Born Eva Unger in Berlin in 1932 to an affluent, secular Jewish family, she arrived in Britain as a refugee in 1939 with her mother Irma Unger, and her younger brother, Ernst. During Kristallnacht in November 1938, her father Emil was arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp. He was later released after his wife offered the Nazis a large bribe and managed to escape to England to join his family in London. All of Figes's grandparents on both sides of the family died in concentration camps. Towards the end of the World War II, Figes recalled in "The Observer" in 1979, "my mother gave me nine pence and sent me off to the local cinema ... I sat alone in the dark and watched the newsreel of Belsen". It gave her nightmares for many years.