Leopold Tyrmand

Life Youth Leopold Tyrmand was born to a Polish Jewish assimilated secular family in Warsaw, son to Mieczyslaw Tyrmand and Maria (Maryla) née Mańska or Oliwenstein. an experience he wrote about in his semi-autobiographical novel "Filip".

He tried to escape to neutral Sweden, but was caught in Norwegian port of Stavanger, and sent to the Grini concentration camp in Norway, where he managed to survive the rest of the war.

Tyrmand then suffered from an unofficial ban on publications.

Dziennik 1954 In 1954 Tyrmand started a diary and, due to the frustration associated with forced inactivity, he transferred his writing to this diary which recounts the first three months of 1954. The text was later edited and released in 1980 as "Dziennik 1954". a Polish jazz festival that continues to this day as one biggest and oldest of its genre in Europe.

The festival, whose first theme song he picked ("Swanee River") attracted notables of jazz from the West. To Tyrmand, jazz was a declaration of freedom, and thus a political statement.

Departure from Poland Despite the success and national recognition, the period from 1957 to 1963 was particularly rough for the author due to government censorship

He became the co-founder and vice-president of the Rockford Institute, a conservative foundation critical of American publishing values and their apparent bias toward liberal writers. Tyrmand also served as editor of Chronicles of Culture, an anti-communist, paleoconservative journal.

Death Tyrmand died of a heart attack in Fort Myers, Florida at the age of 64 on March 19, 1985. He was survived by his wife, Mary Ellen, and his children, Rebecca and the investor and consultant Matthew Tyrmand.

The book was Tyrmand's biggest success

Later it became also an international hit (especially in the Eastern Bloc) and was translated into more than 20 European languages.