Jeanette and Hermann Wolff married on 21 December 1911 in Bocholt. This is also where the three daughters Juliane, Edith and Käthe were born. In the early 1910s, both parents joined the SPD, the German Social Democratic Party. In the following years, the three daughters Juliane, Edith and Käthe Frieda were born in Bocholt.

In 1932, the family moved from Bocholt to Dinslaken. Following the accession to power of the Nazis, Jeanette Wolff was held in preventive detention in Hamborn prison in the years 1933 to 1935 because of her political activities.
After being briefly taken into preventive detention himself, and the family having become the target of anti-Semitic attacks, Hermann moved on 6 May 1933 with his daughters and his mother Julie Wolff, née Cohen, to Münsterstrasse 40 1/2, now no. 42, in Dortmund.

After the “Pogrom night”, Hermann Wolff was held in detention from 12 November to 22 December 1938 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
During the pogrom, the home of the Wolffs was ransacked and the furniture and furnishings destroyed. During the 1930s, the daughters lived in different cities, but in 1938/39, they all came back to Dortmund. In 1939/40, Edith Wolff’ daughter Ruth was born (father: Michael Sowinsky).
In 1939, Edith and Käthe attempted to flee to the Netherlands, but were arrested and imprisoned for three months in Münster. A short time later, Käthe was arrested once more for illegally visiting the cinema, and after a temporary stay in Steinwache police station in Dortmund was held in the police jail in Herne until 1941; she was then deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was shot in 1944.
On 1 April 1941, the family were forced to go and live in a “Jew house” at Williburgstrasse 6. On 27 January 1942, they were deported to the ghetto in Riga. Hermann’s mother Julie Wolff, who had initially stayed in Dortmund, was deported on 29 July 1942 to Theresienstadt, where she was murdered on 10 April 1943.

At the end of 1943, Ruth Sowinsky was deported to Auschwitz and most probably murdered there immediately. The rest of the family were sent to Riga-Kaiserwald concentration camp. When it was closed down in September 1944, the Wolffs were sent first of all to Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig, where Juliane Wolff was presumably murdered in the first half of 1944. From there, Hermann Wolff was sent to Buchenwald, and was shot by SS guards on 22 April 1945 in Wetterfeld/Upper Palatinate on the death march from Buchenwald to Flossenbürg. Jeanette and Edith Wolff were sent from Stutthof to various work camps, and were ultimately liberated by the Red Army.