André Tchaikowsky

André Tchaikowsky (also Andrzej Czajkowski; born Robert Andrzej Krauthammer; November 1, 1935 – June 26, 1982) was a Polish composer and pianist. In addition to his musical work, he is also notable for bequeathing his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use as Yorick in Hamlet. Life and career Robert Andrzej Krauthammer was born in Warsaw in 1935 into a Jewish family. He had shown musical talent from an early age, and his mother, an amateur pianist, taught him the piano from the age of four. When the Second World War broke out, they were moved into the Warsaw Ghetto. Krauthammer remained there until 1942, when he was smuggled out and provided with forged identity papers that renamed him Andrzej Czajkowski. He then went into hiding with his grandmother, Celina. The pair remained hidden until 1944, when they were caught up in the Warsaw Uprising, and they were then sent to Pruszków transit camp as ordinary Polish citizens, from which they were released in 1945. Tchaikowsky’s father, Karl Krauthammer, also survived the war, and remarried, producing a daughter, Katherine, later Krauthammer-Vogt. Tchaikowsky’s mother, Felicja Krauthammer (née Rappaport) was confined in the Warsaw