Richard Krygier

Henry Richard Krygier OBE (1917–1986), was a Polish-born Jewish Australian anti-communist publisher and journalist, and a founder of Quadrant magazine.

Education and career

He was born in 1917 in Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and as a law student was active in student politics at the Józef Piłsudski (Warsaw) University. His early sympathies with communism were shattered by events such as the Soviet purges of the 1930s and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and he remained a vigorous lifelong anti-communist.[1]

In 1939, he and his wife, Roma, escaped to Kaunas, Lithuania, where they obtained Japanese transit visas. They reached Sydney, via Vladivostok, Japan and Shanghai, in 1941.[1] In Sydney, he was active in Polish journalism and import-export businesses.[1]

Krygier's anti-totalitarian, liberal, democratic perspective led him to sympathies with the international Congress for Cultural Freedom, founded in West Berlin in 1950. In 1954, he formed and became secretary of its Australian arm, the Australian Committee (later Association) for Cultural Freedom.[1]

The Association's principal achievement, as well as his, was the creation in 1956 of the literary-political magazine Quadrant, under the editorship of James McAuley.[2] Krygier was publisher, business manager and fund-raiser. In addition, he organised lecture tours of prominent overseas political and cultural figures and conferences on the problems on establishing democracy in developing states.[1]

He remained active in Quadrant up to his death in 1986.[3] For the last four years of his life, he wrote a regular Quadrant column, but he had contributed a few other pieces to the magazine before then.

Personal life

He married Romualda (Roma) Halpern in Warsaw in 1939.[1]

They had two children, a daughter and a son, Martin Krygier (born 1949) who is the Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at the University of New South Wales.[4]

References
  1. Peter Coleman, "Krygier, Henry Richard (1917–1986)", Dictionary of Australian Biography, anu.edu. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  2. Rafe Champion, Quadrant Magazine: The McAuley Years, the-rathouse.com. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  3. Martin Krygier, "The usual suspects: 'Quadrant' at 50", The Monthly, December 2006 - January 2007. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  4. Clarence Ling, Martin Krygier's Contribution to the Rule of Law", The Western Australian Jurist, Vol. 4, p. 211. Retrieved 6 October 2020.

Further reading
  • Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe, New York 1989.
  • Various authors, "Tributes to Richard Krygier", in: Quadrant, vol. 30, no. 11, November 1986.
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