Eva Heilmann lived in Berlin with her parents and three siblings. Her father Ernst Heilmann was a well-known SPD politician of Jewish origin. He was arrested on June 26, 1933. Eva Heilmann had to change schools shortly afterward. She graduated school in 1939. Since her father was a concentration-camp prisoner and Jewish, she was classed as “politically unreliable” and not allowed to attend university. She performed labor service and trained as a chemical-technical assistant, then worked in a commercial laboratory in Berlin.
The Heilmanns experienced the persecution of Jews in their family and circle of friends. Eva Heilmann, her mother Magdalena, and her brother Peter were involved in a range of activities supporting people living underground. They took in persecuted people to their apartment in Berlin-Kreuzberg, including the Jewish couple Eva and Martin Deutschkron, Gerd Ehrlich, and Ernst Schwerin. In 1944 Eva Heilmann took her driving test solely so as to pass on her driver’s license to a woman in hiding.
In 2023, a mural was installed in Berlin to commemorate the Heilmann family and their resistance.
Negative response from university principal Hoppe to Eva Heilmann’s application for permission to attend the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, May 6, 1940. Source: Landesarchiv Berlin, B Rep. 078, BEG Nr. 211.420, E2
The four Heilmann siblings Eva, Peter, Ernst-Ludwig, and Beate (left to right) on their mother Magdalena Heilmann’s 75th birthday, Berlin, 1969. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Mural by the street artist Paula Marie commemorating the Heilmann family in Berlin-Charlottenburg, at the corner of Heckerdamm and Heilmannring, unveiled on October 18, 2023. Source: Stiftung Berliner Leben, Foto: Sebastian Kläbsch
