Marianne Strauß lived in Essen with her parents Regina and Siegfried and her younger brother Richard. Her fiancé Ernst Krombach and his parents were deported to Izbica in occupied Poland on April 22, 1942. In August 1943, the Gestapo arrested the Strauß family in their home. Regina, Siegfried, and Richard Strauß were deported to Theresienstadt and later murdered in Auschwitz. 20-year-old Marianne managed to escape while briefly unobserved.
Marianne Strauß was initially taken in by Sonja Schreiber, a co-founder of the Essen association “Bund. Union for a Socialist Life.” Further Bund members placed her in other cities for two to three weeks at a time. Women she was acquainted with also took Strauß in for short periods.
During her twenty months living “illegally,” Marianne Strauß changed her hiding place around thirty times. She was liberated by the U.S. Army’s arrival in Düsseldorf on April 17, 1945. She emigrated to the United Kingdom and married the British Jewish army officer Basil Ellenbogen.