The social worker Herta Pineas lived with her husband, the physician Dr. Hermann Pineas, in Berlin. They went into hiding at the last minute in March 1943. An acquaintance advised Herta Pineas to go to Donata Helmrich, an opponent of the regime, for forged papers.
Despite being a complete stranger, Helmrich was prepared to give the Jewish Pineas her identity papers and to report them to the police as lost. Herta Pineas stayed in hiding for more than two years, often separately from her husband, surviving with the support of Württemberg parish houses close to the Confessional Church. In the summer of 1944, for instance, she was in the parish house at Gerstetten, where the parish workers Elisabeth Braun and Gertrud Kirn and the pastor’s wife Hanna Holzapfel took care of the community, since the pastor was away in the Wehrmacht. A long journey with many stops eventually took the Jewish couple to Memmingen, where they were housed in an apartment in the district office, officially registered as refugees under the name of Günther.
After their liberation, Herta and Hermann Pineas emigrated to New York and built a new life for themselves there.