This photograph shows a merry-go-round near the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was mentioned by Czesław Miłosz in one of the Nobel prize-winner’s most famous poems, Campo de’ Fiori – the first reaction to the Holocaust in Polish literature.
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I thought of the Campo de’ Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.
Author
Extract from the poem Campo de’ Fiori, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49751/campo-dei-fiori
Miłosz’s poem hinged on the contrast between the tragedy of the people fighting alone behind the ghetto walls, and the indifference of those having a good time just nearby. Miłosz recalls the Italian philosopher and poet Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for his views. By mentioning the lonely death of that 'heroic fighter for the freedom of thought', the Nobel prize-winner wished to evoke an image of 'an incessantly shifting throng, trading and enjoying themselves all around'source.
In conversation with Jan Błoński, Marek Edelman and Jerzy Turowicz in 1993, during the fiftieth anniversary of the Uprising, Miłosz told the story of how the poem came to be:
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A tram line used to pass through the exact place where the merry-go-round stood, and one could hear the insurgents’ defensive gunfire. Once, in a tram jam, I observed what was happening there for a long time. Overwhelmed with emotion, I immediately penned that poem.
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'The humanity that remains', Tygodnik Powszechny No.18/2005
It was April 25, 1943 – Easter Sunday – the sixth day of resistance fighting.
Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, described what the merry-go-round meant to them on the other side of the wall:
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The merry-go-round was already there on day one of the Ghetto Uprising, but wasn’t working. It only started revolving on the second day, and it was a tragic sight. Through the windows we could see it turning, with a barrel organ playing, as the girls’ skirts – red and blue with white polka-dots – fluttered in the breeze. We could see it from the windows, and it was our curse. Here we had burning and killing, while everyone there was laughing and having fun.
Author
'The humanity that remains', Tygodnik Powszechny No.18/2005
Originally written in Polish, translated by AG, edited by MB, Dec 2018
