Gdzie twoje serce? (Where Is Your Heart?) Tango z rewii „Gwiazdy Warszawy", Muz.: Artur Gold, Tekst: Andrzej Włast -- Tadeusz Faliszewski, Syrena-Electro 1930 (Polish)

NOTE: In interwar period, Warsaw had the international reputation of being „Paris of the East". Considering the elegant and sophisticated architecture of the streets and public buildings, number of cabarets, night bars and places of entertainment as well as the beauty and elegance of Warsaw women -- the title well deserved. Among all Warsaw's revue-scenes, the undisputed leader was theatre "Morskie Oko", whose director -- the lyricist Andrzej Włast - was famous for his numerous love affairs as well as ambition, to make his theatre at least as excellent as Folies Bergere. Therefore, he made regular trips to Paris for previewing the French cabaret and theatre novelties and bringing some of their ideas to Warsaw.

In January 1930, the sensation in Morskie Oko's newest show, entitled "Gwiazdy Warszawy" (The Stars of Warsaw) became the previously unknown singer, Vera Bobrowska. Seated on a high bar stool, in gold-silken gown and accompanying herself on the banjo, she half-sung and half-recited with slight Russian accent, the newest Artur Gold's tango "Gdzie Twoje Serce?" (Where Is Your Heart). The stage was arranged in style of a night bar, with large piano in the corner and four revellers seated in their tuxedos by the counter, murmuring the refrain with her. The result was an explosion of enthusiastm. The new star was born and Warsaw's demanding audiences applauded Bobrowska during a standing obvation, calling her back on stage several times.

Vera Bobrowska never was a professional singer but rather - a smart lady from Warsaw's high life. During one of the social parties she was discovered by Tadeusz Olsza -- a popular Warsaw actor and tango-performer. Seeing her sing by the piano the selection of Gypsy romaces and tango refrains, he decided to introduce her to Andrzej Włast. She came to a meeting with the director of Morskie Oko dressed in glorious dormice fur jacket, with the blase curve of her mouth and manners of a heiress to the throne. And indeed, within several weeks she was not only Andrzej Włast's lover but also the queen of Warsaw's film and theatre circles. Born in Russia and married to a Polish nobleman, this stunning beauty was suspected by many to be a foreign intelligence agent -- the version as fantastic as possibly true, considering her sudden disappearance forever from Warsaw somewhere in Europe, in the middle of the 1930s.

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"Gdzie twoje serce" is for sure, one of the most beautiful light repertoire melodies ever composed in Poland. It's composer was bandleader Artur Gold -- cousin of Henryk Gold, who also led one of the most popular dance orchestras in prewar Warsaw. They two were members of the Melodyst family - the old klezmer dynasty in Warsaw. Henryk was lucky to have survived the Holocaust -- having escaped in time from Warsaw to Lwów, shortly after the German invasion on Poland in September 1939. He then stayed for some time in the USSR and finally -- joined the theatre, associated with the Polish Emigree Army in the West. After 1945, Henryk Gold emigrated to France and USA, where he continued his successful bandleading. On contrary, in 1940 in Warsaw his cousin Artur was captured by the Germans into the newly-formed and Germany administered so-called "Jewish Ghetto" in Warsaw, and after two years of the Ghetto nightmare -- he was transported to Treblinka in 1942, when the Endlösung actions started (the Final Solution actions: German plan of annihilating the Jewish population in Europe). For some time, he was hovewer kept alive in that death-camp, being the leader of the orchestra, which -- according to a peculiar sense of humour of German managers -- was supposed to accompany prisoners, on thair way to the gas chambers. Dressed in the clown-guises, Artur Gold and other musicians stood on a wooden platform in front of the smoking crematorium, and played his prewar tangoes and foxtrotts.

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