In 2017, a group of animators from Łódź Drama Academy carried out a project inspired by, inter alia, Bezsenność Jutki. It consisted of various workshops, in which teachers and students from Łódź took part. One of the results of the project was a spectacle based on Combrzyńska-Nogala book, directed by Hanna Jastrzębska-Gzella and played by children and adults representing several Łódź schools.

Preparations to produce an animated movie based on Bezsenność Jutki are under way. An application for funding the project was submitted by Tessa Moult-Milewska (EGo Film) for consideration by the Polish Film Institute’s ‘Film Production’ operational programme 1/2018.

Based on: Katarzyna Marciniak, Elżbieta Olechowska, Joanna Kłos, Michał Kucharski (eds.), Polish Literature for Children & Young Adults Inspired by Classical Antiquity: A Catalogue, Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2013, 444 pp.

The book is set in Łódź during WW2. A small Jewish girl Jutka Cwancygier lives in the Łódź [Litzmannstadt] Ghetto with her grandfather Dawid and her aunt Estera. The girl doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation. She tries to spend her time playing with friends or her tame rook named Wawelski and listening to her grandfather’s stories (on many subjects, such as Polish folklore or Greek mythology). On the other hand, she also learns how to survive under these terrible conditions. One day, Jutka and her family move to a house near the wall of the Ghetto. She finds a friend in Basia, a little girl from behind the walls. They talk often and Basia even enters the Ghetto to give Jutka apples and let her play with a kitten. When the operation ‘Wielka Szpera’ [Aktion Gehsperre – "Great Search"]* begins, Jutka hides in the basement and waits for her family. When the "Szpera" ends, it is revealed that Jutka’s grandfather bribed some people and obtained "Aryan" documents for the girl and her aunt. Both leave the Ghetto together (it is unclear what happened to them later and what happened to Jutka’s grandfather but as far as we know he remained in Łódź). It is suggested that Basia’s mother helped the women escape: she probably exchanged messages with Jutka’s grandfather using the girl’s tame rook.

*  The word “Szpera” derives from German “Allgemeine Gehsperre” meaning a general curfew, a ban on leaving homes. The Aktion Gehsperre started on September 5, 1942 and ended a week later. Houses in the Ghetto were searched by Jewish policemen and German gendarmes in order to find all the elderly, ill and infirm people and children under 10 years old. More than 15 000 people were sent to an extermination camp in Chełmno upon Ner [Kulmhof]. In addition, many people were killed because they refused to part with their families. Very few children under 10 (those who managed to hide and the children of Jewish superior officers and policemen who took part in the Aktion Gehsperre) survived these events, according to: Joanna Podolska, Łódź żydowska. Spacerownik [Jewish Łódź: A Walking Guide], Łódź: Agora S.A., 2009, 124–125.

In children’s and young adult literature, the Holocaust is often presented with the use of the fantastic – for example, Jane Yolen in Briar Rose (1992) and Joanna Rudniańska in XY (2012) utilized certain fairy-tale motifs and conventions. However, Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala’s Bezsenność Jutki proposes another way of telling a story about the horrible times: by referencing classical antiquity. In this book, Jutka’s grandfather tells her stories deriving from Greek mythology: the story of the Minotaur, Theseus and Ariadne, and of Icarus and Daedalus. The girl interrupts him comparing these myths with the reality of the war: for instance, for Jutka the Labyrinth of Crete resembles a prison, Icarus could have been shot down by a German officer and the hero’s mother who wasn’t mentioned in the myth could have been taken to the Ghetto. After listening to these stories, Jutka also compares German gendarmes to the Minotaur – in the illustration by Joanna Rusinek, we see one of the Nazis, but only as a shadow trying to chase children, therefore the gendarme is portrayed as a kind of an evil force*. When the "Szpera" begins, Jutka is scared, but her grandfather tells her that Theseus survived in the Labyrinth in the dark. He also, in order to give courage to the girl, gives her a ball of wool. 

The stories about mythological heroes and heroines, told to Jutka by her grandfather – “the metaphorical Ariadne” (Rybak, 2016), help the girl to face the horror reality of the Holocaust, the time of the Aktion Gehsperre in particular. Donald Haase’s words, although the scholar refers to fairy tales, seem to be relevant in the case of Combrzyńska-Nogala’s book too, as here: […] we see the liberating potential of the imagination at work […]. Whether, in these extreme circumstances, the genre’s appeal and the imaginative work it generates amount to denial depends ultimately on the value we give to hope**. In Bezsenność Jutki, the limit of hope is also reliant on the reader’s interpretation of the story. As Katarzyna Marciniak states: The women leave the Ghetto. The Grandpa stays and probably dies. The girl probably survives the war. The world is not black-and-white and Combrzyńska-Nogala makes her young readers aware of this. And nothing serves such aim better than ancient myths (Marciniak, 2015, 82). 

