Andrzej Włast (aka Gustaw Baumritter) (17 March 1885 – 1942 or 1943) was a Polish

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

songwriter A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. ...

. He wrote the lyrics for the 1929 hit song "Tango Milonga" / "Oh, Donna Clara". He died in the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (, officially , ; ) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the Nazi Germany, German authorities within the new General Government territory of Occupat ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Biography

Włast was born in

Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...

. He studied law at Warsaw University. He began writing for the Warsaw stage before 1920 at ''Mirage'', ''Czarny Kot'', ''Sfinks'' and others. When the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

army attacked Poland in 1920 he fought to defend Warsaw against the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in Pilsudski's Legion.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtyYBgmIyBk, notes associated with Polish tango - Artur Gold's Szkoda twoich łez, 1929 After 1921 he worked with the ''Stańczyk (The Jester)'' theater and then the famous ''Qui Pro Quo''. In 1927 he founded his own revue, the ''Morskie Oko'' theater, which he managed until 1931. Later on, he managed the ''Rex'' revue and ''Wielka Rewia (The Grand Revue)'', each considered to be Polish versions of the Folies-Bergère. He was a prolific lyricist, sometimes called "The King of 'szmira' (cheap mass production of very low quality)" but there were

"also pearls of pure poetry, as well as innumerable examples of sophisticated Jewish humor and gems of ''szmonces (shmontses)'', Polish Jewish self-mockery, albeit resting upon many stereotypes."

He wrote Polish lyrics to Jerzy Petersburski's 1929 international hit ''Tango Milonga'', better known internationally as "Oh, Donna Clara". Bob Rothstein writes:

"One of the most successful of the Polish Jewish composers was Jerzy Petersburski (born Jerzy Melodysta, 1897–1979), whose 1929 hit ''Tango Milonga,'' renamed ''Oh, Donna Clara,'' swept Europe ... and the United States ... sung by
Al Jolson Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson, ; May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-born American singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. Self-billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," Jolson was one of the United States' most famous and ...
in the 1931 Broadway show '' The Wonder Bar''. ... The original Polish text of ''Tango Milonga'' was written by Andrzej Włast (born Gustaw Baumritter, 1885–1941), one of the best-known lyricists of the interwar period, who wrote other hit tunes with melodies by Petersburski
uch as Uch (; ), frequently referred to as Uch Sharīf (; ; ''"Noble Uch"''), is a historic city in the Pakistan's Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab province. Uch may have been founded as Alexandria on the Indus, a town founded by Alexander the Great during I ...
''Już nigdy (Never Again)'' and ''Ja się boję sama spać (I’m Afraid to Sleep Alone)'', and by other Jewish composers, such as Henryk Gold (1899–1977; ''Szkoda twoich łez (Don’t Waste Your Tears)''), Artur Gold (1897–1943; ''Przy kominku (By the Fireplace)''),
Zygmunt Białostocki Zygmunt Białostocki (15 August 1897 – )http://www.altango.art.pl/postacie/zygmunt-bialostocki/ Wojciech Dabrowski biography at altango was a Polish Jewish musician and composer. He composed many popular Polish pre-war songs, and worked as con ...
(1897–1942; ''Rebeka''), and Fanny Gordon (pen name of Fania Markovna Kviatkovskaia, 1904–1991; ''Pod samowarem (By the Samovar)'')."http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/printarticle.aspx?id=2195, YIVO article by Professor Robert Rothstein on Jewish songs and songwriters

After the 1939 German invasion of Poland, Włast was ordered in 1940 to live in the German-ordered

. Some say that he was dragged out, like thousands of others, during a 1942 German action, to the Umschlagplatz and transported to Treblinka German death camp. Others say:

...that he hid on the so-called "Aryan" side, in a flat of one of hePolish actresses he knew from his theatre. Being unable to stay most of the time alone in that microscopic shelter, and panicking at the slightest sign of the approaching steps, he finally ran out to the street, where he was immediately identified as a Jew and shot by a German soldier.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wlast, Andrzej 1885 births 1940s deaths Jewish songwriters Polish male songwriters Writers from Łódź People who died in the Warsaw Ghetto Polish civilians killed in World War II