Latte Ellen (Brockmann)

Latte, Ellen Ellen Brockmann, a young singer with the Hessisches Volkstheater (Hessian People’s Theater), was 23 years old at the time she first met Konrad Bauer, the new chapel master of the music ensemble. Bauer was, in fact, the assumed name of Konrad Latte, the Jewish son of Manfred and Margarete Latte. He and his parents had begun to live illegally after February 1943. In September 1943, all of them had been caught in a Gestapo raid and were sent to the assembly camp in Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin pending deportation. Konrad alone managed to make his escape and was engaged, in May 1944, by the Hessisches Volkstheater in Goslar without divulging his Jewish identity. Brockmann, who sensed Konrad Latte’s true situation from the outset, provided him with food out of her own ration cards. In general, she took up his cause against the rest of the theater personnel, who, with time, grew suspicious of the newcomer who had no proper identification papers. In September 1944, when all the theaters in Germany were closed because of the war situation, Konrad Latte no longer had any place to go. Brockmann then offered him shelter in her apartment in Homburg, introducing him to her curious neighbors and acquaintances as her fiancé. Since Brockmann’s legal position was unassailable, her open romantic connection with Latte sufficed to confer also on him an aura of legitimacy, which protected him from suspicion until the end of the war. Ellen Brockmann and Konrad Latte were married on April 28, 1945. On June 29, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Ellen Latte as Righteous Among the Nations.