Albert and Loni Harder

The couple Albert and Loni Harder hid the three Jewish women Selina Moschkowitz-Manielewitz, Miriam Zweig and Genia Weinberg from the end of January 1945 until the arrival of the Russian army on April 15, 1945 in Palmnicken , a center of the amber industry on the East Prussian Baltic coast.

These had previously escaped from a forced laborer or prisoner trail sent by the National Socialists on a death march, which had led them from a subcamp of the Stutthof concentration camp to the Baltic coast.

About 3,000 of their fellow prisoners - mostly women - were shot by members of the SS on the beach of Palmnicken on the night of January 31, 1945, or driven into the frozen sea, where many drowned or froze to death. The Harders took the three women who had managed to break away from the rest of the trek, despite threatened denunciation by Nazi-minded neighbors, and fed them for more than two months.

When Albert Harder died shortly after the war, his wife and her former wards moved to West Germany, where they were accepted into a Bavarian camp for displaced persons . On November 29, 1966, Albert (posthumously) and Loni Harder were honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations .