Meier Luise (Bemm)

Meier, Luise Höfler, Josef Höfler, Elise Luise Meier, a widow (née Bemm) b.1885 in Vorhallein Hagen (Ruhr) lived in Berlin’s Grunewald neighborhood. Meier got to know the Jewish tenants of a boarding house opposite her building. One of them was a Mrs. Franke, who managed to flee to Switzerland. From there she sent Meier a secret Swiss Red Cross courier called Friedrich, who gave her identification cards to be used by other Jewish refugees. He also asked her to help a young woman, Lotte Schloss-Kahle, to flee to Switzerland. Meier contacted Lotte and in May 1943 took the train with her from Berlin to Singen am Hohentwiel. There she was met by a courier who took Lotte on foot to the house of the Höfler family in Gottmadingen. The following afternoon, Josef Höfler, in the company of his wife Elise and his four-year-old daughter, led Lotte Schloss over the border on an apparently innocent Sunday walk. This was the beginning of a year during which Luise Meier in Berlin worked with Josef Höfler in Singen. With the support of his Swiss-born wife Elise, who came from an area close to the border, the 32-year-old Josef was able to smuggle more than 20 Jewish refugees over the border. They included Lotte’s fiancé Herbert Strauss, who in the 1980’s became director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin, and his friend Ernst-Ludwig Ehrlich. In May 1944, the Gestapo managed to arrest two Jewish women who had lost their way in an attempt to cross the Swiss border. When interrogated, they divulged the name of their helpers. Josef Höfler and Luise Meier were arrested and charged with “assistance to the enemy” by “persistently aiding and abetting illegal emigration to Switzerland.” The Reich Ministry of Justice was ready to hold a show trial, but since the files were destroyed when the People’s Court in Berlin was bombed in February 1945, the two were able to avoid conviction and survived in prison. On July 16, 2001, Yad Vashemrecognized Luise Meier, Josef Höfler and Elise Höfler as Righteous Among the Nations.