During the Second World War, Elisabeth Mann lived in Frankfurt and was a member of the Quakers faith community. In mid-February 1943, at the request of her fellow Quaker Eva Hermann, she took in the Jewish couple Hilde and Fritz Rosenthal, who had gone underground in Berlin in December 1942 to evade deportation. Eva Hermann and her husband Carl had previously hidden the Rosenthals in Mannheim.
After about a month, the Rosenthals moved on to a new hiding place. They were arrested in Saarbrücken in April 1943, after the Gestapo arrested another helper, Gertrud Luckner, on March 24, 1943. Fritz Rosenthal committed suicide during his arrest. His wife was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was presumably murdered immediately on arrival. It is not known whether the Jewish couple’s arrest had any consequences for Elisabeth Mann.