Anita Brunnengraber had a sheltered childhood in Drohobycz in Poland. After completing her schooling, she wanted to study medicine but was denied access to university, as a Jew. She trained as a midwife and nurse in Lviv. When the city was occupied by the German Wehrmacht in 1941, she had to perform forced labor in Hyrawka labor camp near Drohobycz.
The German camp director Eberhard Helmrich tried to help many people at risk. He obtained false papers for young Anita Brunnengraber and sent her to his wife Donata in Berlin-Charlottenburg in the summer of 1942. The latter placed Anita Brunnengraber with a former schoolmate of Eberhard Helmrich’s in Hamburg-Blankenese, posing as a Ukrainian Christian under the name of Maria Kolczycka. The friend did not know his new domestic help was Jewish. Brunnengraber had to work hard until the end of the war to stay alive.
Immediately after her liberation in May 1945, she left Germany with her friend Melania Reifler, also from Drohobycz. Anita Brunnengraber’s parents and almost all her relatives had been murdered in Drohobycz.
Anita Brunnengraber, Hamburg, around 1944. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Anita Brunnengraber (left), Melania Reifler, and the children of the Hamburg family for whom Melania Reifler worked during the war, 1945. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Eberhard Helmrich (front, center) at his Yad Vashem ceremony. 2nd row, 5th from right: Anita Brunnengraber, front right: Melania Reifler, with other people from Drohobycz rescued by Helmrich, 1968. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
