Sygnały Magazyn was 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...

 cultural and social magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 published 1933–1939 in Lwów (Lemberg, today Lviv

Lviv

Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...

, Ukraine). It was a leading periodical of the leftist

Left-wing politics

In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 Polish intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

. The journal started as a 12-page monthly and was subsequently published once every two weeks, with editions of up to 32 pages. Sygnały was published in the tabloid format, similar to the New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 at about 56x40 cm (22x16 inches).

Editors

Its editor-in-chief was Karol Kuryluk

Karol Kuryluk

Karol Kuryluk was a Polish journalist, editor, activist, politician and diplomat. In 2002 he was honored by Yad Vashem for saving Jews in the Holocaust.- Biography :...

, and the editorial committee included Tadeusz Banaś, Stanisława Blumenfeld, Halina Górska

Halina Górska

Halina Górska - was a Polish writer and a communist activist.Beginning in 1924 Górska became associated with the Lwów literary scene. Her first publication, in 1925, was "Mam mieszkanie" , in the Kurier Lwowski...

, Tadeusz Hollender

Tadeusz Hollender

Tadeusz Hollender was a Polish poet, translator and humorist. During World War II, he wrote satirical articles and poems in underground press, for that he was arrested by the German Gestapo and executed in May in the infamous prison, Pawiak....

, Anna Kowalska, Andrzej Kurczkowski and Marian Prominski.

Polish Contributors

Among the literary contributors from Poland figured Erwin Axer

Erwin Axer

Erwin Axer is a Polish theatre director, writer and university professor. A long-time head of Teatr Współczesny in Warsaw, he also staged numerous plays abroad, notably in German-speaking countries, in the USA and Leningrad ....

, Maria Dąbrowska

Maria Dabrowska

Maria Dąbrowska was a Polish writer.Dąbrowska was a member of the impoverished landed gentry. Interested both in literature and politics, she set herself up to help people born into poor circumstances. She studied sociology, philosophy, and natural sciences in Lausanne and Brussels and moved to...

, Jan Kasprowicz

Jan Kasprowicz

Jan Kasprowicz was a poet, playwright, critic and translator; a foremost representative of Young Poland.-Life:...

, Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, in the province of Galicia then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent...

, Leopold Staff

Leopold Staff

Leopold Staff was a Polish poet and one of the greatest artists of European modernism honored two times by honorary degrees . He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature...

, Julian Tuwim

Julian Tuwim

Julian Tuwim , sometimes used pseudonym "Oldlen" when writing song lyrics. He was a Polish poet, born in Łódź, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, of Jewish parents, and educated in Łódź and Warsaw where he studied law and philosophy at Warsaw University...

, Debora Vogel and Józef Wittlin.

International Contributors

International literary contributors included Henri Barbusse

Henri Barbusse

Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...

, André Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

, Carl von Ossietzky

Carl von Ossietzky

Carl von Ossietzky was a German pacifist and the recipient of the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize. He was convicted of high treason and espionage in 1931 after publishing details of Germany's alleged violation of the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding an air force, the predecessor of the Luftwaffe, and...

, Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

, Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

 and Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...

.

Artists

The magazine featured reproductions of art work by Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist.-Biography:...

, Jan Cybis, Xawery Dunikowski

Xawery Dunikowski

Xawery Dunikowski was a Polish sculptor and artist, notable for surviving Auschwitz concentration camp, and best known for his Neo-Romantic sculptures and Auschwitz-inspired art.- Biography :...

, Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

, Henryk Gotlib

Henryk Gotlib

Henryk Gotlib , was a Polish-born painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and writer, who settled in England and made a significant contribution to modern British art. He was profoundly influenced by Rembrandt, and the European Expressionist painters.“There was never any doubt of Gotlib’s stature in the...

, Bronisław Linke, Maria Jarema, Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, in the province of Galicia then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and spent...

, Henryk Streng and Zygmunt Waliszewski

Zygmunt Waliszewski

Zygmunt Waliszewski was a Polish painter, a member of the Kapist movement.-Biography:Waliszewski was born in Saint Petersburg to the Polish family of an engineer. In 1907 his parents moved to Tbilisi where Waliszewski spent his childhood. In Tbilisi began his studies at a prestigious art school...

; avant-garde photographs and photomontages by Otto Hahn, Jerzy Janisch, Margit Sielska and Mieczysław Szczuka; and caricatures by K. Baraniecki, F. Kleinmann, Eryk Lipiński and Franciszek Parecki.

History

Special issues were dedicated to Jewish, Ukrainian and Byelorussian culture.

In 1938 an armed ONR (National Radical Camp) gang raided the editorial office and Karol Kuryluk barely escaped alive. In spite of financial hardship and heavy censorship, he published “Signals” through August 1939.

In September 1939, after the Soviet annexation of Lwów, Kuryluk deposited his “Signals” archive at the Ossolineum Library

Ossolineum

The Ossolineum or Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich a meritorious department for Polish science and culture , which was founded for the Polish Nation in 1817 by Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński, and was opened in 1827 in Lviv.It was one of the most important Polish...

 (now Stefanyk Library) where it has survived until now.

Sources

• Encyklopedia Gazety Wyborczej, 2005
• Ewa Pankiewicz, Karol Kuryluk. Biografia polityczna 1910–1967, doctoral dissertation, Warsaw University.
• Prasa Polska w latach 1939–1945, Warsaw, 1980.
• Książka dla Karola (a collections of memoirs and essays on Karol Kuryluk, and his letters), ed. K. Koźniewski, Warsaw, 1984.
• Halina Górska, Chłopcy z ulic miasta, with an introduction by Karol Kuryluk, Warsaw, 1956.
• Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz, edited by J. Ficowski, New York, 1988.
• Ewa Kuryluk, Ludzie z powietrza—Air People, Cracow, 2002
• Ewa Kuryluk, Goldi, Warsaw, 2004
• Ewa Kuryluk, Cockroaches and Crocodiles, The Moment Magazine, July/August 2008
• Ewa Kuryluk, Frascati, Cracow, 2009 www.kuryluk.art.pl
• Source materials about Karol Kuryluk in Polish, published in Zeszytyhistoryczne, in Acrobat PDF format: http://www.marekhlasko.republika.pl/03_artykuly/Kuryluk.pdf