Markowska was born in a travelling Polska Roma "tabor" (a mobile camp) in an area around Stanisławów, in the Kresy region of the Second Polish Republic. In 1939, the German invasion of Poland caught her in Lwów (Lviv). After the Soviet Union also invaded Poland as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Stalin and Hitler, her tabor moved to the German occupied part of Poland. In 1941 the Germans murdered all the members of her family (65 to 85 people), including her parents and siblings, in a massacre near Biała Podlaska. Alfreda was the only one to survive. She spent several days searching the local forests for the mass grave of her family. She made her way to Rozwadów where in 1942, at the age of 16, she married. She and her husband were caught in a street roundup while visiting Stanisławów by Ukrainian police who handed them over to the Germans, but the couple managed to escape. Subsequently, they were forced to move into Roma ghettos in Lublin, Łódź, and Bełżec but they fled these as well and settled back in Rozwadów, where the Germans had organized a labor camp for Roma.