Hirschfeldt Edith (Berlow)

Hirschfeldt-Berlow, Edith Edith Berlow was born in Wilhelmshavenin 1903. As a qualified secretary, she lived by herself in Berlin, where she met a Jewish doctor and orthopedic specialist, Kurt Hirschfeldt, in 1936, and fell in love with him. This happened at a time when relationships between Jews and non-Jews had been defined by the Nuremberg Laws as a “racial defamation” and were a punishable offense. In July 1938, Jewish physicians had their licenses revoked, and Dr. Hirschfeldt had to give up his practice. He was permitted to continue working until 1941, solely as a medical specialist restricted to treating Jewish patients. When, in 1941, Dr. Hirschfeldt went underground in order to escape deportation, he found shelter in Berlow’s home and was thus able to survive the war. Another person who owed his life to Berlow was Hirschfeldt’s young cousin, Walter Frankenstein. When, in 1943, Frankenstein became separated from his wife and his infant son whom he had left alone in Leipzig, he roamed the streets of Berlin incognito in order to slip away from the Gestapo. He then turned to Berlow for help. She sheltered him for one night and then located accommodations for him with a well-known anti-Nazi, Dr. Arthur Ketzer, who lived in Berlin-Grunewald. Through Werner Scharff, a Jewish electrician who had founded the Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau, a small Berlin-based resistance group, Berlow also met other illegal Jews, whose life depended on help from non-Jews. Among these Jews were Marlis and Michael Michailowitz. In November 1941, Berlow agreed to accommodate them for only a few days, but they actually stayed for about six months. Then the risk of discovery became too great, and Scharff located an alternative shelter for the couple in a summer house. But the Gestapo succeeded in tracking them down. The husband was deported to Auschwitz; his wife took her own life while in the Gestapo prison in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. After the war, Edith married KurtHirschfeldt and emigrated with him to the United States. Following her husband’s death in 1971, she returned to Germany to live in Berlin. On October 4, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Edith Hirschfeldt-Berlow as Righteous Among the Nations.