Oyzer Warshawsky was born in Sochaczew, Poland, in 1898. He moved to Warsaw as a young man where he began to work on his

first novel, Smugglers. The book was published when he was only twenty-one and was an outstanding success, highly acclaimed by the critics and an instant best seller. It went into many editions. His second eagerly awaited novel, Harvest Time, was published in 1926 in Paris where he had made his home. The book disappointed his readers and, crushed by the critics’ cool response, Warshawsky gave up writing novels and became an art critic. In 1941 he fled Nazi-occupied Paris for Marseilles, then escaped to Nice and finally to Rome where his hiding place was discovered by the Gestapo. He was murdered in Auschwitz in May 1944.