Research into the life and work of Bronisława Wajs (Papusza), though pursued with varying intensity for several decades, can hardly be considered complete. Its popularity rose in the mid-1990, when scholars began to stress the importance of Wajs’s poetry for the conceptualization of Romani literature. Papusza was then called ‘the pioneer of Romani poetry’ (Eder-Jordan 1999: 36) ‘the mother of Romani literature’ (Toninato 2024: 76), ‘the emblematic Polish Romani poet’ (Stefanovsky 2023: 123), and ‘the most famous Roma poet of the twentieth century’ (Zahova 2020, 544). Papusza’s works have been included in anthologies of Romani poetry, including those by Ian Hancock (1998), Rajko Djurić (2002), and Wilfried Ihrig and Ulrich Janetzki (2018). They are also featured in the online project RomArchive. The poet’s tragic story has become the subject of reportage books (Fonseca) (Kuźniak), films (eg. Joanna Kos-Krauze, Krzysztof Krauze) and literary transformations (McCann). Quotes from her works are used to commemorate the extermination of the Roma (monument by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in Borzęcin Dolny in southern Poland), and are the subject of artistic projects (Tears of gold/ Sownakune jaswa exhibition, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Valerie Leray, Emilia Rigova, Marcin Tas, Lamna Varady, Berlin 2019). It is safe to say that Papusza is the most recognizable Roma poet in the world. However, despite these gestures of recognition, the circumstances of writing her poetry are still obscure and her biographies are fraught with inaccuracies, which the new archival research helps to resolve.

This essay seeks to reconstruct the biography of Bronisława Wajs with the aid of hitherto untapped documents. The modest collection of source materials on which the previous biography of Bronisława Wajs was based has been expanded in recent years to include the poet’s manuscripts and other sources that have not yet received wider attention.

One of the most important novelties in the study of Papusza’s life is the fact that researchers of her biography have so far been able to draw on a relatively small collection of sources which, based on their authorship, could be called autobiographical. This collection included only about 20 well-preserved handwritten letters found scattered in three archives in Poland,¹ as well as a small excerpt of a copy of her diary. We also knew only two audiovisual documents in which Bronisława Wajs herself talked about her life and work: a film entitled Papusza by Grzegorz and Maja Wójcik from 1974 and a radio broadcast entitled Kolczyki Papuszy [Papusza’s earrings] by Irena Linkiewicz from 1979. Unfortunately, Papusza provided scant information about her own past and said very little about her poems. Faced with such a small corpus of source materials, biographic profiles of Papusza had to rely mainly on the memories of people who met the poet in the course of her 79-year long life.

For over forty years, almost the only source of information about the poet’s biography and writings was Jerzy Ficowski, in his own words, the ‘discoverer’ of Papusza (Ficowski 1989: 109). This poet and lover of folk art was also the author of the most popular monograph on the people referred to as Gypsies published in Poland in the 20th century, entitled Cyganie na polskich drogach [Gypsies on the Polish Roads] (which was published in altered versions in Poland in 1953, 1965, 1985 and 1989, as well as in English in 1989 under the title Gypsies in Poland, and in German in 1992 under the title Wieviel Trauer und Wege… Zigeuner in Polen). Part of this monograph (in some editions, it was a chapter) was devoted to Papusza and her work. Ficowski also translated into Polish and edited three volumes of Bronisława Wajs’s poetry, which he prefaced with introductions. Starting from 1950 until the end of the 1980s, he submitted numerous biographies of Papusza and selections of her poems to Polish literary magazines, newspapers, anthologies and occasional collections.

As Ficowski himself said, he owned a collection of manuscripts of the poet’s works, which were excerpts from letters addressed to him (Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila 1956: 5). However, he did not make this collection available to other researchers and, with few exceptions, he did not publish it. It was only towards the end of his life that a scattered repository of these documents found its way to the Ossoliński Institute and the District Museum in Tarnów. They became the groundwork for the first revision of Bronisława Wajs’s biography by Magdalena Machowska (2011). After the death of the author of Cyganie na polskich drogach in 2006 another part of his archive was sold to the National Library. Machowska could not make use of it, because at the time she prepared her book the collection underwent editing process.

The group of sources, which I have called recollections, also includes publications of other people who were acquainted with Papusza and who preserved her memory. Shortly after her debut in 1952, admirers of her poetry who were part of the artistic community of the so-called Ziemie Odzyskane [Recovered territories], the former German territories annexed to Poland after World War II, began to publish their accounts about the artist. In particular, these were artists who were contributing to the development of Polish literary culture in two large cities in this region: Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski, the city where Papusza lived for almost 30 years. These were usually publicists and journalists who knew Papusza and tried to improve her and her family’s living conditions. At the same time, they were shaping her image as a significant figure of the artistic community in this unique area of post-war Poland, which was devoid of Polish literary and historical tradition. These accounts were partly consistent with Papusza’s biography, as portrayed by Ficowski, but they were contradictory at other times.

After Papusza’s death in 1987, members of this community began to urge Ficowski to publish the manuscripts of her poems. Different reasons were given for this, as will be discussed below. The mounting controversy was partly defused by Ficowski’s decision to sell almost the entire archive of Bronisława Wajs’s life and work that was in his possession to the Stowarzyszenie Twórców i Przyjaciół Kultury Cygańskiej w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim [Association of Creators and Friends of Gypsy Culture in Gorzów Wielkopolski]. However, instead of being handed over to Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim [Provincial and Municipal Library in Gorzów Wielkopolski] and made available to all interested parties in accordance with the sale agreement, the collection was not made public for another 24 years. This was finally done at the end of 2020, partly after my appeal, published in Romani Studies (Kledzik 2020: 271).

