Bruno Schulz was born in the Galician town of Drohobycz. As a writer and painter, he made Poland famous worldwide with his works. His books are translated into all languages and his prints are triumphs at international auctions. Bruno Schulz is an artist still to be discovered. Let us learn about the history of the plaque commemorating the artist in Drohobycz.

Death of Bruno Schulz in 1942.
For an unexplained reason, history has chosen the fourth day of the week as the one when tragedies happen. We have Black Thursday 1851 in Australia, when a raging fire destroyed much of the bush. The Thursday crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 contributed to one of the world's most famous economic crises. There is also the memorable Thursday of 17 December 1970 for the Poles, when demonstrating workers on the Coast were fired upon.

There is another tragic point stretched between these dates. On Thursday, 19 November 1942, the Nazi perpetrators arranged for themselves a kind of manhunt in Drohobych (then in occupied Poland, today in Ukraine). According to various data, between one hundred and as many as two hundred and thirty Jewish residents were killed at that time. At that time, at the corner of Mickiewicza and Czackiego Streets, the writer and painter Bruno Schulz was shot at around noon. The fatal shot was fired by German officer Karl Günther.

This much we know (almost) for sure. Everything else is burdened with the sin of legend and conjecture. Some maintain that Schulz was just going to buy bread, although we do not know if he ran out of food, or perhaps he was gathering provisions for the escape to Warsaw co-organised by Zofia Nałkowska. There are also disputes about whether that bandit pile-up was an accidental action or a Marquezian 'chronicle of a death foretold'.

According to the version that rejects coincidence and was popularised by a song by Jacek Kleyff, the artist's death was supposed to be retaliation for the killing of a certain Löw. This man, in turn, was a local dentist and otherwise had a reputation as Günther's Jewish protégé. He was also to die a little earlier at the hands of Felix Landau, an SS man famous for his cruelty, who, playing with people, had chosen Schulz as his protégé. Thus, human deaths would not even be the plaything of the gods, but merely a kind of mutual mischief, exchanged by torturers devoid of humanity.

What happened to the writer's body - this too remains in the realm of speculation. Some report that the corpse was not allowed to be taken from the street for a whole day, so that it was exposed to the disgraceful public view. Others, including a friend of the deceased, Izydor Friedman, argued that they were buried as soon as possible in the old Jewish cemetery. The body was never found, however, and time has erased the traces and a Soviet-era block of flats stands in the place of the old necropolis.

First commemoration of Schulz in Drohobych
The memory of the achievements of one of the world's most famous Polish-born artists is still alive. In Drohobych, on 19 November 2006, after an ecumenical prayer by the head of the Jewish community and the clergy of the Roman and Greek rites, a brass plaque with an inscription in Polish and Ukrainian was set into the pavement on Taras Shevchenko Street (formerly Czackiego Street):

. IN THIS PLACE ON 19 XI 1942 / SHOT DEAD / BY A GESTAPO OFFICER / GREAT ARTIST / DROHOBYCHIAN / BRUNO SCHULZ / AD 2006 XI 19

Second commemoration of Bruno Schulz in Drohobych
One would be wrong, however, to think that this was the end of Bruno Schulz's posthumous odyssey in his hometown. Less than two years later, on the night of 6-7 May 2008, the plaque was stolen. Torn from the pavement and sawn into several pieces, it was found at a nearby scrap metal dealer. When the thief was caught, he explained that he was illiterate and did not know what he was really stealing.

The destroyed plate, as a kind of artefact, ended up in the local Bruno Schulz Museum. However, the writer's admirers - the Schulzians, as they call themselves - have once again started collecting funds and various permits, for the creation of a new commemoration. The artist they intended to honour wrote: "Autumn is the human soul's longing for materiality, for materiality, for boundaries. When, for unexplored reasons, metaphors, projects, human dreams begin to yearn to be realised, the time of autumn comes." And it was at such a time, in November 2010, that the memorial plaque at the execution site was successfully re-attached. The new plaque, returned to its old location.

The anniversary of Bruno Schulz's death - seventy-nine years later
Perhaps there is a bright moment in this sad story as well. How many new readers and audiences has the author gained in his hometown? Let us recall that Schulz was not only a writer, but also the author of prints, drawings and paintings, most of which were lost during the war. An expert in the works of the great Drohobyczan, Władysław Panas, once said that Schulz "creates after death. His oeuvre may be great, but there are no volumes behind it. So what is happening now in Drohobycz is also some of his work".

Let this November polonik, therefore, be our tribute to the artist on the 79th anniversary of his death, and at the same time an encouragement to get to know - read and see - what remains of this outstanding man who chose the Polish language for his creative realisation.