Monika Hagemann lived with her parents Gerhard and Wally Hagemann and five older siblings in Havelberg, a small town 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Berlin. Her aunt Ella Friedlieb also lived in the Catholic family’s household.
In Berlin, where Gerhard Hagemann was an auditor in the episcopal ordinariate, he met the Jewish businessman Jacob Kahane, who had to go into hiding with his wife Lina and daughter Jenny in the fall of 1942. When their hiding place was hit by a bomb in November 1943, the Hagemanns took in the Kahane family temporarily.
Thanks to Gerhard Hagemann’s help, Jacob Kahane was able to pose in Havelberg as a “bombed-out Berliner.” He and his family then received “Aryan” identity papers and food ration cards. They were also allocated a replacement home very close to the Hagemanns. After their liberation, the Kahanes returned to Berlin.
After the war, Monika Hagemann married Josef Wirsig. She worked as a pharmacist and lived in Greifswald. In 1994 her family was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem.