Emma Gumz and her husband Franz ran a laundry in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The couple were members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious community (also known as Bible Students). They rejected National Socialism. One of their customers was Ella Deutschkron. Emma Gumz continued to serve the Deutschkron family when Jews were increasingly excluded after 1933.
At the end of 1942, a soldier from the neighborhood told the Gumz family about the mass murders of Jews in German-occupied Poland. Emma Gumz advised Ella Deutschkron to go into hiding with her 19-year-old daughter Inge. Emma and Franz Gumz offered them both a hiding place in their home. On January 15, 1943, Ella and Inge Deutschkron moved into a small room behind the laundry. When a neighbor noticed them several weeks later, they had to seek new quarters. Emma Gumz continued to support them and provided them and other persecuted Jews with food.
The Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored Emma Gumz as Righteous Among the Nations in 1971.
Emma and Franz Gumz with their son, around 1938. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
The former Gumz laundry at Knesebeckstraße 17 where Ella and Inge Deutschkron hid, 1970s. Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
Memorial plaque installed in 2004 for Emma and Franz Gumz at Knesebeckstraße 17, Berlin-Charlottenburg, photographed 2024. Source: Privatbesitz/Private, Foto: Andreas Uhse
Helpers of Inge Deutschkron at the posthumous honoring of Otto Weidt and others as Righteous Among the Nations, left to right: Else Weidt, Walter Rieck, unknown, Lisa Holländer, unknown, and Emma Gumz, Berlin, January 1972. Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
