Marge Rich was born Margit Zsupnyik on December 13, 1937 in Vienna, Austria. Suddenly and abruptly, her life changed under Nazi occupation. Marge's childhood and adolescence was stripped as she and her family fell victim to Nazi persecution and sent by cattle car to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, In Marge's earliest memories, she was living with her mother and grandparents in a one room dwelling, and they were starving. She has no early memories of her father who had been sent to a slave labor camp.

ln 1942, the Nazis captured her, her mother, uncle, and grandparents and shipped them to Theresienstadt. They travelled for 2-3 days by train standing in cow dung up to their ankles. When they arrived at the camp, they were hosed down, but it was winter, and their clothes froze to their bodies.

ln June 1944, the lnternational Red Cross came to tour Theresienstadt. The worst parts of the camp were hidden, and prisoners were given blankets and other items of comfort in a fake display of their good treatment at the hands of the Nazis. As soon as the Red Cross left, everything was taken back. The conditions were terrible; the barracks were overrun with rats and many people were bitten and died of rabies. Water was scarce. One day, her one friend drank water she found, despite Marge’s warnings that the water was toxic, and her friend died two days later.

Theresienstadt was liberated in May 1945 by the Russians. Marge was eight years old. Following liberation, she and her mother were sent to the Deggendorf Displaced Persons Camp in Germany, and then to England where, after an eight-year separation, they were reunited with her father. They subsequently immigrated to the US.