Tadeusz Borowski (; 12 November 1922 – 3 July 1951) was a Polish writer and journalist. His wartime poetry and stories dealing with his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz are recognized as classics of Polish literature. Early life Borowski was born in 1922 into the Polish community in Zhytomyr, Ukrainian SSR (today Ukraine). In 1926, his father, whose bookstore had been nationalized by the communists, was sent to a camp in the Gulag system in Russian Karelia because he had been a member of a Polish military organization during World War I. In 1930, Borowski's mother was deported to a settlement on the shores of the Yenisey, in Siberia, during Collectivization. During this time Tadeusz lived with his aunt. Borowski and his family were targeted (as Poles) by the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Terror. In 1932, the Borowskis were expatriated to Poland by the Polish Red Cross in an exchange for Communist prisoners. Impoverished, the family settled in Warsaw. Experiences under Nazi occupation Under Nazi occupation, Poles were forbidden to attend university or even secondary school. In 1940 Borowski finished his secondary schooling in Nazi-occupied Poland in an underground lyceum. He graduated from high school in 1940 amid the roundups of Jewish residents. He began his underground studies in Polish literature at Warsaw University. His classes met in secret at private homes. While attending university he met Maria Rundo, who would become the love of his life. He also became involved with the leftist publication Droga. Wherever the Earth (1942), his anonymously self-published collection of poems, was distributed illegally. The poems have been described by modern scholars as "remarkable for their dark view of the earth as an enormous labor camp". While a member of the educational underground in Warsaw, Borowski was engaged and living with Rundo. After Maria did not return home one night in February 1943, Borowski began to suspect that she had been arrested. Rather than staying away from any of their usual meeting places, though, he walked straight into the trap that was set by the Gestapo agents in the apartment of his and Maria's close friend. Borowski was 21 years old when he was imprisoned in Pawiak prison for two months before he was shipped to Auschwitz that April. Forced into slave labor in extremely harsh conditions, Borowski later reflected on this experience in his writing. In particular, working on a railway ramp