She was one of the most colorful figures of 20th-century Polish literary life, a muse to many artists, and the subject of literary and social scandals. She fascinated and scandalized both as a socialite, a militia officer, and the author of autobiographical novels. She had three husbands and five surnames, always distinguished by, as she herself wrote, "an inhuman greed for life, an unpredictable vitality"...
Nothing was ordinary in the life of the "first vamp of the interwar period." There were four possible dates of birth and three possible places. Bella Szwarc, as her real name was, was probably born on November 5, 1898, in Sosnowiec. She herself, in a fairytale style, described the circumstances of her birth: "You, little one, will have the luck of a goat in life. The first to wish you well was the black goat, Szmila." She was born in her parents' bedroom, furnished in the then-fashionable Chinese style: "I was born under a huge, ribbed umbrella that covered almost the entire ceiling. There were four screens, my father was constantly knocking things over, my mother wore a gold brocade kimono with green and red birds in the mornings and drank tea from Chinese cups."
She came from a wealthy Jewish home. Her mother, Felicja Janina, née Kino, was believed to be of French descent, but this was likely Bella's own invention. Her mother certainly bore her five children (one brother, Hilary, died in infancy), then separated from her husband and left Poland. Her youngest daughter, Ela, married Marius Dumas and had a son, Jean, the last Dumas in the great writer's family. Her mother died in exile only in 1947. Bella remembered her quite fondly, but above all, she adored her father, Wilhelm Szwarc, a merchant and industrialist, to whom she bore a strong resemblance both physically and mentally: "My father was very wise, very unstable, and walked his own path. I knew he loved me above all; he was my rock, my armor, my armor."
Bella's biographer, Paulina Sołowianiuk, wrote: "She spoke broadly and proudly of her Jewish origins. And she had much to be proud of in this matter. Her father was the son of Majer Ber Szwarc, half-brother of Isuchar Mosze Szwarc, head of the Jewish community in Zgierz, a famous maskil, a proponent of assimilation and Europeanization of Jews, a great erudite who turned his hometown into a cultural center. His temple was an impressive library." Bella herself described her first contact with her father's family, whom she met as a child, this way: "The feeling of alienation from that family was almost physical." Her mother spitefully criticized her mother-in-law, "the terrible grandmother from Zgierz": "Your grandmother mourns the history of the Jews since the Egyptian captivity." Bella recalled her first meeting with her grandmother: "There were ropes stretched across the room, and handkerchiefs were drying on them. Grandma was sitting in an armchair, and when she saw us, she burst into tears: 'The children of Wilhelm and that Frenchwoman are lost to us forever.' Grandma didn't leave her room; she was probably crying and still hanging tear-soaked handkerchiefs on the ropes."
Bella also met her famous great-uncle, Isucher Schwarz: "He had an extraordinary dignity, even majesty, in his whole person." But little Bella wouldn't be herself if she didn't get into mischief during this family visit: "For once in my life, I wanted to have fun, and I convinced Aunt Leonie that at home, my younger sister and I would eat pickled cucumbers for dinner and drink strong coffee, of course, in our mother's French custom." This feast ended with both girls suffering from serious food poisoning...
When Bella was a few years old, she and her family moved to Warsaw. She had already experienced homeschooling, "the bitter fruit of knowledge." Her teachers were quite conventional, but one of them taught her science using a collection of stuffed animals. Bella, so unconventionally prepared, failed her school exam, where she "revealed an exceptional lack of intelligence."
