Izabela Czajka Stachowicz (1893-1969)

Bella Szwarc, for that was her real name, was probably born on November 5, 1898, in Sosnowiec. She came from a wealthy Jewish home. "My father was very wise, very unstable, and walked his own path. I knew he loved me above all else; he was my rock, my armor, and my armor."

As a young girl, she moved to Warsaw with her family. She learned several foreign languages ​​from a boarding school in the capital, and later studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw. During this period, she met many young writers and scholars. The most important of these was Aleksander Hertz, a member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and a sociology student. Bella's father, for a long time, opposed her marriage to Hertz, but her fiancé finally won her father over by agreeing, despite his atheism, to a traditional Jewish wedding. The ceremony took place in 1920. Aleksander Hertz's dedication to his scientific work meant their marriage was short-lived. After their divorce, she moved to Paris, where she met her second husband, the distinguished architect Jerzy Gelbard.

Her experiences during the occupation were extraordinary. She survived the Warsaw ghetto, where she suffered severely from typhus. The painter Roman Kramsztyk also hid in the apartment on Sienna Street with her and her husband. Bella wrote poetry and ran a café where Wiera Gran performed.

"Bella, whose mind was like that of a conjurer throwing live rabbits from under his top hat, one fantastic idea followed another, began writing ghetto poems, began singing courtyard songs, and founded a café where people came to hear something, to meet, where there was a semblance of normal life, amidst the burning ashes," Janina Kruszewska, Jerzy Gelbard's cousin, described the atmosphere of those tragic days. "There, amateurs sometimes sat at the piano and played Beethoven's concertos and Chopin's Revolutionary Concertos from memory, and Bach, which reminded us that God was somewhere."

Upon hearing of the extermination plans, Gelbard fled and, the day before the liquidation, helped Czajka escape. He died shortly afterward in Majdanek, and Bella herself was later sent to the Otwock ghetto. Eventually, she had to hide in the countryside, rescued 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. Thus was Czajka born." She recounted her sometimes improbable wartime experiences in the book "Ocalił mnie kowal" (A Blacksmith Saved Me), attributing her survival to "a passionate need to survive, to bear witness to the truth."

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 in the Citizens' Militia in Katowice." In 1944, she joined the People's Army. After the war, she settled in Katowice, worked at the Citizens' Militia headquarters, and it was probably then that she met her third husband, Władysław Stachowicz, known as "Czajnik." Her third marriage proved to be her longest. She left the militia in 1946. It was then that 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, were, among other things, a tribute to her great-uncle, Isuchar Szwarc. The postwar period saw a new incarnation of Bella as a writer. Although she debuted before the war, she wrote nine autobiographical novels afterward. 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."

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 smear campaign. 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."