Susanne Manasse lost her mother due to illness in 1936. Her father, a Jewish communist, was imprisoned in a concentration camp for more than a year. After his release in 1939, he fled to Shanghai. Susanne was cared for by her non-Jewish aunt Bertha Becker, until the authorities transferred her to be fostered by the Jewish kindergarten teacher Liselotte Pereles.
In February 1943 Liselotte Pereles went into “illegal” hiding with the child, to escape deportation. Susanne spent several months with Bertha Becker in Lindow, Brandenburg to begin with, under the name of Liane Becker. She and her foster mother found more helpers in the circle formed around the Quaker Elisabeth Abegg. Abegg’s close friend Hildegard Knies placed Susanne with helpers in East Prussia for some time, later in Alsace with the dressmaker Margrit Dobbeck. An acquaintance of Abegg, the vicar Ruth Wendland, obtained a forged baptism certificate for her. She placed Susanne with the pastor’s wife Dorothea Thiel in Gebersdorf, Brandenburg in 1944. Susanne Manasse experienced the end of the war back with Bertha Becker.
She emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, started a family, and worked as a nurse.