Andzia Regina Eker (25/07/1912 Lwów - 23/01/1936 Lwów) - poet

She was born as Andzia Regina Eker, the daughter of Fanna and Samuel Eker. Her father was a pharmacist and a committed Zionist activist. Her mother, née Borak, helped her husband run the pharmacy. In the first half of the 1930s, Samuel bought a tenement in Tel Aviv, where he lived with his wife. At that time, some of Eker's family, including his brother, had already settled in the town. Until 1939, the Eker family were regular visitors to Poland, but never returned to Lwów after the outbreak of war. They died in Tel Aviv.

Ignatius, Andzia's younger brother, studied medicine in Vienna after graduating from junior high school in Lwów. However, in 1938, due to antisemitic experiences, he moved to London. There, he graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art and started a family. He settled permanently in Jamaica, where his wife was from. He adopted the pseudonym “Andrew Hope” and became a respected art critic and artist.

Andzia Eker was educated in Lwów - first at Maria Regina Goldfarb's private school, and then at the Juliusz Słowacki private junior high school. In 1930, she entered the Faculty of Humanities at the Jan Kazimierz University. She interrupted her studies in 1933, because she went to Palestine to study at the agricultural school in Nahalal. However, she probably did not finish the course that prepares young women to work on Palestinian farms, as she had not taken a job in any of the kibbutzim. She also did not return to study in Lwów.

In Palestine, she befriended representatives of the New Hebrew literature of the time, including the poet Bat-Miriam. That is where she wrote her best works. Between 1933 and 1935, she constantly travelled between Lwów and Tel Aviv. The poet never made a secret of the fact that, while in Poland, she missed Palestine and, while in Palestine, she missed Poland - she considered both countries to be her homelands.

She made several attempts to live in Tel Aviv permanently. However, her body was not adapted to the local climate, and she was also tormented by a longing for Lwów and an apparently unsuccessful personal life in Palestine. Eker's friends emphasised her extreme sensitivity, but also mentioned her poor physical condition, depressive states, feelings of loneliness and misunderstanding. She wrote about herself, “I am like a person who dies of thirst while in the middle of the sea”.

In 1935, she returned from Tel Aviv for the last time. Once again, she moved back to her family flat in Lwów. A few months later, she died at the age of twenty-four. Exhaustion, due to pneumonia, was given as the official cause of death. There were also rumours that, because ofa nervous breakdown and unrequited love for an unknown writer, she committed suicide. However, this information has not yet been confirmed.

She wrote her first works already as a ten-year-old child. She made her official debut at the age of thirteen in the pages of “Chwilka Dzieci i Młodzieży” (a supplement to the Lwów daily “Chwila”). She was the literary discovery of Runa Reitman, the originator of the magazine and a well-known social activist in Galicia. It should be added that Andzia Eker worked with the editors of the supplement until her death. Her children's works also appeared in the “Dzienniczek dla Dzieci i Młodzieży” (a supplement to the Kraków's “Nowy Dziennik”). She published her work aimed at older audiences in leading Polish-Jewish periodicals, including “Nowy Dziennik”, “Ewa”, “Opinia”, “Nasz Opinia”, and she also published several poems in “Nasz Przegląd”. She was associated with the Polish-Jewish literary community centred around “Chwila”. She was friends with Maurycy Szymel, Daniel Ihr, Stefan Pomer, as well as with Minka Silberman and authors associated with the Lwów “Sygnały”.

Andzia Eker wrote exclusively in Polish. She did not know Yiddish and too little knowledge of Hebrew prevented her from creating in that language. During her lifetime, she published one volume of poetry, Na cienkiej strunie (Lwów 1936). The debut collection received critical acclaim. The influence of the poetry of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Beata Obertyńska, or Teofil Lenartowicz can be found in the works of Andzia Eker. According to Michał Borwicz,  Na cienkiej strunie was “a documentation of her great and unusual lyrical talent”. After the poet's sudden death, her legacy was cared for by her parents and her literary friends in Lwów (among them, Tadeusz Hollender), as well as the editors of the Zionist children's magazine “Okienko na świat”.

Four volumes of fairy tales and poems for children were published in 1937. Three of them were completely devoid of Jewish content: O świerszczyku muzykancie, Mama śpiewa kołysankę and Słoneczny światek. These were mainly reprints from “Chwilka” and  “Dzienniczek”. The Ojców dzieje volume constituted a collection of texts that Andzia Eker wrote between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Most of them were devoted to Zionist ideology (including Teodor Herzl), as well as Jewish culture and tradition. The same year saw the publication of a second volume of poetry, Melodia chwili. These were mainly reprints from the Polish-Jewish press, as well as some previously unpublished poems.

Maria Antosik-Piela 

References

• Antosik-Piela M., Zakochana po uszy w wierszach, [in:] Anda Eker. Miłość stracona, eds. M. Antosik-Piela, E. Prokop-Janiec, Kraków 2017.
• Prokop-Janiec E., Międzywojenna literatura polsko–żydowska jako zjawisko kulturowe i artystyczne, Kraków 1992.