Born to a family of Jewish extraction in Russia and raised in Egypt, he studied in Paris and lived in the United States before the outbreak of the war.

He was a junior wrestling and boxing champion in his youth, and has been described as a "giant of a man.

He was dropped in the wrong place[1] and became a radio operator for the SPINDLE network (codename "Arnaud"), with Peter Churchill and Odette Sansom, and managed to evade capture when that network collapsed.

[2] Because he was a Jew, he was deported to Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Poland, where he was gassed.

[3] Peter Churchill dedicated his book Duel of Wits to "my beloved Arnaud, the late Captain Alec Rabinovitch, a violent, difficult, devoted and heroic radio operator, and through him to all 'underground' men and women of his supreme calibre who died, as they lived, in solitude.