 Waszyński was born as Mosze Waks into a Polish Jewish family as Michał Waks in 1904 in Kowel, a small town in Volhynia (now in Ukraine), which at the time was part of Imperial Russia.As Germany occupied this part of Europe during World War I, he moved first to Warsaw and later to Berlin.As a young man he worked as an assistant director of the legendary German director F.W.