Piotr Rawicz
Piotr Rawicz was a Polish-born author, born in L'wow (now Lviv, Ukraine) on July 12, 1919, into a Jewish family. His early education included studying law and Asian languages, reflecting both familial expectations and personal interests. Rawicz's life was profoundly affected by historical events, including the Soviet occupation and the German invasion during World War II, which led to his detention by the Gestapo and subsequent imprisonment in Auschwitz. After the war, he reunited with his wife and settled in Poland before moving to Paris, where he pursued a career in journalism and began writing.
His most significant work, *Le Sang du ciel* (1961; *Blood from the Sky*, 1964), draws from his experiences as a Holocaust survivor and employs a postmodern narrative style. The novel is notable for its rich intertextuality and innovative structure, earning critical acclaim and the Prix Rivarol in 1962. Rawicz's later work, inspired by the 1968 Paris student uprising, remained untranslated into English. His life came to a tragic end when he committed suicide in 1982, but recent scholarship has rekindled interest in his writing, particularly in *Le Sang du ciel*, which stands as a poignant exploration of Holocaust themes.
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Subject Terms
Piotr Rawicz
Writer
- Born: July 12, 1919
- Birthplace: L'wow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine)
- Died: May 21, 1982
- Place of death: Paris, France
Biography
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Piotr Rawicz was born on July 12, 1919, in L’wow, Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine. He was the third child of Salomon Rawicz, a lawyer, and Helena Sabina. His parents were active members in the Jewish community.
At the local university, Rawicz studied law to please his father and Asian languages to satisfy his own desires. He fell in love with classmate Anna Dastre but events, including the Soviet occupation of their country in 1939 and the German invasion of 1941, delayed plans for marriage. The young lovers fled, but within a year Rawicz was detained by the Gestapo and underwent interrogation and torture. Rawicz convinced officials that he was not Jewish, but he could not talk his way out of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he was sentenced for two years for unspecified political crimes. Two decades later, his experiences both eluding and enduring captivity would provide background for his first novel.
Released from his interment, Rawicz reunited with his wife. The couple married and settled in Poland, where Rawizc found employment as a journalist. He applied for admission to the Sorbonne and received a scholarship to study languages in 1947. Paris became their permanent residence. In the early 1950’s, Rawicz was a correspondent for the foreign press, but his success as a journalist in Paris was short-lived. Subsequent jobs as a translator, a salesman, and a chauffeur provided only subsistence living for the couple, but afforded Rawicz the opportunity to begin a novel.
Though proficient in many languages, Rawicz composed his first and most significant novel, Le Sang du ciel (1961; Blood from the Sky, 1964), in French. Le Sang du ciel is a postmodern story of an Auschwitz survivor. Though events in the novel resemble episodes in Rawicz’s life, it is not presented as autobiography. The main character is a Jew who pretends to be a Gentile during the occupation. “Remember and tell” is the mantra of the novel and the motto by which the protagonist survives his deception. Critics responded with enthusiasm to Rawicz’s innovations: snippets of other genres, including poetry, scholarly explication, replete with footnotes. and dramatic asides collude with traditional narration to offer a panoramic view of the Holocaust. Given the scope and topic of his work, the embedded forms, reminiscent of Old Testament structure, are appropriate. In 1962, Le Sang du ciel was awarded the Prix Rivarol, the top prize for a work written in French by a foreign national.
His second novel, inspired by events of the 1968 student uprising in Paris, was published in 1969. Bloc-notes d’un contre-révolutionnaire: Ou, La Gueule de bois has yet to be translated into English.
Rawicz committed suicide on May 21, 1982. By that time, interest in his writing had waned, but recent Holocaust scholarship has created a new audience for Le Sang du ciel. Rawicz wrote only one novel about the Holocaust, but it is a masterpiece of the genre. He recreated convincingly in fiction, through the use of nontraditional literary methods, the atrocities of the Holocaust in a novel both personal and universal.