Adolf Rudnicki, born Aron Hirschhorn (February 19, 1912,

Żabno Żabno is a town and municipality on the river Dunajec in southern Poland, north of Tarnów. Since Poland's administrative reorganization in 1999, Żabno has been a part of Tarnów powiat which belongs to Lesser Poland Voivodeship. Before adm ...

− November 14, 1990, Warsaw) was a Polish author and essayist, best known for his works about

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

and the Jewish resistance in Poland during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Biography

He was born to a

Hasidic Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism ( Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of conte ...

Jewish family. After attended a trade school, he worked as a bank clerk. His writing career began in 1930 when he published his short novel ''Death of the Operator'' in the current events journal '. He first gained popularity in Poland with his 1930s novels ''The Unloved'' and ''The Rats''. He was captured by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

s during the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

, but managed to escape. After a brief period of service in the Polish Army, he went to

Lwów Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...

and joined the National Jewish Committee. Around 1942, he returned to Warsaw and was active in the underground. He joined the

Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) es ...

in 1944 and took part in the

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...

. After the war, he published the novels ''The Golden Windows'' and ''The Merchant of Lodz'', and the short story collection ''Epoch of the Ovens'', all concerning the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

and the Jewish resistance. The widely used term "epoka pieców" (Age of the Stoves) comes from one of his works. After 1953, he began writing essays on a wide range of topics which were ultimately collected in a series of volumes called the ''Blue Pages''. During the 1960s, his works took on a mystical tone. In 1964 he was one of the signatories of the so-called

Letter of 34 ''Letter of 34'' – two-sentence protest letter of Polish intellectuals against censorship in Communist Poland, addressed to the Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, delivered on 14 March 1964 to by Antoni Słonimski. The name refers to the numb ...

to Prime Minister

Józef Cyrankiewicz Józef Adam Zygmunt Cyrankiewicz (; 23 April 1911 – 20 January 1989) was a Polish Socialist (PPS) and after 1948 Communist politician. He served as premier of the Polish People's Republic between 1947 and 1952, and again for 16 years between ...

regarding freedom of culture. He spent most of the 1970s in Paris, where he was married and had a son. He returned to Poland, largely forgotten, in the 1980s and lived in Warsaw until his death. His story ''The Unloved'' was made into the film ' (1966).

External links

New York Times obituary, Nov. 17, 1990 Instytut Ksiazki profile
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rudnicki, Adolf Polish male novelists Polish essayists Male essayists Jewish novelists Polish resistance members of World War II 20th-century Polish Jews 1912 births 1990 deaths 20th-century Polish novelists 20th-century essayists 20th-century Polish male writers Recipients of the State Award Badge (Poland)