NOTES

Page viii: Tomasz Różycki, excerpt from “Scorched Maps” in Colonies, translated by Mira Rosenthal. Copyright © 2013 by Tomasz Różycki. English translation copyright © 2013 by Mira Rosenthal. Reprinted with the permission of the Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Zephyr Press, zephyrpress.org.

 

Act I, page 1: Johannes Bobrowski, excerpt from “Precaution” in Shadow Lands, translated by Matthew Mead and Ruth Mead. English translation copyright © 1984 by Matthew Mead and Ruth Mead. Reprinted with licence of Carcanet Press Limited.

 

Act I, page 5: Filipinki cocktails: Polish, homemade hand grenades, like Molotov cocktails.

 

Act I, page 11: mit Empfindung: German, “with feeling.”

 

Act I, page 12: Amt: German, “administrative bureau.”

 

Act I, page 12: lokum: Turkish, “Turkish delight.”

 

Act I, page 20: Wiersze: Polish, “verse; poems.”

 

Act I, page 20: Italicized lines: Krystyna Wituska, Inside a Gestapo Prison: The Letters of Krystyna Wituska, 1942–44, translated and edited by Irene Tomaszewski (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006; first edition: Montreal, Véhicule Press, 1997). Reprinted with permission of Irene Tomaszewski.

 

Act I, page 21: Przepraszam bardzo: Polish, “so sorry.”

 

Act I, page 22: Nie mówię po polsku: Polish, “I don’t speak Polish.”

 

Act I, page 22: Hallo, ist – zu Hause?: German transliteration of “Hello, is – at home?” Not used in native German.

 

Act I, page 24: This line converses with the Polish theatre director and theorist Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999). “The man of the city who has the tendency to make gestures, gives his hand to another like this [Grotowski gives his hand starting from the hand]. The peasants go from inside of the body, like this [Grotowski gives his hand starting from the inside of the body through the arm].” Thomas Richards, At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions. Copyright © Thomas Richards, 1995 (New York: Routledge), 75. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Group.

 

Act II, page 25: Excerpt from “True Love” from View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wisława Symborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright © 1976 Cztelnik, Warszawa. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

 

Act II, page 27: S-Bahn: German, Stadtschnellbahn, “City rapid railway.” The S-Bahn/S-train was introduced in Berlin in December 1930.

 

Act II, page 29: Djelem, Djelem: Romani, “I went, I went.” German and French orthography of the Romani national anthem composed by Žarko Jovanović.

 

Act II, page 30: Hof: German, “yard.”

 

Act II, page 30: Italicized lines from Anna Kamienska,
A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook, at Poetry Foundation, poetryfoundation.org, 1 May 2012. Copyright © 1982 by Anna Kamienska. Translation copyright © 2012 by Clare Cavanagh. Reprinted with permission of the translator and Paweł Śpiewak on behalf of the estate of Anna Kamienska.

 

Act II, page 32: Kohlmeise: German, “Great tit,” Parus major.

 

Act II, page 35: jarati wasadiqi: . Arabic transliteration of “My neighbor and friend.” Translation from English to German to Arabic and back again, between Khawla Nassar and the author.

 

Act II, page 37: “The seaweed holding itself up with air bladders, as we hold ourselves up with ideas.” Tomas Tranströmer, Baltics, translated by Samuel Charters. English translation copyright © Samuel Charters, 2012. Reprinted with permission of Tavern Books.

 

Act III, page 45: Zbigniew Herbert, excerpt from “Report from a Besieged City” in the New York Review of Books, 18 August 1983. Copyright © 1983 by Zbigniew Herbert. Translation copyright © 1983 by Czesław Miłosz. Used with permission of the New York Review of Books.

 

Act III, page 48: rogatywka: Polish, Czapka rogatywka, “Rogatywka cap.” Asymmetrical, four-cornered, peaked military cap worn by Polish formations since the fourteenth century.

 

Act IV, page 63: Don Mee Choi, excerpt from Hardly War. Copyright © 2016 by Don Mee Choi. Used with permission of the author and Wave Books.

 

Act IV, page 66: hlavní nádraží: Czech, Praha hlavní nádraží, “Prague main railway station.”

 

Act IV, page 66: ICE: German, InterCity Express train.

 

Act IV, page 68: Epigraph, “die ganze stadt steckte fest im eis,” from Jan Wagner, “(schleuse) neukölln II,” in Selbtsporträt mit Bienenschwarm. Copyright © 2016 by Jan Wagner. Reprinted with licence of Frankfurt Rights on behalf of Hanser Berlin in der Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München. Translation mine.

 

Act IV, page 68: SO 36: German, SüdOst 36, “South East, 36.” Historic postal code for a district in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood, Berlin, and the name of a club on Oranienstrasse.

 

Act IV, page 68: Senf: German, “mustard.”

 

Act IV, page 69: “There is no moving porno film.” See Winfried Menninghaus on the emotional state of being moved, why we like to watch sad films, and what it means to be moved by an artwork.

 

Act IV, page 69: Hai: German, “shark.”

 

Act IV, page 70: Warschauer: German, “Warsaw Street Station.” A city train station in Berlin.

 

Act IV, page 71: Silvester: German, New Year’s Eve.

 

Act IV, page 72: The right-justified lines include found text. D. Janess, email to B. Janess, 6–7 April 2010, subject: “gestorben bird.”

 

Act IV, page 72: Die Kohlmeise: Das Männchen versorgt seine Partnerin mit: German, “The Great tit: the male provides his lady with …”

 

Act V, page 77: Totskoie: Russian, Тоцкое, “Totskoye.” A rural location in Orenburg Oblast, Russia. In 1941–42, it was used as the assembly and rough training ground of the Polish Armed Forces in the East, later called the Free Polish Army, led by Polish general Władysław Anders. My grandfather would have been here.

 

Act V, page 77: Arekhangelsk: One among tens of thousands of Soviet Gulag forced labour camps in the former USSR. My grandfather spoke haltingly of his time as a POW in Siberia. I do not know the names of the camps wherein he was detained.

 

Photo, page 79: My grandparents, Józef and Stefania Stępiński, on their wedding day. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, date unknown.

 

Act V, page 80: Italicized lines from the national anthem of Poland, Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, / Dabrowski’s Mazurek. English translations include “Poland is not lost / So long as we still live.”

 

Act V, page 83: kapusta: Polish, “cabbage.”

 

Act V, page 84: “Not even ink can withstand / the power of river sand.” Marek Kepa, “How to Clean with River Sand & Vodka,” Culture.pl, 8 October 2019, https://culture.pl/en/article/how-to-clean-with-river-sand-vodka. Used with permission of the author and Culture.pl.

 

Act V, page 84: “Snow on the fields … treatment is rough …”: Lines from diaries found on the unidentified bodies of Polish victims of the Katyn Forest Massacre, recorded by J.K. Zawodny in Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962), 107–9.

 

Act V, page 86: Italicized lines: Naomi Shihab Nye, “How Long?” in The Tiny Journalist. Copyright © 2019 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with licence of the Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

 

Act V, page 87: Headdress badge of the 13th Wilno “Lynx” Riflemen Battalion, 5th Kresowa Infantry Division, 2nd Polish Corps. Catalogue number ins 44076, Imperial War Museum, UK. Thanks to Marcin Wojciechowski, whose blog

rysie.montecassino.eu offered a clue to my grandfather’s rank, regiment, and battalion from 1941 to 1946.