Henryk Grynberg

Henryk Grynberg (born 1936 in Warsaw) is a Polish writer and actor who survived the Nazi occupation. He is a novelist, short-story writer, poet, playwright and essayist who had authored more than thirty books of prose and poetry and two dramas. Grynberg, known as the “chronicler of the fate of the Polish Jews”, tackled in his writings the Holocaust experience and the post-Holocaust trauma.

Personal survival Grynberg and his mother were the only survivors from their family. He spent the years 1942 to 1944 in hiding places, saved from German Nazis by the Polish families. After the war, he lived in Łódź and Warsaw.

Post-War On 11 October 1956 he signed as an undercover agent of the 1st Department (Intelligence) of Polish Agency for Internal Security - code name "reporter" as documented by Polish Historical Institute (or IPN), but the report in "Życie Warszawy" of 1 December 2006 is distorted and unreliable. Grynberg was pressured by the SB, denied that he informed on any one, and reportedly revealed his recruitment to the FBI. See Ted Lipien

From Henryk Grynberg: I did sign a cooperation agreement with Polish intelligence (not military intelligence) on October 11, 1956 and received a one-time assignment to bring to the next meeting written characteristics (in Polish opinie) of three fellow students (two of them Jewish), no more than a page each. I presented those three persons as good intelligent students loyal to the state ideology and those were the only "reports" I was asked to do or have done in writing or otherwise. My contacts with the Polish intelligence or whatever secret services lasted no more than five months during which time I did nothing else for them. A document in my files at the IPN says, "His recruitment assumed future utilization in Israel and subsequently in the USA. After finishing his studies, Grynberg showed unwillingness to further collaboration. For this reason, the 1st Dep. resigned from further contacts with him." That ultimate "unwilingness" I expressed in 1959 when an intelligence agent wanted me to take with me a letter to Israel and I refused. I revealed my recruitment – or rather attempt at recruitment – to the FBI when applying for U.S. citizenship and for a sensitive position with U.S. Information Agency (which I held for 20 years). The note "Collaboration with Communists," so prominently placed, directs undue attention to a very short and meaningless episode in my biography.

Grynberg's books were also translated into the French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Dutch, as well as Czech, Hungarian, and Swedish languages.

In that same text, Grynberg went on to claim that even during the 1968 antisemitic campaign in Communist Poland Jews "were not denied the right to live in Israel (never called the 'Zionist entity') … and "Yes, there were demands that Israel withdraw to the pre-1967 demarcation lines, but nobody anywhere chanted 'from the river to the sea.'"