Ilonka Stockl was born on December 26, 1907 in Berlin, Germany. She married a non-Jewish man, Johann Michael Stockl, in 1923. They had a daughter, Monika, in 1936. When the Nazis began their persecution of the Jews, Michael abandoned Ilonka. She fled to Arnhem, Holland in 1939. In August 1943, Ilonka was arrested and taken to Westerbork transit camp. From there she was deported to Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Monika was sent to live with her new step-mother in Bernau, Germany while Michael served in the German army. Ilonka was liberated in 1945, and, with the help of Queen Wilhelmina’s (queen of the Netherlands) lady-in-waiting, found her daughter in an unknown farmhouse occupied by strangers.
Ilonka and her daughter left Europe and arrived in the United States on January 9, 1948. Ilonka’s parents, her older sister, and brother-in-law all died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after a forced march from Budapest, Hungary. Ilonka eventually moved to El Paso, Texas where she lived until her death on December 11, 1988.