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to village, the dog that had leaped at his heels, the loss of speech, the reunion at the orphanage where he was identified by his

resemblance to this mother and the mark on his rib cage. What if conversation got around to those wartime experiences? What,

God forbid, if someone casually asked her where the adult Kosinskis had been during the war? The question had come up, and

he had managed to get away with vague answers. Sweden, he sometimes said. It was a big country. Some Poles must have

escaped there. Maybe they had gotten there by boat.

The way Kosinski dealt with the situation reveals a great deal about the type of intimacy that existed between mother and son. In

the course of her visit to New York, Elzbieta Kosinski met a good number of people - not only Mary and her friends, but the

Strzetelskis and members of the Polish emigre circle. They made a day trip to Long Island, where Kosinski, Mary, and his mother

spent an afternoon with Ewa Markowska and her family. Instead of shrinking from discussion of his experiences during the war,

Kosinski made a point of bringing the subject up. His mother supported his story in every particular, describing the terrible fears

she had felt for her son. On that point, everyone who met her in New York agreed.

How did he enlist her support? It is interesting to consider what arguments he must have made, if any were needed. The family

had always managed to survive by telling a lie, he might have said. Lies were an essential tool of state; not only Hitler and Stalin,

but all political leaders and all governments lied. It might be Camelot in America, but the Kosinskis were Europeans. Americans

could buy images like the Kennedy marriage and family (even the myth that Kennedy had produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning

book); Americans were innocents, but Europeans - especially worldly Central Europeans like the Kosinskis - knew better.

What was a lie anyway, and what was the truth? The minute after an event took place, it meant different things in the memory of

each individual who had witnessed or experienced it. What was art but lies - enhanced "truth," nature improved upon, whether

visually or in language. Even photographs chose the angle of representation; indeed, photographs, with their implication of

objectivity, were the biggest liars of all. Wasn't that the most basic message of the twentieth century? The truth, whether in art or

in life, was whatever worked best.

Or perhaps it wasn't necessary to make excuses for himself at all. His mother knew what he had been through in actual fact. She

had lived the same history; she was the wife of Moses Lewinkopf, who had survived the Holocaust at whatever cost. She may

have recognized the inner necessity of her son's behavior. She may well have grasped that those half-invented wartime stories

had become an important part of his personal capital.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 171-172)

And here is an even more explicit confirmation of Elzbieta Kosinski supporting

her son's lying - Sloan is describing a letter from Elzbieta Kosinski to her son,

Jerzy, in which she recounts her reactions upon first reading a German

translation of The Painted Bird:

But then, she added, she suffered from the innocence that he was not with them at that time. Writing, of course, in Polish, she

spaced the letters - Y O U W E R E N O T W I T H U S. The double-spacing might well have had the character of emphasis,

but in the context of all that is knowable of the Kosinski family during the occupation, one must conclude that this most remarkable

statement was, instead, delivered with a symbolic wink.

As extraordinary as it might appear, the most satisfactory explanation is that Elzbieta Kosinska had agreed with her son to

maintain, even in their private correspondence, the fiction that he had been separated from them.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 225)

In fact, it would not be too much to say that Kosinski's relationship with his

mother transcended her supporting his lying - it ventured into the pathological:

There is, of course, a powerfully Oedipal undertone to this constellation of affinities [...]. That this is not mere conjecture is made

clear by a conversation Kosinski had with Tadeusz Krauze, who was by then in New York as a graduate student in sociology. To

a shocked Krauze, Kosinski unburdened himself of the revelation that he would like to have sex with his own mother. Before

Krauze could respond, he added, "I would like to give her that pleasure."

Near the beginning of Blind Date, there is an episode in which the protagonist has sex with his own mother. The elderly father

suffers a stroke, and the relationship begins when mother and son both run nude to the telephone to take a call reporting on the

father's condition. After the call, mother and son find themselves in an embrace. They remain lovers for years, the relationship

bounded only by her refusal to undress specifically for her son or to allow him to kiss her on the mouth. As Blind Date is filled with

transparently autobiographical material, the episode dares the reader to believe that it is literally true.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 129-130)

Kosinski's sexual deviance is of insufficient relevance here to describe in detail.

