Marie Grünberg lived with her husband, the Jewish businessman Kurt Grünberg, in Berlin-Mitte. Despite their marriage being classified as a “mixed marriage,” Kurt Grünberg was put into Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the 1938 November pogroms. He was arrested during “Operation Factory” in 1943 and taken to the Rosenstraße assembly camp, but released several days later because Marie Grünberg was not Jewish.
When his brother Martin had to go into hiding, Marie and Kurt Grünberg took him and three other persecuted Jews into their home. They themselves lived in their weekend house with a large garden in Berlin-Blankenburg. When the air raids on the city center increased, their Jewish guests hid there too, despite the danger that posed to Kurt Grünberg in particular. Marie Grünberg also occasionally offered shelter to her nephew, Heinz Abrahamsohn. It was difficult to find food for them all.
As the wife of a Jew, she was presumably drafted into forced labor in a factory in 1944.
Marie Grünberg was honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1984.
Marie Grünberg, Berlin, around 1945. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Letter from the Yad Vashem memorial center to ambassador Ben-Ari on honoring Marie Grünberg, Jerusalem, July 4, 1984. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
