The housewife Gerda Janicke lived in a small apartment in Berlin with her grandmother and her young son. Her husband was an SS man deployed in the war. Gerda Janicke’s former gynecologist Dr. Benno Heller and his wife Irmgard looked after many Jewish women living underground. Despite being persecuted as a Jew himself, he provided them with medical care and found hiding places for them. When he asked Gerda Janicke in the summer of 1942 whether she would take in Marie Jalowicz, she said yes.
They told the neighbors that Jalowicz was a nurse for Janicke’s sick grandmother. Conflicts arose between Janicke and Jalowicz. After the war, Jalowicz reported that she had to work in the household without pay and her helper barely provided her with food. From the start of 1943, Janicke also hid the seamstress Eva Deutschkron in her home for six months.
After Benno Heller’s arrest on February 23, 1943, Gerda Janicke became an active resistance fighter. She gathered information, obtained and distributed food, and arranged accommodation for persecuted Jews.
Gerda Janicke with her son Jörg, around 1943. Source: Privatbesitz/Private, Scans Anna Fischer, Berlin
