Ingrid Pitt's father, a German scientist of Russian descent, often misidentified as Jewish, was wanted by the German government to assist with work on military projects, but he refused to help the Nazi programme to develop rockets. Pitt's Polish mother was of Jewish descent. During the Holocaust, Ingrid and her mother were imprisoned for three years at Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Stutthof was primarily a forced labour camp, and most of the prisoners there were non-Jews. One day, taken into a forest to be shot, Ingrid and her mother managed to escape and were rescued by Partisans, with whom they lived rough during the last year of the war. After the war, they searched for Ingrid's father, and her older sister, Brigitte (who had been sent to a separate camp). The four were eventually reunited but Pitt's father was a broken man who died five years later.