Vera Oredsson's father was a German engineer, soldier and a member of the Storm Detachment, and she was herself a member of the League of German Girls, the female wing of the Hitler Youth of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. During the Battle of Berlin, her family's home was hit by a firebomb. With her brother, the journalist Folke Schimanski, and their Swedish mother, she arrived in Sweden in April 1945 as a refugee via White Buses.