Henry Richard Krygier

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(9 September 1917 – 27 September 1986), was a Polish-born Jewish Australian

anti-communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...

publisher and journalist, and a founder of '' Quadrant'' magazine.

Education and career

He was born in 1917 in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

, of Jewish parents, and as a law student was active in student politics at the Józef Piłsudski (Warsaw) University. His early sympathies with

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

were shattered by events such as the

Soviet purges of the 1930s The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and he remained a vigorous lifelong anti-communist. Peter Coleman
"Krygier, Henry Richard (1917–1986)"
Dictionary of Australian Biography, anu.edu. Retrieved 6 October 2020. In 1939, he and his wife, Roma, escaped to

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

, where they obtained Japanese transit visas. They reached Sydney, via

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea ...

, Japan and Shanghai, in 1941. In Sydney, he was active in Polish journalism and import-export businesses. He was a supporter of the Australian Labor Party, and in 1947 he became a naturalized citizen. Krygier's anti-totalitarian, liberal, democratic perspective led him to sympathies with the international

Congress for Cultural Freedom The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the ...

, founded in

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

in 1950. In 1954, he formed and became secretary of its Australian arm, the Australian Committee (later Association) for Cultural Freedom. The Association's principal achievement, as well as his, 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. In addition, he 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. For the last four years of his life, he wrote a regular ''Quadrant'' column, but he had contributed a few other pieces to the magazine before then.

Personal life

He married Romualda (Roma) Halpern in

in 1939. They had two children, a daughter and a son,

Martin Krygier Martin Evald John Krygier , (born 1949) is an Australian academic. Education Krygier obtained BA and LLB degrees at the University of Sydney and a PhD in the History of Ideas at the Australian National University. Career Krygier taught in the ...

(born 1949) who is the Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...

.Clarence Ling
Martin Krygier's Contribution to the Rule of Law"
''The Western Australian Jurist'', Vol. 4, p. 211. Retrieved 6 October 2020. Richard Krygier died of cancer on 27 September 1986 at

Darlinghurst, New South Wales Darlinghurst is an inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Darlinghurst is located immediately east of the Sydney central business district (CBD) and Hyde Park, within the local government area of the City of Sydney. I ...

and was cremated.

References

External links

Richard Krygier interviewed by J.D.B. Miller
at

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Krygier, Richard 1917 births 1986 deaths Australian Officers of the Order of the British Empire Australian publishers (people) Australian magazine founders Polish emigrants to Australia Australian anti-communists Australian Jews Australian people of Polish-Jewish descent 20th-century Australian journalists

Education and career

Personal life

References

Further reading

External links