His grandfather Józef Newerly, was a Czech national, who held a title Master of the Hunt (Russian: Ловчий, Polish: Łowczy) at the court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
He studied law at Kiev University but he was relegated for political reasons, arrested and sent to Odessa.
In 1924 he emigrated illegally to the newly independent Poland and was active in the field of pedagogy in Warsaw.
He also hid from Nazi persecution several of his Jewish colleagues from Nasz Przegląd daily[1] – among them Kuba Hersztein – and transported Lejzor Czarnobroda to Warsaw after he escaped from the train to Treblinka and broke his leg.
Until the end of the war he was an inmate of Nazi concentration camps: Majdanek, Auschwitz, Oranienburg and Bergen Belsen where he was liberated.