Mindu was born in a small town outside Prague, Czechoslovakia. After the Nazis invaded, Mindu’s father was taken from the family and forced into the army.

In 1942, when Mindu was 12 years old, she was put on a packed cattle car and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. A Polish prisoner advised her mother to send her two daughters ahead, and to say that they were 17 and 19 years old.

 

Mindu never saw her mother or her brothers again. The sisters were then sent to an underground ammunitions factory in the Polish countryside.

After the American army liberated the region, Mindu returned to Prague. In 1948 she left for the UK as conditions under the Soviets worsened.