Lisbeth Sokal, was born in 1919 in Vienna, into a wealthy family, where her father, Max Schein, was a well respected citizen and furniture maker, restorer and valuer of antiques and jewellery. Lisbeth was born and lived in a flat in Kettenbruckengasse, where her father and grandfather had also been born. With her elder brother Carl, the family would holiday in Italy and at their villa near Baden. She tells of attending a Protestant infant school and then grammar school, where she had mostly non-Jewish friends and did not experience anti-semitism until Hitler. With her parents she attended synagogue on Yomtov, but her parents were Austrian first and their religion was Jewish. Her father was very proud of having fought for the army in WW1 and when the Nazis first visited he put on his uniform and displayed his medals. Lisbeth describes how through a friend she got a visa to be a domestic for Mrs Moon and left for Britain in 1938. Her brother Carl was taken to Dachau, but with Mrs Moon’s help Lisbeth describes how she arranged to get him out and join her. Unfortunately she was unable to help her parents in time and they were taken to Sobibor. She met her husband David Sokal, when working for the Jewish Refugee Committee, where he too was a refugee form Austria.