Jerzy Kosinski / Jozef Lewinkopf (M / Poland, 1933-1991), Holocaust survivor.
Jerzy Kosinski / Józef Lewinkopf (M / Poland, 1933-1991), Holocaust survivor.
- KEYWORDS : <Poland> <Hidden Children, Poland>
- MEMOIRS : The Painted Bird (novel, 1965) -- Nabarvené ptáče (film, 2019)
Biography
Kosiński was born Józef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosiński, which his father gave to him. Eugeniusz Okoń, a Catholic priest, issued him a forged baptismal certificate. The family lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka, near Stalowa Wola, and attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, with the support of villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka. For a time, they were sheltered by a Catholic family in Rzeczyca Okrągła. Jerzy even served as an altar boy in the local church.
After the war ended, Kosiński and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra. By age 22, he had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Łódź. He then became a teaching assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Kosiński also studied in the Soviet Union, and served in the Polish Army.
In 1957 he migrated to the United States. Kosiński first worked at odd jobs to get by, including driving a truck, and he managed to graduate from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965 and became a successful novelists.
A victim of depression, he died by suicide on May 3, 1991.
Novel : The Painted Bird (1965)
- Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965)
Although the novel reflects the author's personal experiences, it is not an autobiographical account. Jerry did not live separated from his family nor suffered the abuses described in the novel. He lived with his own parents under false identity in a rural village in Poland, protected by Christian friends. The novel is a work of imagination that reflects his worst fears and nightmares during the Holocaust.
"Jerzy Kosinski's mythic, master-work of a shattered post-War Europe ... Originally published in 1965, The Painted Bird established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. Kosinski's story follows a dark-haired, olive-skinned boy, abandoned by his parents during World War II, as he wanders alone from one village to another, sometimes hounded and tortured, only rarely sheltered and cared for. Through the juxtaposition of adolescence and the most brutal of adult experiences, Kosinski sums up a Bosch-like world of harrowing excess where senseless violence and untempered hatred are the norm. Through sparse prose and vivid imagery, Kosinski's novel is a story of mythic proportion, even more relevant to today's society than it was upon its original publication."--Publisher description.