Herta Loschinski married the Berlin sales representative Ernst Goldstein in 1937; their daughter Evelyn was born a year later. During the war, the couple had to perform forced labor. The family evaded “Operation Factory” in Berlin on February 27, 1943, and found a hiding place with the grocer Christine Engler. When they were threatened with discovery there, the Goldsteins had to separate. Engler’s niece Hildegard Knies took in Evelyn, while Ernst and Herta Goldstein had to move frequently and rent rooms under false names.
After her husband’s arrest at the end of June 1943, Herta Goldstein received help from the circle formed around Hildegard Knies and her close friend Elisabeth Abegg. At the end of February 1944, she went to join the Bunke family in Blöstau, East Prussia (now Vishnevka), where her daughter had been staying for more than six months. Mother and daughter survived the end of the war with a family of farm workers in the neighboring village of Gamsau (Podgornoye).
They were not able to return from the Soviet Union to Berlin until 1948, then emigrated to the United States in 1950. Having remarried, Herta Long lived in San Francisco and remained friends with her helpers.
Herta Goldstein with her baby daughter Evelyn on the balcony of their apartment, Berlin, 1938. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Left to right: Lotte Baus, Herta Goldstein, Julie Abegg, Evelyn Goldstein, Hildegard Knies, Berlin, 1949. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Evelyn and Herta Goldstein a year after their return, Berlin, 1950. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
