Jack Tramiel was born in 1927, in the village of Lodz, Poland. A Jew, he was one of only 970 survivors of his town after the Nazi invasion, and has survived both Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen death camps.
In 1947, he emigrated to America, served in the army, and became a typewriter repairman. Then he moved up to Canada, founded Commodore Business Machines, and the rest is history.
Later on, he did leave Commodore, and bought Atari from Time Warner. But his time was really the two decades (or so) that he was with CBM, from 1962 to 1984.
In 1996 he sold Atari to a disk-drive manufacturer, JTS, which he partially owns, but does not run. (Later, JTS sold to Infogrames, but that's another matter.) He is now mostly retired, and lives in Monte Sereno, California, with his wife Helen and two Rolls-Royce automobiles. He is also known as a philanthropist, he has donated to many different Holocaust survivor funds, and also donated the stone for the Holocaust memorial in Los Gatos, California.