Begley was born Ludwik Begleiter in Stryi, then part of the Polish Republic and now in Ukraine, the only child of a physician. Using forged identity papers that enabled them to pretend to be Polish Catholics, he and his mother survived the Nazi occupation in which many Polish Jews were killed.
He lived with his mother at first in Lwów, and then in Warsaw until the end of the August 1944 Warsaw uprising. By the time World War II ended, they were in Kraków, where they were reunited with Begley’s father.
During the school year 1945/46, Begley attended the Jan Sobieski school in Kraków. It was his first experience of formal instruction since kindergarten during the Soviet occupation of Stryi, which followed the German invasion of western Poland in 1939.

Return to Louis Begley Autograph Profile