During World War II, Aranka was thirteen years old. She, her mother, and her siblings, Iboya, Sándor, and Joli, were forcibly moved from their home to the Beregszász brick factory, which had been turned into a ghetto to house Jews. At the time of their departure, Siegal's stepfather, Ignac Davidowitz, was serving in the Hungarian Second Army on the Russian front. Meanwhile, her older sister, Roszi, was in Komjaty with their grandmother, and her other older sister, Etus, was in Budapest. Shortly before the family's move to the ghetto, however, some of her relatives had already been taken away by the Nazis: Lilli (Siegal's older sister), Lajos (Lilli's husband), and Manci (Lilli and Lajos's baby daughter).
Soon after Aranka Siegal and her family had arrived in the ghetto, they were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. Upon their arrival on May 9, 1944, she and Iboya, were separated from the rest of the family, and they never saw them again. Eventually, the two girls were sent to another concentration camp, Christianstadt, to work and later, forced to the death march during six weeks to Bergen-Belsen.
Little more than half a year had passed since their initial arrival into Auschwitz when they were rescued by the British First Army in early 1945. By the end of World War II, only two of Siegal's immediate family remained alive: her older sisters, Iboya and Etus.
In April 1945, she and her sister were liberated by Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army and taken to Sweden by the Swedish Red Cross.
They immigrated to the United States in 1948 when Aranka Siegal turned eighteen years old.
Aranka Siegal on her passport photo - 18 years old