The Many Hats of Dr. Krystyna Modrzewska

Abstract:This article explores the complex identities of Dr. Krystyna Modrzewska (1919–2008), a Polish-Jewish physician and writer, and a fascinating border-crosser. Hailing from an assimilated Jewish family in Lublin, she was a convert to Catholicism as well as a closeted transsexual and transvestite, Modrzewska struggled to create and assert her various personae through shifting historical circumstances. In her multiple postwar and war memoirs, she negotiated her own understanding of Jewishness and Polishness, absorbing the revelations of Polish hostilities against the Jews. Realizing her gender dysphoria, she had to hide and adjust to societal norms, while she projected her real gender identity in her literary output. Ultimately, she framed her life within the Catholic values of guilt, repentance and reconciliation, expressing her most unified self in a mode of personal, spiritual confession. This is the first study analyzing Modrzewska’s multiple identities. Based on original, untranslated Polish documents, it contributes to the understanding of Polish-Jewish female doctors recreating their “selves” in the oppressive climate of communist Poland and post-1968 exile.