Igor Newerly

Igor Newerly or Igor Abramow-Newerly (24 March 1903, Białowieża – 19 October 1987, Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish novelist and educator. He was born into a Russian-Polish family. His grandfather Józef Newerly, was a Czech national, who held a title of Łowczy ("Master of Hunt") to the court of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. His son, and Igor's father, was a Polish novelist Jarosław Abramow-Newerly.

Igor Newerly studied law at Kiev University but he was relegated to Warsaw for political reasons. Following his studies he returned to Russia but was arrested and sent to Odessa. In 1925 he emigrated illegally to the newly independent Poland and was active in the field of pedagogy in Warsaw. He worked together with the renown educator Janusz Korczak, and in 1926 became his secretary. From 1932 to 1939 Newerly worked for "Mały Przegląd" ("Little Review"). He married Barbara Jarecka.

Under the Nazi German occupation Newerly was a member of the Polish resistance during WWII, and was arrested in 1943 by the German Gestapo. Until the end of the war he was a prisoner of Nazi concentration camps (Majdanek, Auschwitz, Oranienburg and Bergen Belsen).

After the war in 1945 he resumed a pedagogical career. Based on Newerly's novel "Pamiątka z Celulozy", the Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz made a film "Celuloza".

Works

*"Chłopiec z Salskich Stepów" 1948
*"Archipelag ludzi odzyskanych" 1950
*"Pamiątka z Celulozy" 1952
*"Leśne Morze" 1960
*"Żywe wiązanie" 1966
*"Rozmowa w sadzie piątego sierpnia", Warszawa, Czytelnik 1978
*"Za Opiwardą, za siódmą rzeką...", Warszawa, Czytelnik, ISBN 83-07-01165-5 1985
*"Wzgórze błękitnego snu", Warszawa, Czytelnik, ISBN 83-07-01369-0 1986
*"Zostało z uczty bogów", Paryż, Instytut Literacki, ISBN 2-7168-0085-5 1986

Film screen-plays

*"Król Maciuś I", 1957
*"Pod gwiazdą frygijską"
*"Celuloza", 1953

Bibliography

*Igor Newerly, "Zostało z uczty bogów"
*Michał Grynberg, "Księga Sprawiedliwych (Book of the Righteous)", Warsaw, PWN, 1993. (ill., ports., 766 pp.)