The Ugly Black Bird

The Ugly Black Bird: The Real Story of Jerzy Kosiński's Wartime Childhood

Cover art of the English edition
Author	Joanna Siedlecka
Language	Polish
Genre	investigative reporting
Publisher	Wydawnictwo Marabut and Wydawnictwo CiS
Publication date	1994
Publication place	Poland
Published in English	2018
ISBN	83-85458-04-2

The Ugly Black Bird: The Real Story of Jerzy Kosiński's Wartime Childhood (Polish: Czarny ptasior) is a 1994 book by Polish journalist Joanna Siedlecka about Jerzy Kosiński (Polish-American writer and Holocaust survivor). The books presents the results of Siedlecka's journalistic investigation about Kosiński's life during World War II, which up till then had often been seen as similar to the tragic fate of the protagonist of his well known novel, The Painted Bird.

Siedlecka's found that unlike the protagonist of his novel, Kosiński's life in occupied Poland was relatively uneventful, as he and his family successfully survived the Holocaust while hiding in a Polish village of Dąbrowa Rzeczycka. Her book has therefore successfully discredited the autobiographical value of Kosiński's The Painted Bird.

The initial reception of The Ugly Black Bird was relatively negative as a number of critics panned it as too unsympathetic to Kosiński. In Poland of that time, as observed by an American biographer of Kosiński, James Park Sloan, "to side against Siedlecka [was] to affirm one's stance as cosmopolitan, anti-Marxist and anti-anti-semitic". Criticism of Siedlecka's work lessened a few months later after Sloan published an article in The New Yorker which corroborated most of Siedlecka's findings. Since then her book has elicited mixed reviews, with enduring criticism about her lack of sympathy for Kosiński, counterweighted by praise from those who find value in the fact that Siedlecka unearthed historical truth and debunked the ahistorical theories that The Painted Bird is autobiographical.

History

Siedlecka's work was inspired by letters published in Polish press in 1968 and later in 1982 and 1983 citing eyewitnesses that contradicted Kosiński's narrative.

The book was published in Poland by Wydawnictwo Marabut and Wydawnictwo CiS in 1994 and received a second edition in 1998 and a third in 2011. With the support of the Polish Book Institute (Instytut Książki) It was translated to English in 2018 as The Ugly Black Bird (published by Leopolis Press) and to Czech in 2019 as Černé ptáče (published by Volvox Globator).

Content

The title of Siedlecka's book is a direct reference to that of Kosiński's novel The Painted Bird (1965). Internationally, Kosinski's The Painted Bird – a story of a Jewish boy suffering terrible ordeals during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe – has been well received and considered an important document of the Holocaust. Kosiński's The Painted Bird has been widely considered to be mostly autobiographical; and claimed as such by Kosiński himself. Siedlecka's work argued that Kosiński has "profoundly falsified his wartime experiences" and that his novel portrayed what many considered Kosiński's real life during World War II in occupied Poland as much more gruesome than it actually was.

Siedlecka based her work on interviews she carried out with people in and around Dąbrowa Rzeczycka, a village where Kosiński lived during the war with his family and whose inhabitants, Siedlecka showed, were a major inspiration for Kosiński. She controversially noted that Kosiński's father, Moses Lewinkof, pragmatically collaborated with the occupiers – possibly Germans (Gestapo) and very likely with the Soviets (NKVD); the latter likely resulted in arrest and exile for some of the peasants who helped Kosinski's family survive the war. James Park Sloan noted that while a significant part of the book is focused on Kosiński's father, Siedlecka's "real scorn, however, is reserved for the son, who turned his back on the family's saviors and vilified them, along with the entire Polish nation, in the eyes of the world".

Reception

In Poland

Upon its publication in Poland in 1994, the book received numerous reviews, including critical reviews in Gazeta Wyborcza and Polityka, and positive ones in Tygodnik Solidarności and Arka, among others. The book also led to a significant debate between its supporters and critics in Polish media. According to Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Polish reviews were "more negative than favourable". Critics of her work included Henryk Dasko, Michał Cichy, Tadeusz Komendant, Wacław Sadkowski, Monika Adamczyk-Grabowska, Adam Boniecki, Marcin Piasecki, Ryszard Marek Groński, Janusz Majcherek, Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz, Aleksandra Jakubowska and Maria Janion. Positive reviewers at that time came from Piotr Szwajcer, Teresa Bochwic and Edmund Morawiec.

