The Jewish businessman Hermann Ornstein lived in Berlin from 1923. In 1939 he married Therese Silbermann, who also came from a Jewish family; the couple did not have children. On December 2, 1942, they had to go into hiding to evade deportation. They initially found refuge in an unheatable shed in the Deutsche Scholle allotment gardens. Hermann Ornstein only ventured outside at night to get hold of food. When the shed was damaged in an air raid on January 20, 1944, the Ornsteins only managed to save themselves and the clothes on their backs. They fled to Franziska Bereit, who had been hiding Ornstein’s sister-in-law Adelheid Silbermann since March 1943. Despite the crowded conditions, the three persecuted Jews stayed there until the end of the war. Franziska Bereit’s three children supported them with food.
Hermann Ornstein, his wife, and his sister-in-law emigrated to the United States in 1949. He changed his first name to Harry and they all lived in New York until their deaths. In 1972 they donated a tree in Jerusalem in memory of Franziska Bereit, whom Adelheid Silbermann described as like a “second mother” to her.