Isolde Symanowski and her husband Horst lived in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) with their two daughters. Horst Symanowski was a theologian and a member of the Confessional Church. He was severely injured in the military in 1941. As a war invalid, he could use trains free of charge. He therefore acted as a courier between the East Prussian Confessional Church and the Confessional Church leadership in Berlin.
Isolde and Horst Symanowski also arranged accommodation in East Prussia for Jews from Berlin living in hiding. They received coded information on new arrivals, then Isolde Symanowski collected them from the station and took them to pastors’ families. She is estimated to have found shelter in East Prussia for 30 to 40 people in need of help.
In 1944 Isolde and Horst Symanowski took the Jewish couple Rosa and Rudolf Karmeinsky and their six-year-old daughter Christel into their home for several months.
The Symanowskis fled west at the start of 1945. In 2002 the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored Isolde Symanowski posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations.