Disselnkoetter Walther & Anna

Disselnkötter, Walther Disselnkötter, Anna Walther Disselnkötter, a Protestant minister, was born in Traben-Trarbach; his wife Anna was born in Diedenhofen. During World War II, they lived with their four children in Züschen, in present-day Hesse, some 15 miles southwest of Kassel. On January 28, 1945 – Anna’s birthday – a middle-aged woman rapped at the entrance to the vicarage. She introduced herself as Mrs. Schmidt from Allenstein in eastern Prussia, who had fled from the Russians. Her packages and papers had been stolen. She had intended to stay at the apartment of good friends in Kassel, but it turned out that their house had been completely destroyed. Now she was seeking some temporary accommodations. Mrs. Schmidt looked extremely confused and distraught. The vicar’s wife did not believe a word of what she said, but admitted her nevertheless. She was in fact Rahel Ida Plüer (née Schild), the Jewish wife of an Aryan dental surgeon, who, in order to escape the grip of the Gestapo, left her husband and two children in Kassel, feigning suicide. When Mr. Disselnkötter arrived home in the evening, his wife told him of the strange visitor. Both strongly suspected Mrs. Schmidt to be Jewish, but decided to offer her refuge without probing into the matter any further. The next day, Mr. Disselnkötter went to the local mayor and, on the strength of the fugitive story, obtained for Mrs. Plüer, alias Schmidt, food-ration cards and a temporary identity card. On one hand, his task was somewhat easier due to the fact that, at that time, the roads were flooded with refugees from eastern Prussia seeking asylum. On the other hand, hosting an illegal fugitive in one’s home under false pretenses was a highly risky affair. The vicar and his wife were aware of the fact that, in case they were discovered, they would have to reckon with deportation to a concentration camp – at the very least. The risk was all the greater as Mr. Disselnkötter, as a minister of the dissidentConfessing Church, had already been targeted by the Gestapo as “politically unreliable.” Actually, this was, in fact, the very reason why Mrs. Plüer, at the advice of a teacher friend, turned to him for help in the first place. In April 1945, all could breathe a sigh of relief when Züschen was liberated by the American army. On May 20, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Walther and Anna Disselnkötter as Righteous Among the Nations.