The death of Jonasz Kofta is still a mystery. They thought he was joking, but he was dying

As Jeremi Przybora used to say, Kofta was one of the “three bards of Polish song”, alongside Agnieszka Osiecka and Wojciech Młynarski. “Anyone Can Sing”, “Remember the Gardens” and “Holidays with a Blonde” are just a few of the hits he wrote. He knew as a teenager that he would be an artist.

Jonasz Kofta almost got kicked out of high school for drinking alcohol. Years later the problem returned

He was born Janusz Kaftal and came from Volhynia. A few months after his birth, his parents took him away from his hometown to escape the massacre. He graduated from an art high school in Poznań and began abusing alcohol at the age of 18. According to Onet, during one of the school camps he got so drunk that he was found unconscious and he was almost thrown out of school. Fortunately, he had great skills that saved him from expulsion, and soon he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

It was there that he met his first wife. Even though they were both in different relationships at the time, there was a spark. “We met for the first time on the steps of Dziekanki. We both stood there and he gave me a lollipop with a flower inside. My boyfriend had a terrible argument with me about the lollipop,” Jaga Kofta later said. “Then we ran into each other in September, in Sandomierz. He with his fiancée, I with the same guy. And somehow it happened that they left us and we started dating,” she added.

During his studies, Kofta also met Jan Pietrzak. They met at the bus stop. “He was very funny, he smoked a pipe and talked a lot. Since he was going to study in Warsaw, I invited him to the Hybrydy Club,” recalls Jan Pietrzak, quoted in “Rzeczpospolita”. Together with Adam Kreczmar, Janusz Tadeusz Stanisławski, Stefan Friedman and Wojciech Młynarski, they created the “Hybrydy” cabaret, which a few years later changed into the famous Kabaret Pod Egidą.

Kofta had many talents, but also an extraordinary personality. He quickly won people over. “He was able to find poetry where a normal person would think there was none,” said Jaga Kofta, wife of Jonasz Kofta, in Lidia Nowicka’s program on Polish Radio. In turn, Piotr Kofta, the artist’s son, told in interviews that his father was ruled by whims and impulses, which caused him to waste money. His alcohol problem also kept recurring.

He was an outstanding artist. He died in mysterious circumstances

He had been drinking away his problems since his teenage years. “He drank when he felt bad,” his son said. The artist seemed to have control over his addiction. In 1982, Kofta was diagnosed with cancer, but he managed to beat the disease. Unfortunately, not without consequences. The radiation damaged the skin on his face and his esophagus. Kofta became depressed and could not eat anything except mashed potatoes. The rock revolution caused him to fade into the background.

“He was looking for death, but he couldn’t solve the case himself,” said Piotr Kofta. The artist ate less and less, but he did not give up drinking. According to Onet, he started disappearing from home and did not return for weeks. After a few years, he appeared at SPATiF, where he had an interview. He arrived at the agreed place earlier and ordered the usual food. Kofta’s larynx did not function properly and the artist choked. The media report that people sitting around the poet thought he was joking. And Kofta was dying.

Piotr Kofta, in an interview with Viva, recalls that his father met his friends at SPATiF. However, he emphasizes that the circumstances of the artist’s death have never been precisely explained. “We had no one to talk to about it, because suddenly it turned out that there were no witnesses, even though the place was full. There were some wild legends circulating, most of them made up,” he declares. Kofta fell into a coma and in the hospital he was diagnosed with brain stem damage. He died on April 19, 1988 at the age of 46.