Leonie Rosner grew up in Leipzig. After training as a kindergarten teacher, she worked in the Auerbach Jewish orphanage in Berlin. She met Walter Frankenstein there, a former charge still living in the institution. They married in February 1942 and their son Peter-Uri was born in January 1943.
The couple narrowly evaded “Operation Factory” at the end of February 1943 and went underground with the baby. The three of them first hid with Leonie’s mother in Leipzig. Following her arrest, they returned to Berlin in September 1943. Leonie, Walter, and Peter-Uri Frankenstein were able to hide in the home of Arthur Ketzer. After his building was destroyed in an air raid, Leonie registered as homeless under a false name, and was evacuated along with her son to the village of Briesenhorst (now Brzeźno, Poland). Her second son Michael was born on September 26, 1944.
Threatened with her identity being revealed, Leonie Frankenstein had to return to Berlin with the two small children at the end of 1944. She was reunited with her husband and the family hid in Berlin until the city’s liberation in early May of 1945. In November 1945 Leonie Frankenstein emigrated to Palestine with her children.