Czesław Miłosz (30 June, 1911 – 14 August, 2004) was a poet, writer and translator from Poland.
1) Originally born under the flag of the Russian Empire, the village of Szetejnie is now part of Lithuania.
2) During World War II, Mr. Miłosz was in Warsaw, which was ruled by Nazi Germany.
3) After the war, Mr. Miłosz was appointed as Poland’s cultural attaché to Washington DC and Paris.
4) In 1951 Mr. Miłosz defected to the West. In 1970 he because a US citizen.
5) Mr. Miłosz’s book The Captive Mind (1953), a study on how intellectuals behave under totalitarian governments, is a staple in political science course.
6) In 1978 he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and in 1980 the Nobel Prize in Literature.
7) Books and works by the author where banned in his home country of Poland, the first time many Poles heard of him was when he won the Noble Prize.
8) Mr. Miłosz is recognized in 1989 as a Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem, Israel for his role in helping four Jews escape Warsaw during World War II.
9) After his death, protesters in Kraków, Poland threatened to disrupt his funeral because he was an “anti-Polish, anti-Catholic, and had signed a petition supporting gay and lesbian freedom of speech and assembly”
Zohar — Man of la Book
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