Rudolf Pachali and his wife Cornelie lived in Berlin. Their children Regina and Roland were born in 1941 and 1943. Rudolf Pachali was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1940. He was stationed with a veterinary unit and was often able to return home. There, he ran an anthroposophical reading group. Since the Anthroposophical Society was banned in 1935, the circle of friends posed as a singing and hiking group. The members were against the Nazi dictatorship and helped Jews to escape, and later to go into hiding.
At the end of 1942, the Pachalis took in the Jewish woman Ruth Lilienthal. She was able to hide with the family until the summer of 1943.
Rudolf Pachali’s unit was posted to Ukraine at the start of 1943, and he was taken prisoner of war near Kharkiv by the Soviets in the fall of 1943. He was released from the camp in August 1945.
After the war, the family lived in Bückeburg. The Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem posthumously honored Rudolf Pachali as Righteous Among the Nations in 2016.