From Australia’s Jewish past
Henryk Ryszard (Richard) Krygier – publisher, journalist, and businessman
Richard Krygier
Henryk Ryszard was born on 9 September 1917 in Warsaw and was known throughout his life as Richard. He was the elder son of Jewish parents, Benedykt, a timber merchant, and his wife, Flora.
He studied law at the Jozef Pilsudski (Warsaw) University, where he was elected chairman of the Jewish students’ protest committee, which in 1938 successfully campaigned against the exclusion from examinations of Jewish students who refused to sit in the officially segregated `ghetto benches.’ He graduated in 1939.
On 8 January 1939, Richard married Roma in Warsaw. By September that year, the Polish Command ordered all able-bodied young men to walk to the nearest army recruiting centre. Richard, unable to find the army recruitment centre, walked and hitch-hiked to Lithuania. Roma joined him, and they settled in Kaunas. Roma had been a member of the Polish Communist Party, which Richard sympathised with. Their political faith, already shaken by the Moscow trials of the `Old Bolsheviks’ during the years of 1936 to 1938, was shattered by the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939, the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union and their experience of Sovietisation in Lithuania from June 1940. Richard and Roma managed to obtain Japanese transit visas and travelled by train to Vladivostok and then by ship to Japan. Their visas would not have been possible without the tireless work of Chiune Sugihara, then a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. His amazing work in issuing thousands of visas and defying the Japanese government provided an opportunity for Jews to flee to freedom. The couple lived in a hostel in Kobe for several weeks, until they were both appointed to the Polish Relief Committee in Tokyo.
Nine months later, Richard and Roma left for Australia via Shanghai, arriving in Sydney on 21 November 1941, just before the Pearl Harbour attack in December. As was the case, finding work was not easy and, after eighteen months, Richard became a waiter in the well-known restaurant of the times – Romano’s in Stanley Street, Darlinghurst. He then moved on to become the correspondent for the Polish Telegraphic Agency in London, the position otherwise known as the Polish Consulate Press Officer in Sydney. He was responsible for writing and distributing news releases in support of the Polish government (in exile) in London. He also served as a war correspondent for the Polish press in the Netherlands East Indies and the Philippines. This role was his lead-in to Sydney newspapers, journalists, and Australian politics. Richard supported the Australian Labor Party and, in 1947, he became an Australian citizen.
In July 1945, the Warsaw Postwar Communist Government closed the consulate office. Richard and his Polish boss from Japan had established a business, known as K Zyngol & Co Pty Ltd, which exported food and clothing parcels to Europe. Richard established a second business – Vistual (Aust) Pty Ltd – which imported European books and magazines, which then amalgamated with Overseas Periodicals (Aust) Pty Ltd. At varying times, he held the positions of chair of the board of directors and managing director.
Richard’s youth, especially with the loss of his home country, his survival of the Holocaust and the Gulag, produced in him a democratic, anti-totalitarian perspective that the years would deepen. It attracted him, particularly to the liberal internationalist Congress for Cultural Freedom, which one hundred intellectuals, mainly refugees from Hitler and Stalin, had formed in Berlin in June 1950. He became its honorary `Australian representative’, that is, distributor (and sometimes translator) of its publication. In 1954, Richard established the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom and served as its secretary for 32 years, quite a feat. This was an organisation of difficult intellectuals, and keeping them together depended largely on his great qualities of selflessness and modesty. Under the chairmanship (1954-61) of Sir John Greig Latham, an Australian lawyer, politician, and judge who served as the fifth Chief Justice of Australia, the committee’s principal activities were judicious statements on such matters as the reform of laws on immigration, censorship, defamation, and Aborigines, and occasionally on wider issues ranging from South African apartheid to Soviet oppression. It also published a bulletin, Free Spirit, which debated these issues in a livelier, journalistic style.
In 1956, Richard’s and the Australian Committee’s greatest achievement was the creation of the literary political magazine, known as Quadrant, together with Australian academic, poet, journalist and literary critic James McAuley. The magazine started as a quarterly and later became a monthly, publishing poetry, fiction, cultural criticism, and political essays of literary quality. James was the editor, and Richard was the publisher, business manager, and fundraiser, as well as a contributor and `ideas man’.
He arranged lecture tours for academics, poets and novelists and overseas exhibitions for artists, including John Olsen in Paris and Peter Laverty in Tokyo. He organised several international conferences on the problems of establishing constitutional or democratic institutions in developing states. In 1962, he organised a major conference in Sydney on the role of ‘little magazines’, which brought editors of these publications from the United States of America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
It was revealed in the 1960s that the US Central Intelligence Agency had funded Congress for Cultural Freedom, and that some of this money had trickled down to the Australian association and the magazine Quadrant. There was no evidence that funds had been received, but the idea that it may have been possible was deplorable. In subsequent years, Richard ensured that all funding was open, transparent, and Australian.
Richard was awarded an OBE in 1981 for services to the publishing industry and the community. He died of cancer on 27 September 1986 at Double Bay. He was survived by his wife, daughter, and son. Richard remained active in Quadrant until his passing. In the last four years of his life, he wrote a regular Quadrant column. Roma passed away on 20 August 1999.
Tributes in the November 1986 edition of Quadrant emphasised not only his civic courage and contribution to Australian intellectual life but also the warmth of his personality. Peter Coleman AM, a family friend who delivered the eulogy at Richard’s funeral, spoke of him as ‘a great romantic, a dreamer of plans to save the world. He was a brave man, an unshakable optimist and had a gift for friendship, notably with young people. He was a complex man, convivial and sometimes a loner, both easy-going as well as stubborn, idealistic, and shrewd, modest, proud, absent-minded, and sharp as a tack, dignified and informal.’
A colleague, Heinz Arndt, found him `invariably cheerful, imperturbably optimistic, and completely secure in his convictions’. Sir Zelman Cowen and Owen Harries, Australian foreign-policy intellectual and founding editor of The National Interest magazine, described his capacity for warm friendship. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a US national security advisor, noted that his commitment to democracy was `a life-long epic’.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Martin Krygier – Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory, University of New South Wales; Australian Dictionary of Biography; Richard Krygier’s eulogy – Peter Coleman AM; Wikipedia; Australian National University; Interview by JDB Miller, National Library of Australia; Quadrant Magazine. The Liberal Conspiracy, by Peter Coleman, on the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe, was dedicated to Roma and Richard Krygier.
The Australian Jewish Historical Society is the keeper of archives from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 to the present day. Whether you are searching for an academic resource, an event, a picture or an article, AJHS can help you find that piece of historical material. The AJHS welcomes your contributions to the archives. If you are a descendant of someone of interest with a story to share, or you have memorabilia that may be of significance to our archives, please contact us via www.ajhs.com.au or [email protected].
From Australia’s Jewish past is edited by Ruth Lilian
