Ilse Bechhold was born in Nuremberg, Germany, on 24 October 1917 in a family of Abraham Bechhold and Pauline Mann. When her father committed suicide in 1929, she was sent to Hamburg to live with her sister. In 1933, she and her sister left Germany, traveling to Italy, Spain, Cuba and Mexico. Bechhold then joined immediate family in New York. In 1937 she married lawyer David Getz and settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Three years later she gave birth to a child and became naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1942 Getz visited her sister in Mexico. In 1943, upon returning to New York, she attended Art Students League, studying with George Grosz and Morris Kantor.
