Leonard Krasnodębski — teksty piosenek

The young poet and journalist from Warsaw, Leonard Krasnodębski, wrote the text of “Chorał” in 1942 in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen (north of Berlin). He was a male nurse in the camp “hospital”, where he witnessed the bestial experiments carried out by SS-Dr. Paul Schmitz, who tested the effects of new, quick action poisonous gases on prisoners. Krasnodębski, who had seen and knew far too much of the nature of these experiments, was forced by the SS to commit suicide in 1943. Kulisiewicz composed the melody in October 1944 to commemorate the German Jewish composer, Rosebery D'Arguto, who died in Auschwitz in 1943. Kulisiewicz first performed the song for fellow patients in the camp “hospital”. At the time he was temporarily blind.