Odenthal Heinz & Josephine (Cronenberg)

Odenthal, Heinz Odenthal, Josephine Cronenberg, Sibylla Bayerwaltes, Katharina Salomon and Henriette Jacoby (aged 77 and 72) and their widowed daughter Hildegard lived in Cologne, where the family owned a department store called “Kaufhaus Jacoby.” In 1939, the store was confiscated by the authorities in the so-called "aryanization" of Jewish property, leaving the Jewish family without an income. At the end of 1941 and beginning of 1942, all 7,000 Jews in Cologne and those in the surrounding area began to be arrested and held at the Müngersdorf camp, established at Fort V, a former prison. From there, they were deported to the east. Were it not for the Jacobys' neighbors, Heinz and Josephine Odenthal, they too would have been deported. The Odenthals, a Catholic family lived in the same building as the Jacobys. Heinz Odenthal was a teacher and an opponent of the occupying regime. When his Jewish neighbors began to be taken away, he decided to act. Since all the neighbors knew the Jacobys, he took them to a relative in Bonn, 72-year-old Sibylla Cronenberg. They were introduced to Cronenberg's neighbors as relatives whose house in Cologne had been destroyed by Allied bombs. The Odenthals would visit “their relatives,” and bring them food and ration cards. In May 1943, Cronenberg became sick and had to be hospitalized. The Jacobys were then moved to the house of 29-year-old Katharina Bayerwaltes, whose husband was a soldier at the Russian front. Bayerwaltes worked at an industrial plant in Bonn, and placed an apartment in her building at the disposal of the Jacobys. Although the subject was never brought up, she suspected that the couple was Jewish. Nevertheless, she shared the secret with nobody, not even her husband when he came on leave. In December 1943, Henriette Jacoby fell down the staircase. When Bayerwaltes offered to call a doctor, the elderly woman began to cry and begged her not to call anyone, and told her that she, her husband anddaughter were actually Jews in hiding. Bayerwaltes hugged her, and assured her she had nothing to fear. She admitted that she had guessed they were Jews. She took care of the wounded woman and attended to all the Jewish family’s needs, despite also having to care for her own infant. In October-December 1944, Bonn was heavily bombed. Bayerwaltes' husband, who was home on leave, decided to take his family out of danger and brought them to his parent’s home in Schlegeshaid. The Jacobys stayed at the house, even after they left. The Odenthals continued to check on the Jacobys and bring them food and other items. But Bayerwaltes constantly worried that if the house were to be bombed, the Jacobys would be discovered, and in February 1945 she decided to return home. When Bonn was liberated by the American forces in March 1945, the Jacoby family decided not to return to Cologne, and moved instead to nearby Bad Godesberg. The elderly couple passed away shortly after the end of the war in 1945 and 1946. Hildegard Jacoby remained in contact with their rescuers until her death in 1980. On May 25, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Heinz and Josephine Odenthal, Sibylla Cronenberg, and Katharina Bayerwaltes as Righteous Among the Nations.