Julian Stryjkowski

Who was Julian Stryjkowski?

Julian Stryjkowski, born Pesach Stark was a Polish journalist and writer, notable for his social prose of radical leftist leanings. He was considered one of the best Polish-Jewish writers of the communist era.

Stryjkowski was born April 27, 1905 in Stryj, to a family of Hasidic Jews. He graduated from the Faculty of Polish language and literature of the Lwów University and in 1932 started working as a teacher of Polish language in a gymnasium in Płock in central Poland. Initially a Zionist, in 1934 he joined the delegalized Communist Party of Western Ukraine and began teaching his own pupils Communist ideology, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in 1935. Upon his release the following year he moved to Warsaw, where he started working as a journalist for various newspapers, and as a library clerk. About that time he also started his work on the Polish translation of Céline's Death on the Installment Plan.