Porombka was born in Zabrze, a substantial conurbation east of Breslau and close to Kattowitz. His father, also called Vinzent Porombka, was a miner who would end his life as a murder victim in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp. Long before that, when Vinzent Porombka was aged 4, the First World War broke out. Less than a year after that Zabrze was renamed as "Hindenburg", to honour the German military commander on the Eastern front who had recently received much public adulation following his victory at Tannenberg. Porombka was still a child during the period of revolutionary turmoil that followed German defeat in the war. He later obtained a job as a dairy worker in 1925/26, and then worked as a miner from 1926 till 1930. After 1930 several years of part-time working alternating with unemployment ensued.