Richard Krygier

Henry Richard Krygier (9 September 1917 – 27 September 1986) was a Polish-born Jewish Australian anti-communist publisher and journalist, and a founder of Quadrant magazine.

Education and career He was born in 1917 in Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and as a law student was active in student politics at the Józef Piłsudski (Warsaw) University. His early sympathies with communism were shattered by events such as the Soviet purges of the 1930s and the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and he remained a vigorous lifelong anti-communist.

In 1939, he and his wife, Roma, escaped to Kaunas, Lithuania, where they obtained Japanese transit visas. They reached Sydney, via Vladivostok, Japan, and Shanghai, in 1941. 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 of establishing democracy in developing states. 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 Warsaw in 1939. Richard Krygier died of cancer on 27 September 1986 at Darlinghurst, New South Wales and was cremated.