Alfred Holschke managed the Naundorf estate near Oschatz in Saxony. In the end phase of the war, one of the infamous “death marches” passed the estate. Hanna Levy, Anna Borinski, and three or four other women were among the concentration camp inmates being marched from Auschwitz. They were able to steal away on April 17. The next day, Holschke’s son Walter found the absolutely exhausted women hiding in bushes. He informed his father, who hid the Jewish women in a barn on the estate. Holschke’s daughter Ursula took particular care of nursing the women back to health.
Several days later, Alfred Holschke was denounced by a neighbor. Fearing a search, he sent the women out to the fields with others. Thankfully, no one looked for them there. Oschatz was liberated by the Western Allies on April 26, 1945.
When Alfred Holschke was under threat of arrest for alleged sabotage in 1952, the widower fled to West Germany with his son and daughter. In 1998 the courageous estate manager and his children were honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.