The archive of correspondence and other documents donated to the library in Gorzów Wielkopolski in December 2020 includes 134 letters from Papusza to Jerzy Ficowski from 1949 to 1981, postcards, a notebook with the poem Ratwałe jaswa so pał sasendyr przegijam apre Wołyń 43 anid 44 bersza (28 pages), as well as a memoir written by Papusza at the request of Jerzy Ficowski from 1949 to 1981 entitled Pamiętnik [Memoirs] (196 pages) and 12 pages of the text entitled Uściłók dnia 20go maja 1934 roku za Bógiem na temat wróżby co mi sie zdażyło w mym życia prawdziwa prawda tak było ze mną. [Uściuług² behind the Bug on the 20th of May 1934 about fortunetelling what happened in my life the truest truth this is what happened to me]. This is the largest known corpus of documents on the life and work of Bronisława Wajs, which has fundamentally changed the dominant narrative of several stages of the poet’s life. This chapter outlines a biography of Papusza that takes into account the main aspects of this change, as well as new biographical information that has emerged independently of the release of the archival collection. The following biographical profile of Papusza is based primarily on what I call autobiographical sources and archival documents, with references to memoirs only when necessary.

Papusza’s date of birth has been the subject of controversy and speculation for many years. Following Jerzy Ficowski, researchers have suggested it to be 1908, 1909, or 1910 (Ficowski 1953: 127; Ficowski 1986: 213). In 2017, 30 years after Papusza’s death, historian Dariusz Rymar analyzed the documentation in the Archiwum Państwowe w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim [State Archives in Gorzów Wielkopolski] that related to the issuance of an identity card to Papusza in 1952. Attached was a copy of the baptismal certificate dated August 17, 1908. The ceremony took place in the Roman Catholic parish in Sitaniec (in the Lublin region). The certificate was drawn up in Russian because at that time these territories belonged to the Russian Empire. All documentation, including church records, had to be kept in Russian. The certificate stated that the child was born on the same day as she was baptized. It also revealed that Papusza’s mother was the unmarried Katarzyna Zielińska, and her godparents were Stanislaw Bobowicz and Marianna Bogdanowicz. No additional information about Bobowicz and Bogdanowicz has survived. The copy of the birth certificate, an official document, is generally considered to be a reliable source of information on Papusza’s date of birth and the identity of her mother.

It is much more challenging to establish the identity of Bronisława’s father. He is not mentioned in her baptism certificate. In her diary, Papusza wrote that she was five years old when her father died in Siberia (in the Russian Empire, this was a common place of exile for people who had come into conflict with the law), and her mother married Jan Wajs eight years later (Pamiętnik: 1). The Wajs family’s main source of income before the war was a music band led by brothers Jan and Dionizy Wajs, who performed in Volhynia, Polesia, and the Lublin region. Their route led through the eastern part of Poland that was inhabited by a multicultural community consisting of Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews, as well as the so-called Poleshuks (considered a separate ethnic group by some scholars [Obrębski 2007: 187–191]). It is not easy to determine which of these groups made up the clientele of the Wajs band. In her Pamiętnik, Papusza only mentioned that during their performances, she entertained the audience with fortune-telling. This went on until she turned 15 and got married (Pamiętnik: 6). Papusza did not judge this relationship well in retrospect, and accused her husband of infidelity. Eventually, after some trials and tribulations connected with her husband’s imprisonment, their marriage was dissolved. In 1928, in Szumsk in Volhynia, Papusza married her uncle, Dionizy Wajs, who was 23 years her senior (Rymar 2017: 35). Papusza’s second marriage lasted until Dionizy’s death in 1972. The poet wrote to Ficowski that their adopted son, Władysław Wajs, came from a mixed Roma-Gadjo (non-Roma) family. The exact date of the adoption is unclear. However, it must have occurred before 1949, when Papusza first met Jerzy Ficowski. In 1952 Władysław attended the second grade of elementary school.

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Birth record of Bronisława Wajs. Archiwum Państwowe w Zamościu, Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Rzymskokatolickiej w Sitańcu, sygn. 88/631/0/-/37, s. 93, wpis 180.

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We know from Pamiętnik, written in late 1949 and early 1950, that before the war, in 1936, Papusza was hospitalized for mental disorders. In the absence of hospital records, the memoirs are the only source dealing with this period of the poet’s life. However, the autobiographical account of her stay in the hospital is chaotic and muddled, so it is hard to draw conclusions about the process of treatment, diagnosis and convalescence on its basis.

Papusza and her family survived World War II in Volhynia. This area was engulfed by war and from 1943 it was also the scene of violent attacks of Ukrainian nationalists on the Polish population, known as the Volhynia Massacre. Papusza included her memories from that time in a poem sent to Jerzy Ficowski in the middle of 1952 entitled Ratwałe jaswa…, known in its abridged version, censored according to communist politics of memory,³ edited and translated into Polish – and from Polish into other languages – as a poem entitled Krwawe łzy co za Niemców przeszliśmy na Wołyniu w 43 i 44 roku [Tears of blood: what we suffered under the Germans in Volhynia in 43 and 44].

Immediately after the war, which is evident from the memoirs of Bronisława Wajs’s nephew, Edward Dębicki, the Wajses were still in Volhynia, and in the winter of 1946/47 they were living in eastern Poland. It was not until 1947 that they moved to the west of the country and arrived in Wrocław (Dębicki 2012: 224). Their migration was connected with the Polish-Soviet population exchanges, following World War II and the revision of the Polish-Soviet frontier. As a consequence, over 1.2 million persons left these areas between 1944 and 1947. They headed mainly west. Between 1945 and 1947, about 2.2 million people migrated to this area from central and eastern Poland (Praczyk 2018: 86–187). It was a massive migration process, of which Bronisława Wajs’s family also became a part. Edward Czarnecki, an old friend from Volhynia, helped the group which included Papusza to settle in a new place. Jerzy Ficowski, who was looking to get in touch with ‘Gypsies’, contacted Czarnecki in the summer of 1949.

