From 1917, the librarian Gerta Bartels lived in her house in Berlin-Wilmersdorf with her Jewish partner Elsa Danziger. Due to their relationship, Bartels was transferred to a different post in mid-1934 and excluded from promotion. She harbored three Jewish men for several days during the November pogrom in 1938.
When Danziger was threatened with deportation on April 2, 1942, Gerta Bartels took her partner to stay with their friend, the actress Aloisia Tirsch-Kastner, who lived nearby. On the Gestapo’s arrival at Bartel’s house the next day, she claimed Danziger had told her she would commit suicide, and gave the officers a fake suicide note. After two weeks, Danziger returned to Bartels. Since she was known in the neighborhood, she could not leave the house or go to a bomb shelter during air raids. Bartels shared her meager food rations with Elsa Danziger until the end of the war.
Gerta Bartels also supported Sophie Rosner, who was living in hiding, by obtaining false papers for her. In 1959 she was honored by the West Berlin senate as an Unsung Heroine.
Certificate from the Berlin Senate honoring Gerta Bartels as an Unsung Heroine, June 27, 1959. Source: Deutscher Koordinierungsrat der Gesellschaften für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit (DKR)
