Hans Ackermann was born intersex and initially grew up as a girl. In 1922, by then working in administration, he received official permission to live as a man.
Hans and his older sister Elsa, both devout Protestants, rejected National Socialism. At the end of January 1943, Ackermann took the Jewish couple Max and Ines Krakauer into his two-room apartment in Berlin-Tempelhof, despite only knowing them superficially and having already hidden another Jewish woman there for several days, Johanna (Hanne) Putzrath.
When the building was damaged in an air raid on March 1, 1943, the Krakauers had to move to other hiding places in Pomerania. However, traveling there was too dangerous without forged papers. Hans Ackermann gave Max Krakauer his own postal identity card. He swapped their photos and made an amateur attempt at completing the missing section of the official stamp. Had the card been checked thoroughly, it would have been easily traced back to him.
Hanne Putzrath returned to Hans Ackermann’s apartment during the same month. After two years, despite the risk presented by a neighbor, Putzrath experienced her liberation there at the end of April 1945.