Their prosperity allowed Marian, and his younger brother, Kazimierz, to attend the best private school for boys, sponsored by the city's merchants' club, Zgromadzenie Kupców Miasta Łodzi.
[1] During the Second Polish Republic Brandys graduated in Law from Warsaw University and worked in the courts before the 1939 invasion of Poland.
He took part in the September Campaign as the commander of a mounted platoon of machine guns for the Independent Operational Group Polesie led by General Franciszek Kleeberg.
Brandys published his first book during the Stalinist era, the propagandist Początek opowieści (The Beginning of a Story) about the factory workers of Nowa Huta.
[1] He was the elder brother of the far more popular Polish writer, Kazimierz Brandys, author of the heart-wrenching Miasto niepokonane (Unconquered City) about the two Warsaw Uprisings during World War II.