Anna Rado was born in Rajka, Hungary that is a small town near the border of what was then Czechoslovakia. Her family consisted of her parents and a brother and sister. Anna’s father owned two butcher shops—one kosher and one non-kosher. On March 10, 1944, the Nazis marched into Hungary and changed Anna’s life forever.
Anna was first sent to live in a ghetto and from there the family was deported by train to Auschwitz. When they arrived at the concentration camp, her parents were separated from her and her sister. It was the last time she saw them alive. Anna was taken from Auschwitz to work in a factory in Gebhardsdorf, Germany which seemed like paradise compared to life in Auschwitz and then to a munitions factory in Georgenthal. She was liberated by Russian troops when she was 14 years old.
Anna and her family, along with her brother and his family, came to live in San Antonio, Texas in 1957 where they were reunited with their sister Susanne Jalnos who is also a Holocaust survivor.