Elfriede Guttmann grew up in East Prussia. She and her family moved to Berlin around 1937. On December 11, 1942, after her parents’ deportation, she had to go underground. Acquaintances introduced her to Margarete Grenzebach, who ran a lending library in the Steglitz district. Due to Grenzebach’s employees, however, she could not stay there for long. In January 1943 she was taken in by Anna Muschiol, who ran a boarding house in the Tiergarten district. Elfriede Guttmann helped to run the house, which was destroyed in an air raid in November 1943.
Shortly later, Guttmann happened to meet a non-Jewish former school friend from East Prussia on the street, who helped her with food and gave her her labor service certificate. From February 1944, she found refuge with Johanna Eck, an acquaintance of Anna Muschiol’s in Schöneberg. Using the altered papers, the elderly widow managed to pass Guttmann off as a “bombing refugee” and her sub-tenant, and Guttmann was then able to get food ration stamps.
Elfriede Guttmann died in May 1946, shortly before her planned emigration to the United States, of a sudden intestinal obstruction.
