The agricultural expert Eberhard Helmrich lived in Berlin with his wife Donata. The couple both rejected the Nazi regime. In the summer of 1941, Helmrich was drafted to work in the German-occupied Polish town of Drohobycz. As the head of food and agriculture administration, he attempted to alleviate the Jewish population’s suffering by smuggling food into the ghetto. In 1942 he was put in charge of Hyrawka labor camp, where vegetables were grown to feed the local SS. Helmrich used his influence to protect the approximately 200 Jewish woman and men forced to work there. He hid people at risk in his house during SS raids. When Hyrawka was closed down in September 1943, he helped many to escape.
In the fall of 1942, Helmrich smuggled several Jewish women out of Drohobycz, having obtained forged papers for them, and sent them to his wife in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Donata Helmrich placed the Jewish women in families looking for low-priced domestic workers, who thought they were Ukrainian Christians.
In 1965 Eberhard Helmrich was honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.