Moshe Ze'ev Flinker was born in the Netherlands, one of the seven children in a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family of Polish origins. During World War II the Flinkers fled to Belgium and lived there under false identities to hide from the Nazis. Moshe was deeply religious and a gifted linguist. He planned to move to Palestine and become a diplomat, and studied Arabic for this purpose. He kept a diary while in hiding, from 1942 to 1943.

The Flinker family was betrayed in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz, where Moshe and his parents were gassed. He was seventeen years old. His younger brother and five sisters survived, and published his diary after the war.