However, the author also builds, as it was indicated earlier, the image of the Nazis as resembling the Minotaur. It could be interpreted as a way of fairy-tale-like portraying them as extremely terrifying and evil***. This accordance to the bipolar axiology can be seen as helping both Jutka and the audience to somehow ‘settle in’ the broken, unintelligible world****. The choice of the figure of the Minotaur strongly corresponds to the fact that in Bezsenność Jutki the Ghetto is similar to a labyrinth. As Krzysztof Rybak writes: "It is a closed, crowded, limited territory made of narrow, winding paths. It is also a destiny for many Jews, who will die there (like the Athenian youths) or be transported to Nazi camps later"*****, which is very well presented in the illustrations by Joanna Rusinek.

* Rusinek explained that: “[…] making illustrations to this book was a hard and painful task;” what is more, “in the graphics that were created, kept in grey and black tones, the author tried to present the little heroine’s close ones’ warmth and kindness rather than show tragedy”. After: Anna Cymer, Joanna Rusinek, 2013, available at www.culture.pl (accessed: July 12, 2018).

** Donald Haase, “Children, War, and the Imaginative Space of Fairy Tales”, The Lion and the Unicorn 24.3 (2000): 360–377, 373.

*** One of the Nazis later in the book spares Jutka, showing mercy; Katarzyna Marciniak considers that the scene: “[…] proves that the author avoids stereotypes and simplifications in presenting Germans”. After: Katarzyna Marciniak, “(De)constructing Arcadia: Polish Struggles with History and Differing Colours of Childhood in the Mirror of Classical Mythology”, in Lisa Maurice, ed., The Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in Children’s Literature: Heroes and Eagles, Leiden: Brill, 2015, 56–84.

**** It is interesting that the Nazis are often shown as or compared to creatures both in children’s and young adult literature and in popular culture, to mention Ransom Riggs’s novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Marcin Szczygielski’s book Arka czasu [Rafe and the Ark of Time] (2013), or Tommy Wirkola’s zombie film Død snø [Dead Snow] (2009).

***** Krzysztof Rybak, Childhood in the Labyrinth of the Ghetto: Nazis as Minotaurs in Children’s Literature about Shoah, 2016, available at academia.edu (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Adelson, Alan and Robert Lapides, eds., Łódź Ghetto: Inside a Community under Siege, New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Haase, Donald, “Children, War, and the Imaginative Space of Fairy Tales”, The Lion and the Unicorn 24.3 (2000): 360–377.

Howorus-Czajka, Magdalena. “‘True Fiction’ – the Memory and the Postmemory of Traumatic War Events in a Picturebook”, Problemy Wczesnej Edukacji / Issues in Early Education 3.34 (2016): 94–106, available online at pwe.ug.edu.pl (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Marciniak, Katarzyna, “(De)constructing Arcadia: Polish Struggles with History and Differing Colours of Childhood in the Mirror of Classical Mythology”, in Lisa Maurice, ed., The Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in Children’s Literature: Heroes and Eagles, Leiden: Brill, 2015, 56–84.

Podolska, Joanna, Łódź żydowska. Spacerownik [Jewish Łódź: A Walking Guide], Łódź: Agora S.A., 2009.

Rybak, Krzysztof, Childhood in the Labyrinth of the Ghetto: Nazis as Minotaurs in Children’s Literature about Shoah, 2016, available at academia.edu (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Rybak, Krzysztof, “Hide and Seek with Nazis: Playing with Child Identity in Polish Children's Literature about the Shoah”, Libri & Liberi 6.1 (2017): 11–24, available online at librietliberi.org (accessed: July 22, 2018).

Skibińska, Ewa, Bezsenność Jutki, available online at ryms.pl (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Skowera, Maciej, “Polacy i Żydzi, dzieci i dorośli. Kto jest kim w Kotce Brygidy Joanny Rudniańskiej i Bezsenności Jutki Doroty Combrzyńskiej-Nogali” [Poles and Jews, Children and Adults: Who is who in Kotka Brygidy by Joanna Rudniańska and Bezsenność Jutki by Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala], Konteksty Kultury 11.1 (2014): 57–72, available online at ejournals.eu (accessed: July 12, 2018).

Wójcik-Dudek, Małgorzata, W(y)czytać Zagładę. Praktyki postpamięci w polskiej literaturze XXI wieku dla dzieci i młodzieży [To Read into the Holocaust: Post-Memory Practices in the 21st Century Polish Literature for Children and Adolescents], Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2016.

Bezsenność Jutki was published under the patronage of the Polish Commissioner for Children’s Rights in "Literatura" publishing house’s series Wojny Dorosłych – Historie Dzieci [Adult Wars – Children’s Stories] in 2012, which marked the 70th anniversary of the "Szpera."

The illustration (pp. 32–33) showing Jutka and her grandfather with a ball of wool (a reference to the story of Theseus and Ariadne), courtesy of the publisher.

The illustration (pp. 50–51) presents Jutka and her friends trying to escape from the monster-like Nazi, courtesy of the publisher.