Adelheid Silbermann grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin-Wedding. She had a sister, Therese, and two brothers. Franziska Bereit, the family’s non-Jewish maid, took particular care of the two girls.
Adelheid Silbermann had to perform forced labor from 1940. In the major raid on February 27, 1943, she evaded arrest by coincidence and fled to Franziska Bereit, who had been providing the Silbermanns with food and other essentials. In January 1944 Franziska Bereit also took in Adelheid’s sister Therese Ornstein and her husband Hermann to her one-room apartment in the Wedding district. Despite the cramped conditions, the three of them remained there until the end of the war. They also received food from Franziska Bereit’s three children.
The three survivors emigrated to the United States in 1949. In 1956 Adelheid Silbermann described what Franziska Bereit had done for her and her family to the writer Kurt Grossmann for his book “Unsung Heroes.”