Adamczyk-Garbowska observed that some Polish critics were afraid to criticize Kosiński (or praise Siedlecka) due to fear of being seen as pro-communist (Kosiński's book was subject to much criticism in Polish communist press decades earlier) – such a sentiment was expressed for example by Anna Bojarska. Piotr Gursztyn argued that criticism of Siedlecka represented elitists bias for intellectual Kosiński versus their dislike for "backward Polish peasants". James Park Sloan noted that upon publication, the book has caused a controversy in Poland, where its initial reception was rather negative among liberal intellectuals, many of whom recalled the inept criticism of The Painted Bird by the communist authorities in the 1960s. Siedlecka's defense of Poland – whom Kosiński was widely seen as having vilified in his account – was simplistic, and according to critics, downplayed Polish anti-semitism. He noted that while few disagreed with Siedlecka's core findings (that Kosiński's work was fiction), "to side against Siedlecka's is to affirm one's stance as cosmpolitan, anti-Marxist and anti-anti-semitic". Reminiscing about early reception of her work in 2019, Sielecka described it as "extraordinary outpouring of hate" and a "witch hunt", quoted a number of reviews that called her work "disgusting", and noted that she has been criticized for bad-faithed "insinuations" ranging from accusations of antisemitism to being described as a naïve "dumb blonde" who was misled by the local peasants.

Criticism of Siedlecka's work lessened a few months later with the publication of article in The New Yorker by the American historian James Park Sloan who corroborated most of Siedlecka's findings. A more enduring criticism of the book was that it was too critical of and unsympathetic towards Kosiński, with critics arguing that Siedlecka primarily presents the point of view of Polish villagers and ignores the psychological hardships a Jewish boy – here, Kosiński – would have faced while trying to survive the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Meanwhile, the book's supporters argued that Siedlecka unearthed historical truth and that Kosiński's book unfairly slanders the Polish nation. They stress that his The Painted Bird hid any reference to the fact that Kosiński's family survived the war with the help of its neighbours – and then it portrayed many of the same, identifiable individuals (Polish villagers) in as antagonists. Siedlecka's book is therefore seen as vindication of those villagers.

Later positive reviews of her work included Paweł Lisicki, who reviewed the book's second edition in 2011 for Rzeczpospolita, favorably comparing it to works of Jan T. Gross, as well as Piotr Gursztyn.

In 1996 Jadwiga Mizińska wrote about the book for Polish journal Nowa Krytyka. She discussed it as an example of literary negation, noting the image of Kosiński as shown by Siedlecka is a near perfect opposite of the protagonist of The Painted Bird.

International

James Park Sloan, whose later biography of Kosiński, published in 1996, mostly endorsed Siedlecka's findings, reviewed her book for The New Yorker in 1994, calling it an exposé. Sloan recounts his own investigation, retracing Siedlecka's steps, interviewing witnesses and consulting local archives, and concludes that "Siedlecka's basic story was confirmed by more than a dozen informants" and that Kosiński's account "is fiction. Kosinski borrowed the atrocities from other accounts, or made them up". He did, however, criticize Siedlecka's account for underestimating the psychological stress and pain that Kosiński's Jewish family must have faced during the wartime.

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska discussed the book in an article in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry in 1999. She acknowledged that she has already reviewed the book for Polish press, and that her review was critical and highly emotional. In Polin she noted that Siedlecka's book is likely mostly factually correct, but she nonetheless criticized it as too unsympathetic for Kosiński (writing that "Siedlecka's book does not offer Jerzy Kosinski a single warm word"), and noted that its publication led to a significant debate in Poland, both about her book and (a renewed one) about Kosiński. She also wrote that Siedlecka's book was marketed as presenting Kosiński's "true" story, which she considered unnecessary as The Painted Bird is "a fictionalized account of the nightmares of a suffering child", although she acknowledged that "there is evidence that some critics, including Elie Wiesel, have read it as autobiographical".

In 2022 Elżbieta Rokosz in her chapter on controversies about Kosiński's book noted that Siedlecka's work successfully discredited "the autobiographical value of The Painted Bird".

Further reading

• T. Bochwic, "Czarny ptasior", Tygodnik Solidarności, 19 (1994), 22
• E. Morawiec, ‘O sprawiedliwej nienawiści i malowanych ptakach’, Arka, 50 (1994), 180.