[2] Sendrey was born in Vienna in 1884 as the daughter of Leopold Weisz and his wife Franciska, née Frankel.
Sendrey fled as a Jew around 1933 with her family from the National Socialists, first to Paris.
The battle of France in May and June 1940 forced the family to continue fleeing to the United States.
There she changed her Hungarian surname "Szendrei" to the Americanized spelling "Sendrey".
Sendrey's mother Franciska was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in August 1942 and died there on 31 December 1942.