Gedenkstätte Stille Helden

Günther Samuel ran a clothing store in Trebbin. He had been friends with Hans Winkler since his youth. In 1933 Samuel’s non-Jewish wife divorced him. He had to give up his business and leave Trebbin.
He prepared to emigrate at a Hakhshara camp. However, he stayed in Germany because he met the Jewish nurse Else Urbaniczyk and married her around 1935. They lived in Berlin. Their son Hans-Peter was born in the summer of 1936. Together with Hans Winkler, Günther and Else Samuel developed an idea to form a group supporting Jews living in hiding at the end of 1941. They called it the “Large Stake Savings Association.”
Through Else Samuel’s work at the Jewish Hospital, the family was initially protected from Operation Factory. Hans Winkler tried to find a hiding place for the Samuels in Luckenwalde. However, it was hard to find somewhere for a family with a child to stay. The three of them were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on August 4, 1943. Else and Hans-Peter were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Günther Samuel died in a sub-camp of Dachau concentration camp.