Andrzej Włast (aka Gustaw Baumritter) (1885, Łódź - 1942, Warsaw) was a Polish Jewish songwriter. He wrote the lyrics for the 1929 hit song "Tango Milonga". He died in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
He studied law at Warsaw University, began writing for the Warsaw stage before 1920 at Mirage, Czarny Kot, Sfinks and others. When the Bolshevik army attacked Poland in 1920 he fought for Warsaw with the Red Army in Pilsudski's Legion.[1]
After 1921 he worked with the Stanczyk (The Jester) theater and then the famous Qui Pro Quo. In 1927 he founded his own revue, the Morskie Oko theater, which he directed until 1931. After this he directed the Rex revue and Wielka Rewia (The Grand Revue), each considered to be Polish versions of the Folies-Bergere.[2]
He was a prolific lyricist, sometimes called "The King of Shmira (cheap mass production)" but there were
"also pearls of pure poetry, as well as innumerable examples of sophisticated Jewish humor and gems of shmonces (shmontses), Jewish Polish self-mockery, albeit resting upon many stereotypes."[1]
His 1929 international hit was the Tango Milonga. Bob Rothstein writes:
"One of the most successful of the Polish Jewish composers was Jerzy Petersburski (born Jerzy Melodysta, 1897–1979), whose 1929 hit Tango Milonga, renamed Oh, Donna Clara, swept Europe ... and the United States ... sung by Al Jolson in the 1931 Broadway show The Wonder Bar. ... The original Polish text of Tango Milonga was written by Andrzej Włast (born Gustaw Baumritter, 1885–1941), one of the best-known lyricists of the interwar period, who wrote other hit tunes with melodies by Petersburski [such as] Już nigdy (Never Again) and Ja się boję sama spać (I’m Afraid to Sleep Alone), and by other Jewish composers, such as Henryk Gold (1899–1977; Szkoda twoich łez (Don’t Waste Your Tears)), Artur Gold (1897–1943; Przy kominku (By the Fireplace)), Zygmunt Białostocki (1897–1942; Rebeka), and Fanny Gordon (pseudonym of Faina Markovna Kviatkovskaia, 1904–1991; Pod samowarem (By the Samovar))."[3]
In 1940, Andrzej Włast was in the Warsaw Ghetto. Some say that he was dragged out, like thousands of others, during a 1942 Nazi action, to the Umschlagplatz and transported to Treblinka. Others say:
...that he hid on the "Aryan" side, in the flat of one of the Polish actresses he knew from his theatre. Being unable to stay most of the time alone in that microscopic shelter, and panicking at the slightest sign of the approaching steps, he finally ran out to the street, where he was immediately identified as a Jew and shot.[1]