Marianna Spitzerová lived with her parents Janka and Pavel Spitzer and her older sister Zuzana in Poprad, Slovakia. Her father ran a grocery store there with his brother Gejza. A friend of the Spitzers, Vojtech Kolenka, was employed in the store.
Jews were persecuted in Slovakia from 1941, and Marianna Spitzerová was no longer allowed to attend a state school. When the Spitzers were expropriated in 1941, Kolenka took over the business pro forma. The Spitzer brothers went on working in the store. Kolenka also turned to the Greek Catholic bishop Father Pavol Gojdič for help. The bishop obtained “presidential exemptions,” intended to protect the family from deportation. He issued false baptism certificates for Marianna Spitzerová and her sister, and the two of them were taken into a convent in Prešov. Posing as Christians, they were allowed to attend school there.
After the failed Slovak National Uprising in 1944, Marianna Spitzerová and her sister had to leave the convent school. They then hid in the mountains with their parents. Kolenka provided the family with food. All of them survived the war.