Daisy Grochowski lived in Berlin-Friedrichshain. At the end of October 1942, she took in the office clerk Max Gottheiner, who had gone underground several months previously to evade deportation. Presumably without his helper’s knowledge, Gottheiner and two Jewish acquaintances also living in hiding posed as police detectives or Gestapo officers. The three men extorted money and valuables from Jews in order to survive.
In November 1942 Daisy Grochowski also hid the Slavist Wolfgang Leppmann, also persecuted as a Jew, at a friend’s request. When Leppmann returned to Grochowski’s apartment on December 9, he was too late in noticing two police officers in the hallway, who were presumably looking for Max Gottheiner. Leppmann was sentenced to a penal institution for alleged “racial defilement.” In the summer of 1943, the Berlin Gestapo had him transferred to Auschwitz, where he was murdered.
In the course of investigations into Max Gottheiner and his accomplices Gerhard Redlich and Heinz Riechert, Daisy Grochowski was also interrogated on December 12, 1942; the consequences are unknown.