The Jewish dressmaker Rosa Bibo had to perform forced labor in Berlin from 1940. She and her husband Siegfried decided to go underground in 1942. The situation was especially critical for Rosa Bibo, since she was pregnant. The Jewish physician Dr. Benno Heller carried out an abortion. They then fled to Althüttendorf near Eberswalde, where Rosa’s friend Johanna (Hanne) Biermann had set up a coat-making workshop earlier that year.
Rosa Bibo worked there as a tailor, posing as an “Aryan.” Because the house-owners were not aware they were Jewish, Siegfried Bibo could only show himself at the weekend, when he “visited” from his alleged workplace in Guben. He had to hide in the attic at all other times.
Hanne Biermann courageously tampered with Rosa Bibo’s identity papers, altering the enforced name of Sara to read “Mara.” When “Mara” suffered from terrible toothache, she was able to visit a dentist using a sickness certificate from Hanne Biermann. After the liberation, the Bibos returned to Berlin.
Rosa Bibo, 1948. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Rosa Bibo at Plötzensee Memorial Center, 1981. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Rosel Bibo drawn by Monika Sieveking, 1987. Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Mappe „Gesichter des Widerstands“
The remote house in Althüttendorf where Hanne Biermann lived during the war and Rosa und Siegfried Bibo stayed in the attic apartment from 1943 to 1945, 2009. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
