POLAND: Across the Line

Marek Hlasko was seven years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. He was 13 when the Communists took over. He worked as a bellboy in a Warsaw hotel, put in six years as a taxi driver. Out of his experiences he wrote savagely realistic short stories that made Polish Reds wince. A tall, blond, flop-haired youngster who resembled the late Hollywood hero, James Dean, Hlasko headed a coterie that was analogous to Britain's Angry Young Men and the Beat Generation of the U.S. The difference was that Hlasko had more to be beat about—a fact that gave his work...