Charlotte and Erhard Oewerdieck
The married couple Charlotte and Erhard Oewerdieck were given the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations because they helped Jewish people to flee Germany during the National Socialist era at risk of their own lives.
In 1939, through financial support, they enabled the businessman Arno Lachmann to emigrate to Shanghai with his wife and elderly father . During the war they hid the office worker Martin Lange in their apartment and shared food and clothes with him. The burden and danger were particularly high because Oewerdieck, as a staunch opponent of the Nazis, was banned from working. In March 1941, Oewerdieck helped Eugen Täubler and his wife to flee to the USA at the last minute. He employed the resistance fighter Wolfgang Abendroth in his auditing and trust firm.
Erhard Overdieck (born 1893) died in 1977. On September 21, 1978 Yad Vashem awarded Charlotte and Erhard Overdieck the title of Righteous Among the Nations .
In 2010, archaeologists discovered the Berlin sculpture on the property of Oewerdieck's office at the Berlin City Hall . Eleven high-ranking sculptures of classical modernism , believed to be lost , which the National Socialists had confiscated as “ degenerate art ”, were rediscovered in the rubble. The scientists initially suspected a connection with Oewerdieck. In 2012, however, a letter was found proving that the Reich Propaganda Ministry had a storage room in the house.
Individual evidence
- ^ Entry in Yad Vashem's database (accessed October 20, 2013)
- ^ A b Matthias Wemhoff: The Berlin Sculpture Find. "Degenerate Art" in Bomb Rubble , Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2463-3 (volume accompanying the exhibition, page 43)
- ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 14, 2012 , accessed on October 20, 2013