Johanna (Hanne) Biermann was arrested in 1936, since her Jewish husband was active in the illegal KPD. She was released after claiming to have known nothing about her husband’s activities. After serving a term in a penal institution, Herbert Biermann was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and murdered there.
Hanne Biermann, a trained dressmaker, moved to Althüttendorf near Eberswalde in 1942. She set up a coat-making workshop in a remote house with a business partner. When her Jewish friend Rosa Bibo and her husband Siegfried had to go underground at the end of 1942, Biermann took them in. Also a dressmaker, Rosa Bibo worked with her, posing as an “Aryan.”
Because the house-owners did not know the couple were Jewish, Siegfried Bibo could only be seen at weekends, when he “visited” from his alleged workplace in Guben. During the week, he had to hide in the attic.
After the war, all three returned to Berlin. Hanne Biermann married Hans Tübbecke, a member of the same resistance group as her murdered first husband.
Self-portrait of Herbert Biermann, sketched in Brandenburg-Görden penal institution before his deportation to Auschwitz, 1943. Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
The remote house in Althüttendorf where Hanne Biermann lived during the war and Rosa und Siegfried Bibo stayed in the attic apartment from 1943 to 1945, 2009. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
