Johanna (Hanne) Putzrath lived in Berlin from 1937. While her son and former husband were able to emigrate, she did not succeed in doing so. When threatened with deportation on January 26, 1943, she escaped to the home of Hans Ackermann, a man she had not previously known. A retired administration employee, he had previously offered his help to a Jewish colleague.
Ackermann took Hanne Putzrath into his two-room apartment in the Tempelhof district. In November 1943 his sister Elsa also moved in; she helped to obtain food for Putzrath. Shortly after the apartment was destroyed by an air raid in May 1944, Ackermann was allocated a replacement apartment, and the brother and sister once again took in Hanne Putzrath. They claimed in the building that she was a friend of Elsa Ackermann.
One neighbor did become suspicious, however, and threatened to report them to the police. Fortunately, this danger was averted, and Hanne Putzrath experienced the liberation with Hans and Elsa Ackermann at the end of April 1945. In 1947 she emigrated to the United States, in 1955 marrying Dr. Paul Matthias, a Jewish man she knew from Berlin.