ZAPOLSKA IN EXILE: ON TAMARA KARREN

Abstract

Tamara Karren, émigré writer, journalist and poet, was born as Maja Salomonowicz in Warsaw before the war to the assimilated Jewish family. Before the war the family found themselves in Romania, and Tamara in 1940 left Warsaw to find her family. Important stages in this war journey were Białystok and Vilnius. In Vilnius she met Roman Brandstaetter, to whom she was married. Together they made their way to Palestine. In 1945 she divorced him. As an education officer of the Red Cross, she joined the Polish II Corps in Italy. In 1946 she married Wacław Zagórski, a publicist and officer of the underground Home Army and they moved to London together. From that time on, she used the name Tamara Karren-Zagórska. In the community of Polish emigration she was very active. As a publicist and reviewer, she was connected with the London papers: “Wiadomości”, “Tygodnik Polski”, and “Orzeł Biały”. Her literary debut had place late, in the second half of the 1970s, which was a play based on Gabriela Zopolska’s letters titled Pani Gabriela (Autoportret z listów) [Pani Gabriela, A Self-Portrait from letters]. The 1980s resulted in only two, yet very mature, texts: the monodram Kim był ten cżłowiek? Rzecz o Januszu Korczaku [Wha was that man? On Janusz Korczak] as well as a volume of poetry Czarne niebo [Black sky]. The writer died on April 12, 1997 in London.

The drama Pani Gabriela (Autoportret z listów) was based on Zapolska’s letters to Ludwik Szczepański and Stanisław Janowski. The work is a kind of testimony to reading not only the last years of the life of the author of Moralność pani Dulskiej [Mrs. Dulska’s Morality], but also the phenomenon of her outstanding personality. The drama was very popular on the stages of London emigration (the first public performance was in December 1976 at the Polish Hearth Club).