After surviving several Nazi concentration camps during 1944–1945 in World War II, including Auschwitz, she returned to Romania, where she studied drama and theater arts.
Mária Földes was born to a Jewish Hungarian family in Arad, Romania on 5 September 1925.
In May 1944, after graduating from the gymnasium, Földes at the age of 18 was interned in the Cluj ghetto, where the Nazi occupiers forced the local Hungarian authorities to gather the Jews.
It was adapted as a one-woman play by the same name, and received productions in Hebrew in Tel Aviv at the Habima Theatre, and a short tour in the United States.
In 1948, she divorced her first husband and married Lazlo Földes, an adjunct professor at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj.
Her daughter Agnes Lev worked with the actress Baatsheva to adapt her mother's memoir for the stage.