Maria Hagemann lived with her parents Gerhard and Wally Hagemann and her five siblings in Havelberg, a small town around 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Berlin. Her aunt Ella Friedlieb also lived in the Catholic family’s household.
In Berlin, where her father worked as an auditor in the episcopal ordinariate, he met the Jewish businessman Jacob Kahane, who had to go into hiding in the fall of 1942 with his wife Lina and daughter Jenny. When the Kahanes’ quarters were hit during an air raid in November 1943, Hagemann’s family took them into their home temporarily.
With Gerhard Hagemann’s help, Jacob Kahane and his family were able to pose in Havelberg as “bombed-out Berliners.” They 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.
After the war Maria Janicke, as she was called after her marriage, worked as a bookkeeper and lived in Essen. She and her family were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Center Yad Vashem in 1994.