The avant-garde group of poets Skamander, founded in Warsaw in 1919, was dedicated to the modernization of Polish literature. Among the founders were the Polish-Jewish poets Antoni Słonimski (1895–1976) and Julian Tuwim (1894–1953). While Tuwim saw himself as essentially Polish before the Shoah, he emphasized his Jewish affiliation more strongly from 1944 onward when he composed the manifesto My, Żydzi Polscy (We, the Polish Jews) in exile in the United States, endeavoring to …