Wally Hagemann lived with her husband Gerhard in Havelberg, 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Berlin. She ran a small local tobacconist store and raised their six children. Her unmarried sister Ella Friedlieb also lived in the family household.
In Berlin, where Gerhard Hagemann worked as an auditor in the episcopal ordinariate, he met the Jewish businessman Jacob Kahane. The latter had to go into hiding with his wife Lina in the fall of 1942; at the end of February 1943 their daughter Jenny had to join them. When their quarters were hit during an air raid in November 1943, the devout Catholic Hagemanns took the Kahane family into their home temporarily.
Thanks to Gerhard Hagemann’s help, Jacob Kahane was able to pose in Havelberg as a “bombed-out Berliner.” 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 posthumously honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem, as were their children and Ella Friedlieb.