in occupied Poland until 1943 when he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. After the liberation, he stayed in Germany for some months and his first officially published books appeared in Munich. In June 1946, he returned to Poland, began to work for the Communist party as a journalist, he wrote and published the books of his stories about the concentration camps. In 1951, at the age of 28 as a disillusioned man, he committed suicide.

Tadeusz Borowski (1922–1951) was a Polish writer and journalist involved in underground resistance activities in occupied Poland. Arrested in 1943, he was deported to Auschwitz and later transferred to Dachau. After liberation, he remained in Germany for several months, where his first books were published in Munich. He returned to Poland in 1946, worked as a journalist affiliated with the Communist Party, and became increasingly disillusioned with the regime. He published his major camp narratives before taking his own life in 1951, amid this political and moral disillusionment, at the age of twenty-eight.

[Ref.: Drewnowski, T.: Ucieczka z kamiennego świata; o Tadeuszu Borowskim. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1962.; Drewnowski, T. (ed.): Postal Indiscretion. The Correspondence of Tadeusz Borowski. Northwestern University Press, 2007.]

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Price: €25,000.00