Jerzy Iwanow-Szajnowicz was born in Warsaw on 14 December 1911, as the son of the Russian army colonel Count Vladimir Ivanov, and a Polish mother.

[1] Iwanow also graduated from the University of Louvain in agricultural engineering, followed by post-graduate courses at the École nationale supérieure d'agriculture coloniale in Paris, before returning to Greece.

[2] Fleeing the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, he left the country for the Middle East, to join the exiled Polish forces there.

His subsequent activity in the Greek underground was prodigious: apart from establishing an extensive intelligence network for the Allies reporting on the military and political situation in Greece, on the Greek war industry, now used by the Germans, and on ship and railway schedules, he engaged in numerous sabotage missions.

[2][3] On 5 December 1944, Field Marshal Harold Alexander, Allied Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, sent a diploma of thanks to his mother, while on 30 March 1945, the Polish government in exile honoured Iwanow with the Virtuti Militari cross.

In April 2021, Poland issued a postal stamp honoring Iwanow, which was initiated by the Polish-Greek Parliamentary Group.