Therese (Resi) Silbermann grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin-Wedding. She had a sister, Adelheid, and two older brothers. Franziska Bereit, the family’s non-Jewish housemaid, took special care of the two girls. Therese Silbermann had to break off training as a pianist. In 1939 she married the Jewish businessman Hermann Ornstein; the couple did not have children. On December 2, 1942, they had to go underground. They initially found refuge in an unheatable shed in the Deutsche Scholle allotment gardens. 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 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.
Therese Ornstein, her husband, and her sister Adelheid Silbermann emigrated to the United States in 1949 and lived in New York until their deaths. In 1972 the three of them donated a tree in Jerusalem in memory of Franziska Bereit.