Background
He was born into a Russian-Polish family.
He was born into a Russian-Polish family.
Igor Newerly lost one leg as a child. In 1924 he emigrated illegally to the newly independent Poland and was active in the field of pedagogy in Warsaw. He worked together with the renowned educator Janusz Korczak, and in 1926 became his secretary.
He helped Janusz Korczak at his Orphanage and saved his diary of martyrdom.
Newerly was arrested at the beginning of 1943 by the German Gestapo and imprisoned at Pawiak in Warsaw. Until the end of the war he was an inmate of Nazi concentration camps: Majdanek, Auschwitz, Oranienburg and Bergen Belsen where he was liberated.
After the war in 1945 he resumed a pedagogical career. Based on Newerly"s novel Pamiątka z Celulozy (A Souvenir from the Cellulose Mill), the Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz made two films: Celuloza (Cellulose Mill) and Pod gwiazdą frygijską (Under the Phrygian Star).
Król Maciuś I, 1957
Pod gwiazdą frygijską
Celuloza, 1953.
He studied law at Kiev University but he was relegated for political reasons, arrested and sent to Odessa. From 1932 to 1939 Newerly worked for Mały Przegląd (Little Review).
Under the Nazi German occupation of Poland Newerly was a member of the Polish resistance.