Katharina Bayerwaltes née Rehtmann

born in Gelsenkirchen on January 20, 1914 – died in Bonn on June 11, 2011
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Katia Bayerwaltes, 1940.

Katharina (Katia) Bayerwaltes lived in Bonn, where she worked as an accountant. Her husband, a lawyer in training, was drafted into the Wehrmacht as an officer in 1940. In May 1943, an elderly couple and their daughter knocked at her door. They claimed to be a family by the name of Schott, looking for accommodation. In reality, the Jewish Jacobys from Cologne and their daughter Hildegard Schott had been living illegally for over a year, and were in urgent need of new quarters. Bayerwaltes let them move into a newly vacant apartment in the building. In December 1943, Henriette Jacoby had a bad fall and revealed that she was Jewish, to prevent a doctor being called. In response, Katia Bayerwaltes gave the family free accommodation and food until the Allies occupied the city on March 9, 1945, and ended the war.
Katia Bayerwaltes was recognized by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 2005.

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