The Jewish couple Alice and Hermann Löwenstein lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. Having been partially paralyzed for years, Hermann Löwenstein poisoned himself at the end of December 1941 to avoid deportation. When his widow was to be deported at the end of May 1942, she went underground “with the help of good friends,” as she stated after the war. When her situation appeared increasingly hopeless in March 1943, Alice Löwenstein attempted suicide in the home of Richard Noack in Brandenburg; the attempt failed.
She moved on to Braunschweig, where medics took care of her. In December 1943 she was committed to a sanitorium and mental hospital in Göttingen, where the staff were unaware of her Jewish origins. After several months there, she revealed her identity to the senior physician Dr. Krätzschmer. He, his colleague Dr. Haddenbrock, and the matron Ms. Helbig promised Löwenstein they would not hand her over to the Gestapo. They protected her until her liberation. In 1947 Alice Löwenstein was able to leave for Switzerland, emigrating from there to New York in 1948.