Early Life
Atkins was born Vera Maria Rosenberg to a German Jewish father, and a British Jewish mother, in Galati, Romania. Her family emigrated to England in 1933 but after a couple of years moved to France. She enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris to study modern languages before attending finishing school at Lausanne. The surname 'Atkins' was her South African-born mother's maiden name, which she adopted as her own. She was a cousin of Rudolf Vrba.
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