Tsafendas was familiar with politics from an early age. Several members of his family were Cretan rebels during the Great Cretan Revolution (1866-1869), while his father was a passionate anarchist. At the age of 16, Tsafendas began to work at various jobs. and was dismissed from one of them "owing to his Communist leanings" and after he was suspected of being "engaged in disseminating Communistic propaganda." When he was 20, the Portuguese security police, PIDE, opened a file on Tsafendas after discovering that he had twice distributed Communist propaganda. In 1939, Tsafendas entered South Africa illegally and joined the South African Communist Party. He became a seaman in the US merchant marine in 1941 and served aboard American ships during the Second World War. While in the United States, Tsafendas became a member of a religious sect known as the Christian Church.