After the Nazis raided the convent of St. Ursula and caught a few Jewish girls hiding there, Gabriella and her family found safe refuge in a most unexpected location: in a flat within the housing development for Slovak Nationalists called Slovenská Liga House on Dunajská street 18.

By August 1944, Gabriella’s family was sleeping in an apartment owned by Karol Blanár, who was a lawyer and a boyfriend of Gabriella's aunt. The parents of Karol Blanár had also been hiding Gabriella's grandmother in the Slovak countryside.