Professor Hurwicz was born in Moscow, Russia to a Jewish family a few months before the October Revolution. His family is Polish and had lived in Congress Kingdom (the part of Poland then in the Russian Empire) but they moved to Russia to escape World War I. Soon after Professor Hurwicz was born, the family returned to Warsaw, in Poland. Hurwicz and his family were treated very badly by the Bolsheviks and Nazis because they were Jewish. He became a refugee again when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. His parents and brother ran away to Russia where they were arrested by the Soviets and sent to labor camps. Hurwicz was forced to move to Switzerland, then to Portugal and finally in 1940 he moved to the United States. His family joined him there after some time.