Lili Sulima was born in 1901 as the daughter of Jewish merchant Siegfried Rosenberg and his wife Rosa, née Kahn.

In 1924, Lili, who worked as an office clerk, married Erich Sulima, an electrical fitter by trade and of Protestant faith, in Dortmund. Lili was a member of the KPD, the German Communist Party, and worked as a shorthand-typist for the district leadership of the KPD Ruhr Area, and in 1930 was also secretary for the editorial team of the Dortmund-based “Ruhr-Echo” newspaper. From the accession to power of the Nazis and the banning of the KPD, the couple became the subject of significant persecution measures.

In 1934, Lili and Erich left Dortmund and went to live in Lili’s original home town of Untergrombach in the district of Karlsruhe. From Lili’s emigration to the Netherlands in 1938 at the latest, the couple lived in separation. Erich continued to live in Untergrombach, with a short stay in Dortmund. Lili continued to work for the KPD from exile, at least until 1940. In Germany, she was wanted by the Gestapo, though initially in vain – they hoped she would be able to provide them with information in an ongoing case about the organization of explosives by the KPD.

Lili must have been captured around 1942. The exact date can no longer be established. She was detained initially in Vught camp (Hertogenbosch concentration camp), but in March 1943 she was transferred to Westerbork camp and then deported in November of the same year to Auschwitz, where she was murdered immediately after her arrival.

Erich Sulima had no knowledge of the fate of his wife in the immediate post-war period. After the war, he filed for divorce and remarried in 1947 in Dortmund, where he also died in 1973.