Salomon (Sally) Nooitrust lived with his wife Hubertine and their three children in Düsseldorf. Under the Nazis, the businessman was initially protected from deportation through his non-Jewish wife. Around 1938, his permit to run a travelling sales business was withdrawn and he became dependent on support from his children.
Eventually, Jews living in “mixed marriages” were also at risk of deportation. After Sally Nooitrust received a summons for deportation in 1944—presumably in the fall or winter—he went underground and hid “in basements and bunkers and with a few good people,” as he wrote in 1946.
He stayed for a time at Winkelsfelder Straße 14 in Düsseldorf. Josef and Maria Otten, non-Jewish relatives of Sally’s daughter Berta, lived in the building and his brother Emanuel was in hiding in the basement.
Maria Otten was the air-raid warden for the building, which had previously been damaged by bombing. That meant she could ensure that Emanuel Nooitrust was relatively safe from being discovered in the basement. Both brothers survived.