Luise Nickel came from a modest family background. She and her husband Fritz were early activists in the SPD, and after the First World War in the KPD. Fritz Nickel died in 1922.
When Luise Nickel and her son Willy lost their home in Berlin due to bombing in 1942, they moved to their weekend house in Strausberg, 20 miles (35 km) northeast of Berlin. In March 1943 they temporarily took in Alice Löwenthal and her daughters Ruth and Brigitte.
The widow kept chickens and rabbits in the house’s kitchen garden, which helped her to feed the family in hiding. In the spring of 1944, Löwenthal stayed with Luise Nickel again, this time without her children, whom she had had to leave behind in a hiding place in Weimar. At Alice Löwenthal’s request, Nickel also gave refuge to Gertrud Raszkowski and Rolf Themal. In 1947 her son Willy married Alice Löwenthal, whose daughters had been murdered in Auschwitz. The couple’s daughter Eva Nickel was born a year later.