I was one of a group of art students that created an exhibit of illustrations based on the widely acclaimed Holocaust novel The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski.

This show in the early 1970s caught the eye of Kosinski and he participated by giving an address to students at the School of Visual Arts about his childhood experiences in Nazi occupied Poland.

My exhibit piece was selected and adapted as this promtional poster to advertise the exhibit and lecture.
This earned me a lunch date with Kosinski. As a young art student, I was awed by his stories and personal accounts of the war.
Ironically, after years of "eluding the Nazis", Kosinski was almost murdered by the Charles Manson Family in 1969.
He was an expected guest at Sharon Tate's home on the weekend the Manson Family broke in and murdered everyone. Only a flight delay saved Kosinski's life.

Years later, it was revealed that most of Kosinski's war tales were fabricated and his books were penned by others. Discredited by literary and academic circles, he committed suicide in 1991.