Hanna Krall is a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 writer.

Childhood

Krall is of Jewish origin. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 she lost some of her close relatives. She survived the war only because she was hidden from the Nazis.

Journalism

After Krall finished her studies in journalism, she started working for the Polish local paper "Życie Warszawy" ("Warsaw Life") in 1955. In 1966 she left the paper and began to write for the well known magazine Polityka

Polityka

Polityka is a centre-left weekly newsmagazine in Poland. With a circulation of 170,000 it is the country's biggest selling weekly, ahead of Newsweek's Polish edition and Wprost. Today, the magazine has a slightly intellectual, social liberal profile, setting it apart from the more conservative...

 ("Politics"). Shortly after, Wojciech Jaruzelski

Wojciech Jaruzelski

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski is a retired Polish military officer and Communist politician. He was the last Communist leader of Poland from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country's head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's...

, then Prime Minister of the former People's Republic of Poland

People's Republic of Poland

The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...

, declared martial law

Martial law in Poland

Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition...

, Krall left "Polityka" and wrote articles for the "Gazeta Wyborcza

Gazeta Wyborcza

Gazeta Wyborcza is a leading Polish newspaper. It covers the gamut of political, international and general news. Like all the Polish newspapers, it is printed on compact-sized paper, and is published by the multimedia corporation Agora SA...

" some time later.

As an author

During her time working for "Polityka", she published her first book named Na wschód od Arbatu ("Heading east from Arbat") in 1972, which was written after she spent several years as a correspondent in Moscow. The book dealt with day-to-day life in Moscow during the 1960s.

Commercial success came with the publication of Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem (engl. title: "Shielding the Flame"). The book is about a Polish Jewish cardiologist and social activist, Marek Edelman

Marek Edelman

Marek Edelman was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of...

, who was one of the founders of Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa

Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa

The Jewish Combat Organization was a World War II resistance movement, which was instrumental in engineering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ŻOB took part in a number of other resistance activities as well...

 (Jewish Combat Organization) and who took over its leadership after the head-commander Mordechai Anielewicz had perished. Edelman was at that time the only living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....

. Shielding the Flame can be seen as a model for most of Krall's works. Krall describes the relations between Jews, Poles and Germans during the Holocaust and the years thereafter.

Apart from this main point in her writing, Krall also reflects about the search for her own identity, as can be seen very clearly in Dowody na istnienie ("Evidence for Existence").

Another theme in her book is the often complicated destiny of the Polish people in history and the influence of the past on people's lives in the present.

Krall was a mutual friend of Krzysztof Kieślowski

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Krzysztof Kieślowski was an Academy Award nominated influential Polish film director and screenwriter, known internationally for The Double Life of Veronique and his film cycles The Decalogue and Three Colors.-Early life:...

 and Krzysztof Piesiewicz

Krzysztof Piesiewicz

Krzysztof Marek Piesiewicz is a Polish lawyer, screenwriter, and politician, who is currently a member of the Polish Parliament and head of the Ruch Społeczny or Social Movement Party....

, and inspired Decalogue Number 8

The Decalogue

The Decalogue is a 1989 Polish television drama series directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and co-written by Kieślowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with music by Zbigniew Preisner...

in the series of films made by these two men.