Igor Newerly

Who was Igor Newerly?

Igor Newerly or Igor Abramow-Newerly was a Polish novelist and educator. He was born into a Russian-Polish family. His son is Polish novelist Jarosław Abramow-Newerly. His grandfather Józef Newerly, was a Czech national, who held a title of Łowczy to the court of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.

Igor Newerly studied law at Kiev University but he was relegated for political reasons, arrested and sent to Odessa. In 1924 he emigrated illegally to the newly independent Poland and was active in the field of pedagogy in Warsaw. He worked together with the renowned educator Janusz Korczak, and in 1926 became his secretary. From 1932 to 1939 Newerly worked for Mały Przegląd. He married Barbara Jarecka.

Under the Nazi German occupation of Poland Newerly was a member of the Polish resistance. He helped Janusz Korczak at his Orphanage and saved his diary of martyrdom. He also hid from Nazi persecution several of his Jewish colleagues from Nasz Przegląd daily – among them Kuba Hersztein – and transported Lejzor Czarnobroda to Warsaw after he escaped from the train to Treblinka and broke his leg. Newerly was arrested at the beginning of 1943 by the German Gestapo and imprisoned at Pawiak in Warsaw. Until the end of the war he was an inmate of Nazi concentration camps: Majdanek, Auschwitz, Oranienburg and Bergen Belsen where he was liberated.