Rzewuski finished a gimnazjum in Łódź in 1934 and between 1934 and 1939 studied chemistry in Lwów and Gdańsk. From the start of the German occupation of Poland until 1942 he worked in the cotton industry in Łódź as an ordinary worker. In the next two years he studied theoretical physics in a secret underground (Poles were forbidden to study past the elementary level during the German occupation) university organized by the University of Warsaw.