At the time, Jerzy Ficowski was a 25-year-old Gypsy culture passionate, who was publishing essays on Roma people and their songs (Ficowski 1947; Ficowski 1948). From 1948 or 1949, he worked for the Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce [Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland]. This was a team of experts appointed by Polish authorities in order to collect evidence for Polish and international trials against Nazi criminals. Jerzy Ficowski drafted a report on the extermination of the Roma for this commission. His research was pioneering. Unfortunately, the report did not come out in print in the journal of the Główna Komisja. Sections of this work were later included in the aforementioned monograph Cyganie polscy by Jerzy Ficowski and thus became an important context for the research to come decades later on the wartime plight of the Roma.

While gathering materials for the Główna Komisja, Jerzy Ficowski tried to track down the Roma who survived the war in the eastern parts of interwar Poland, which were annexed by the USSR. He managed to make the acquaintance of Edward Czarnecki, who probably played the cimbalom in their music band.⁴ Ficowski’s pass to the Wajs tabor was his article ‘Skarby ludowej kultury w cygańskim taborze. Ostatni harfiarze wędrowni potomkowie nadwornego muzyka Królowej Marysieńki krążą po Polsce, rozrzewniają, weselą i budzą zachwyt znawców’ [Treasures of folk culture in the Gypsy camp: last wandering harp players, descendants of the court musician of Queen Marysieńka, wander throughout Poland, cheer people up and arouse the admiration of experts] which the young Gypsy enthusiast wrote about the Wajses and the Dębickis (Ficowski 1949: 4). In this article we read that ‘Among the gypsies [sic!] who survived the Holocaust, there lives in Poland a family that has formed a musical ensemble, consisting of harps, violins, the cimbalom and double bass. … This is the Wajs family, an old Gypsy family, who have been playing the harp for generations’ (Ficowski 1949: 4). The article also gave insight into the family’s current problems: ‘The Wajses are now anxious to get into some kind of trade union, to obtain privileges that would allow them to perform and earn money legally again’ (Ficowski 1949: 4). Ficowski noted that the problem was the lack of professional training of the band members, which was the reason for the unfavorable opinions of the committees that decided on granting the rights.

Jerzy Ficowski paid a few-days visit to the Wajs family⁵ in August 1949 and it was their only meeting in the camp. Papusza’s family was then living in the town of Płoty in the West Pomerania. Ficowski promised the Wajses help in obtaining official permits for public performances and collected wartime accounts of their experiences in Volhynia, which were published in several later studies (Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila 1956: 54–190; Ficowski 1965: 96–109). During this stay, he also met Bronisława Wajs-Papusza, who promised to send him her wartime stories in letters (Letter dated 23 August 1949).⁶ Papusza wrote her first letter to Ficowski immediately after his departure. She declared that she would send the text as soon as they managed to find a permanent home. In subsequent letters, she wrote with variable frequency until 1953, addressing Ficowski cordially and often calling him her little brother (pszałoro).

In 1949, the year in which Ficowski and Papusza met, Poland began preparing a state-run settlement and production campaign targeted at the ‘Gypsy population’. As historians note its first stage was an attempt to count how many Roma people lived in post-war Poland (cf. e.g. Olejnik 2003). A census was carried out in December 1949, but not in all of Poland’s voivodeships (Mirga 1998: 21).

In the same year, Ficowski made an appeal for information about the extermination of the Roma. It was published in the popular Polish magazine Problemy by the famous avant-garde poet Julian Tuwim (Tuwim 1949: 779). Tuwim, himself interested in Gypsy culture for many years, became a mentor of Ficowski’s Gypsy studies. The career of the future author of Cyganie na polskich drogach then began to soar,⁷ and his later fate got intertwined with the fate of Papusza.

In 1950 Tuwim interviewed Ficowski about his interest in Roma culture. The interview was published again in Problemy magazine. Ficowski described Papusza, a part of her diary and several passages of her poems. He also pledged support for the ‘socialization, productivization, and settlement of Gypsies’ campaign that was beginning in Poland (Tuwim 1950: 662). ‘For the abilities dormant in this nation to develop, for the Gypsies to free themselves from the shackles of darkness and bad, stagnant habits, they must break with their wanderings’, he said (Tuwim 1950: 662). Papusza’s work was thus linked to the propaganda campaign for the settlement of Gypsies that was underway in Poland. In this respect, the People’s Republic of Poland was ahead of other countries in the Soviet sphere of influence, which began settlement-productivization campaigns after the war. The first efforts to register the ‘Gypsy population’ took place in Poland as early as 1949 (Barany 2002: 119). During this time, propaganda articles also appeared in press, authored or co-authored by Jerzy Ficowski. To illustrate their political message, the interview in question included a Romani translation of [The Internationale] alongside a short biography of Papusza and the story of her family.⁸

The Wajses were still looking for a place to live in the western part of Poland, near Gorzów Wielkopolski. It was not an easy task. Papusza’s tabor companions, contrary to the stereotype of Gypsy people, were experiencing a feeling of threat because they lived in the woods. They also had the impression that they were constantly being watched by the communist police. Sometimes they felt like victims of provocations of the Polish majority society. Papusza described one such incident in a letter dated October 18, 1949. She told Ficowski that two members of her stock were suspected by police of setting fire to the forest, actually carried out by local shepherds (Letter dated 18 October 1949). Some men from her tabor worked loading cars and at the sawmill (Letter dated 27 October 1949). Bronisława Wajs complained to Ficowski that, despite the exhausting work, her companions still could not count on suitable accommodation; they also suffered from difficult relationships with Poles, who did not want to have Gypsies in their neighborhood.

Meanwhile, in the spring of 1950, riding the wave of his burgeoning career as an expert in Gypsy studies, Jerzy Ficowski became an advisor to the commission in charge of the settlement campaign in Poland (Ficowski 1953: 185). In April 1950, the Wajs family received an invitation to a meeting at the Ministry of Public Administration, which was leading the project. A letter dated 22 April 1950, written by Papusza to Ficowski after her return from Warsaw, shows that Papusza and her husband were to promote the settlement campaign among the Roma community living in the area of Gorzów Wielkopolski (Letter dated 22 April 1950). The pledges that Papusza made in her letters to Ficowski about her community’s determination to find a permanent home became more and more intense.

