Harry Kogan was born March 11, 1916 to poor Russian immigrant parents in the Jewish ghetto of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kogan sometimes walked to school shoeless, with no hat nor a raincoat. A treat would be his mother handing him ten-cents to go to the theater and enjoy a silent movie. After graduating from high school in 1933, Kogan quickly took one of the rare jobs available in a garment manufacturing company where he worked his way into being a skilled and valued fabric cutter—a job that paid $35 a week.