The Jewish couple Sofie and Adolf Loebl lived in Karlsruhe with their daughters Ellen and Hannelore. Adolf Loebl had to give up his textiles business in November 1938 due to the repressions. The family was no longer able to emigrate.
Through fortunate coincidences, they evaded deportation by fleeing to southern France in October 1940. Sofie Loebl’s mother, however, was deported on August 22, 1942 to Theresienstadt, where she perished in March 1943. The family lived in constant fear from then on.
In October 1942 Otto Hörner, a non-Jewish acquaintance, took them into his garden house in Ettlingen. They spent several months living in cramped conditions there until Sofie and Hannelore found refuge with the Sinz family in Horb am Neckar, and Ellen with Klara Kaus in Mannheim. Only once, in the fall of 1943, did Ellen Loebl join her mother and sister temporarily; after that they were separated until the end of the war.
After 1945 the family lived in Heidelberg. The couple and their daughter Hannelore emigrated to the United States in 1952; their older daughter Ellen moved to Israel after her marriage. After their emigration, the family changed the spelling of their surname to Loebel.