Gerhard Hagemann lived with his wife Wally and their six children in Havelberg, a small town 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Berlin. He worked as an auditor in the episcopal ordinariate in Berlin. The Hagemanns, devout Catholics, maintained their contacts to Jewish families in Havelberg after 1933. In Berlin, Gerhard Hagemann met the Jewish businessman Jacob Kahane, who had to go into hiding in the fall of 1942 with his wife Lina and daughter Jenny.
When their quarters were hit during an air raid in November 1943, the devout Catholic Hagemanns took the Kahane family into their home temporarily. With Gerhard Hagemann’s help, Jacob Kahane was able to pose in Havelberg as a “bombed-out Berliner” who had lost his identity papers and belongings. He and his family then received “Aryan” identity papers and food ration cards. They were also allocated a replacement home very close to the Hagemanns. After their liberation, the Kahanes returned to Berlin.
In 1994 Gerhard and Wally Hagemann were honored posthumously by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, as were their children.