Luise Mallwitz met the Jewish businessman Herbert Silbermann in 1933. Their son Edmund was born a year later. After the “Nuremberg race laws” were decreed in 1935, they could no longer marry. The couple were summoned by the Gestapo under suspicion of “racial defilement” at the end of 1937. After that, the Gestapo repressions were so severe that Herbert Silbermann barely spent any time in his apartment or his store, which he went on to lose. Luise Mallwitz moved in with her sister in Jüterbog temporarily.
Herbert Silbermann had to perform forced labor for the Voigt company. He evaded arrest during “Operation Factory” at the end of February 1943 and went into hiding, as did his sister Adelheid Silbermann. His fiancée hid him and provided him with food. Her apartment was bombed in May 1944 and Herbert Silbermann was buried under rubble, since he had to stay in the apartment during air raids.
The couple married shortly after their liberation, on June 19, 1945. The family emigrated to the United States in 1949.