Simcha Nornberg was born on July 18, 1918, in Nowe Brzesko, a small Jewish town near Crakow, to Hadassa and Nathan, into a poor religious family. He received a traditional education in Heder and Talmud Torah. Nornberg graduated in 1937 from HaGymnasia HaIvrit in Crakow, where he started painting. He also began his study of law at the Jagiellonian University, playing a leading role in Zionist movements. At the beginning of WWII, he moved to the eastern part of Poland, which was controlled by the Soviet Union, and organized the Zionist youth in Lvov. In 1940, Nornberg was declared an “enemy of the people” and sentenced to prison with hard labor in Soviet camps, where he refused to work on Yom Kippur. His paintings, done for the wife of the prison-camp commander, saved his life. Most of his family had remained in the German-controlled part of Poland and perished in the Holocaust. His older sister, Genia Weinstein, was saved by Oscar Schindler and lives today in New Heaven.