Elisabeth Wirtz, born around 1900, lived in Dierdorf near Neuwied in Rhineland-Palatinate during the Second World War. She had known the Quaker Eva Hermann and her Jewish friend Hildegard Rosenthal from her schooldays. Hilde Rosenthal and her husband Fritz lived in Berlin and had to go underground in December 1942 to evade deportation.
Eva Hermann informed Elisabeth Wirtz of their former schoolfriend’s dire situation. Wirtz agreed to help “in an extreme emergency.” Presumably in February/March 1943, she took in Hilde and Fritz Rosenthal, who had previously been hiding in the home of Eva Hermann and her husband Carl in Mannheim.
In April 1943, however, the Rosenthals were arrested in Saarbrücken, after another helper, Gertrud Luckner, had been arrested by the Gestapo on March 24, 1943. Fritz Rosenthal committed suicide during their arrest. His wife was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and in 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was presumably murdered immediately on arrival. It is not known whether the Rosenthals’ arrest had any consequences for Elisabeth Wirtz.