Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz

Rymkiewicz is the son of Władysław Szulc, of German and Polish origin, who changed his last name to Rymkiewicz (a writer) and of Hanna Baranowska, of German and Tatar origin (a physician).

As a poet, he is influenced by the traditions of classicism and the baroque. He has received multiple prizes for his novels, essays, and translations, including the Kościelski Prize (1967), S. Vincenz Prize (1985), and Polish PEN Club Prize. His volume of poetry Zachód słońca w Milanówku won the prestigious Nike Award in 2003.

Although Rymkiewicz is primarily a poet, he is better known as the author of two influential novels that contributed to the two most important debates of the 1980s: that involving martial law (1981) and Polish-Jewish relations. His novel Rozmowy polskie latem, 1983 (Polish Conversations in Summer 1983) discusses the meaning of being Polish and the preoccupation with achieving independence. Rymkiewicz’s second novel, entitled Umschlagplatz (1988), had a greater impact. Instytut Literacki, the largest Polish émigré publishing house, originally published the novel in Paris in 1988 as it could not appear in communist Poland. It was reprinted a few times by underground publishing houses in Poland but officially appeared only in 1992 after the communists lost power in 1989. It was translated into French (1989), German (1993), and English (1994).

The novel focuses on the symbolic meaning of Umschlagplatz, which denotes a small square in German-occupied Warsaw (1939–1945) from which the Germans sent more than 300,000 Jews to their deaths, and thus a place which "may well be the only place of its kind" in the world. (p. 7, Umschlagplatz). He attempts to understand the implication of the existence of such a place for the contemporary Warsaw and the contemporary Poles. It took Rymkiewicz two years of study and research to create a detailed plan of the square. He concluded that Germans introduced the name Umschlagplatz sometime before July 1942; in pre-war Poland the place was called Transfer Square and was the center for the Jewish wholesale trade.

As an essayist, Rymkiewicz concentrates on Polish history (the partition period, World War II).

He supports the conservative Law and Justice political party.

• Joanna Michlic. "Umschlagplatz". [In:] Polin. A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies 6(1991): pp. 333–338.
• Katarzyna Zechenter. "Marek Rymkiewicz". [In:] Holocaust Literature. An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work. Vol.2. Ed. S. Lillian Kremer. Routledge 2003, pp. 1063–1067. ISBN 0-415-92984-9.

• Instytut Książki Web page on Rymkiewicz