Zuzanna Ginczanka

Zuzanna Ginczanka was a Polish-Jewish poet of the interwar period. She was born Sara Gincburg in 1917 in Kiev, which was then part of Russia. She grew up speaking primarily Russian and opted to live in Poland with her grandmother after her parents, refugees from the Russian Revolution, separated and emigrated. Ginczanka wrote her earliest poems at age four and started publishing at 14. In 1936, she released her first and only book, On Centaurs, which was widely acclaimed. She was arrested in Kraków in 1944 and killed by the Gestapo no more than a few days before the Soviets liberated the city on January 18, 1945. She died at the age of 27 or 28.

Two English-language editions of her work, On Centaurs & Other Poems (World Poetry Books), translated by Alex Braslavsky, and Firebird (New York Review Books), translated by Alissa Valles, appeared in 2023.