Robert Finaly lived in La Tronche in southern France with his younger brother Gérald and their parents, who had fled from Austria. When Robert was almost three years old, his parents were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and murdered. Shortly before, they had entrusted Robert and his brother to a neighbor, who took them to a convent in Grenoble. The nuns placed Robert and Gérald 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 Robert and Gérald 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 Robert and Gérald under false names in southern France and then secretly took them to Spain. Only after sustained public pressure could Robert Finaly and his brother leave for Israel in 1953.