She was born in Zadworze near Lwow (now Lviv) in Eastern Poland to Ludwik and Antonina (née Frysz) Munk.
She went directly from school to the city's Jagiellonian University to study biology, but the following year, 1933, she changed her course to medicine, receiving an "absolutorium" (certificate of completion) in 1938.
[2] Following the Soviet occupation of the area, she returned to Athens via Hungary and Romania, traveling from there to Marseille, where the Polish Consulate found her a medical post on the Polish merchant ship, SS Warszawa, which transported troops and weapons across the Mediterranean.
[1] She reached England in April 1942 on a naval convoy, and went to Scotland in May where she joined the Polish School of Medicine in order to complete her studies.
[3] She stayed in Edinburgh after the war as a GP, and married the naval architect Symington McDonald.