Schroedter Otto & Hedwig (Pohl)

Schrödter, Hedwig Schrödter, Otto During the war, Otto Schrödter (b. 1898), a blacksmith by profession, and his wife, Hedwig (b. 1896), lived on the eastern outskirts of Berlin, where they maintained a small garden with vegetables, chickens, and a pig. Their son Herbert was drafted into the army in December 1942, and was away on the eastern front. The Schrödter couple, both Social Democrats, abhorred the Nazi regime. In August 1943, the Schrödters were approached by the Reich couple, who had received their name as a family who might be willing to offer assistance to people persecuted by the regime. Kurt and Ursula Reich, had been constantly on the move ever since their marriage in May 1942, attempting to elude the Nazi dragnet. In August 1943, having run out of hiding places, they decided to give themselves in but sought first a secure place for their baby daughter, Monica. After hearing the story from the tearful mother, Hedwig Schrödter proposed that all three take shelter in her house. The Reich couple and their daughter stayed there, apart from one brief interruption, from September 1943 until the approach of the Russians at the end of April 1945. As if that were not risk enough, in December 1943, the Schrödters took in another Jewish family in hiding: Robert and Eva Sachs and the latter’s 63-year-old mother, Johanna Hirsch. The Schrödters pointedly refused to accept any material remuneration and even sought to raise the spirits of their illegal lodgers by inviting them to listen to the forbidden BBC broadcasts. Their soldier son, Herbert, who returned home briefly in February 1944, on furlough from the eastern front, also insisted that none of the visitors should leave on his account. In April 1944 Johanna Hirsch died of a stroke. Since they could not bury her in a cemetery, rescuers and their proteges had to secretely bury her at night in their garden. On December 30, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Hedwig and Otto Schrödter as Righteous Among the Nations.