Dorothea Neff (21 February 1903 – 27 July 1986) was a
Vienna stage actress during the 1930s. Neff helped hide her Jewish friend Lilli Wolff, after she received resettlement orders from the
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
to leave Vienna. To confuse the
Gestapo, Neff wrote a suicide note and signed it 'Lilli' and left it in her apartment. Neff allowed Lilli to live with her for a short time and later Lilli moved in with Mati Driessen and Meta Schmidt. Driessen and Schmidt were honored in
Yad Vashem in Israel as
Righteous Among the Nations.
She later moved from the stage to the cinema, acting up until her death in 1986.
In 1979, Dorothea Neff was awarded to the list of
Righteous Among the Nations by
Yad Vashem in recognition of the risk to her own life, in hiding a Jew during the
Holocaust. Since 1967 to her death, Neff was blind, but still worked as an actress.
Selected filmography
* ''
The Singing House'' (1948)
* ''
Adventure in Vienna'' (1952)
* ''
I'm Marrying the Director'' (1960)
References
External links
*
Dorothea Neff– description of her activity at the
Holocaust, at
Yad Vashem website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neff, Dorothea
1903 births
1986 deaths
Austrian stage actresses
Austrian Righteous Among the Nations
Austrian people of German descent
Actresses from Vienna
Austrian film actresses
20th-century Austrian actresses