The housewife Maria Nickel lived in Berlin with her husband Willi and their two sons. Willi Nickel was a driver. During the war, Maria Nickel saw Jewish forced laborers going to work near the family home. She wanted to help these women.
Nickel spontaneously offered her help to a pregnant woman. Ruth Abraham was suspicious at first but then came to trust her, and the two women became friends. Ruth Abraham and her husband Walter wanted to go underground after their baby was born. Maria Nickel let Ruth Abraham have her postal identity card. She gave Walter Abraham her husband’s driver’s license.
When their papers were checked, the Abraham family managed to escape, and warned Maria Nickel by telephone. Shortly later, Nickel was ordered to the Gestapo’s offices. During her interrogation, she claimed not to know Ruth and Walter Abraham. The Gestapo then threatened to take her children away if they could prove she had “aided and abetted Jews.” She continued to support the family, nonetheless.
Maria Nickel, later Maria Rimkus, was honored as an Unsung Heroine and in 1953 as Righteous Among the Nations. She remained friends with Ruth Abraham for the rest of her life.
Ruth Abraham with her helper Maria Nickel (right) on Nickel’s visit to the United States, Washington D.C., around 1970. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Maria Rimkus (front, 3rd from right) on her 90th birthday, with Ruth Abraham (1st from right) and Reha Sokolow née Abraham (front, 2nd from right), along with children and grandchildren from the United States, Berlin, May 2000. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
