Ida Scharf and her husband Ernst ran a farm in Thiemendorf near Görlitz. The Scharfs were convinced opponents of National Socialism. Their older daughter Erna Scharf began working as a maid and nanny for the Michalski family in Görlitz at the end of 1934. Lilli Michalski was of Jewish origin and her sons Franz and Peter were classified as “half-breeds.” When she and the children were threatened with deportation in the fall of 1944, Ida and Ernst Scharf took in the two boys.
In February 1945 the farm was searched several times for Wehrmacht deserters, meaning the children were no longer safe there. Herbert and Lilli Michalski therefore collected their sons from Thiemendorf in mid-February 1945.
The families remained in contact after the war. Ida and Ernst Scharf were posthumously honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem in 2012.
The Scharf-Raack family (left to right): Herbert and Erna Raack, Erna’s sister Else Scharf, and their parents Ida and Ernst Scharf, Thiemendorf, around 1944. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Ida and Ernst Scharf with their great-grandson Matthias, born 1969, Thiemendorf, 1971. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
