He was born in 1917 in Warsaw , of Jewish parents , and as a law student was active in student politics at the Józef Piłsudski ( Warsaw ) University . His early sympathies with communism were shattered by events such as the Soviet purges of the 1930s and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and he remained a vigorous lifelong anti-communist . In 1939 , he and his wife , Roma , escaped to Kaunas , Lithuania , where they obtained Japanese transit visas . They reached Sydney , via Vladivostok , Japan and Shanghai , in 1941 . In Sydney , he was active in Polish journalism and import-export businesses
Soviet purges of the 1930s
Great Purge
Richard Krygier