#krzysztof kamil baczynski

Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński(1921-1944) was born 101 years ago. He is considered one of the greatest poets of the Generation of Columbuses whose adolescence coincided with WWII.

■ He was only 23. His name was Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński. He was one of many who had to live through the tragic days of September, 1939, and who had not seen liberation. He experienced – what he himself envisioned – a shower of bullets, grenades, hitting the dirt, and ‘one charge only, straight up to heaven’.From this supreme sacrifice of countless such young daredevils was supposed to be born a mighty Poland free as a bird: ‘… We’ll raise a house of iron – for nations, storms, and dreams’, he wrote in January, 1943. Yet poets are often wrong, and so was Baczynski. Warsaw fell … a different Poland emerged. But whatever one may now say about the Warsaw Uprising, nothing can erase the sacrifice and heroism of the insurgents.

■Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński was born in Warsaw on January 22, 1921. His dream was to become a graphic artist or a book illustrator. He belonged to the generation born and raised in a free and independent Poland, a generation which did not know foreign rule. He started to write poetry very early. In 1936, at the age of 15, his first poem was published. But it was the shocks, the uncertainties, the cruelties of war which brought his true talent to the fare. He became the poet of fighting Warsaw.

■ He was killed in action by a German sniper at approximately 4 pm of August 4, 1944, in Blank Palace (Pałac Blanka) in the Warsaw Old Town area. He is buried in the Powązki Military Cemetery, together with his pregnant wife, who was killed on September 1, 1944.

■ He came to rest among the ruins of his own native city just as he prophesied in his verse:

“For us, one charge
–  straight up to heaven
one medal only,
– a cross on our grave.”                                                                                           
And a Polish writer and critic; Stanislaw Pigon, had this to say at the news of Baczynski’s death:“What can we do? We belong to a nation whose lot is to shoot at the enemy with diamonds.”