Hoff and Tumarkin were both Jewish, with relatives in parts of Europe that were badly affected by the Shoah. In 1925 and 1937, the friends made two lengthy visits to Tumarkin's relatives in Chișinău, then a part of Greater Romania, today in Moldova. The city had been the scene of ferocious antisemitic pogroms at the start of the twentieth century, and the coming to power in Germany of the Hitler government paved the way for race based persecution and slaughter in the 1940s as the German and Soviet armies fought for control over the Bessarabia region. Many of Tumarkin's family were horribly persecuted, deported, and in some cases killed.