Nora-Platiel was born in Bochum on January 14, 1896, the eighth of ten children. Her parents Therese and Bendix Block, liberal Jews, ran a clothing store in the center of Bochum. The death of their father in 1915 plunged the family into serious financial difficulties. During their time of emigration in Paris, they met Gerhard Kumleben, a member of the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK). The relationship broke up before their son Roger was born in 1934. In 1943, she married Hermann Platiel in Montauban.
After her father's death, she helped her mother with the business, which went bankrupt in 1917. Following her voluntary work in the international auxiliary war service during the First World War and work for Helene Stöcker and Elisabeth Rotten, she completed her A-levels in Berlin in 1922 and studied law. Her goal was to become a lawyer in order to "campaign for the enforcement of the law in society". Women's rights, socialism and peace were among her political goals. After her first state examination in 1927 and her legal clerkship at Bochum District Court, she passed her second state examination in 1931. In 1931, she was the first female lawyer to open her law firm in Bochum. Among other things, she was a criminal defense lawyer in political trials and worked for Rote Hilfe Deutschlands (RHD).
Since her school days, Nora-Platiel was repeatedly exposed to anti-Semitic experiences. As a Jew, a socialist and the only woman among the lawyers licensed to practice in Bochum, she directly attracted the attention of the National Socialists, especially Roland Freisler. The SS repeatedly tried to arrest her. She fled to Paris at the beginning of March 1933. She found a job as editorial secretary at the exile magazine "Neues Tagebuch" and wrote for "Cahier Juifs", among others. She also worked for the ISK and on a white paper about Hitler's Germany. From 1934 to 1939, she worked for the Omnium Métallurgique company. After her internment in Gurs in 1940 and her escape to Montauban, she took over the management of an office of the CAR (Comité d'Assistance aux Réfugiés), which was supported by the Swiss Workers' Relief Organization (SAH). She later fled to Switzerland, where she continued to work for the SAH. As refugees were not welcome in Switzerland, she decided to return to Germany in 1949.
The Hessian judicial service hired her as a judge in 1949 and assigned her to a restitution chamber at the Kassel Regional Court. In 1951, after a brief period at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court, she became Hesse's first female regional court director. At the same time, Nora Platiel began to work for prisoner welfare in Kassel. In her own restitution proceedings, she received compensation in 1956, seven years after filing her claim, which amounted to just 20 percent of what she would presumably have earned during the 16 years of emigration - minus her actual income during this time.
From 1954, she was elected to the Hessian state parliament for three consecutive legislative periods and was deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group for six years. In this role, she fought against the impending emergency laws and campaigned for a rapprochement with Israel. She was also a member of the Hessian State Court and the Judicial Election Committee. In 1962, she was defeated by one vote in the election for the office of President of the State Parliament. She left parliament in 1966; she was generally regarded as the "best speaker in parliament" and the "conscience of parliament".
Nora Platiel had joined the "German League for International Law" in 1918 and the SPD in 1922. She worked in the International Youth League (IJB). She was active in exile in France and later in Jewish aid organizations. After the dissolution of the ISK, she rejoined the SPD and over time took on a leading role in the Kassel SPD. As a lawyer, she took an active part in the discussions at the time about the discrimination of women in family and labor law. As a politician, lawyer and victim, she repeatedly and unsuccessfully pointed out the inadequate denazification of the German judiciary and politics.
Nora Platiel died on September 6, 1979 in Kassel.
(Based on: Texts from the traveling exhibition "Jüdische Juristinnen und Juristinnen jüdischer Herkunft", Deutscher Juristinnenbund e.V. [ed.], 2019, pp. 109-112)
