Hildegard Berner


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Hildegard Berner lived in Berlin with her husband Max. He was friends with Wilhelm Staehle, military commander of the veterans’ home in Berlin-Frohnau from 1937. At Staehle’s home on January 15, 1943, Berner met the Jewish businessman and former officer Gerhard Eylenburg from Berlin. Eylenburg and his wife Eva had to go into hiding that day to evade deportation.
At Staehle’s request, the Berners hid Gerhard Eylenburg in their vegetable garden in Berlin-Wittenau, while Staehle sent Eva Eylenburg to the Jahn family in Hohen Neuendorf, a village north of Berlin. In July 1943 Gerhard Eylenburg moved to the Berners’ summerhouse in Hohen Neuendorf, where they presumably also lived at the time. They also occasionally housed Eva Eylenburg from then on.
Wilhelm Staehle and his wife Hildegard, members of the resistance circle formed around Hanna Solf, were arrested in the summer of 1944, and the Eylenburgs had to find a new hiding place on July 3, 1944. They were liberated at the end of April 1945 while living in the garden hut of a non-Jewish acquaintance in Potsdam.

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