Lilli Wolff papers

Lilli Wolff papers 

Lilli Wolff (1896-1983) was born Wilhelmine Wolff in Köln to Richard and Regine Wolff. She operated a costume design and dressmaking shop with her business partner, Meta Schmitt (1890-1951), and her assistant, Martha (Mati) Driessen (1910-1990), but lost her ownership of the business following Kristallnacht. She moved to Vienna and hid in the home of her friend, actress Dorothea Neff (1903-1986). Schmitt and Driessen helped sustain her with parcels of food and eventually joined her and Neff in Vienna when the shop in Köln was bombed. She immigrated to the United States in March 1947, joining her sister and brother-in-law, Alice and Walter Schiff, in New York before settling in Dallas. In 1958 she sponsored the immigration of Mati Driessen and her son Klaus, who joined Wolff in Dallas. Meta Schmitt, Mati Driessen, and Dorothea Neff were recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 1979 for hiding Lilli Wolff during the Holocaust. 

Lilli Wolff papers