In 1945, the renowned Polish writer Zofia Nalkowska became a member of the Home National Council, which led to her direct involvement in the proceedings of the Main Commission for Investigating German War Crimes. Nalkowska, who lived throughout the German occupation of Poland in Warsaw, forced to move from place to place (finally finding shelter in the corner of her sister’s studio), found the testimonies of the survivors she interviewed, the atmosphere of the sites she visited, the minutes of the court hearings she attended, too powerful to be orderly recollected as a part of legal documentation left amongst other stacks of moldy paper. As a result of what she saw, heard, partook in, she wrote a slim volume of sparse and near-parabolic narration, titled Medallions (Medaliony, 1946), an artfully documented work of poignant representation and heightened moral searching.
The seven minuets, only a few pages long, and the concluding summation, are told by Nalkowska’s author-narrator with a deliberate maximal simplicity, freed from the burdensome commentary accompanying other works of documentary fiction. Nalkowska’s observer-interviewer is present all throughout these accounts, assuming the role of the distanced looker-on, jotting things down, posing questions, but never herself uttering a terse phrase, a comment of any sort. This narrative technique allows for the shattering depiction of the Nazi crimes (for example, the story remembered through “Professor Spanner”) and the renderings of those who managed to survive the non-discriminative “selection” of the extermination camps (as in “The Visa”) to come full circle: Nalkowska’s documentary prose brings forth an attempt to grasp the unfathomable moral sense of the events described, as it looks into the pitfalls of evil. “People dealt this fate to people” reads the volume’s epigraph. As readers we cannot but return to these simple words associated with great pain, perhaps even stunned disbelief. I feel that as we proceed with our humanity in this brave new millennium, Nalkowska’s words of caution may be the most instructive lesson we can receive.
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