Memory and Reflection

This article discusses five little-known texts by Czesław Miłosz that remained unpublished until 2020. Written between 1946 and 1968, they have been recovered from archival collections only recently and published in Miłosz's Z archiwum. Wybór publicystyki z lat 1945–2004 [From the archive: Selected journalistic writings, 1945–2004]. My discussion focuses on Miłosz's statements concerning the Holocaust, with particular emphasis on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (April-May 1943). I argue that the testimonies left by Miłosz in the form of poems, essays, and journalism create a community of memory, while also revealing empathy and solidarity with the victims of genocidal violence. Miłosz emerges here not only as an eyewitness to the atrocities and a firm opponent of antisemitism, but also as a moral witness. Despite some controversies of a personal and political nature, a telling example of Miłosz's attitude towards the Jewish insurgents who died in Warsaw are his words in a 1979 letter to Jerzy Giedroyc: “I will not be able to cope with my life because an honest man should have gone to the Warsaw ghetto and died there.”