Johanna Altmann lived with her parents and her sister Susanne in Vienna. After Austria’s annexation, they fled to Krakow, continuing to Soviet-occupied Lemberg in the fall of 1939. When the Wehrmacht invaded in June 1941, the family were put into Hyrawka forced labor camp near Drohobycz. The camp director Eberhard Helmrich deployed Johanna’s father, Wilhelm Altmann, as his administrator.
Helmrich, who helped many persecuted people, obtained forged papers for Susanne and Johanna Altmann in the fall of 1942, passing them off as Ukrainian Christians, and smuggled the sisters to his wife Donata in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Despite her concerns for her own children, Donata Helmrich took the young women into her home. When neighbors became suspicious, she looked for a way out. She applied to the labor office for permission to employ the escapees, since they could work in private households as “Ukrainians.” Then she placed the sisters in families looking for low-priced domestic workers; their employers did not know about their Jewish origins. After her liberation, Johanna Altmann returned to Poland and eventually emigrated to Australia.