Emanuel Schlechter

Emanuel Schlechter (born 9 October 1904, Lwów – died November 11, 1943, also: Szlechter, Olgierd Lech) was a Polish-Jewish artist, lyricist, screenwriter, librettist, writer, satirist, translator, composer and director, and occasional actor. He was one of the most influential creators of interwar Polish popular music in the 1930s, whose songs became deeply embedded in Polish language and culture. He was also the author of the famed “Tango of Death”, according to Simon Weisenthal, the famed Janowska survivor, and who captured Adolf Eichmann Biography Emanuel Schlechter was born in Lwów, then part of Austria-Hungary and later interwar Poland, into a Polonized Jewish family. His father Jakub Szlechter worked as a house painter. His family lived in modest conditions in the Zamarstynów district of Lwów. His brother was Emil Henryk Schlechter, a famed lawyer in Paris and expert of Assyria He attended the prestigious State Gymnasium named after Hetman Stanisław Żółkiewski in Lwów, graduating in 1923 with a “sufficient” result in his matura examinations. During his school years, he developed early literary and performance interests, and according to later recollections, he was already acti