When, in the 1980s, Barbara Schieb began researching the subject of rescuing Jews in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, she and her colleague Martina Voigt initially met with skepticism and reserve. “People categorically rejected and dismissed the idea of being considered heroes, saying that helping had been the most natural course of action for them to take. They didn’t realize they had something important worth telling. The first thing we had to do was gain their trust and make them understand what we really wanted from them,” says Barbara, a research fellow at the German Resistance Memorial Center.
It was some time before the researchers found out why people were so cautious. “We were asking exactly the same questions that the Gestapo had been asking all those years before. We were asking for information they’d had to keep private for so many years. Their minds were conditioned to the impossibility of disclosing their secrets,” says Barbara.
Various public institutions funded the project, including the Berlin Research Center on Anti-Semitism and the German Resistance Memorial Center. Today the incredible stories of these rescuers can be found at the “Silent Heroes” Memorial in Berlin. Most people have never heard these names.
The memorial has a dual purpose: telling the untold stories of courage and making them accessible to the general public.
“Approximately 900 stories have been recorded, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg,” says Barbara.
| Elisabeth Abegg |
Elisabeth Abegg
Born in Strasbourg, Alsace in 1882, Elisabeth Abegg was one of the few women to acquire a post-doctoral degree at the time. After completing her studies in history and ancient languages, she taught at various secondary schools and was an outspoken advocate of women’s rights.
“She was a staunch champion of democracy who detested the Nazis, worrying more and more about her students’ fate. She had to stand by and watch Jewish students and colleagues expelled from her school. When her good friend, a Jewish woman, was deported, she vowed that she would help the Jews. That was her motive,” Barbara explains.
In the late 1930s, she was denounced during one of her classes by a group of fanatical Nazis among her students. When she declared that English soldiers had been as brave as German soldiers, she was forced into early retirement. “What gave her some room for maneuver were her good contacts with trustworthy and reliable colleagues from her time as a teacher. She built up a strong network of helpers for Jews who had been forced underground. She even adopted a Jewish girl who survived by hiding at her place. Elisabeth Abegg saved around 80 people, but we only know 30 of them by name,” says Barbara.
Siblings Ralph and Rita Neumann were among those who were saved. They went underground in Berlin in February 1943 and were finally placed with the Wendland family by members of the local congregation, who belonged to Elisabeth Abegg’s network. “Those in hiding had to move from one place to the next fairly often to avoid detection. Elisabeth Abegg not only provided shelter, she also taught classes for young Jews in the underground once a week. ‘I owe it to Elisabeth Abegg that I didn’t end up stupid,’ Ralph Neumann later wrote in his memoir,” Barbara recounts.
Between 1943 and 1945 a very large number of Jews were forced into hiding.
Elisabeth Abegg continued to help, and was never caught by the Nazi regime.
She helped Rita Neumann assume a new identity by passing her off as her niece at the National Socialist People's Welfare. Thanks to this bold move, Rita Neumann was issued new papers and food stamps, she could even work legally. “Elisabeth Abegg was a religious person, a typically Prussian woman, perfectly able to distinguish between a white lie and blind obedience. Most teachers at the time were loyal to the party line, but Elisabeth Abegg was a courageous woman, making a deliberate decision to help those in need. Her actions make her stand out from most of her former colleagues. She lived to the age of 92,” says Barbara.
| Marie Burde |
The rescuers came from all walks of life: some were wealthy, some were not. However, there were many more poor heroes than rich ones.
Marie Burde was a rag-and-bone woman, poor as a church mouse. She had no children and lived in a small apartment in the basement of a tenement house in the Wedding district of Berlin, eking out a living by selling newspapers. Despite her own destitution, she helped three young men, the Joseph brothers and a friend of theirs, to survive the Nazi era.
One day, they knocked on her door and asked for help. “Marie Burde was a very strange woman. Nothing in her entire apartment came from animals, no blankets filled with down, no meat of any kind. She lived a strictly vegan life and slept on piles of paper. She had a good heart and what little she possessed, she shared generously with others,” says Barbara.
Marie Burde had a small garden outside Berlin, where the three men built a makeshift bomb shelter and hid. In order to provide for all of them, Marie sold her ration stamps for cigarettes and meat. Even after the war, they did not lose touch. When Germany was partitioned, Marie stayed in the Soviet sector. “Many of those who survived emigrated after the war. The Joseph brothers, however, stayed in West Berlin. They visited their savior whenever they could, supporting her to the best of their abilities,” Barbara continues.
| Agnes Wendland |
The high price of rescue attempts
According to Barbara, most attempts to save Jews unfortunately failed. She estimates there were as many as 7,000 to 8,000: “Once a Jew was apprehended, his or her fate was sealed. They fell into the hands of the German Secret State Police and, from 1942 onwards, they lost the right to a trial in a regular court, which meant they were at the mercy of those who hunted them down. The sentences they faced ranged from imprisonment to death.” The fate of those who had been helping them was uncertain, too. They could be tried, but had to be charged with a criminal offense.
“Hiding Jews was not a crime on the statutes, so the prosecutors invented other offenses so that these people could be found guilty and punished anyway. These ranged from tuning in to enemy radio stations or falsifying documents to violating economic wartime regulations such as trading rationed foodstuffs on the black market. But if you had taken in people who’d gone underground, there was no way you could avoid violating those regulations about rations and food,” Barbara points out.
Those who denied it all could usually not be proven guilty before a regular court, so they were sent to concentration camps without due process. Some survived, others did not.
| One of the people saved by Elisabeth Abegg, Ralph Neumann, in 1946 |
A different breed
The saviors were both politically and humanitarianly aware. They were brave enough to question the ideology and act on their beliefs, which put them at considerable risk.