Gertrude Hoffer was born in 1921 in Eisenstadt. Her father Wilhelm Gabriel had worked since his youth at the firm Leopold Wolf & Sons, where he also had the possibility of promotion. Like her sister Martha, Gertrude also visited the grammar school in Eisenstadt following the Jewish primary school. The Gabriel family was one of the first the Gestapo interrogated, robbed and exiled from Burgenland and Austria, in March 1938.The family was only able to hide for a short time in Vienna. After being discovered by the Gestapo, they were imprisoned for six weeks in the Roßauer barracks. The father was interrogated and forced to sign to leave the home country. Via Triest, the family was able to finally escape to Buenos Aires. Gertrude Hoffer initially began giving extra tuition in English and other subjects, an income that the family desperately needed to live on. She later worked as an au pair girl in Buenos Aires. At the same time she did evening courses for further education. In 1945, she went to Montevideo, where she continued teaching English. With her first husband, who died young, she had two children. Her son lives in Buenos Aires as an industrial engineer, her daughter died very young. She visited Austria for the first time again in 1961. In 1973 Gertrude Hoffer was appointed to the Austrian Honorary General Consulate, she later became the Austrian Honorary Consulate for Uruguay. Gertrude Hoffer now lives in Montevideo with her second husband Carlos, who was exiled from Vienna in 1938, and continues doing unpaid English teaching at an institute for people in the third phase of life.