From a women's boarding school in the capital, where her classmate was supposedly Irena Krzywicka herself, she acquired knowledge of several foreign languages and later studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw. It's unclear whether she completed three semesters of philosophy or even earned a doctorate, but she did earn one in art history. She certainly met many young writers and scholars during this period. The most important of these was Aleksander Hertz, a member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and a sociology student. Their shared interest in socialism brought them together. Bella worked at the Metalworkers' Club at the time, where she ran a library for workers: "Comrade Iza is a good librarian, but when it comes to fundamental matters, her mind is weak." Bella's father long opposed her marriage to Hertz, so in protest, she fled to Nałęczów, where she ran an illegal medical practice to earn money. In her absence, her fiancé won her father over by agreeing, despite his atheism, to a traditional Jewish wedding. The ceremony took place in 1920: "Olek converted to Judaism and we married. I was his wife for less than two years, then I left." Years later, she described her first husband this way: "A future scholar, a researcher. A boy who respects the human being in me and loves me with his first love. A pure intellectual, he was not the slightest bit egotistical or neurasthenic." But she remembered their wedding night much worse: "He terrified me, embarrassed me, hurt me. In the morning, I hated him like no one else. I had fallen into the hands of a pervert." Bella's first marriage fell apart when her clandestine abortion, arranged with the help of the caretaker's wife, resulted in a serious hemorrhage. Neither her husband nor her own father could forgive her for this decision. Bella later went to her husband, who was studying in Vienna, but the final end of her first marriage was her strange affair with a "mustachioed neurasthenic" – a professor of art history. Bella, already a young divorcee, moved to Berlin. There, in keeping with fashion, she cut her hair short, studied with her younger sister Ewa, and even had a Chinese fiancé, Saofang-Wu. Although the latter could more likely be attributed to her vivid imagination. In 1924, Bella fled her despotic father for Paris, "falling madly in love with this city." There, for the first time in her life, she had to work for a living at the "Polish Bookstore," which sold books by mail order to Polish miners and workers. She befriended Xawery Dunikowski, Maurycy Zamoyski, Moses Kisling, Chaim Soutine, Tytus Czyżewski, and Ilya Ehrenburg. She treated the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky to potato soup. She also reportedly met Pablo Picasso. She recalled years later: "I drank this Parisian life like cool water from a misty tall glass, like a moonshine with the taste of fresh thyme, I thought with carefree confidence in my own youth, health, energy."
In France, she also met her second husband, the distinguished architect Jerzy Gelbard; "the Paris Spring brought us closer." Then came the wedding: "Jerzy was a Catholic, and I converted." They had an open relationship, and Bella experienced her "erotic schemes." Their only child , a daughter, died shortly after birth.
Bella went down in Polish literary history as the prototype for the heroines of two famous and scandalous novels. On her first honeymoon, in Zakopane, she met Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, then in Warsaw, she experienced several weeks of all-night drinking bouts with Witkacy and his company. Initially, these bouts took place at Bella's house; "Daddy hated Staś, and terrible scenes erupted between them. Staś, under the influence of drugs, which he was constantly carrying around at the time, created an atmosphere of irrational madness." The breakup came when Witkacy criticized her novel, calling it "filthy graphomania" and "impotent rambling." Bella recalled: "Witkacy wrote 'Farewell to Autumn' and didn't even try to hide my name. Not only was I never his lover, but he never even kissed me." For Witkacy, in his book, she was a "first-class demon." He wrote: "Hela Bertz was, of course, a Jew and the embodiment of everything that Atanazy could not like in a woman as such. Moreover, she was a notoriously easy woman." In his novel, Witkacy also described Bella's father, creating a demonic image of him and referring to them both as "The Kingdom of the Two Bertzes."
The writer Zbigniew Uniłowski portrayed her in his debut novel, "Wspólny Pokój" (A Common Room), as Miss Leopard. Her surname is said to have originated from a compliment the writer paid Bella: "you look like a panther, a leopardess." Published in 1932 as a portrait of young bohemians from the Kwadryga literary group, the novel was deemed a "pornographic lampoon" and confiscated by the censors three weeks after its publication. Uniłowski wrote: "Miss Leopard was indeed a beautiful woman. Perfectly built, she had a face with exceptionally noble features and wonderful eyes with a navy blue gleam. Her black hair stood out against the pallor of her complexion. Her suit hugged her slender figure, and she had a pair of magnificent calves." But she was also a scandalous figure: "You're too young for me; I only like older men. These sexual matters are so repulsive, everyone should deal with them in private." She played unscrupulously with both the feelings and the body of young Lucian: "Miss Leopard's left hand thrived very effectively under the covers."
Warsaw was the center of gossip about the real Bella's many affairs, but she herself wrote these surprising words for a famous vamp: "An alien scent, an unfamiliar skin, no pleasure, so much fuss about nothing, so many volumes, so much literature, aren't they really exaggerating?" Colonel Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski was reportedly interested in her, she competed with Mira Zimińska for the attentions of writer Jerzy Stempowski, and was rejected by writer Arkady Fiedler and Władysław Broniewski, who recalled: "Mrs. Bella tried to flirt with me, but I carefully avoided it. Despite her great erudition and high intelligence, she is an ordinary, shallow woman." Antoni Marianowicz himself joked: "Have a good laugh – you've lived with all the famous men of the era, including Einstein and Donald Duck."
