page_title: Janusz Żurakowski
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Janusz Żurakowski / Early life
caption_attribution_description: PZL P.7 Polish fighter
context_page_description: Janusz Żurakowski was a Polish fighter and test pilot. At various times in his life he lived and worked in Poland, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
context_section_description: Żurakowski was born in 1914 to Polish parents in Ryzawka, which had been a city of the Russian Empire since 1793 when it was removed from Poland in the Second Partition. In 1921, following the Polish-Soviet War, the Treaty of Riga established the frontier between Soviet Russia and the Second Polish Republic. The new border placed Ryzawka in Soviet territory. So the Żurakowski family left their home and escaped into the newly established Polish Republic.
  Żurakowski was educated at a high school in Lublin, where he learned to fly gliders. In 1934, he joined the Polish Air Force and entered the Polish Air Force Officers' School. After learning to fly powered aircraft, he graduated in 1935 as a sub-lieutenant. He went on to serve as a fighter pilot posted to 161 Fighter Squadron in Lwów, and in 1939 he served as a flying instructor at Dęblin.
caption: PZL P.7
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "600", "Image ImageLength": "347", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "4", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:10:24 13:07:47", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "386", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4808", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "347"}