Ryszard Bilan was born in 1946 in Krakow. He comes from the assimilated Jewish family. Ryszard’s parents survived World War II in Lodz, being in possession of Aryan papers. They came from Stanisławów (presently Ukraine). Following World War II, Ryszard moved with his parents to Kłodzko where his father ran an upholstery workshop. In the effect of her traumatic experiences during the Nazi occupation, Ryszard’s mother got a psychiatric decease and was placed in a psychiatric hospital – the contacts between her and her son ceased to exist. His father employed a Christian woman to take care of the boy. The woman came from Central Poland. She became Ryszard’s foster mother. He used to spend much time in the village of Żytkowice, in the house of the woman’s family whom – as he says – he had adopted by himself. Soon, however, Ryszard remained alone. His father died of TB, and her foster mother had severed off her contacts with him. As a teenager, he had to fight for survival: he experienced hunger and loneliness; to survive, he used to sell cuckoo clocks found on the attics of the post-German houses in Kłodzko.
He was placed in an orphanage where he experienced some stability for the first time in his life. He began education at the vocational school specialising in progressing glass and crystals (he obtained a diploma of a grinder) and found employment in a glass factory. He lived in the so-called House of the Young Worker where he was confronted with the habits of the workers’ community, full of vulgarity, brutality and alcoholism. He was an alien among them; he was not addicted neither to tobacco nor to alcohol. He began education in a technical college upon the recommendation of a German teacher. He had passed final examinations. He was appointed a clerk at the Sales Department. He planned to study economy, and to develop his artistic passions. His plans for future had been disrupted by the events of March 1968. In 1967, after the outbreak of the Six-Day War, he experienced anti-Semitism for the first time in his life. He became an object of growing curiosity and subtle hints.
In 1968, he continued to live in the House of Young Worker, together with other workers from the glass factory in Szczytna. At that time, he was subjected to psychological and physical violence which was a consequence of the anti-Semitic smear campaign. “At that time, anybody could spit me in the eye; everybody could humiliate me, and I had support from nowhere. There was nobody to help me. Neither the State nor any religious institution which was obliged to preserve a certain moral order, to protect humanity. Then, anybody could do to me anything he or she wanted. Nobody would get interested in my fate. I wanted to be a human being, to be a Polish man. After all, I was brought up here, in this land, was I not?” – he deliberates. He and his wife made a decision to immigrate. They went by train to Vienna; he wanted to go to America while she wanted to go to Israel where she had a family. After their arrival in Israel, they had been directed to Akko and provided with an accommodation. They intensively learned Hebrew. Ryszard Bilan passed entrance examinations to the Technical University and to the artistic high school.
Presently, Ryszard Bilam lives in Paris. Today he describes himself as “a man with no past”. “I had a terrible life but I did not want to immigrate. I would have never immigrated for financial reasons. One had to be very brave to stay and one had to be very brave to leave”, he underlines.