The Jewish salesman Siegfried Bibo has to perform forced labor in Berlin, as did his wife Rosa. When they learned in 1942 of the murder of Jewish men, women, and children in the East from a neighbor, a soldier on home leave from the front, they decided to go underground. At the end of 1942 they fled to Althüttendorf near Eberswalde, where Rosa’s friend Johanna (Hanne) Biermann had set up a coat-making workshop in 1942.
Rosa Bibo worked there in her profession 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.
Thanks to Biermann’s help, the couple survived. After the war they returned to Berlin. Siegfried Bibo, formerly a KPD member, was chairman of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (VVN) for many years.