However, the working conditions were still not favorable to trouble-free adjustment of Papusza and her close ones. In March 1950, the poet wrote to Ficowski about the tragic death of a five-year-old boy from her family injured by a mine explosion at his father’s workplace (Letter dated 24 March 1950). After this event, overwhelmed by a sense of danger and a precarious professional situation (they still did not have permission to perform officially), the Wajses, with a group of other families, decided to leave the western part of Poland and look for a place to live in the north-eastern part of the country, in the former East Prussia. The journey took several weeks. After a three-month search for suitable accommodation, the group with which the Wajs family was travelling made the decision to separate. Another reason behind this choice was the above-mentioned Ficowski’s interview with Tuwim on Gypsies, published at the end of 1950, which brought Papusza bitter fame. On December 13, 1950, the poet wrote to Jerzy Ficowski that she felt harassed by the unjust opinions that she had heard from members of her community on account of this interview (Letter dated 13 December 1950). The poet’s enigmatic comment in the letter suggests that members of her community did not like her poetry being associated with the state settlement campaign. Papusza’s family then decided to return to western Poland. Some of them, including Papusza’s sister Janina, stayed in Kujawy, while another group returned to Gorzów Wielkopolski. In January 1951 Papusza moved with her husband, son and mother to Żagań, not far from Zielona Góra, from where she continued to write frequently to Ficowski.

For Papusza, this was a time of prolific poetry writing. She sent her poems to Jerzy Ficowski in letters, separating the parts entitled ‘gili’ or ‘pieśń cygańska’ [Gypsy song] on separate pages. She wrote them both in Polish and in Romani. Jerzy Ficowski used only those Romani poems that he edited and translated into Polish. Papusza’s first poems after the interview with Tuwim appeared in the Polish press in 1952 (Ficowski 1952: 5). This was the year of the so-called Operation C, the first successful registration of the ‘Gypsy community’ in Poland (Mirga 1998: 126). In the spring of 1952, Uchwała Prezydium Rządu z 24 maja 1952 roku ‘W sprawie pomocy ludności cygańskiej przy przechodzeniu na osiadły tryb życia’ [the Resolution of the Government Presidium of 24 May 1952 ‘On Assistance for the Gypsy Population in their Transition to a Settled Way of Life] came into force (Mirga 1998: 125–126). The image of Papusza in the press became an important element of pro-settlement propaganda. Poems containing praise for the assimilation policy, patriotism towards People’s Republic of Poland, and elements legitimizing Papusza’s Gypsy identity (nostalgic references to wandering and life close to nature) included Ficowski’s short biographical notes on the poet, which emphasized her non-traditional attitude, self-taught ability to read and write and her resolution to abandon nomadic lifestyle, settle down, educate, and take up a job.

Ficowski stressed the importance of Papusza’s poetry by focusing on its links to a traditional Gypsy folk song. As a collector of such songs, he also planned to combine his own collection with the lyrics noted down by Izydor Kopernicki (Kopernicki 1930) to create Antologia polskiej poezji cygańskiej [The Anthology of Polish Gypsy Poetry]. Papusza’s works, along with those of the Soviet-Roma poet Alexandr Germano, were introduced in the anthology as a new stage in the history of Gypsy literature and the end of anonymous folk poetry. The anthology was never published,⁹ but the idea of including Papusza’s poems in the continuum of Gypsy songs became an important part of Jerzy Ficowski’s gypsylorist project. Inscribed into the broader history of folklore, the poems became more ‘authentic’ and, compared to the anonymous Gypsy songs, Papusza’s work appeared as a step towards modernity. Such a slant of the poet’s biographical portrait was clearly in line with the requirements of the state settlement campaign.

A detailed biographical profile of Papusza, as well as several of her poems, were included in Jerzy Ficowski’s magnum opus, the monograph titled Cyganie polscy [Polish Gypsies]. The book was published at the end of 1953. The author also added an edited excerpt from her memoir, in which the poet recounted how she learned to read as a child.¹⁰ It showed that because of this determination she was considered a misfit in her community and was even taunted (Ficowski 1953: 127–128).

The price that Papusza paid for the publication of Jerzy Ficowski’s book was a nervous breakdown. She had already informed the author of her health problems; in the summer of 1952 she was treated for rheumatism and, as she put it, ‘a weak heart’ (Letter dated 24 June 1952) at a clinic in Busko-Zdrój. Correspondence from Dionizy Wajs to Jerzy Ficowski, written through intermediaries (his son and others) in late 1953 and early 1954, reveals that the poet asked the author to destroy the edition of Cyganie polscy. Her immediate concern was that poems signed with her name were included in the volume. Although Papusza sent Ficowski her poems, knowing that some of them might be published, there is no documentary evidence that Ficowski consulted with Papusza on the selection of poems that he published in his monograph. Moreover, following an interview that appeared in 1950, Papusza likely preferred to avoid having her work linked to the state settlement campaign (Tuwim 1950: 662–664). Wajs wrote: ‘Dear Sownakuno [golden one – E. K.] I will describe how Papusza began to lose her senses after her return from Warsaw. She said unbelievable things, … she gets very upset and immediately starts crying a lot, and after she cries she gets upset and says why did they put my poems in that book [Cyganie polscy] and that very book is the cause of her anxiety’ (Bartosz 2012: 199). The poet’s health was deteriorating. Papusza was hospitalized in the State Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill in Lubliniec from January 28, 1954 (Muzeum Okręgowe w Tarnowie, hospital admission confirmation of January 28, 1954). Another stay in the hospital took place from 17 May to 8 September 1954 (Muzeum Okręgowe w Tarnowie, hospital admission confirmation dated 17 May 1954, discharge form 8 September 1954).

