Konstanty Ćwierk 1895 - 1944

Born 21.11.1895 in Sosnowiec
Died 20.8.1944 in Gusen

Biography

Konstanty Ćwierk was born on 21 November 1895 in Sosnowiec in Poland and died on 20 August 1944 in the Gusen I concentration camp. Konstanty Ćwierk was a businessman and a talented writer and poet. He wrote poems, short stories, radio plays and screenplays. A gifted pupil, after completing primary school he attended four years of vocational school and worked afterwards for a regional newspaper in the Sosnowiec area. But because he wanted to join the theatre, at the end of 1912 he went to Warsaw to study at the theatre school of the ‘Grand Theatre’. Financial problems and the outbreak of the First World War caused him to return to Sosnowiec in 1914. There he and other drama enthusiasts founded an amateur theatre group, which grew increasingly successful. From 1916 the newly-married Konstanty Ćwierk also attended the teacher training school in Zawiercie and then worked for some years as a teacher in Sosnowiec and Gniazdow. In 1921 he finally became editor-in-chief of a regional union newspaper and, alongside writing poetry and satires for other papers, was also involved in public welfare during this period. In 1936, when Konstanty Ćwierk was already well-established in the cultural landscape of the Sosnowiec area, he began to compile a regular radio programme, which enjoyed great popularity.

Konstanty Ćwierk was arrested by the Gestapo on 1 May 1940, was deported to the Dachau concentration camp and then to the Gusen I concentration camp, where over time he was assigned prisoner numbers 7402, 5025 and 45374. Although he was deployed as a stonemason in the Kastenhof quarry, his cultural contributions to life in the Gusen extermination camp soon made him an important factor in how many of the prisoners retained their human dignity. He wrote and recited poetry and patriotic songs in the Gusen concentration camp and also tried to interest his fellow prisoners in literature whenever he could. He fancifully named the Kastenhof quarry his ‘Golgotha’ – a song he penned that Gracjan Guziński set to music in the camp in 1943 and which the Polish baritone Józef Gruszczyński even sang once in the Gusen quarry shortly before liberation.

Despite receiving good care from the Polish doctors in the camp, Konstanty Ćwierk’s state of health deteriorated steadily over the course of 1944. Once, when he was already lying seriously ill, the musician and composer Lubomir Szopiński and tried to cheer him up with his singers until the Kapo Emil Sommer chased them out of the infirmary with a cudgel.

Konstanty Ćwierk died on 20 August 1944 in the infirmary of the Gusen I concentration camp. In 1942 he had also written the text for the famous camp march of the political prisoners of Gusen concentration camp, Już przebrzmiał grom (The thunder has already passed), which was also set to music by Gracjan Guziński. Today it is considered the hymn of the survivors of Gusen concentration camp.

Rudolf A. Haunschmied

 

Gedenkdienstkomittee Gusen (www.gusen.org)

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

Location In room