Emma Besser née Kassigkeit

born in Ragnit, East Prussia on July 4, 1893 – died in Berlin on November 7, 1981
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Portrait of Emma Besser, after 1960.

During World War II, Emma Besser and her husband Hans lived on a plot of land with a summer house in Berlin-Köpenick. Her sister Inge Kuhn, a resident of the Charlottenburg district, was an acquaintance of the actor Wilhelm Endtresser. In February 1943 he had hidden several Jews in his home, including Ruth and Julius Wedel with their three-year-old son Gideon. Since the situation with the child became too dangerous, Inge Kuhn asked her sister if she would take in the boy.
Emma Besser collected young Gideon in March 1943 and cared for him lovingly, helping the confused child to settle in fairly well. A few weeks later, his parents joined him. Emma Besser told her husband the Jewish family had been bombed out of their home in Düsseldorf. Shortly before the end of the war, the Wedels had to find a new place to stay, since Emma Besser needed to house her daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
In 1961 Emma Besser was honored by the West Berlin senate as an Unsung Heroine, at Julius Wedel’s request. She and the Wedel family remained friends.

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