Welcome, this post is the celebration of Polish-American month. To help celebrate, I have chosen writers. This is the second post in this category this month. If you would like to see the first post, click here.
Born Jozef Lewinkopf in Lodz, Poland on June 14, 1933. He survived World War II as a child in central Poland under a false identity. Jerry Kosinski, which his father gave him. A Catholic priest issued a forged baptismal certificate. The family was allowed them to survive the Holocaust due to the villagers who assisted the Polish Jews.
After the war, Jerry moved with his family to Jelenia, Gora. Graduated at age 22 with a degree in history and sociology at the University of Lodz. Then became a teaching assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He also studied in the Soviet Union and served as a sharpshooter in the Polish Army.
In 1957 Jerry migrated to the United States, where he created a fake foundation, which sponsored him. Later he admitted the letters were forged from the prominent communist authorities, worked odd jobs like being a truck driver while he graduated from Columbia University.
Found the lady of his life Mary Hayward Weir, an American stell heiress. Unfortunately, it only lasted four years. She died in 1968 due to brain cancer. She did not put Jerry in her will.
Became an American citizen in 1965. He also wrote The Painted Bird.
Also, he received grants from the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and the Ford Foundation in 1968. After the death of his wife, he wrote Blind Date, was he fictionally described his marriage to the heiress.
Jerry won the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature in 1970, plus he wrote Being There. This allowed him to become a lecturer at several universities, Yale, Princeton, Davenport, and Wesleyan. He was President of the American Chapter of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, and Novelists).
Suffered from multiple illnesses, one being irregular heartbeat, another was several physical and nervous exhaustion. This led Jerry to consume large amounts of alcohol and drugs, but to ensure his death, he wrapped plastic around his head, caused him to suffocate to death on May 3, 1991.
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Karen Carnahan 