Kaeferle Anna (Haefner); Mother: Haefner Anna (Hold)

Käferle-Häfner, Anna Marie Elise Häfner, Anna Marie During the Nazi period Anna Häfner of Mannheim (b. 1920) was engaged to Alfred Albert Käferle, the only son of the late Emil Käferle, an Aryan German, and a Jewish-born mother, Martha Käferle-Süsskind. However, as an Aryan and employee of the Nazi “Labor Front,” Häfner could not marry Albert Käferle, as, under Nazi law, Albert was considered a half-Jew. Nevertheless, she remained faithful to her fiancé, who was drafted into the German army despite his half-Jewish descent, wounded in battle, and decorated with the Iron Cross. In the autumn of 1940, when Martha Käferle-Süsskind, Albert’s mother, was faced with deportation to Gurs in southern France, Häfner showed up at the Gestapo headquarters and, with the help of documents bearing out her fiancé’s war record, succeeded in canceling the deportation of his mother. In 1941, Käferle-Süsskind, who was again threatened with deportation, had to leave her own home and live illegally. Häfner and her mother kept in contact with her during the entire period and even hid her in their home for six months. After the war, Anna Häfner married her fiancé, thus becoming the daughter-in-law of the person she had rescued. On August 27, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Anna Marie Elise Käferle-Häfner and her mother Anna Häfner as Righteous Among the Nations.