Marian Brandys

Who was Marian Brandys?

Marian Brandys was a Polish writer and screenwriter born in Wiesbaden into an assimilated Jewish family of Polish intelligencia. Brandys grew up in Łódź. His father owned a banking establishment. The prosperity allowed Marian, and his younger brother Kazimierz, to attend the best private school for boys anywhere around, sponsored by the merchants' club Zgromadzenie Kupców Miasta Łodzi.

In the Second Polish Republic Brandys graduated from the Law Faculty of Warsaw University and worked in the courts before the invasion of Poland of 1939. He took part in the September Campaign as the commander of a mounted platoon of machine guns for the Independent Operational Group Polesie led by General Franciszek Kleeberg. Brandys spent the war years at the II-C Woldenberg prisoner of war camp for Polish officers near Zielona Góra. He joined the communist party upon the Soviet takeover of Poland and worked as reporter in Warsaw since 1949. Brandys debuted as a book-writer during the Stalinism in Poland with his propagandist Początek opowieści about the factory workers of Nowa Huta. After Stalinism, he focused on writing historical and children's novels. He quit the communist party in 1966.