Richard Krygier

Henry Richard Krygier (usually known as Richard), was an Australian anti-Communist publisher and journalist, and a founder of " Quadrant" magazine.

He was born in 1917 in Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and as a law student was active in student politics at the Józef Piłsudski (Warsaw) University. His early sympathies with Communism were shattered by events such as the Soviet purges of the 1930s and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and he remained a vigorous life-long anti-Communist. In 1939 he and his wife Roma escaped to Kaunas, Lithuania, where they obtained Japanese transit visas. They reached Sydney via Vladivostok, Japan and Shanghai in 1941. In Sydney he was active in Polish journalism and import-export businesses.

Krygier's anti-totalitarian, liberal-democratic perspective led him to sympathies with the international Congress for Cultural Freedom, founded in Berlin in 1950. In 1954, he formed and became secretary of its Australian arm, the Australian Committee (later Association) for Cultural Freedom. His and the Association's greatest achievement was the creation in 1956 of the literary-political magazine "Quadrant", under the editorship of James McAuley. Krygier was publisher, business manager and fund-raiser. He also organised lecture tours of prominent overseas political and cultural figures and conferences on the problems on establishing democracy in developing states.

He remained active in "Quadrant" up to his death in 1986.

References

*P. Coleman, "The liberal conspiracy. The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the struggle for the mind of postwar Europe", New York 1989.
*P. Coleman, Krygier, Henry Richard, to appear in Australian Dictionary of Biography