Johanna Eck lived in Berlin-Tiergarten and worked as a secretary. Around the turn of 1942/43, she hid a Jewish acquaintance, Heinz Guttmann, in her apartment and in January 1943 arranged quarters for him with her neighbor Anna Muschiol. He survived and later emigrated to the United States.
Johanna Eck’s building was hit by an air raid in November 1943, and she was rehoused in emergency accommodation in the Schöneberg district. In February 1944 she took in Elfriede Guttmann (no relation to Heinz Guttmann), who had also gone underground. With the aid of forged papers that Guttmann obtained from a former school friend, Eck was able to pass the young woman off as a “bomb refugee” and as her sub-tenant, meaning she could also get food ration stamps. In May 1946, shortly before a planned emigration to the United States, Elfriede Guttmann died of a sudden intestinal obstruction.
In 1958 Johanna Eck was honored as an Unsung Hero by the West Berlin senate, and in 1973 by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. A school in Berlin was named after her in 2014.