Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924 in Lwow (or Lvov), a city that was located in Eastern Poland and that later became a part of the Ukraine. Herbert was the son of a banker and professor, and the grandson of an Englishman, thus accounting for Herbert's very English surname. He was not even fifteen years old in 1939 when the Red Army invaded his city, as part of an agreement with Hitler. By 1941, when Nazis invaded the city, Herbert's city had become a concentration camp. Eventually Herbert joined the underground Polish Home Army and became actively involved in an anti-Soviet resistance movement after the Soviets recaptured Lwow in 1944, which was then annexed to the Soviet Union. After most of the Polish Home Army died during the Warsaw massacre of 1944, Herbert moved to Krakow, where he began his studies in law and philosophy at the University of Krakow...