Ashes, has been called the most moving account of the Holocaust written by a non-Jew. As a consequence of his signing, in 1975, of the letter of 59, practically all of Ficowski's writings had become banned in Poland for the remainder of the decade, and only the emergence of Solidarity in the early 1980s has brought his works back to Poland's bookshelves. Both his prose and poems continued to be widely translated in the West. He was active in the opposition movement, and was a member of the Workers' Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) and subsequently of the Committee for Social Self-defence KOR. Under the communist regime he had urged his fellow writers to voice their concerns over censorship and the suppression of workers. His most public statement was a letter to the Writers Union in which he said, "I do not believe deeply in the immediate effectiveness of letters to the government, but even less do I believe in the effectiveness of silence." Following the fall of communism, liberalisation of Poland and its breaking with the Soviet bloc, Ficowski continued to write and translate works from languages as diverse as Spanish and Romanian, not to mention the Yiddish and Roma languages that had always fascinated him. Selected publications Poetry Ołowiani żołnierze (1948) Zwierzenia (1952) Po polsku (1955) Moje strony świata (1957) Makowskie bajki (1959) Amulety i defilacje ("Amulets and Definitions") (1960), inspired by his stay with Gypsies Pismo obrazkowe (1962) Ptak poza ptakiem (1968) Odczytanie popiołów (1979); on the Jews and their suffering; illustrated by Marc Chagall; translated by Keith Bosley as A Reading of Ashes, 1981) Errata (1981) Śmierć jednorożca (1981) Przepowiednie. Pojutrznia (1983) Inicjał (1994) Mistrz Manole i inne przekłady (2004; collected translations of poetry) Zawczas z poniewczasem (2004) Pantareja (2006) Poetic prose Wspominki starowarszawskie (1959) Czekanie na sen psa (1970; translated by Soren A. Gauger and Marcin Piekoszewski as Waiting for the Dog to Sleep, 2006) Others Cyganie polscy (1953) Cyganie na polskich drogach (1965) Gałązka z drzewa słońca (1961) Rodzynki z migdałami (1964) Regiony wielkiej herezji (1967, revised editions 1975, 1992, 2002; translated by Theodosia S. Robertson as Regions of the Great Heresy, 2000) Okolice sklepów cynamonowych (1986) Demony cudzego strachu (1986) Cyganie w Polsce. Dzieje i obyczaje (1989; translated by Eileen Healey as The Gypsies in Poland. History and Customs, 1989) Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz, with Selected Prose (1988, edited by