Around the same time, at the end of 1953, Jerzy Ficowski applied to the Wydawnictwo Ossolineum [Ossolineum Publishing House] for the publication of a collection of poems by Bronisława Wajs that he himself had selected, edited and translated (Archiwum Wydawnictwa Ossolineum, file Pieśni Papuszy). Because of the poet’s prolonged hospitalization, Dionizy Wajs became involved in the publishing process that lasted almost three years. The publishing records suggest that his role was limited to honoring the agreement between the publishing house and Bronisława Wajs at the end of 1954. They do not show that Papusza had any say on the form of the published collection: the selection of poems, their editing or the biographical information in the preface.

When in 1956, the year of the post-Stalinist thaw, the poetic volume Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila [Songs of Papusza] edited and translated by Jerzy Ficowski was published, the propaganda for the assimilation of Gypsies in Poland temporarily eased. Gradually, Jerzy Ficowski and the state authorities appointed to carry out the settlement campaign also parted ways. Compared to the early 1950s, the accents in Ficowski’s portrait of Papusza also changed: the poet was still presented as an advocate of ‘civilization’, including settlement, but her poems were now interpreted as testimony to the demise of traditional Gypsy culture. This pattern, also found in the writings of earlier Gypsy ethnographers such as Heinrich von Wlislocki (Wlislocki 1890: 55), placed Bronisława Wajs’s poems in a different, unpolitical and more artistic context. As the alleged last documents of the days of wandering, they became a sort of reservoir of memory about the Gypsy model of culture under Ficowski’s pen. The collection Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila contained 13 poems in three language versions: the so-called poetic translation, which Ficowski called the ‘original version’, and the ‘literal translation.’ Therefore, the book satisfied the readership’s needs of both lovers of Gypsy culture and scholars: ethnographers and linguists interested in the Romani language.¹¹ In light of the correspondence, it seems important to mention that even though Papusza had an excellent command of Polish, Jerzy Ficowski decided that he would be the one to translate her poems. The collection also leaves out all of Papusza’s many works written in Polish.

While Papusza was being treated in the hospital in Lubliniec, her husband Dionizy Wajs moved to Gorzów Wielkopolski. Papusza was released from the hospital in September 1954, but her correspondence with Jerzy Ficowski ceased. However, the reception of the volume Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila in Poland was very enthusiastic: it was praised by the outstanding Polish avant-garde poet Julian Przyboś (Przyboś 1956: 74–77) and the future Nobel Prize winner for literature, Wisława Szymborska (Szymborska 1956, 73). Soon after her debut, when readers started expecting new poetic works, Papusza remained silent or spoke only occasionally. In 1958, a scandal erupted in Gorzów Wielkopolski’s artistic circles when it turned out that a few months earlier the poet had been arrested for stealing a chicken (Kajan 1958a: 3). It was at this time that news broke out about the Wajses’ dire financial situation (Kajan 1958b: 6). A modest scholarship, which was granted to the poet thanks to Julian Tuwim’s efforts back in 1953, was not enough for them to live on. The local literary community intervened with the city authorities, asking for a new apartment for the Wajses. They also contacted Jerzy Ficowski with a request for help in publishing the poet’s older and newer works (Tadeusz Kajan’s letter to Jerzy Ficowski dated September 14, 1958). In 1958, Papusza was awarded the Lubuska Nagroda Kulturalna [Lubuski Cultural Prize], which also came with a material assistance. In the same year, the 50th jubilee of the author was held in Gorzów Wielkopolski, at which, according to Kajan, ‘Papusza could not speak to a large audience. … She also read only one poem’ (Kajan 1960: 16). The aid efforts were successful, because in December 1958 Papusza moved to a new, bigger apartment. Her situation improved slightly after she was accepted to the Związek Literatów Polskich [Polish Writers’ Union] in 1962. At that time, it became possible for her to receive a pension, which the poet herself or Tadeusz Kajan and Jerzy Ficowski applied for in later years (Machowska 2011: 66–67).

Keeping the promise made to Tadeusz Kajan in the late 1950s, Jerzy Ficowski published Papusza’s several new works in the literary press (Papusza 1958). During this period, he also began to work on the next edition of his monograph, Cyganie na polskich drogach [Gypsies on Polish roads], with a chapter devoted to Papusza (Ficowski 1965).

Little is known about Papusza’s later fate. As the sources that I have referred to as autobiographical are scarce, we must also rely on memoirs. The poet very rarely made public appearances and almost never gave interviews. Until 1981, she lived in Gorzów Wielkopolski. Her husband Dionizy Wajs died in 1972. It is difficult to establish the date when her son Władysław Wajs got married and moved out. She often expressed her longing for him in her memoirs and reportages (Ańska 1975: 29; 32). Elżbieta Dziwisz, in her reportage from 1981 titled Całe życie Papuszy [Papusza’s Whole Life], painted a picture of the poet abandoned and starving to death in utter solitude during her illness (Dziwisz 1981: 46). A poet from Gorzów Wielkopolski, Zdzisław Morawski, said that Papusza was also frequently admitted to the local hospital during this period and that this could have been due not only to the aggravation of her illness symptoms, but also to neglect (Morawski 1992: 53). Papusza received various forms of financial support from state institutions: a pension, one-time allowances, and awards. In 1978, she received an award from the Ministerstwo Kultury i Sztuki [Ministry of Culture and Art] ([n.a.], 1978, 12). In 1984, she was decorated with the badge Zasłużony Działacz Kultury [Distinguished Activist for Culture] (Machowska 2011: 80).

Meanwhile, Jerzy Ficowski regularly reminded readers of Papusza in Polish literary and cultural periodicals. His image of the poet was marked by hypersensitivity, the fact that the artist was rejected by Roma people who were not willing to appreciate her talent, and the exceptional value of her poetry, which grew out of the spirit of Roma culture. Simultaneously, Ficowski also articulated a kind of tristes tropiques¹² for the perishing Gypsy culture in his own work. He wrote the lyrics of a very popular song titled Jadą wozy kolorowe [Colourful wagons]. It was first performed at the 8th Przegląd Piosenki Polskiej w Opolu [National Festival of Polish Song in Opole] by the Polish pop star Maryla Rodowicz wearing a Gypsy costume. The artist won the Nagroda Telewizji Polskiej [Polish Television Award] for her performance and a pass to the 10th Międzynarodowy Festiwal Piosenki w Sopocie [Sopot International Song Festival], where she took third place in the international competition. It was one of the biggest hits of the communist era and the beginning of the popularity of Gypsy themes in Polish popular song. Fueled by this success, Jerzy Ficowski published another volume of Papusza’s poems Pieśni mówione [Spoken songs] in 1973. Another collection of Papusza’s verses entitled Lesie, ojcze mój [Forest, my father] was published posthumously in 1989.

