The commercial agent Herbert Michalski lived with his wife Lilli in Görlitz. Although she was baptized for her wedding in 1933, the Nuremberg “race laws” classified Lilli Michalski as Jewish, and her son Franz as a “Mischling” (“half-breed”). When Herbert Michalski refused to divorce his wife, he lost his company. He moved to Berlin to make a living. In 1940 Herbert Michalski was drafted into the Wehrmacht and stationed in Paris. He was dismissed in 1942 as “unworthy of service” because of his Jewish wife.
In October 1944 Lilli and Herbert Michalski were told to report for forced labor. The family went underground and fled to the Austrian region of Styria. The Michalskis eventually placed the children with their former nanny Erna Raack near Görlitz, and sought in vain for a safe hiding place for the family in the Yugoslavian partisan territory.
Gerda Mez, a colleague of Herbert Michalski, hid the family from February 1945 in her hotel room in Tetschen-Bodenbach (now Děčín). Herbert Michalski was briefly arrested at the end of March, but released again. The family returned to Berlin on foot in the summer of 1945.