The dressmaker Lilli Wolff opened a fashion studio in Cologne with her friend Meta Schmitt in 1921. The actress Dorothea Neff was one of their customers. Neff and Wolff became friends and later a couple.
Due to the anti-Jewish laws, Lilli Wolff had to resign from her business in October 1938. She left Cologne after the November pogroms of 1938. In Berlin, she worked as a costume designer for the Jewish Cultural Association. She had to give up the job in the summer of 1939, however, for health reasons. She moved to Vienna to join Dorothea Neff.
To obtain food ration cards of her own, Lilli Wolff registered officially in Vienna and then had to move into a “communal apartment” for Jews. She received a deportation order in October 1941, and Dorothea Neff spontaneously offered to hide her in her home. Lilli Wolff accepted the offer and went underground.
When Lilli Wolff needed a tumor operation, she was taken to hospital under a false name. Neff’s neighbor, the medical student Erwin Ringel, took over her subsequent medical care. Lilli Wolff witnessed the liberation in Vienna.
Lilli Wolff (back row, 3rd from left) with the staff of her fashion studio, Cologne, before 1939. Source: Landesamt für Bürger und Ordnungsangelegenheiten (LABO) Berlin, Abteilung I Entschädigungsbehörde, Entschädigungsakte Lilli Wolff
Lilli Wolff (left) and Martha Driessen, 1939. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., Lilli Wolff papers, 1999.A.0041_001_014_0003
Lilli Wolff’s identity card, stamped with a “J” (for “Jew”), issued in Berlin, June 17, 1939. Source: Landesamt für Bürger und Ordnungsangelegenheiten (LABO) Berlin, Abteilung I Entschädigungsbehörde, Entschädigungsakte Lilli Wolff
Membership card of the Austrian “U-boat association” issued to Lilli Wolff on December 29, 1946. Source: Landesamt für Bürger und Ordnungsangelegenheiten (LABO) Berlin, Abteilung I Entschädigungsbehörde, Entschädigungsakte Lilli Wolff
