Early Life
Moor-Jankowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in Częstochowa. His father was an engineer and an architect, and his mother a concert pianist. When his mother's cousin developed cancer, at the age of five, Moor-Jankowski decided that he wanted to be a research physician in order to find a cure.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Moor-Jankowski joined the Polish Army, at the age of 15, and his family moved back to Warsaw. When Poland was overrun, the family moved back to Częstochowa. With the Polish schools closed by the Nazis, he obtained a high school diploma without official government recognition.
When his father disappeared in 1942, Moor-Jankowski joined the Polish Resistance. He would later write that he wanted something of himself to carry on, and so he fathered a son, Tadeusz, who was born in 1942. He saw the child once, when he was two weeks old, but did not see him again for 35 years.
Moor-Jankowski was fighting in Warsaw uprising. He was injured by an explosive bullet in his knee, and he was forced to move from hospital to hospital, pretending to be a German officer in order to survive. Eventually, his impersonation was discovered, and he was imprisoned by the Germans, and then later by the Soviets. He finally escaped to Switzerland, where he earned a medical degree.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)