Papusza died on 17 February 1987 in Inowrocław, where she had been living since 1981 under the care of her sister, Janina. She was buried at the local cemetery in the tomb of the Zieliński family. Both the Gorzów community and Jerzy Ficowski learned about the funeral with a delay.

After Papusza’s death in the new social and geopolitical reality of the Polish Republic, a dispute over the right to the poet’s legacy began to grow with Jerzy Ficowski and members of the Gorzów’s literary community involved. The latter took steps to ensure that the editor and translator of Papusza’s poems made her manuscripts available to the public. This was because any reprinting of the texts already published required Jerzy Ficowski’s permission, which he was unwilling to grant (Bołtryk 1987: 47). In memoirs about Bronisława Wajs published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were speculations about the poet’s creative impotence, as she did not submit a single poem to the local literary community during the entire time she lived in Gorzów Wielkopolski (Koniusz 1992: 129). Some even claimed that Papusza’s legacy was a mystification engineered by Ficowski (Morawski 1992: 52); other Gorzów-based artists who knew Papusza were surprised that her attitude to her own poetry was astoundingly indifferent. They remarked on the fact that the poet consistently referred those interested in her works to Jerzy Ficowski (Bołtryk 1987: 42). Furthermore, a documentary by Greg Kowalski entitled Historia Cyganki [A Gypsy Girl Story] was released in 1991. The relatives of Bronisława Wajs who featured in it, including her son, Władysław, accused Jerzy Ficowski of collaborating with the Polish administrative apparatus during the Stalin era, of exploiting the poet’s fame for pro-settlement propaganda, and of cynically ignoring her declining health. The film had an international audience (Fonseca 1996: 312), and polarized the community of people who were interested in the life and work of Papusza. Some found it manipulative (Bartosz 2015: 299), while others felt that the arguments it put forth were worth considering (Kamińska 1992: 134).

The international recognition of the Papusza phenomenon began at the same time. This had to do with the publication of two translations of the fourth revised edition of Jerzy Ficowski’s monograph Cyganie w Polsce. Dzieje i obyczaje. The English translation entitled Gypsies in Poland. History and Customs came out in 1989 and almost coincided with the fourth World Romani Congress in Serock near Warsaw. The German translation entitled Wieviel Trauer und Wege… Zigeuner in Polen was published by Suhrkamp in 1992. These two volumes still serve as the chief source of knowledge on the life and work of Bronisława Wajs-Papusza outside Poland.

The chapter in the 1989 version of the book in which Ficowski summarized Papusza’s life and work is titled ‘Folk Literature and the Gypsy Poet Papusza.’ Roughly speaking, it is the quintessence of the nostalgic profile of Papusza that Ficowski created and reproduced from the moment he parted ways with the state propaganda apparatus. This sketch is composed of several elements questionable in light of contemporary knowledge of Bronisława Wajs’s biography:

Papusza’s birth date is not precisely known and the poet herself was not sure of the year of her birth. Years ago she claimed it to be 1909, but in documents [which ones? – E.K.] it is May 30, 1910, and also January 17, 1908. In this generation of Polish Gypsies, literacy is an exception. … The heyday of her work came around 1950, just after she had given up wandering, at a crucial time for Polish Gypsies, the time of their great drama. Papusza is the spokesperson and participant of this drama, and her song is its only artistic testimony. … Her brothers did not pay gratitude to the poet’s work for the community. As an alleged ‘traitor,’ she was pilloried by the Gypsy community, who accused her of collaborating with non-Gypsies. … From then on, harassed by her own people and sick, she remained silent until the end: she died on February 8, 1987 (Ficowski 1989: 109).

The not valid facts are: the unprecise birth date, the fact of ‘giving up wandering’ instead of searching a new place to stay, the undefined ‘drama’ which in light of the archival documents appears to be the private tragedy of Papusza whose poetry got involved in the settlement campaign propaganda. The above passage, which became the most frequently cited excerpt on Papusza in international studies (Fonseca 1996: 312; Bogdal 2011: 535; Eder-Jordan 1999: 35; Zahova 2014, 33–35), was followed by passages from several poems that, as Ficowski argued, ‘gave one an idea of the whole’ (Ficowski 1989: 110).¹³ Edited by Ficowski and translated by Elleen Healey in the English edition and by Karin Wolff in the German version, the poems are in turn the most frequently cited works in international studies of Bronisława Wajs’s poetry.

