His family moved first to Kościelna Wieś in the historical Kujawy region and then to Rękawczyn, Greater Poland, where his father bought an estate after World War I. Waldorff spent his childhood there, in a manor house at the end of an avenue bordered with 100-year-old lime trees.

He was also active in the social support organization called Rada Główna Opiekuńcza (Central Welfare Council), the only cross-country network allowed to function legally under the German administration with some financial aid from the authorities.

After the liberation, due to wartime annihilation of Warsaw, Waldorff settled in Kraków between 1946 and 1950, where he wrote for the popular magazine Przekrój.

Waldorff put on paper and elaborated the unwritten memoir of his own friend, the Polish eminent pianist Władysław Szpilman, titled Death of the City (Śmierć miasta), first published in 1946.

[7] In the introduction to the first edition of his book Waldorff informed the reader that he wrote the story told to him by Szpilman "as closely as he could", and that he used his brief notes in the process.

The latest edition was slightly expanded and printed under a different title, The Pianist, in line with the 2002 screen version by Polanski, but without a single mention of Jerzy Waldorff as its author, which prompted Henryk Grynberg to question its legality.

[1] After his death, Waldorff's friends organized the lobbying, so the City Council could give one of the streets in Warsaw his name, which triggered a substantial controversy.