Wust Elisabeth (Kappler)

Wust, Elisabeth Elisabeth Wust (née Kappler) was born in Berlin-Stegliltz, in 1913. As a young mother of four, she lived during the war in Berlin-Schmargendorf, while her husband was away at the front. One day in November 1942, when visiting the fashionable coffee house “Berlin” – a favorite haunt of the homosexual-lesbian community of the city – Wust’s housekeeper introduced her to an elegantly dressed young woman who presented herself as Felice Schröder. It was only after she had invited her new acquaintance to her home and had fallen in love with her that Wust discovered that her lover was in fact Felice Schragenheim, a Jewish fugitive on the run. In time, Wust, who in the meanwhile had become legally separated from her husband, invited her Jewish lover to move in with her. Food was no problem since, as a German mother of four, Wust was entitled to a relatively generous allocation of food. The arrangement lasted until July 1944, when Felice, who fell victim to a denunciation, was tracked down by the Gestapo. She was arrested in Wust’s house, and, after being held for a few days in a transit camp in the Schulstrasse in Berlin, was transported to Theresienstadt. In October she was sent to Auschwitz. She was never heard from again. The tentative date of her death was subsequently determined as December 31, 1944 [?]. Wust had only been able to escape punishment because she was the mother of four young children whose father was missing in action. However, she continued to see Felice while she was being held in the Schulstrasse and even risked a journey to Theresienstadt, where she was turned down by the spiteful camp commandant. The upshot of this misadventure was that she was obliged to report every second day to the district police station. In spite of this, a few months later, she took upon herself an even greater risk and offered to shelter in her home three other victims of Nazi persecution: Lucie Friedländer, Katja Lazerstein, and Dr. Rosa Ohlendorf.Wust, who met the three before Christmas in 1944, sensed at once that they were Jews on the run and offered to shelter them. To avoid detection by suspicious neighbors, they stayed upstairs during the frequent air-raid alarms. Feeding them all was also a challenge on account of the severe food shortage in Berlin during the last months of the war. The three Jewish women survived the war, although Lucie Friedländer committed suicide shortly after the liberation. On August 31, 1995, Yad Vashem recognize Elisabeth Wust as Righteous Among the Nations.