Nora (in American sources “Lora”) Schiff came from a widely branched cattle dealers’ family in Oberthulba who had been living in the rural community for generations. She was born in Oberthulba on September 24, 1906 as the youngest child of the cattle dealer Gabriel Schiff and his wife Regina, née Stern. She had two older sisters: Kathinka (*1900) and Nora (*1906). 

Only little is known about Nora’s life. There is no evidence that she moved to Bad Kissingen in 1930 with her parents when they relocated their place of residence to the spa town. In the middle of the 1930s, she must have emigrated to the USA as her wedding to Gustav Zimmermann in January 1935 is indicated in the marriage register of New York. She succeeded in escaping to the United States like the rest of her family. According to US Census, in 1940, she lived with her husband Gustav Zimmermann and their 2-year-old son Richard in an apartment in New York.

It is also possible that Nora (Lora) Zimmermann’s family moved into the area of Hartford together with her emigrated siblings and her parents in the following years. There, the Schiffs had bought farmland in the rural neighborhood of Hartford and established “Schiff Dairy Farm”, a big cattle farm with dairy cows. Thus, the Schiff’s family’s tradition as a “cattle dealers’ family” was continued in a modified way. A clear proof of since when Nora lived in Hartford hasn’t been found so far. She died there in November 2002 at the age of 96. Her husband Gustav died two years later at the age of 93.