His colorful personality attracted other eccentrics. Chief among them was the "unforgettable master" – the legendary Franc Fiszer. He was a living legend, and after losing his family fortune, which he literally drank away and devoured with friends, he spent his life primarily in Warsaw – in cafés (he was the undisputed king of the famous "Ziemiańska"), restaurants, and dinner parties. He was a philosopher, a classic of absurd wit, a renowned gourmet, "Socrates in the skin of Falstaff." He had a large, dyed beard, a gigantic belly, was friends with all the Polish writers, but never wrote a word himself…
Bella met him after her return from France. It was a seven-year "friendship based on absurdity" and was described by her in a book with the telling title "My Great Love." The acquaintance itself began with an insult, as Fiszer called her "a phenomenally stupid woman." But undeterred, Bella later invited him home, where he ate an entire, enormous dinner by himself and moved into the spare room. A week later, they were drinking bruderszaft: "Life seemed idyllic to me; we went to Ziemiańska Street together, came home together, and went to the cinema in the evenings." But unfortunately, the idyll soon ended, as Bella's husband would not tolerate Fiszer's sloppiness, cleaning his pipe everywhere in their elegant apartment. A sort of truce was then established between the men: "Jerzy's not home, Franek's coming back immediately." Bella's great friendship ended only with Fiszer's death in 1937: "I dressed Franek for his coffin. I pinned a large carnation in his buttonhole for the last time, fixed his eyebrows. I tied his tie in a bow under his chin. I evened out his beard with a brush."
In both her incarnations, pre-war and post-war, she ran a social salon, and she was the only one forgiven for frequenting the hostile literary tables. Włodzimierz Sokorski wrote: "Czajka was the pride of the evenings. Witty, cheerful, wife of many husbands and lover of many friends. Czajka's stories were the art of truth and fabrication, brilliant narration and wit." But Bela's personality also evoked negative emotions. Antoni Słonimski strongly disliked her, although she adored his poems, which she knew by heart. Magdalena Samozwaniec spitefully called Bella "an exhumed kitten." Bella's characteristic, often mentioned by many of her friends, was her caring nature and willingness to lend a helping hand in times of need. She helped during the interwar period, but also after the war, leveraging her military contacts. Wojciech Żukrowski recalled: "There was no matter, if you just trusted her with your heart, that she didn't push through, she wouldn't leave. What a good woman she was. She arranged studio assignments for painters, and sometimes for former German trousers. She would burst in screaming at the seasonal figures in office and wouldn't leave until she had wrested the decision in writing, a hurricane in a skirt, a Niagara of eloquence, a demon of patient besieging. Besides, it was never her business; she always stood up for someone." Even in the postwar period, she greatly helped Teofil Ociepka, an amateur painter from Silesia. Bella promoted his work ("a painter of jungles and fantastic animals"), defended him against press attacks, and had wealthy acquaintances buy his paintings.
Her experiences during the occupation were extraordinary. She survived the Warsaw ghetto, where she suffered severe typhus. The painter Roman Kramsztyk also hid with her and her husband in an apartment on Sienna Street. Bella wrote poetry, ran a café, and then ended up in the Otwock ghetto, where she reportedly witnessed the death of poet Julian Tuwim's mother. Eventually, she had to hide in the countryside, but was saved by the blacksmith's teenage daughter, Danusia. Her father obtained false papers for his sister: "a Kennkarte for Stefania Czajka, born of a mother named Nepomucyna Czajka, father unknown. That's how Czajka was born." She described her sometimes improbable wartime experiences in the book "Ocalił mnie kowal" (A Blacksmith Saved Me), explaining her survival as a "fervent need to survive, to bear witness to the truth." Jan Kott wrote: "The book is true. It tells of the most terrible years. But it has not ceased to be a fairy tale; there is a good fairy here, she is the blacksmith's daughter. It is a fairy tale about goodness, which is stronger than stupidity, meanness, and hatred. And that is why this fairy tale is true."
