Henriette and Julius Klonower were both born in what is today the territory of Poland. Their presence is documented in Dortmund at least from the year 1910.

The couple had altogether five children. Along with Ottilie, the eldest daughter, the family also included Liselotte (born 1914), Helmuth (born 1915), Irma (born 1920) and Ruth (born 1924).
Ottilie fell ill when aged eight, presumably of meningitis, which left her with a severe mental disability. She lived for a long time in a home, before being transferred to Aplerbeck Provincial Hospital (Provinzialkrankenhaus Aplerbeck) in 1939, where she died in 1940. The official cause of death was stated as “Imbecility, pulmonary tuberculosis”. Ottilie is one of many individuals with mental or physical disabilities who met their death in this facility in Aplerbeck during the Nazi period.

Her parents, Julius and Henriette, may well have been deported to Riga in 1941 and lost their lives there. However, there is still no documentary evidence of this to this day.

The other four members of the family all survived the Holocaust.
Lieselotte left Dortmund in 1935 for Leipzig, and in 1938 moved to Cologne. Later, she managed to leave Germany and get to Palestine. Helmuth also left Dortmund and moved initially to Hamburg; he then relocated to Denmark and finally, in 1937, to Palestine. Irma, for her part, first went to Brandenburg, where she attended a training facility for young people planning to emigrate to Palestine. She managed to flee from the Nazi persecution via Denmark and Sweden, and reached Palestine in 1949.
With the aid of an uncle, the youngest member of the family, Ruth, was able to join a child transport to Belgium, and from there found her way to a neutral foreign country. She arrived in Israel on board the first ship bringing immigrants to the country after its declaration of independence.