Mager Frieda (Bruehl)

Mager, Frieda Emma Schubert was born in 1904. In 1933, she married a German Protestant from Bonn who worked in a bakery, and the couple settled in an apartment at 4 Bonngasse. In the attic of the same building lived Frieda Mager, a cleaning woman, whose husband was serving in Norway. The apartment had been put at her disposal by her employer, the head of the artists union and an ardent Nazi. Her employer had warned Mager not to have any contact with her Jewish neighbors, but she helped them nevertheless. For some time, Schubert was protected from deportation because of her non-Jewish husband. She was, however, subjected to anti-Jewish decrees, and in the early war years, when Jews were restricted in their shopping hours and were provided with specially stamped ration cards, Mager would do Schubert's shopping for her. She also obtained extra food, so that Schubert could send packages to her relatives who had been deported to Terezin. Mager would trade with farmers in the area, buying goods in exchange for the smoked fish that her husband sent her from Norway. In September 1944, the authorities decided to deport Jews in mixed marriages, as well as their children. Schubert was ordered to present herself at the Gestapo offices in Bonn, and was then incarcerated at Fort V in Cologne, a former prison that had been turned into an assembly point for Jews before their deportation. From there, she was sent to a forced labor camp in Kassel. Her husband was ordered to leave the area. Throughout Schubert's incarceration, Mager maintained contact with the couple. On October 16, 1944, Schubert managed to escape from the camp, and went into hiding with her husband. Mager continued to help them in every possible way, and when the building they had lived in was bombed and she herself had to move out, she suggested they return to Bonn and hide in her mother’s home. After the war, the Schuberts continued to live in Bonn, and maintained a close friendship with Mager. WhenMartin Schubert died in 1973, his widow decided to bury him in the Jewish cemetery. She passed away in 1991, and was laid to rest next to her husband, who had never abandoned her, even during the Holocaust. Frieda Mager, their benefactor, died in 1994. On May 5, 2009, Yad Vashem recognized Frieda Mager as Righteous Among the Nations.