Gerda Mez began working as a hair specialist for the Hans Schwarzkopf company in Berlin in 1934. The Nazis’ “race laws” prevented her from marrying her Jewish fiancé.
When her former colleague Herbert Michalski asked her for help, she was immediately willing. In October 1944 she went from Berlin to Breslau to help his Jewish wife Lilli Michalski and their sons to escape the country. During passport checks on the overcrowded train to Vienna, Gerda Mez slipped her passport to Lilli, which went unnoticed.
In the winter of 1945 Gerda Mez was working in Tetschen-Bodenbach (now Děčín, Czech Republic), to where Schwarzkopf had been relocated. She was housed in a hotel. From February, the four members of the Michalski family hid in Gerda Mez’s room. The hotelier noticed the family but did not betray them. The situation was very tense. When Gerda Mez’s sister and her baby arrived from Berlin after six weeks, the family moved into a hotel in the neighboring village.
Gerda Mez stayed in touch with the Michalskis until her death. She was honored posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem in 2012.