The sex worker Hedwig Porschütz, born 1900, was officially employed by Otto Weidt from 1940 on. She took part in Weidt’s aid activities, and hid the twins Marianne and Annelies Bernstein in her apartment from January 1943 to the summer of that year. In March 1943 she also took in Grete Seelig and her niece Lucie Ballhorn. The women had to leave the apartment occasionally, when clients visited. When the Gestapo found a Jewish couple hiding in the same building, the women moved out. Hedwig Porschütz continued to provide them with food, and arranged for Grete Seelig and her niece to stay with her mother in Berlin- Schöneberg for a time.
Hedwig Porschütz was sentenced to a year and a half in a penal institution in 1944 for “war economy crimes“ and “receiving and selling stolen goods.” She served her term in Erdmannsdorf- Zillertal labor camp from November 1944 until the end of the war. Hedwig Porschütz died in poverty in 1977. The help she provided was never acknowledged or honored during her lifetime, since she was accused of being “morally degenerate.”
