By Boris Dombrowski
They risked their lives during the Nazi dictatorship to save the lives of others. In this way they protected hidden Jews from deportation. For this, two couples from Berlin and Brandenburg were honored posthumously by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
The Berliners Bruno and Anna Schwartze as well as the Brandenburgers Friedrich and Helene Hübner are officially considered “Righteous Among the Nations”. This is the highest honor given by the State of Israel to non-Jews. It is awarded to men and women who saved Jews during the Shoah. Just like Schwartze and Hübner.
Flashback: Berlin, December 1942. There is a pounding on the door of the Jewish tailor Moritz Mandelkern. Nazis want to pick him and his wife Henriette up. Like her son Siegfried, who was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1939 at the age of just 15 and deported to Poland in 1940.
Persecuted Jews: Henriette, Siegfried and Moritz Mandelkern 1928 in Berlin. The parents were hidden from the Nazis by courageous helpers and thus saved. Her son Siegfried did not survive the Nazi terror Photo: Private/Danny Mann-Segal
Both pretend to be mute, and the Nazis leave without having achieved anything.
Mandelkern’s neighbors Bruno and Anna Schwartze offer to help. And hide Moritz Mandelkern in a tiny attic room. Caring for him for 18 months.
At the same time, his wife Henriette found shelter on the farm owned by Friedrich and Helene Hübner in Groß Schönebeck. From May 1942, Moritz Mandelkern also found shelter there because his hiding place in the attic had been destroyed by bombs. Both of them went into hiding on the farm until they were liberated by the Red Army on April 25, 1945. But they never heard from their son Siegfried again. He was probably murdered in Auschwitz.
Yesterday, in the Red Town Hall, the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor (64) presented the Yad Vashem medals to Schwartze’s granddaughter Anne-Margret Schmid and Hübner’s granddaughter Gundela Suter in the presence of 27 members of the three families.
A total of 27 descendants of the Mandelkorn, Hübner and Schwartze couples attended the ceremony in the Red Town Hall Photo: Ralf Lutter
Prosor: “By following the example of brave men and women, we make the world a better place. That is the legacy that Bruno and Anne Schwartze and Friedrich and Helene Hübner left us.”
The Yad Vashem Medal and the certificate with which the couple Schwartze and Hübner were posthumously honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” on Wednesday Photo: Ralf Lutter