And so it was widely received. Reviewing the book for the New York Times Book Review, Elie Wiesel said, "It is as a chronicle that The Painted Bird . . . achieves its unusual power." Other critics described it as "semi-autobiographical" or a "testament," praising its historical value. As late as 1976, in a preface to the second edition, Kosinski continued to prevaricate. He never said outright that the book was not an autobiography. The reason he rejected the label, he said, was that he did not wish to be cast "in the role of spokesman for my generation, especially for those who survived the war." Even so, anyone who "bothered to refer to actual source materials" would find that he "was not overstating the brutality and cruelty that characterized the war years in Eastern Europe." He even quoted a death camp commandant to establish that the theme of his book was true to the experience of all Jewish children under the Nazis: "The rule was to kill children right away." And then he repeated the story he had told so many times before: to save him, his own parents had sent him away to live among strangers, just like the unnamed boy in The Painted Bird.
The trouble is, it wasn't true. And yet the truth about Jerzy Kosinski, as set forth in this new biography by James Park Sloan, may be even more fascinating ...
for more read: Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography.