After her husband Leo was forced to emigrate to Shanghai, Hildegard (Hilde) Schott lived with her parents Salomon and Henriette Jacoby in Cologne. At the beginning of 1942 they were put into the Fort V assembly camp in Cologne-Müngersdorf, from where they were to be deported. With the aid of their non-Jewish neighbors, Heinz and Josephine Odenthal, however, they managed to escape from the camp.
In May 1943 the Jacobys had to leave their hiding place in the home of Sibylla Cronenberg, an elderly relative of Josephine Odenthal. Posing as a family seeking accommodation, they were taken in by Katharina (Katia) Bayerwaltes in Bonn, where they lived in a vacant apartment in her building. In December 1943, Henriette Jacoby revealed that she was Jewish; she had had a fall and wanted to prevent a doctor being called. In reaction, Katia Bayerwaltes gave the family free accommodation and food. They also received food ration cards from the Odenthals. The Jacoby family were liberated on March 9, 1945. Hilde Schott eventually learned that her husband had been murdered in 1944.