On 17 September 1938 the writer René Schickele wrote to Alfred Neumann:  "My Dear Friend, Young Wolff has hopefully written to let you know that an apartment is about to become available in number 63 Promenade des Anglais which is just what you are looking for [...]."

Since emigrating, Alfred Neumann and his wife Kitty had lived in Fiesole, near Florence. After the state visit of Adolf Hitler to Italy in May 1938, however, public pressure grew on the German emigrants. They, too, finally came under direct threat following the introduction of racist legislation modelled on that of Germany in September 1938.

During the summer, Alfred Neumann was in Paris and at Lake Zurich where he worked with Erwin Piscator on a dramatisation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. "This was followed by the exciting 'Munich' period and the even more exciting days when I was stuck in Mentone while my wife was across the Italian border in Ventimiglia without a passport. The Gestapo now governing in Italy wanted to return her forcibly to Germany. I finally succeeded - with the help of the French authorities (who detailed two border commissioners to me) - in getting my wife across the border." (Alfred Neumann, A. N. recounts the important news from 1933 to 1948 to F.G., estate of Alfred Neumann)

Alfred and Kitty Neumann lived in the apartment until December 1939. They then moved to Rue Maréchal Joffre, where they remained until their escape from France in January 1941. Theodor Wolff, editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt from 1906 until 1933, lived above them. After arriving in the United States, Alfred Neumann and Hermann Kesten worked tirelessly to rescue Wolff, who was over 70 by then. But ever new difficulties arose, and ultimately the rescue failed. Theodor Wolff was handed over to the Gestapo in mid-1943 and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He died on 23 September 1943.