The poem Krwawe łzy co za Niemców przeszliśmy na Wołyniu w 43 i 44 roku [Tears of blood: what we suffered under the Germans in Volhynia in 43 and 44] has been re-contextualized in a 1989 version of Jerzy Ficowski’s monograph that was prepared for the international market. In earlier versions of Ficowski’s book, this poem was published along with other wartime memoirs by members of Papusza’s family. Until 1989, the author of Polish Gypsies was skeptical about its accuracy. ‘No substantial documents have survived about the extermination of the Gypsies in Volhynia, and in order to illustrate its timeline and character, we must turn to the accounts of the Gypsies themselves. Although they are chaotic and fragmentary, they vividly convey the atmosphere of those terrible years,’ wrote Ficowski about this work in the collection (Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila 1956: 153). In Cyganie na polskich drogach (1965), he confined himself to remarking that the poem is ‘an epic story about the experiences of Gypsies fleeing annihilation during the Nazi occupation’ (Ficowski 1965: 279). The affirmative tone of the 1989 monograph differs from these earlier interpretations: ‘[the poem Krawawe łzy] is unquestionably the most outstanding Gypsy voice [Ficowski’s emphasis], an artist’s testimony to the tragedy of a homeless nation – one of a kind’ (Ficowski 1989: 115). This shift in the evaluation of the poem, which occurred in the English and German editions, may have influenced the fact that the poem Krwawe łzy today enjoys more acclaim internationally than in Poland. This is, arguably, also due to the concurrence with the emerging theoretical framework of Romani literature at the time, which was believed to be founded on texts thematizing Holocaust remembrance. Klaus-Michael Bogdal argued that this oeuvre had to radically break with the stereotype of gypsyism, as well as come to terms with the entire history of Gypsies in order to do justice to the victims and the survivors who wished to pass on their memories (Bogdal 2011: 444). Thus, emancipated Romani literature grew out of autobiographical testimonies of persecution, which gained a communal relevance and became a national literature: ‘It presupposes an ethnic, cultural, social, and political unity between groups that are often visibly different from each other, between whom so far there have been few points of contact’ (Bogdal 2011: 447). In this context, Papusza’s text took on a foundational significance. What might have been a shortcoming for Ficowski still in the 1950s, namely, speaking in one’s own voice about historical memory, was, in view of the nascent research on Romani literature, a valuable reversal of the stereotype about the ahistoricity of Gypsies. For this reason, the poem Krwawe łzy became both a testimony and an artistic phenomenon.

When it comes to the Polish reception of this work, it was not until 2010 that Magdalena Machowska drew attention to its extraordinary value. She wrote that it is ‘a testimony to martyrdom’ (Machowska 2011: 250). In her documentary on Papusza, Angelika Kuźniak used passages from the poem in a quasi-autobiographical monologue about the poet’s wartime experiences (Kuźniak 2013: 49–64). However, among researchers, Sławomir Kapralski did not mention this poem in his seminal work Naród z popiołów. Pamięć zagłady a tożsamość Romów [The Memory of the Holocaust and Roma Identity]; only Andrzej Mirga called this text ‘a commemoration of tragedy’ and compared it to Karl Stojka’s paintings (Mirga 2009: 125).

As new fields of Romani literature studies were emerging in international research, the reception of Papusza’s poem outside of Poland was quite different. The impulse for this came from Mariusz Cybulski, who in the first English-language essay on Papusza’s poetry, published in 1985 in ‘Lacio Drom’, included a passage from Krwawe łzy and described it as a depiction of ‘Gypsy martyrdom during last war’ (Cybulski 1985: 22). Later, commentators made similar remarks: Isabel Fonseca wrote the following about Papusza, with reference to the theme of helping a Jewish woman featured in the poem: ‘She bore witness. She wrote not just about her own people, and of the vague threat of the gadjikano (non-Gypsy) world; she also wrote of the Jews with whom her people shared forests and fate’ (Fonseca 1996: 7). Beate Eder-Jordan began her discussion of the conceptualization of ‘Roma poetry’ (Eder-Jordan 1999: 35) with the passage from Krwawe łzy quoted from Ficowski’s monograph. Klaus-Michel Bogdal described it as Papusza’s ‘most famous poem’ (Bogdal 2011: 473). Karola Fings mentioned Pieśni mówione in Karin Wolff’s translation, containing an excerpt from Krwawe łzy, in a list of biographical and literary testimonies (Fings 2016: 121). Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov compared Papusza’s work to Itzhak Katzenelson’s Song of the Murdered Jewish People (Marushiakova, Popov 2017: 79).

How important this poem was in terms of the worldwide reception of Papusza’s work, and how deep the conviction was that Romani testimony should be a song-poem, is evidenced by the paraphrase of Krwawe łzy that Colum McCann included in his bestselling novel Zoli (2006), loosely based on Papusza’s biography. In McCann’s version, the piece is titled The Bones They Broke Let You Predict the Weather: What We Saw Under the Nazis in 1942 and 1943 and is a collage of quotations from the works of Bronisława Wajs, other songs of extermination, known from the publication of Jerzy Ficowski, and an apocryphal song about the extermination written/sung by the novel’s protagonist, a Gypsy girl. The outcome is a work full of rhetorical figures that link the reality of wartime persecution with natural spaces, forests, mountains, and rivers that offer advantage over the oppressors and safe havens: ‘Auschwitz, Majdanek, Teresin, Lodz / Who gave them such places, O Lord, / Right on the edge of the black forest?’ (McCann 2020: 270). This literary apocrypha completed the image of Zoli-Papusza as an artist who, according to the theories of nation-building, determined the existence of a Romani national community. Her work crystallized the collective memory, as a watershed and formative historical event from the perspective of this community.

The major problem with the reception of Bronisława Wajs’s writing outside Poland, and to some extent also by Polish-language audiences, is that the role of Jerzy Ficowski in the construction of her poetic biography as well as in the editing and translation of her poetic works is overlooked. The transparency of his edits and translations is sometimes emphasized, e.g.: ‘Ficowski then edited and translated them into Polish, without a single interference in the content’ (Zahova 2014: 33). One exception is Marcel Courthiade, who, in the afterword to the French translation of Papusza’s poems, suggested, with regard to the poems promoting the settlement campaign, that Ficowski or someone close to him might have ‘smuggled in lines that Papusza did not write herself’ (Courthiade 2010: 91). Most scholars, however, have drawn attention to the remarkable poetic diction in her texts: ‘powerful verbal images’ (Bogdal 2011: 473) and distinctive stylistic devices (Eder-Jordan 1999: 38).

