Lina Wolf née Feldmann

Lina Wolf was born on January 30, 1886 in Buttenhausen in Württemberg. She was the second of 9 siblings. Her mother's name was Jeannette Feldmann and she was a née Löwenthal. Her father, Wolf Feldmann, earned his money as a traveler.

The family moved to Saarwellingen, Rhine Province (today Rhineland-Palatinate). Lina did a commercial apprenticeship and worked as the manager of a photo studio in Frankfurt am Main. It was in this studio that she met her future husband Josef David Wolf.

Lina and Josef were married on November 9, 1912 in Saarwellingen. At that time Josef David was 30 years old, Lina 26. The couple moved to Trier, where Lina gave birth to three children: Elly Regina in 1914, Ingeborg in 1916, in the middle of World War I, and eight years later, in 1924, son Leo. Little Elly Regina died at 20 months before her sister Ingeborg was born.

Josef David and Lina Wolf opened two shoe stores in Trier in a prime downtown location. As son Leo remembers decades later, his mother always worked full time as manager with signatory powers. She signed business letters and invoices with "Mrs. Josef Wolf".   

In April 1933, shortly after Hitler came to power, Josef Wolf founded another branch in Cologne, in the upscale Hohestraße shopping street not far from Cologne Cathedral. The couple separated, he moved to Cologne, Lina stayed in Trier with the children and continued to run the two shoe stores. 

With Hitler's seizure of power and the call for a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, the targeted dismantling of Jewish businesses began in Trier as well. It intensified two years later with the "Nuremberg Laws". In 1936 Josef and Lina sold the two shoe stores in Trier and Lina Wolf also moved with Ingeborg and Leo to Cologne. There, they moved into a 4-room apartment not far from Josef Wolf's residence.

Despite the Nazi boycott measures and the separation from her husband, Lina was prosperous. As her nephew Simon Feldmann explained after the war in 1957, she lived in a spacious 4-room apartment furnished to a high standard, employed two domestic servants and owned valuable clothing, pictures and jewelry.

During the Reich Pogrom Night in November 1938, Wolf's shoe store was completely destroyed and Josef Wolf had to flee. 

At that time, Lina's daughter Ingeborg was engaged to Ernst Markus, who lived in Amsterdam. Lina also wanted to move to Amsterdam after their wedding. She liquidated her apartment in Cologne and shipped the entire household goods to Amsterdam. The freight never arrived in Amsterdam.

In August 1939, Lina and her daughter Ingeborg moved in with Lina's sister Rosa Glaser, Rosa's husband Hugo Glaser, and their sons Ludwig and Hans Wolfgang to Elberfelder Strasse 29 in Berlin-Tiergarten. There, they planned to wait for their departure to Holland. The 16-year-old Leo remained in Cologne and prepared for his emigration to Palestine with the Aliyah organization. He succeeded in emigrating in 1940.

Probably in connection with the deportation of the Glaser family on November 17, 1941, Lina and Ingeborg had to move to Elßholzstraße 17 in Schöneberg. From there they were picked up and deported to Riga, Latvia, on November 27, 1941, along with 1,051 other Jews from the Grunewald train station. Immediately after their arrival on November 30, 1941, all the people on this transport, including Lina, 55 years old, and Ingeborg, 25 years old, were murdered with rifle shots in the Rumbula forest.