Renée Lichtenstern de Rivadeneira was born on 1 February 1929 in Ostrava.
Before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, both her mother and father emigrated (each to a different place), leaving Renée alone with her grandparents. After the occupation, her grandfather could not bear the anti-Jewish terror and committed suicide. Her grandmother, whom the then ten-year-old Renée had to take care of, had problems putting up with his death.
In September 1942, Renée and her grandmother were deported to the ghetto in Terezín. She worked as a gardener in the ghetto and contracted typhus, but managed to avoid deportation.
She returned to Ostrava in December 1945. In the summer of 1946, her father convinced her to come to Ecuador to live with him. The journey took several months. In Ecuador, Renée completed her high school education. In 1950, she married for the first time and gave birth to her first son shortly afterwards. In 1956, she married a second time to Mr. Rivadeneira. She had another son with her second husband. In 1964, they moved to Colombia, but because of the poor economic situation there, they moved to Venezuela in 1975.
The interview was filmed on 8 June 1997 in Caracas, Venezuela.