Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosiński (born Józef Lewinkopf; ; June 14, 1933 – May 3, 1991) was a Polish Jewish and later Polish-American novelist and two-time president of the American Chapter of P.E.N., who wrote primarily in English.

Born in Poland, he survived World War II and, as a young man, emigrated to the U.S., where he became a citizen.

Kosiński was born Józef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland, in 1933.

As a child during World War II, he lived in occupied 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, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance to Polish Jews, often at great risk.

Kosiński's father was assisted not only by town leaders and clergymen, but also by individuals such as Marianna Pasiowa, a member of an underground network that helped Jews evade capture.

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 as a sharpshooter in the Polish Army.

To migrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him.

He later claimed he forged the letters from prominent communist authorities guaranteeing his loyal return to Poland, as were then required for anyone leaving the country.

Kosiński first worked at odd jobs to get by, including driving a truck, and he managed to graduate from Columbia University.

Kosiński practiced the photographic arts, with one-man exhibitions to his credit in Warsaw's Crooked Circle Gallery (1957) and in the Andre Zarre Gallery in New York (1988).

In 1962, Kosiński married an American steel heiress Mary Hayward Weir.

They divorced four years later.

He became an American citizen in 1965.

The Painted Bird, Kosiński's controversial 1965 novel, is a fictional account that depicts the personal experiences of a boy of unknown religious and ethnic background who wanders around unidentified areas of Eastern Europe during World War II and takes refuge among a series of people, many of whom are brutally cruel and abusive, either to him or to others.

He also received grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and the Ford Foundation in 1968.

Weir died in 1968 from brain cancer, leaving Kosiński out of her will.

He fictionalized his marriage in his novel Blind Date, speaking of Weir under the pseudonym Mary-Jane Kirkland.

Kosiński later, in 1968, married Katherina "Kiki" von Fraunhofer (1933–2007), a marketing consultant and a descendant of Bavarian nobility.

Toward the end of his life, Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses and was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism.

By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat.

Soon after the book was published in the US, Kosiński was accused by the then-Communist Polish government of being anti-Polish, especially following the regime's 1968 anti-Semitic campaign.

In 1970, he won the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature.

The grants allowed him to write a political non-fiction book that opened new doors of opportunity.

He became a lecturer at Yale, Princeton, Davenport, and Wesleyan universities.

He was known for various novels, among them Being There (1971) and the controversial The Painted Bird (1965), which were adapted as films in 1979 and 2019 respectively.

The book was banned in Poland from its initial publication until the fall of the Communist government in 1989.

When it was finally printed, thousands of Poles in Warsaw lined up for as long as eight hours to purchase copies of the work autographed by Kosiński.

Polish literary critic and University of Warsaw professor Paweł Dudziak remarked that "in spite of the unclear role of its author,The Painted Bird is an achievement in English literature."

He stressed that, because the book is a work of fiction and does not document real-world events, accusations of anti-Polish sentiment may result only from taking it too literally.

He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating himself to death.

His suicide note read: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity."

Kosinski's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered off a small cove in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic.

Kosiński's novels have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, and have been translated into over 30 languages, with total sales estimated at 70 million in 1991.