A broken portrait of Adolf Hitler
Marie Budková was born on March 26, 1936 in the town of Recklinghausen in what was then Germany. She lived in Nazi Germany until she was eleven years old. in the family of a Czech mother and a German father. Her father died in Soviet territory sometime between 1943 and 1944 while serving in the German organization Todt. Home Westphalia became the target of frequent air raids during the war years. After the war, in 1947, at the invitation of an aunt, they moved to the town of Aš in what was then Czechoslovakia.