She described her subsequent fate thus: "I hid in the forest, then the army, then the partisans in the Legionowo forests, later in the Lublin region, and later still the Citizens' Militia in Katowice." In 1944, she joined the People's Army. Ryszard Matuszewski described how the uniform hugged her already curvaceous figure, the cocked four-cornered cap and heavy makeup made her look like "Wieniawa in a skirt." She then continued her career as a militiawoman, acting as bodyguard for Professor Stanisław Lorentz, with whom she participated in the recovery of several paintings by Jan Matejko himself. After the war, she settled in Katowice, worked at the Citizens' Militia headquarters, and likely married for the third time. Władysław Stachowicz, known as "Czajnik," was a chemical engineer. She lived with him for a quarter of a century, and the third marriage proved to be their longest. At that time, she was already the widow of Gelbard, who was murdered by the Germans during World War II.
In Katowice, she also created another "artistic salon." Its decorations included a doormat made from a Nazi banner, and a German maid dusting and mopping the floor with banners like those used by her. She left the militia in 1946. That same year, her first post-war book, "Pieśni grobne getta" (Funeral Songs of the Ghetto), was published. Her occupation-era poems, based on the true stories of those murdered, included a tribute to her great-uncle , Isuchar Szwarc. The postwar period saw Bella's reincarnation as a writer. Although she debuted before the war, she wrote nine autobiographical novels afterward. They were eagerly read, but also frequently criticized. Józef Hen wrote: "The story of a woman, somewhat mad, who thinks that everything she has experienced is terribly interesting to others. Czajka's prose is not graphomania, but it probably is a bit of it, because its main impulse is the need to chatter." She herself described her books as: "I am unwinding the film of life, nothing more, I am unwinding the roll of film. I am truly not hiding anything in these memories, I swear I am not lying."
Despite constant financial problems, she traveled extensively after World War II. Her trip to South America in 1958 ended in a major scandal involving Witold Gombrowicz. Bella published a text about their reunion years later, which Jerzy Giedroyć commented on bluntly in a letter to Gombrowicz: "He's bullying you in Przekrój." The writer himself wrote a highly critical letter to Bella: "You write about me as if you were writing about any literary whiz. Bela, it's hard to expect you not to write nonsense."
"I'm old and diabetic, and after my third heart attack, I write very slowly. Work has become more difficult," she complained, but she still cheated at poker, loved animals, and hated logical thinking. Maria Dąbrowska wrote: "She writes, appears on television, talks on the radio, and is the clown at party meetings. She lives by 'crazy papers' and head injuries. Her unrestrained language, bawdy, boisterous humor, and self-promotion through self-irony can be as entertaining as a good cabaret, provided you see and hear her once every few years."
Artur Sandauer recalled: "She had acquaintances with people in power, but she was definitely on the side of the opposition. After 1968, she spoke very hostilely about the government." This was even reflected in secret reports: "In Warsaw's literary circles, she conducted politically harmful activities from a revisionist and Zionist perspective." Toward the end of her life, she became the target of an anti-Semitic witch-hunt. Ryszard Gontarz, writing in the newspaper "Sztandarze Młodych," criticized her pro-Israel views. She feared pogroms but provided financial assistance to those arrested in the March 1968 events. She did not live to see the publication of her last book, in which she described her stay in pre-war Paris. She died on December 11, 1969. Sabina Sebyłowa summarized her character: "Her seething temperament attracted general attention. Bella knew everyone. She was like a joyful epidemic; everyone succumbed to it."
Agata Olenderek
For centuries, Polish Jewish women lived on the border between two worlds, yet were not fully-fledged citizens in either. Jewish traditions bound them by a series of sometimes rigorous regulations regulating all, even the most intimate, spheres of life, while simultaneously limiting access to education. The Polish community viewed them ambivalently, as evidenced by the story of King Casimir and Esterka – they were often orientalized and sexualized through the prism of their cultural distinctiveness. Yet, they served as liaisons between the Polish and Jewish worlds. They established contacts with Polish neighbors more often than men – primarily through trade or other economic activities – and demonstrated a better command of the Polish language, even during the Holocaust. They participated in various areas of social life – education, science, and the arts, contributing a significant component to Polish cultural heritage.
Twice forgotten and censored – as women and Jews, as a doubly alien element, as the ultimate Other in the imaginarium of male-dominated Polish culture.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum wants to help remember them – to bring back from oblivion figures and stories of significant Polish Jewish women and their cultural influences. We present a new series of columns devoted to Polish Jewish women – women of art, cinema, and literature; writers, translators, actresses, and all those who co-created Polish culture.
