Berta Kuller grew up in Białystok, Poland; her father was a Jewish businessman. After her school education, Berta Kuller worked in her parents’ store. During the turmoil after the First World War, she fled to Berlin intending to emigrate to the United States to join her brothers. However, she did not manage to do so. As a stateless single woman, she faced particular harassment after 1933; she was partly supported by the Jewish Community. In 1936, 1937, 1939, and 1941 she was arrested in her apartment in an attempt to expel her. She was sentenced to monetary fines and several three-week imprisonments, which she served in Barnimstraße women’s prison.
In July 1942 she was threatened with deportation. The police officer Adolf Schulz, whom she had known previously and who seemed trustworthy, took her in to his sublet room in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He rented a room for Berta Kuller in the same building and also provided her with food. When the building was bombed in 1944, the two of them moved to an apartment on nearby Grolmannstraße. Berta Kuller and Alfred Schulz married in 1946.
