Elisabeth (Lisa) Holländer lived in Berlin with her husband Paul. Since he was Jewish, their marriage was classed as a “mixed marriage” under National Socialist criteria. Paul Holländer was put into a concentration camp in November 1938 and murdered in September 1942.
When Lisa Holländer’s brother-in-law Walter Rieck asked for help for his Jewish acquaintances Ella and Inge Deutschkron, Lisa Holländer agreed without hesitation. She took the two women into her spacious home in the Rosenhof residential complex in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in the summer of 1943.
The apartment was destroyed in an air raid in January 1944, and the three women had to find a new place to stay. Walter Rieck took them to Potsdam the next morning. They were housed separately there, but Lisa Holländer continued to support the Deutschkrons. On her advice, Inge and Ella Deutschkron posed as refugees during the last months of the war.
The Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored Lisa Holländer as Righteous Among the Nations at Inge Deutschkron’s suggestion in 1971. A memorial plaque commemorates Lisa Holländer on her former building at Sächsische Straße 26 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf.
Lisa Holländer, around 1950. Source: Landesarchiv Berlin, B Rep. 078, BEG Nr. 601.662
Lisa Holländer and Inge Deutschkron, 1980. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
Helpers of Inge Deutschkron at the posthumous honoring of Otto Weidt and others as Righteous Among the Nations, left to right: Else Weidt, Walter Rieck, unknown, Lisa Holländer, unknown, and Emma Gumz, Berlin, January 1972. Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
