Cornelie Pachali lived in a large apartment in Berlin with her husband Rudolf and her mother. Once a week, a reading group focused on the work of Rudolf Steiner met in the apartment. The group was against the Nazi dictatorship and helped Jews to escape.
At the end of 1942, the Pachalis took in the Jewish woman Ruth Lilienthal. Their landlady was against the National Socialists and aware of the situation. In the summer of 1943, Cornelie Pachali moved to Bückeburg near Hannover with mother and her children Regina (born 1941) and Roland (born 1943). Ruth Lilienthal joined them at the beginning of October 1943. She stayed with Cornelie Pachali for three weeks, after which Pastor Wilhelm Mensching took her in.
In November 1943, the Pachalis’ Berlin apartment was destroyed in an air raid. Cornelie Pachali returned to Berlin and registered her family as bombed out. She used this opportunity to obtain identity papers as bombed out for Ruth Lilienthal, in the name of Rose Schwendinger.
Rudolf Pachali returned from the war in the summer of 1945. The family remained in Bückeburg. Cornelie Pachali was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 2016.