Gretel Beer was born in Vienna into a Jewish family. She was mostly raised by her aunt Olga Springer (Bechin, Bohemia 1879–1942 Maly Trostenets extermination camp) the widow of a physician (in 1937: 9th district, Porzellangasse 45), as her mother Regina Weidenfeld née Pisk died when Margaret was six years old and her father, Dionys (Duny) Weidenfeld, did not keep up a household. (At Porzellangasse, until 1938 Eric Pleskow and Ari Rath spent their childhood, as they told the Austrian broadcaster ORF in 2012.) After attending primary school at Marchegg, a small town east of Vienna near the border with Slovakia, she attended a federal Realschule at Vereinsgasse in Vienna's 2nd district, where many Jewish Viennese lived.

In the spring of 1938, after the annexation of Austria by Germany, she and 48 other pupils were forced to leave this school and attend a Jewish class elsewhere in Vienna. At the entrance hall of her school, which is now called Bundesrealgymnasium Vereinsgasse, since 1989 the names of the expelled pupils are displayed on a memorial inscription.
Where did Gretel attend primary school?
Gretel Beer attended primary school in Marchegg, in east of Vienna.