ABSTRACT
During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and suppression in the spring of 1943, Jörgen Stroop commanded his troops to burn the Ghetto’s buildings and round up the remaining survivors. Many people chose to jump from the buildings’ higher-story windows rather than be caught by German soldiers. This image of jumping people was photographed and documented in the so-called Stroop Report prepared by General Jürgen Stroop, as well as witnessed by Warsaw residents standing outside the ghetto wall. This image, frequently replicated in postwar-Polish literature and art, has become an iconic image of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, though these images remain relatively unknown outside of Poland. This chapter explores why these photos have become iconic by analyzing literary and artworks that use this motif of jumping/falling persons. First, I chronologically outline the reception of the photographs of Jewish people jumping from buildings included in the Stroop Report in Postwar Poland. Next, I analyze Polish works of literature and art by the first generation who witnessed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and use images of people jumping, namely, Zofia Nałkowska’s short story The Cemetery Lady included in Medallions (1946) and Mieczysław Wejman’s etching series Dancers (1946), to discuss aesthetic aspects that may have played a role in the process of the image becoming iconic. Analyzing the short story The Cemetery Lady I reconsider the role of nonvisual elements, namely sound in the literature, which gives materiality to the bodies represented in photographs. Further, interpreting Wejman’s etching series Dancers in the context of the Ghetto Uprising, I point out that the “suspension” of the jumping or falling person’s body in the air enables the viewer to interpret it in multiple way (in terms of imminent death but also life, suffering but also bravery, freedom, and autonomy). Finally, by analyzing the use of the motif of falling persons in literature dealing with September 11, namely, Wisława Szymborska’s poem Photograph from September 11 (2002) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), I suggest that iconic images of the Second World War could be revived in narratives of other catastrophes.
