Barbara was born to a middle-class Jewish family in southeast Hungary. Her father had a store that carried grocery and hardware items. Barbara had a sister named Margit and a brother named Desider. In 1928 Barbara married Istvan Geroe and moved to the town of Torokszentmiklos. Her son, Janos, was born there a year later.

1933-39: In 1933 Barbara divorced and returned with 3-year-old Janos to her parents' home in the town of Szentes. She helped run her parents' store, which was located on a busy inter-city road. Janos went to live with his father when he was 7 years old. Beginning in 1938, the Hungarian government, which was sympathetic to Nazi Germany, enacted several anti-Jewish laws.

1940-45: Barbara remarried in 1942. Her new husband, Hugo Balint, was a lawyer and a banker from the city of Kaposvar in southwest Hungary. Beginning in 1940, Jewish males were forcibly conscripted into labor battalions for the Hungarian army. German forces occupied the country on March 19, 1944. That summer, Barbara and her husband were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where Hugo perished. Barbara was deported from Auschwitz to a forced-labor camp in Berlin.

Barbara was liberated in Berlin in 1945 and returned to Hungary. Her son, Janos, survived the war and emigrated to the United States. Barbara died in Budapest in 1980.

Barbara Nemeth Balint