Around 7,000 Jews evaded deportation by going underground in Berlin. This could usually only succeed with help from people prepared to support them. Endangering themselves, these helpers obtained food and forged papers, helped persecuted people to escape, provided accommodation, or hid Jews in their own homes. For every person who went underground, there were up to ten and sometimes considerably more non-Jewish supporters.
This map shows four sites where Otto Weidt arranged for persecuted Jews to stay in 1943. Two of these hiding places were betrayed in 1943 and 1944; a number of persecuted people were arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
GROẞBEERENSTRAẞE 92
Otto Weidt sublet the former premises of the workshop for the blind in the basement of Großbeerenstraße to Karl Deibel in 1943. With the support of the building’s superintendent Emma Trostler, Deibel housed more than ten persecuted people here over time, until the hiding place was betrayed in the spring of 1944.
ROSENTHALER STRAẞE 39
A hiding place for the Horn family was set up in a windowless room at the workshop for the blind at the beginning of 1943. In October 1943, the hiding place was betrayed and the Horns were arrested and deported. Erich and Elsbeth Frey initially hid in the workshop’s basement in March 1943, before they found alternative accommodation.
ALEXANDERSTRAẞE 5
At the beginning of 1943, Hedwig Porschütz took the sisters Marianne and Annelies Bernstein into her one-and-a-half-room apartment. They were joined by Grete Seelig and her niece Lucie Ballhorn that spring. The four Jewish women stayed in hiding there until the summer of 1943. The building was located directly opposite the Berlin police headquarters.
NEANDERSTRAẞE 12
(today Heinrich-Heine Straße)
Otto Weidt rented shop premises on the ground floor of Neanderstraße 12, which were officially declared as external storage for the workshop for the blind. A trap-door and stairs from the shop gave access to a basement, where the Licht family hid until Alice Licht was arrested in a raid on the workshop.