July 30, 1938, Saturday

Warsaw. Before leaving for Paris, Bruno Schulz spends a day in Warsaw. At 10:14 pm, he sets off on his journey from Warszawa Główna train station.

Schulz probably spends his stay in Warsaw, as Kazimiera Rychterówna* advised him in a letter from 23 July, in order to “get the rest of the important information and addresses”1. In particular, it was about “catching” Roman Kramsztyk (“who is leaving [from Warsaw] to Paris in four days”) and Marian Hemar (who “is leaving for France in a week”)2. It is unknown whether Schulz managed to meet them in Warsaw. An attempt to meet Wacław Czarski3 failed. It is possible that he met Rychterówna, who was in Warsaw that day and who promised him in a letter to find out “how to transport drawings”4.

At 10:14 pm, Schulz boarded the L-1303 train going from Stołpce to Paris via Warsaw, Kutno, Poznań, Zbąszyń, Berlin and Aachen at the Warszawa Główna train station. According to the preserved Carte de voyage touristique en France – RF – 1938 number 0.127.439, he was travelling in a sleeping car. The stamp on this card reads “Wagon-Lits/Cook | July 31, 1938 | Warsaw” was given not at the time of departure from Warsaw in the late evening of July 30, but probably already on the train that crossed the Polish-German border in Zbąszyń only after 4 am (so on July 31 he was still in Poland). (sr) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Letter from Kazimiera Rychterówna to Bruno Schulz dated 23 July 1938, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Dzieła zebrane, volume 5: Księga listów, zebrał i przygotował do druku Jerzy Ficowski, uzupełnił Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 306. Rychterówna hoped that Schulz would come to Warsaw much earlier, on Tuesday, July 26.
  • 2
    Ibid.
  • 3
    “You weren’t in Warsaw a week ago”, he writes to Wacław Czarski in his letter from August 10, 1938 (Bruno Schulz, op. cit., p. 100).
  • 4
    Letter from Kazimiera Rychterówna to Bruno Schulz dated July 23, 1938, p. 306.