Schmitz Elisabeth

Schmitz, Elisabeth Elisabeth Schmitz began her career as a teacher in Berlin in 1923. When Hitler became chancellor and Nazi ideology was introduced into the school programs, she found it more and more difficult to reconcile the teaching materials dictated by the Nazi state with her personal convictions. A devout Protestant, in 1934 she decided to join the Confessing Church [Bekennende Kirche], which was opposed to the Nazis. In 1935, Dr. Schmitz published a manifest entitled "Regarding the Situation of the Non-Aryan Germans." [This 23-page document, created on a typewriter, was previously attributed to Margarete Meusel*, but based on a 1947 declaration by Pastor Webbling found over 60 years later, it seems that it was Schmitz who authored it.] In the manifest, Schmitz describes the persecution of Jews, converts and the offspring of mixed marriages. She also calls on the Confessing Church to act, warning that their silence in face of the persecution of the Jews was against divine law. "Over the past two-and-a-half years, a part of our people has been cruelly persecuted because of their origin, including members of our community," she wrote in the introduction. "The suffering – both internal and external – that they have to endure is not known to many; what will follow is the enormous guilt the German people will have to bear." She went on: "The situation described in this document clearly shows that it would not be an exaggeration if one were to speak of an attempt at the eradication [Ausrottung] of German Jewry." Schmitz copied the manifest 200 times for distribution. To her dismay, the Confessing Church did not even discuss the subject at a conference held soon afterwards. Schmitz shared an apartment with Dr. Martha Kassel, a physician who had converted from Judaism, but was fired from her position because of her Jewish origin. In February 1938, the fact that Schmitz was sharing an apartment with Kassel was brought to the authorities' knowledge. Thanksto the intervention of her superior, Schmitz was not fired, but was transferred to another school. Shortly afterwards, following the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, Schmitz decided to retire at the age of 45. She could no longer, she wrote after the war, "serve a regime which permitted the burning of synagogues." In her letter of December 31, 1938, requesting early retirement, she wrote: “I am more and more in doubt as to whether I am able to continue to teach subjects such as Religion, History and German Language using the approach required and expected of me by the National-Socialist State. After repeated self-examination, I have reached the conclusion that this is not possible. As my internal conflict of conscience has become unbearable, I must submit this request." When the deportation of the Jews began, Elisabeth Schmitz hid a number of Jewish people in her home in Berlin and later in Hanau, where she moved after her Berlin home was destroyed during an air raid. Liselotte Pereles had been a welfare worker in the Jewish community of Berlin, employed in a youth center. In early 1943, when the remaining Jews of Berlin were deported, Pereles embarked on an illegal existence. During May-June 1943 she found refuge in Schmitz’s Berlin apartment, and again in October-November of that year. Even after the apartment was destroyed, Schmitz continued to help Pereles with food and money. At the end of the war, Schmitz returned to teaching in Hanau. She died in 1977. On August 16, 2010, Yad Vashem recognized Elisabeth Schmitz as Righteous Among the Nations.