BIO
Born on 15 September 1929 in Warsaw; daughter of the public administrator Jakub Grynsztajn and Pola Perl, née Kijewska. She spent her childhood in the Muranów district of Warsaw where in 1936 she also started attending the local primary school. During the German occupation, she and her family were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto from autumn 1940. Her father was deported to Treblinka in 1942 and was killed there. Following the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, she hid in a bunker at 3 Miła Street. In May 1943, she and her mother, along with other family members, were deported to the Majdanek concentration camp, where her mother was murdered after the first selection of people from the transports. In July 1943, she was moved to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In January 1945, she was part of the death marches that followed the evacuation of the camp. She reached Wodzisław Śląski and was subsequently taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. From February 1945, she was held at the concentration camp in Neustadt-Glewe, which was liberated by the Red Army in May of the same year. The following month, she returned to Warsaw, where she was reunited with her brother Marek, the sole surviving member of her family. She joined the second class of grammar school before being granted permission by the Ministry of Education to move to adult evening classes from September 1945. She joined the Ichud kibbutz at Targowa Street in 1946 before moving to the kibbutz of the left-wing party Hashomer Hatzair at Poznańska Street in order to secure a permit to leave for Palestine. During this period, she started learning Hebrew. In June 1946, together with members of the kibbutz, she travelled without full documentation via Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, where she spent several months, and then Paris (where she stayed with an acquaintance of her brother), before reaching Palestine in December 1947. She worked and lived at the Ein Shemer kibbutz until 1950. She married Adam, an acquaintance from the Warsaw kibbutz. After their divorce, she married Henryk Birenbaum, who had arrived in Palestine with a different Warsaw kibbutz in 1950. She and her family initially settled in a moshava, a cooperative village, before moving to an immigrant camp near Tel Aviv in 1951. She moved into her own house in 1953. Around 1967, she started writing her memoirs about her time in the ghetto and concentration camps in Polish as she had not yet become fluent in Hebrew. She made her debut in 1967 with her autobiographical volume Nadzieja umiera ostatnia (Hope dies last), which was published in Poland. She described her wartime experiences in public events, mainly with school-age youths, held in Israel. In subsequent years, she published further memoirs and volumes of poetry, while she also began translating from and into Hebrew. Excerpts of her prose texts and memoirs appeared in the Polish press, in periodicals including "Zwierciadło" (1987) and "Odgłosy" (1988), then later also in "Akcent" (1990 and 1990) and "Więź" (1993, 1996 and 2001). She also published in the Polish-language Israeli newspaper "Nowiny Kurier", as well as less regularly in the Hebrew-language periodicals "Haare" and "Maariv". She visited Poland in 1986, taking part in meetings with Polish readers, as well as with participants of excursions from Israel and West Germany. She also travelled to Germany on several occasions. In 2001, the Polish Council of Christians and Jews awarded her the title of Figure of Reconciliation, while in 2018 she was made an honorary citizen of Warsaw. The same year, she joined the International Auschwitz Council. She was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1999) and the Order of Merit for Warsaw (2015). She has two sons, the poet, lyricist and music producer Yakov Gilad, and the programmer Beni. She lives in Herzliya, Israel.
Twórczość
1. Nadzieja umiera ostatnia. [Wspomnienia]. Warszawa: „Czytelnik” 1967, 214 s. Wyd. nast.: wyd. 2 tamże 1988, 275 s.; wyd. 3 Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau 2001, 275 s., tamże: wyd. 4 2016, wyd. 5 2017. Arbeit Macht Frei.
Przekłady
angielski
czeski
francuski
hebrajski
hiszpański
japoński
niemiecki
rosyjski
włoski
2. Niepoetyckie wiersze. Z wierszy niepublikowanych [1] = Non-poetic poems. Poems never published before. Powst. 1967-2005. Dostępny w Internecie: Zob. link [dostęp 26 grudnia 2022].
3. Niepoetyckie wiersze. Z wierszy niepublikowanych [2] = Non-Poetic poems. Poems never published before [2]. Powst. 1982-2001 [on-line]. Dostępny w Internecie: Zob. link(http://www.zchor.org/birenbaum/wiersze5.htm) [dostęp 26 grudnia 2022].
4. Nawet gdy się śmieję. [Wiersze]. Rzeszów: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza 1990, 75 s. Dostępny w Internecie: Zob. link [dostęp 26 grudnia 2022].
5. Powrót do ziemi praojców. [Wspomnienia]. Warszawa: „Czytelnik” 1991, 231 s.
Przekłady
hebrajski
niemiecki
6. Nie o kwiatach. [Wiersze]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo BUS 1993, 61 s. Zob. poz. ↑.
Przekłady
niemiecki
7. Jak można w słowach. Wybór wierszy. Oświęcim: Centrum Dialogu 1995, 74 s.
8. Każdy odzyskany dzień. Wspomnienia. Red. i wstęp: I. Sariusz-Skąpska. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak 1998, 228 s.
9. Wołanie o pamięć. [Wspomnienia]. Wprowadzenie: H. Bochenek. Oświęcim: Wydawnictwo Państwowego Muzeum Oświęcim-Brzezinka 1999, 186 s.
10. Echa dalekie i bliskie. Spotkania z młodzieżą. [Wiersze]. [Kraków]: Fundacja Kultury Chrześcijańskiej „Znak” 2001, 135 s. Dostępny w Internecie: Zob. link [dostęp 26 grudnia 2022].
11. Życie każdemu drogie. [Opowiadania; Wiersze]. Fotografie: A. Bujak. Kraków: Biały Kruk 2005, 102 s.
Zawartość
12. Moje życie zaczęło się od końca. [Wiersze]. Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau 2010, 335 s.
Zawartość
13. Wciąż pytają… = Man fragt mich immer wieder… Przeł. R. Wędrychowski. Oświęcim: Fundacja na Rzecz Międzynarodowego Domu Spotkań Młodzieży; Warszawa: Biuro Regionalne Fundacji im. H. Bölla 2011, 46 s.
14. Szukam życia u umarłych. Wywiad z Haliną Birenbaum. Współautorka: B. Bochenek. Wstęp: G. Nikliborc. Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau 2013, 198 s.
Przekłady
niemiecki
włoski
15. To nie deszcz, to ludzie. [Wywiad rzeka]. Współautorka: M. Tutak-Goll. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Agora 2019, 373 s.
Przekłady
hebrajski
16. Z historii mojego życia po Zagładzie. Wspomnienia. London: Wydawnictwo Anna Maria Mickiewicz Literary Waves Publishing 2022, 479 s.
