The New Yorker profiles Stanislaw Lem

[pete...@gmail.com]

As Lem's centenary approaches,, Caleb Crain profiles the man, his survival of the Holocaust, and his fiction.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/a-holocaust-survivors-hardboiled-science-fiction

Pt

[Johnny Tindalos]

"pete...@gmail.com" <pete...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:83fbf962-23b9-4913...@googlegroups.com:

A fascinating article, thanks for that. I'd had no idea he was a Holocaust
survivior, or even that he was Jewish. My Polish ex and her friends were
really into his stuff (as the article says, he's super famous in Poland)
but they never mentioned anything to do with his life; I suspect they
weren't aware.

Must dig out my Lem now. Have only read _Solaris_ (while rather too young
to appreciate it), bits of _Imaginary Magnitude_ and the misadventures of
the constructor-robots Klapaucius & Trurl.

[Quadibloc]

On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 2:17:40 PM UTC-7, Johnny Tindalos wrote:

> A fascinating article, thanks for that. I'd had no idea he was a Holocaust
> survivior, or even that he was Jewish.

I checked the Wikipedia article. Indeed, he was Jewish (by ancestry); his family
avoided being placed in the Lvov Ghetto with false papers, and he was in the Polish
resistance. He noted that he did not have familiarity with Jewish culture.

Perhaps that is why he was able to remain in Poland until his death, which came
after the rise of Solidarity, despite the events of March 1968 under Wladyslaw
Gomulka.

John Savard