Henriette and Salomon Jacoby lived with their daughter Hildegard Schott in Cologne. The department store they owned was expropriated under the Nazi regime. 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.
Katia Bayerwaltes soon found work with the occupying authorities, which enabled her to arrange an apartment for the Jacobys in Bonn-Bad Godesberg.