ÌÇÐÄTV

Stefan Halikowski
Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski: The greatest Polish writer of ‘camp literature’, his lifelong censorship, and redemption in the eyes of the Citizenship Act

Tuesday 27 January, 12-1pm, S0.10 (Social Studies)
This talk revisits the life of Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski (1919-2000), whose Inny Swiat (A World Apart), published 1951, was the first of the great Soviet Gulag exposes (foreword by Bertrand Russell). Herling made his life in exile, in Naples, and his works were banned in Poland, his home, until the very end of his life. I thought of him as I conclude the process of obtaining my own Polish passport. Art. 21, clause 10 of the Citizenship Act offers an 80% reduction for 'persons with the status of anti-communist opposition or an anti-communist activist or a person repressed for political reasons'. The Polish state today (Third Republic, 1989-) commemorates and valorizes the lives of dissidents and anti-Communists who suffered exile, censorship and repression for fifty years under the PRL (Polish People's Republic, 1952-1989).