Magdalena Stroe grew up in an educated liberal-minded Romanian-Hungarian family in Cluj (now Cluj-Napoca). She attended the Calvinist High School for Girls, where she made friends with her Jewish classmate Hanna Hamburg.
Cluj was annexed to Hungary in 1940. Under Hungarian rule, persecution of Jews began. Stroe’s Jewish friend was banned from attending school in 1942, but the two girls remained in contact. In May 1944 Hanna Hamburg came to Magdalena Stroe to say goodbye. She and her family had to move into a ghetto and deportations were planned. Instead, however, Magdalena Stroe spontaneously helped her Jewish friend to escape the city. Stroe gave her her own birth and baptism certificates, which enabled Hanna Hamburg to pose as a non-Jewish Romanian.
After liberation, Magdalena Stroe learned that Hanna Hamburg had survived the years of persecution in Hungary. The two friends stayed in touch for the rest of their lives. Magdalena Stroe was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem in 2003.