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Jerzy Kosinski, who was born on June 18, 1933 and who died on May e, 1991, was a novelist born in Lodz, Poland (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1996. Although born to a Jewish family, a sympathetic Catholic priest provided a forged baptismal certificate at the onsent of World War II so he would be safe from the Holocaust (Wikipedia, 2005). His family hid in the countryside and were not discovered by the Nazis (Wikipedia, 2005). Kosinski paid a high price, because he learned at an early age that he could survive by pretending he was someone he was not (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1996.
After emigrating to the United States in 1957, Kosinski began telling an embellished story of how he survived World War II to those he met (Phillips, 2001). Eventually he wrote a novel, The Painted Bird, widely believed to be an autobiographical story of how he survived the Nazi occupation of Poland (Phillips, 2001). The book describes years of horrific experiences, including sexual perversion, violence and cruelty....
The experiences are so severe that the protagonist, a child, becomes mute, and does not speak again until reunited with his parents (Behrens, 1996). Some critics saw The Painted Bird as a Holocaust document, comparable to The Diary of Anne Frank. In 1965 it received the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the French award for the best foreign book of the year (Behrens, 1996).
The reality was that Kosinski had spent the war with a Polish Catholic family that hid his true identity (Wikipedia, 2005), and that they sheltered his family as well (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1996. He had never been mistreated and had never been separated from his parents. However, in interviews and through other forums, when interviewers represented the book as autobiographical he did not correct them, and even had his childhood picture put on the cover of one of the editions (Phillips, 2001). The book was celebrated as a report of the Holocaust equal in importance to The Diary of Anne Frank, and it…
Behrens, Roy R. 1996. "Introspectives (Jewish novelist Jerzy Kosinski)." Print, November.
Phillips, Aliza. 2001. "Reimagining Jerzy Kosinski, Author and Survivor Who Rewrote His Own Life Story." Forward, Feb. 9.
St. Louis Post-Dispartch. 1996. "Novelist Jerzy Kosinski: Virtuoso at Pretending" (book review). March 17.
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