Inge Deutschkron was born in Finsterwalde and grew up in Berlin. From 1933 on the family was persecuted by the Nazis because Inge's father, Martin Deutschkron, was Jewish and an official of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He was able to emigrate to England in 1939; but the outbreak of the Second World War prevented his wife Ella and his daughter Inge from joining him there as planned. In 1941 Inge Deutschkron worked as a forced laborer at ACETA, a parachute silk factory that belonged to the IG Farben group. She deliberately injured her knee and was discharged after a medical examination. Following a tip from the Jewish Community, 19-year-old Inge Deutschkron went for an interview with Otto Weidt. He managed to give her a job by bribing Alfred Eschhaus, head of the "Deployment Section for Jews" at the Berlin Employment Office. At the suggestion of the Gumz family, Inge and Ella Deutschkron went into hiding in the Gumz's apartment in January 1943. Otto Weidt obtained the employment record of a non-Jewess for Inge Deutschkron, and later a forged employee's identity card in the name of Inge Richter. Inge Deutschkron worked in Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind for around two years, legally and illegally. During the last months of the war, Inge and Ella Deutschkron pretended they were refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army. Living with new identity cards in the name of Richter, they spent the end of the war in Potsdam. In the summer of 1946 they went to England, where the family was reunited.