Ida Sachs lived in Berlin with her husband, the businessman Wilhelm Sachs. They had five daughters: Charlotte (born 1907), Käthe (born 1909), Hilde (born 1910), Annie (born 1911) und Gertrude (born 1913). The girls’ father died of tuberculosis in 1914.
By the start of 1938, all the sisters except Annie had left Germany. In February she had an opportunity to visit Käthe in Oslo. Ida Sachs advised her daughter not to return to Berlin, since the situation there was increasingly dangerous.
Through a marriage of convenience to Kåre Wicklund, Annie was able to stay in Oslo. Kåre also provided a guarantee to enable Ida Sachs to enter Norway in June 1939, only weeks before the war began. Her papers had already been marked with a “J.”
The three of them initially lived in cramped quarters in Oslo. They moved to the countryside in the fall of 1940.
When the two Jewish women were told to register at the local police station twice a day from October 1942, they began preparing their escape. Following a long march at freezing temperatures and overnight travel by car and boat, they eventually reached Sweden by horse-drawn sleigh.