Stanisław Grzesiuk

Stanisław Grzesiuk was born on May 6, 1918 in Małków, but from early childhood he was closely tied to Warsaw. He grew up in Czerniaków, a poor district of prewar Warsaw that later became the central setting of his books and songs. Before the war he worked at the State Tele- and Radiotechnical Works and trained as an electromechanic. Even then, he absorbed the language of the street, the customs of working-class neighborhoods, and the local folklore that later became the core of his art. During the war he was involved in underground activity, was arrested, first sent to forced labor in Germany, and later imprisoned in the Dachau and Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camps. He remained there until liberation in...