Moreover, international commentators on Papusza’s writing, when quoting her poems, have directly or indirectly (e.g. after Cybulski) cited various studies by Jerzy Ficowski or translations of poetry volumes from Polish language versions (e.g. Wolff 2011). Although Mariusz Cybulski cited Romani language versions of works from the volume Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila, he translated Papusza’s poems into English on the basis of Polish language versions from Pieśni mówione. In the anthology Die Morgendämmerung der Worte. Moderner Poesie-Atlas der Roma und Sinti of 2018, the poem Kolczyk z liścia [Ohrring aus Laub] was translated into German based on the version published by Ficowski in Cyganie na polskich drogach (the third edition of the monograph) in 1985. One extreme case in point is Ian Hancock’s, Siobhan Dowd’s and Rajko Djurić’s anthology The Roads of Roma (1998), in which an excerpt from the song Pieśń cygańska z Papuszy głowy ułożona mixed with an excerpt from Ziemio moja jestem córką twoją quoted by Ficowski in the monograph Gypsies in Poland. History and Customs was deemed an ‘excerpt from untitled verse’ (Hancock 1998: 84). Only Marcel Courthiade translated Papusza’s works on the basis of Ficowski’s edited ‘original texts’ in Romani in the volume Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila.

It is difficult to justify why scholars of Romani literature took for granted that the texts they quoted were, in terms of verse, style, composition, and genre, the product of Papusza’s poetic craft. This is all the more baffling because Jerzy Ficowski was a well-known poet and the affinity between the poetic language that he used in his own works at various stages of his career and the poetic language from which he constructed Papusza’s poems is all too evident. In addition, it is impossible to explain why international scholars of Romani literature have only sporadically consulted the volumes published by Ficowski and have mostly relied on his monograph.

The scale of Jerzy Ficowski’s interference in Bronisława Wajs’s manuscripts may be fully revealed after an analysis of the collection of Papusza’s letters to Jerzy Ficowski, made available in 2020. Between 1950 and 1973, he published a total of 30 works by Papusza under the titles that he changed and with frequently altered contents. It is commonly believed that the 13 poems published in the 1956 collection Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila were translated verbatim. In the letters made available in 2020 we find the prototypes of 25 out of 30 poems that Jerzy Ficowski published as Papusza’s works. There is a great deal of variation in how closely they correspond with what we know as the final version of Papusza’s poems. Of the 13 poems published in Pieśni Papuszy – Papušakre gila, three were used in their entirety, including the song Na stepie zabity [Killed on the steppe], which turned out to be a Russian folk song that Papusza translated into Romani (Mann 1953: 66). The other ten underwent transformations.

Jerzy Ficowski made various changes to the texts that Papusza sent him and the extent of the modifications varies as well. Based on a comparative analysis of the manuscripts and the published versions of the works, it is possible to reconstruct his editing and translation practices. Ficowski began editing Papusza’s poems by selecting passages, phrases and expressions from the manuscripts, which he then arranged into poems. The amount of text that Ficowski used from manuscripts ranges (based on word count) from 10% to 80% in the remaining ten poems from Songs of Papusza – Papušakre gila. In some instances, especially in the poems from later volumes, such as the well-known Lesie, ojcze mój, the number of changes is so large that it is difficult to assess the percentage of Papusza’s authorship. Ficowski then arranged selected passages into verses and stanzas, structured their composition, added rhymes, modified stylistic figures, and – in most cases – added a title of his own. The findings of textual studies to date leave no doubt that the poems that have been known to date as Wajs’s are in fact excerpts from Papusza’s manuscripts, fashioned through the vision of Gypsy culture that Ficowski applied to them.

This leads to a fundamental conclusion about the biography of Bronisława Wajs and the reception of the legend of her life and work. Due to the limited number of sources from the poet herself, her lack of participation in literary life, as well as Jerzy Ficowski’s key role in the creation and promotion of her work, the figure of Papusza has become a myth. The myth, encompassing both the pivotal moments of her biography and the contextualization of her work, underwent considerable editing in order for it to accommodate changing social, political, and ideological needs. Accordingly, in the 1950s Bronisława Wajs’s work could be viewed as an example of propaganda poetry, and her biography – as an example of a Gypsy pioneer, a proponent of the settlement of the Gypsy community. After this demand subsided and the paradigm of Romani culture changed, Papusza’s poetry, in a slightly altered context, filled another niche: that of exoticism, otherness, and the Enlightenment story of the noble savage. Her biographical narrative then morphed from propagandistic to nostalgic, and her poetry was seen as a sentimental token of a bygone time of wandering and of stereotypical Gypsyism. This process also strengthened the image of Gypsy culture as ancient and hermetic, orthodox and guarding its customs, which Ficowski called ‘secrets’. Such a profile of Papusza clearly stood out from the crowd of Gypsies portrayed in accordance with the stereotype: backward, primitive, and incapable of honoring their sensitive, poetic soul. Finally, at the turn of the millennium, with the expansion of the concept of Romani literature/literatures, the work of Bronisława Wajs served as a nation-forming cornerstone of emancipated Roma artistic creativity, an example of self-generated talent that was appreciated by the non-Roma reading public.

All of these biographical narratives were created in loose connection with Bronisława Wajs’s life story and her works commissioned by Jerzy Ficowski. It is only after the manuscripts of her poems and her correspondence with the author of Cyganie polscy have been made public that it will be possible to ascertain the true scale of the modifications in these two areas: the creation of poetry and the biographical legend. This is important for revisiting the concept of the new Romani literature, which, as we have seen, was founded on the vision of Gypsy culture embodied in Ficowski’s renditions of Papusza’s texts. Further analysis is needed to investigate, for example, the extent to which the fetishized motif of the forest really did constitute the most important background for Papusza’s poetry. The same also applies to the ‘matching [Übereinstimmung] of Roma and earth’ (Eder-Jordan 1999: 38) ascribed to Papusza’s writings, which connotes a particular kind of patriotism: national and ‘planet-wide.’ On the other hand, the available manuscripts finally offer direct contact with the personality, imagination, and vivid language of Bronisława Wajs. When examined in light of the preserved manuscripts, her writing can open up new avenues of analysis and interpretation. Even a cursory glance at Papusza’s manuscripts reveals that Romani studies can draw on her works to a much greater extent than previously thought.