Roennfeldt Grete (Borchert)

Rönnfeldt, Grete Grete Rönnfeldt (née Borchert), born on 1901, worked as a nursery maid for the Berlin Jewish Ernsthaft family from 1925 to 1927, taking care of and raising the family’s only son, Harry b.1924. Even when she gave up her job after getting married, she stayed in touch with the family. After the Nazi assumption of power, the Ernsthaft family’s situation steadily deteriorated. In September 1942, they were all due to be deported to Poland, but since the father was seriously ill, the couple was lodged at the Jewish Hospital in Iranische Strasse. Harry, by now aged 18, had gone underground and was living “illegally” with a cousin of his father’s, who as a “half-Jew” with an “Aryan” wife was exempt from deportation until further notice. However, in September 1943, when the air raids on Berlin intensified and neighbors noticed Harry’s presence, new accommodation had to be found for him. His mother, Lili, contacted her former nursery maid and begged her for help. At the time, Grete Rönnfeldt was living with her husband and three daughters in a one-family house in Neuenhagen near Berlin. Her husband, who had been inducted into the Wehrmacht, was home on leave and first had to be put into the picture. “The very next day,” Lilli Ernsthaft wrote in her autobiographical notes, “we received a telegram, consisting of just one word: ‘naturally’” But it certainly was not natural for a family with three small children to risk its life and livelihood in order to save a Jew living in hiding. Harry Ernsthaft remained in hiding with the Rönnfeldts until the liberation. The children were not aware of the situation; nonetheless, their mother had impressed upon them that they were never to say a word to anyone about “Uncle Harry”. Harry survived and in 1956 moved to New York. On October 22, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Grete Rönnfeldt as Righteous Among the Nations.