He was born in Cracow in 1914 and died in London on 16 September 2003 at the age of 89. He attended ”Tarbut” private Jewish middle school in Cracow, where Hebrew was the language of instruction. Then he studied law at the Jagiellonian University and he graduated from it in 1936. After his studies he worked as a journalist, publishing social and political articles in the Zionist press.

In 1938 he left Poland. In connection with his fascination with Zionism and the figure of Żabotyński the revisionist, he planned to go to Palestine just like his neighbour in Cracow and the later Prime Minister of Israel – Menachem Begin. Nevertheless, Scharf’s destiny turned out to be different. The journey to Palestine contributed to the liberalization of his opinions. Great Britain, which was to be only a stop during his journey, became his place of life. In the beginning Scharf worked in London as a correspondent of ”Nowy Dziennik” (“The New Daily”) from Cracow and he studied economics at the London School of Economics, although London had been, so far, for him mostly a city which was known through the prism of literature. It was the city of Dickens, Huxley and Zangwill. During the Second World War he served in the infantry, then in the British intelligence. For a period of time he worked for Ignacy Schwarzbart, one of the two Jewish representatives of the Polish Government in-exile in London. He witnessed the telegram arrival from the Polish underground about the extermination camps. At the end of the war he interrogated the German captives in Norway. After the war he owned a company which dealt with printed designs on silk. He was also a seller of watercolours and other works of art. He became one of the founders of the Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies in Oxford and the ”Polin” Polish-Jewish studies annual. He sat in the editorial council of the series published by the Valentine Mitchell publishing house: Biblioteka Świadectw Holocaustu (Holocaust Testimonies Library). Each year he brought a group of students to Poland and they participated in the summer school organized by the Jagiellonian University and in the Jewish Culture Festival in Kazimierz, Cracow.

Except for some dispersed essays on Polish-Jewish topics, he wrote only one book: ”Co mnie i Tobie Polsko? Eseje bez uprzedzeń” (”Poland, What Have I To Do With Thee... Essays without Prejudice”) which was published in 1997 by Valentine Mitchell in Great Britain and by the ”Judaic” Foundation in Poland. Scharf was closely related to this foundation from the beginning of its existence. He was honored with the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his contributions in building bridges connecting ”the two saddest nations on the Earth” (as he defined Poles and Jews in one of his essays).