Jan Dobraczynski was born in Warsaw in 1910, and was educated both at school and university there. His first book "Bernanos the Novelist" was published in 1937. At the outbreak of war he fought as a captain in the cavalry and was wounded. He subsequently spent the war years in political underground activity, being co-editor of two underground periodicals. He was taken prisoner in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and had been sent to Belsen and other concentration camps. During World War II, as the head of the Division for Abandoned Children at the Warsaw municipal welfare department, Jan Dobraczynski helped Zegota activists place Jewish children in convents. On his release in 1945 he returned to Poland and spent his life in Warsaw, where he died in 1994. He held the rank of general in the Polish military.He has written over 50 novels, one play, 4 tales, 24 studies, and essays. His greatest successes have been "The Letters of Nicodemus", "The Shadow of the Father", "God's Miser", and "Jesus Christ and His Apostles". Several of his books have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, and Italian.