Janusz Minkiewicz was a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 writer, translator, journalist and satirist.

Born in St. Petersburg, he graduated from the faculty of philosophy of the Warsaw University. Active in various journals, he was considered one of the heirs to the Skamander

Skamander

Skamander was a Polish group of experimental poets founded in 1918 by Julian Tuwim, Antoni Słonimski, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Kazimierz Wierzyński and Jan Lechoń....

 group of poets. In 1939 he fled Nazi-occupied part of Poland to Vilna, then under Lithuanian occupation, where in 1940 (after the Soviet take-over of the city) he ran a satirical theatre, as well as the "Ksantypa" cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 in Biały Sztral cafe

House of the Signatories

The House of the Signatories is a Lithuanian historic landmark in Pilies Street, Vilnius, where on February 16, 1918, the Act of Independence of Lithuania was signed by twenty members of the Council of Lithuania....

. Following the German take-over of the city in 1941 he moved back to Warsaw, where he collaborated with numerous officially-approved theatres. After the war he became a noted translator of literature, mostly Russian. He collaborated with satiric journals Szpilki, Przekrój

Przekrój

Przekrój is the oldest Polish weekly newsmagazine, established in 1945 in Krakow and since 2001 published in Warsaw. Przekrój was created by M. Eile who, until 1969, was the first editor-in-chief of the magazine...

and Cyrulik Warszawski.