Walter Holschke lived with his older sister in Naundorf near Oschatz in Saxony, where their father Alfred managed an estate. After their mother’s death in 1943, 17-year-old Ursula took charge of the household.
In the end phase of the war, one of the infamous “death marches” passed by the estate. On April 17, 1945, Hanna Levy, Anna Borinski, and three or four other women managed to escape from the group marching from Auschwitz concentration camp. The next day, Walter Holschke found them, utterly exhausted and hiding in bushes. He informed his father, who hid the Jewish women in a barn on the estate. Ursula Holschke in particular took care of the women, nursing them back to health. Oschatz was liberated by the Western Allies on April 26, 1945.
When Alfred Holschke was threatened with arrest for alleged sabotage in 1952, he fled to West Germany with his son and daughter. In 1998 Walter Holschke, his sister, and posthumously their father were honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. The siblings accepted the honor in Israel a year later, in the presence of Hanna Engel née Levy and her family.