The master tailor Josef Jakubowski lived in Berlin-Steglitz with his wife Hedwig. They had known the Jewish couple Bernhard and Eugenia Einzig since 1918. Josef Jakubowski had worked for many years in Bernhard Einzig’s women’s clothing factory, until it was expropriated in 1938. At the end of 1942, the Einzigs had to go underground.
From around December 1942 to July 1943, they lived with the Jakubowskis. Josef Jakubowski helped his former employer to get a postal identity card by passing him off at the post office as his cousin Johann Garst from Pomerania. While attempting to escape to Switzerland, Bernhard Einzig was arrested on a train in Singen and deported to Theresienstadt on August 4. He perished there in December 1943. His wife managed to make the escape to Switzerland.
When Einzig’s postal identity card was checked, Jakubowski’s involvement in its false obtainment was established. He was arrested for “aiding Jews” and held in Gestapo custody for three months, before being taken to the Gestapo-run Wuhlheide “labor education camp” in Berlin-Karlshorst, where he remained until the end of the war. He fell severely ill while imprisoned.