Henryka Łazowertówna
Polish poet (1909-1942); Ringelblum Archive; Holocaust victim
Henryka Łazowertówna (pronounced ['xɛnˈrɨka waˌzɔvɛrˈtuvna]; in full Henryka Wanda Łazowertówna); also Henryka Lazowert, or incorrectly Lazawert, (19 June 1909 – August 1942) was a Polish lyric poet. While in general deeply personal in nature and of great emotive intensity, her poetry is not devoid of social concerns and patriotic overtones. She is considered one of the eminent Polish authors of Jewish descent.
To the reading public she is known as the author of the poem "Mały szmugler" (The Little Smuggler), written in the Warsaw Ghetto c.1941 and first published posthumously in 1947. The poem deals with the subject of a child struggling single-handedly to keep his family alive in the Ghetto by smuggling provisions from the "Aryan" side at the risk of his own life. A poem begins with the stanza also known from an adaptive translation provided by Richard C. Lukas. It reads as follows:
The original text of the poem, together with translations in English and in Hebrew, is today inscribed on the Memorial to the Child Victims of the Holocaust (Pomnik Pamięci Dzieci in Warsaw), serving as the epitaph for the million children murdered in the Holocaust.
Life
Henryka Łazowertówna was the daughter of Maksymilian Łazowert and his wife Bluma. Her mother was a schoolteacher. Łazowertówna studied Polish and Romance philology at the University of Warsaw, and subsequently French literature at the University of Grenoble on a scholarship funded by the Polish interwar Government.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Henryka Łazowertówna” is polish poet (1909-1942); Ringelblum Archive; Holocaust victim. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Henryka, Łazowertówna and Polish, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “polish poet (1909-1942); Ringelblum Archive; Holocaust victim” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13584931. VIAF identifies the subject as 167247200. The Library of Congress control number is no2018054720. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1909, 1942, 1941 and 1947.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Henryka Łazowertówna” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.