Her parents took advantage of a window of opportunity when the Soviets were allowing
Jewish emigration.
A native of Hanover, Germany, with a Ph.D. from Heidelberg, she fled the Nazis in 1933, worked for
Jewish emigration in France, came to the United States in 1941, and became an American citizen in 1951.
Major rescue networks were centered in Genoa under the leadership of the Jesuit Cardinal Pietro Boetto, who worked closely with
the Jewish emigration agency DELASEM, and in Milan under the leadership of a Jesuit priest who served as Cardinal Schuster's head of the office of religious assistance.