Gérald Finaly lived in La Tronche in southern France with his older brother Robert and their parents, who had fled from Austria. When Gérald was twenty months old, his parents were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and murdered. Shortly before, they had entrusted Gérald and his brother to a neighbor, who took them to a convent in Grenoble. The nuns placed Gérald and Robert in the care of Antoinette Brun, who ran the municipal daycare center. Together with ten other hidden children, they survived the persecution there.
After the war, a custody battle began when Antoinette Brun refused to hand the boys over to their surviving aunts. She had Gérald and Robert baptized in 1948. In 1950 the courts awarded custody to their relatives, but Brun would not let them go. Since the boys were regarded as Catholics due to their baptism, she received support from church representatives. Catholic clergymen hid Gérald and Robert under false names in southern France and then secretly took them to Spain. Only after sustained public pressure could Gérald Finaly and his brother leave for Israel in 1953.