Mitzia Bak lived in Wilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) with her husband Jonas and son Samuel. She worked as a bookkeeper for her parents’ business. Shortly after German troops invaded Wilna in 1941, Jonas Bak was put into a labor camp. Mitzia and Samuel Bak had to move into the ghetto in September 1941, but managed to escape the next day. Mitzia’s non-Jewish aunt Janina Ruschkewitsch arranged a hiding place for them in a Benedictine convent. Jonas Bak also escaped there soon afterwards. When the occupying Germans searched the convent at the end of 1941, the family escaped and returned to the ghetto. Jonas Bak now had to work in the Wehrmacht’s Army Vehicle Pool (HKP), and brought his family into the HKP camp in 1943. Mitzia Bak repaired Wehrmacht uniforms there. In March 1944, Mitzia Bak and Samuel fled once again to the Benedictine convent. Her husband was shot dead during the evacuation of the HKP camp in July 1944.
Mitzia and Samuel Bak left Wilna after the end of the war, in 1945. In a camp for Displaced Persons (DP camp) in Landsberg am Lech, Mitzia Bak met Natan Markowsky. They married and emigrated to Israel in 1948.