Israel Wermuth was born on 19 October 1925, in the small town of Kołomyja, Stanislawowskie in eastern Poland (now Kolomyia in Ukraine).

In 1939, after the Red Army invaded eastern Poland, the Soviets declared the family as bourgeois, and confiscated their shop.

As the Germans swept into Poland in 1941, the 15-year-old fled eastward as his family was rounded up and sent to the Kolomyja ghetto, and then to Belzec death camp.

(His younger sister, Rut Wermuth, escaped from the Nazi train to Belzec, survived the war working under false identity as a factory worker and maid inside Germany, and was reunited with Victor in 1994.)

His second escape was more successful, and with help from the author Ilya Ehrenburg, Zorza was able to join up with a Polish Air Force unit that was being formed.

Perhaps partly in tribute to Jane's concern for the poor, Victor went to India, and lived in a remote village in the north called Lakhamandal, accessible only by a precarious hand-pulled cable car across the fast flowing Jamuna River.

[7] In 1991 Rosemary decided to part ways with Victor; his demanding schedule and international travels had preventing him from supporting her in her battle with Parkinson's disease.