Josef Höfler lived with his family in the village of Gottmadingen in Baden, on the border to Switzerland. He was a skilled worker and thus exempted from military service. In 1943 he and his colleague Willy Vorwalder were asked via middlemen to help a Jewish woman, Lotte Kahle, escape to Switzerland. When she arrived from Berlin in nearby Singen at the end of April 1943, Höfler met her non-Jewish travel companion Luise Meier. Both Meier and Höfler rejected the Nazi regime, and they agreed to continue helping people to escape.
Josef Höfler let several people stay in his home before he took them to the border, which increased the risk for his family. When Willy Vorwalder stopped helping at the end of 1943, Höfler managed to find two new allies. The group was arrested when an escape attempt failed in May 1944. The Freiburg special court initially investigated their case, before it was passed on to the “People’s Court” in Berlin. However, the trial for “aiding the enemy” no longer took place. Höfler was released from custody in Konstanz in May 1945.
He was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit for his help in 1984, and honored posthumously by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem in 2001.