Daniel Passent

Daniel Passent was born in 1938 in Stanisławów, a Polish city that is now part of Ukraine. He was a Jewish child who was saved from the Holocaust by a Polish family. He studied journalism at the University of Warsaw, Princeton University, and Harvard University. He started his journalistic career in 1956 in Sztandar Młodych, a communist youth magazine. He also wrote satirical texts for a student comedy group, where he met his first wife, Agnieszka Osiecka, a poet and lyricist. They had a daughter, Agata, who also became a journalist. Since 1959, he worked for Polityka, a Polish weekly magazine, where he wrote columns, articles, and blogs on various topics, such as politics, culture, and sports. He also wrote several books, such as Vietnam: A War Without Fronts, Munich '72: The Olympic Games of Terror, The American Drug Problem, and Wojtek Fibak: The World Class Tennis Player. He also translated works by James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. into Polish. He spoke Polish, English, German, Spanish, and Russian. From 1990 to 1997, he was a correspondent in Boston for a Spanish monthly magazine, El Diario Mundial. From 1997 to 2002, he served as the Polish ambassador to Chile. He received the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1997. He died in 2022 at the age of 83. He was known for his sharp wit, critical views, and liberal opinions. He was one of the most influential and respected journalists in Poland.