Let us glance at just one more incident, this one having to do with a first date

with Joy Weiss (an incident reminiscent of Kosinski's attempt to debauch his

step-son by taking him on tours of sex clubs, as is recounted in the TV

documentary Sex, Lies, and Jerzy Kosinski):

Toward the end of the meal he suggested that the two of them go to Chateau Nineteen, an S-M parlor with which he seemed to be

quite familiar. She agreed on condition that she not be required to participate or remove her clothes. Once they were there, he

moved comfortably among the patrons, chatting as if at a country-club tea. He was particularly friendly with a man who worked in

the jewelry district, who was busy masturbating as they spoke.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 360-361)

An accumulation of incidents points to the conclusion that Jerzy Kosinski was

irresponsible, immature, impulsive, physically abusive toward women, and

generally reckless with the welfare of others. Below are six character-revealing

incidents which taken collectively might have long ago led Jews to write Jerzy

Kosinski off as unfit for leadership, might have long ago led Jews to conclude

that he was too unstable to be trusted as a Holocaust witness, might have long

ago led Jews to conclude that he should be shunned as someone likely to bring

ruin upon any who associated with him:

First character-revealing incident - how Kosinski attempted to elicit a declaration of love.

Meanwhile, matters had come to a crisis in the affair with Dora Militaru. He insisted that she profess her love for him, and when

she refused, he hit her repeatedly. Dora broke off the affair. Their relationship soon resumed as a friendship - in January he

would grant her his only TV interview, for Italian TV, undertaken within two years of the Village Voice episode - but his physical

assault ended their relationship as lovers.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 391)

Second character-revealing incident - how Kosinski had fun behind the wheel.

On the long straightaway crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge, he opened it up to 120, pure exhilaration for a boy who had been told

always to do things carefully, legally, and correctly. A little farther along they found themselves stuck on a two-lane road behind a

slow driver. As a man who would one day drive Formula One race cars, David was astonished at the fluidity and skill with which

Kosinski finally got around the recalcitrant ahead of him - and entertained mightily when Kosinski then slowed to a crawl and

used those skills to prevent the car from passing him. He was more than a little shocked, however, when Kosinski persisted with

the game in the face of an oncoming truck, causing the other car to run off into a ditch.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 150-151)

Third character-revealing incident - how Kosinski played a little joke on one of his students.

Kosinski looked at the young man severely. "You know, the very first time I saw you I got the feeling you were going to die

young," he said. "In the past twenty years I've had the same feeling about several people and each time I've had it, they died. Of

course, I could be wrong this time."

The young man, who was afraid of being drafted and sent to Vietnam, started to cry.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 287)

Fourth character-revealing incident - how Kosinski exposed Yale students to the intellectual contributions

of the Neo Charles Mansonists.

As part of the class, the Yale undergraduates were required to write about their own deaths. To stimulate their thinking, Kosinski

brought in members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement - a group of Satanists who arrived dressed in gray. They

saw themselves as having some sort of tenuous link with Charles Manson's Helter-Skelter family. Proselytizing in Kosinski's Yale

classroom, they urged the students to "accept and embrace evil within themselves." This notion was uncomfortably close to

Kosinski's own claim to Krystyna Iwaszkiewicz that he could achieve revenge upon his enemies because of a pact with the Devil

[...]. The classroom episode took an unexpected turn when a young Jewish student went off with the Satanists, prompting an

exchange with the student's parents over the pedagogical appropriateness of this classroom activity.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, pp. 300-301)

Fifth character-revealing incident - how Kosinski entertained his dining partners.

One day, when the three couples had planned to have dinner in the city, Rose Styron arrived first and was persuaded to be his

accomplice in a prank. Kosinski would hide in his apartment on Seventy-ninth Street, and the others would look for him. They

came, looked, failed to find, and began to grow cross; Sadri was ready for dinner, and didn't find the prank so funny. Kosinski

finally unfolded himself from behind the cabinets in his darkroom.

(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 262)

Sixth character-revealing incident - what Kosinski did to Marian Javits's dog - from which some might

conclude that Jerzy Kosinski was not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your

daughter, and not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your son - he was the kind of

man that you would not leave alone with your dog.

Marian Javits, in particular, was charmed by him, and she continued to be his friend even after his stories and eccentricities had

become familiar - this despite the fact that one of his eccentricities had to do with her dog. Lying in bed recovering from a leg

injury received while riding, she was startled when her dog ran furiously across the room, dripping urine. A moment later Kosinski

appeared at the door. Later a friend told her that Kosinski had been observed abusing the dog in a way that would engender such