Iby Knill grew up with a well educated family in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. She went to a German grammar school, until she was excluded for being Jewish.

Once the war started, Jewish students were not allowed to study beyond the age of 16. Her parents' business was taken over by non Jewish, and they were forced to move out of their apartment. They moved to a tiny flat located on the suburbs of Germany.

When Iby's mother learned that the authorities are rounding up girls to work, she dressed Iby as a peasant girl, and made her take a tram with her cousin out to the village where her grandparents lived to get her to safety. They went across the no man's land in the middle of the night to cross the Hungarian border. Once they made it past, they went to another cousin's house for several weeks.

Later, she was introduced to a solicitor who worked in the Hungarian resistance, and stayed with his family for several months. They were caught though, so Iby was in jail for three months, where she was subject to torture. After she was released, she was arrested again as an illegal immigrant, and was sent to a refugee camp in Hungary. Her family was in another camp in Hungary, so she was allowed to meet them. There, she became engaged with a Hungarian man, and so her family were allowed to legally stay in Hungary.