“It is better for the kids to have dead parents than cowards” Eberhard Helmrich
Donata Helmrich
Donata Helmrich was born in 1900 in Dresden as Donata Hardt. Her mother, Polyxeni, the daughter of an upper-middle-class Greek family, studied art history, and her father, Ernst, was a playwright and literary translator. When Donata was a toddler, the family moved to Weimar. Ernst was appointed the director of the Weimar National Theater and later, after his divorce from Polyxeni, who started a career as an art dealer, was appointed the head of West Germany’s broadcasting service in Cologne. Donata’s daughter Cornelia describes the atmosphere in Donata’s childhood home as liberal, culturally stimulating, devoutly democratic and progressive, and her mother as “temperamental, empathetic, quick as the lighting in thought and action.” Donata completed her education as a French and English teacher and in 1922 married her first husband, with whom she had three children. The couple divorced soon thereafter and Donata met her second husband, Eberhard Helmrich, in 1931, while working as a secretary and interpreter to support her family.
Eberhard Helmrich
Eberhard Helmrich was born in 1899 in Hamburg. He came from a merchant family, studied agriculture in Munich and made a living as an agricultural management advisor. Eberhard is described by Cornelia as “a silent man with a quiet smile and a quiet voice that did not fit his physique as a man of 1,94m. A gentle giant with a surprising amount of natural authority”.
The couple married in 1933, moved to a house in Berlin Westend and a year later, Cornelia was born. Even during the war years, the house was always open to neighbours and visitors, and was full of laughter and music. Already in the 1930s, Donata and her mother assisted Jewish friends by smuggling jewellery across the German border. Donata opened her home to Jewish acquaintances in danger, used her connections to help Jews escape Germany and even “lost” her ID several times so other women could make use of it.
In 1941, Eberhard was drafted to the Wehrmacht and was sent to occupied Poland as an agricultural expert. There, he provided work to about 130 young Jews from the ghetto, and a hiding place for them and their families during raids in the ghetto. He also used his position as an officer to organise false papers and smuggle Jewish fugitives out of the country. One destination for this smuggling operation, suggested by Donata in 1942, was his family’s home in Berlin. There, Donata received Jewish girls disguised as Arian peasants from Ukraine and arranged for them to work as maids in German homes. It is unknown how many lives were saved by the Helmrich family, but estimates range between 70-200.
After the war, Eberhard could not find work in Berlin and had to move to Hamburg. The couple divorced, and he moved to New York in 1948 with his new wife, where he lived modestly until his death in 1969. Only a year before, in 1968, he was invited to Yad Vashem to plant a tree in his honour in the Avenue of the Righteous. Donata resumed her work as an interpreter for the German government, working for renowned politicians such as Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany and the President of Germany Theodor Heuss. She resigned from her position due to “too many Nazis around”, but continued working as a freelancer international interpreter until the age of 82. She moved to the island of Sylt, where she had bought a little cottage. She passed away in 1986. She did not live to see her own tree planted by her daughter Cornelia and grandson Tilo in 1987.
“If they both had to die, but had saved two people beforehand, then they would be ‘even with Hitler’. Every further rescue, however, would be a ‘net profit’ on their credit side.”
“They simply wanted to be normal in a time when normality was ‘out to lunch,’ as my mother would say.”
Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen recalling comments by her mother, Donata
Two Trees in Jerusalem
Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen, the Helmrichs’ youngest daughter, grew up to become a journalist and politician. Among others, she held the position of federal commissioner for immigrant and refugee affairs. In 2002, she published the book Two Trees in Jerusalem, a touching account of the resistance of her parents, Donata and Eberhard Helmrich, against the horrors of National Socialism. For them, it was normal to help persecuted, hunted Jews, and save as many lives as they could. Their unfaltering personal courage shows, that even in times of dictatorship and murderous regimes, it is possible to save lives.
In 2021, Humanity in Action produced an animated short film, Two Trees in Jerusalem, based on Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen’s book. The film shares the story of Donata and Eberhard Helmrich, who together, saved the lives of countless Jews during the Holocaust. Eberhard and Donata worked as a husband-and-wife team in the eye of the storm, in Berlin and the blood-soaked fields of Eastern Europe, devising ever-more daring gambits to save any life they could, even as death surrounded them. The story is dramatically narrated by the couple’s daughter Cornelia, who was called into her parents’ confidence as a young child of six and was imbued with an inner-strength that guided her work decades later as a politician and member of the German Bundestag. By moving back and forth in time, the animated documentary reveals how experiences in Cornelia’s childhood impact her subsequent fight for migrants’ rights in her role as the Federal Commissioner for immigrant and refugee issues during the 1990’s.
- From the book "Two Trees in Jerusalem"
Courtesy of Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen
Courtesy of Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen
Courtesy of Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen
Courtesy of Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen
Courtesy of Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen
Courtesy of Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen
Persecution
In this stage, victims are forced to live in ghettos, deported to concentration camps, or detained in restricted areas, and are consequently sentenced to starvation as they are deliberately deprived of access to resources such as water, food, and medicine. Victims are also subjected to forced sterilizations or abortions; children are forcibly taken from their parents. A group of victims are systematically stripped of all rights, tortured and deported. Mass murders begin. The perpetrators watch closely to see if their actions elicit a strong reaction from international public opinion. If there is no such reaction, the perpetrators know they can continue their plan in front of passive witnesses.
To prevent this stage from occurring, international military intervention is necessary if support can be mobilized from superpowers, regional alliances, the UN Security Council, or the UN General Assembly. Humanitarian assistance from the UN or other organizations is also necessary.
How does this person’s story illustrate response to the particular stage of genocide in Dr. Stanton’s theory?
While the Helmrich resisted National Socialism from the start, their actions became more and more daring as the persecution of the Jews worsened. For them, Crystal Night was a turning point that made it clear that they could not stand idly by. As soon as Eberhard arrived in Galicia, the area with the largest Jewish population in Europe, as a Wehrmacht officer, he understood the real severity of the situation. The Jews there had already been forced to live in ghettos, and the deportations to concentration and death camps had begun. Eberhard set up a farm, officially to provide for the SS, but which secretly provided the Jews living in the Lemberg ghetto water, food, medicine and a place to hide from raids. After the SS shut down the farm and instructed the deportation of all remaining Jews, Eberhard began falsifying documents and smuggling Jews out of Poland. Some Jewish women were smuggled to Berlin, where Donata hosted them in her home, disguised them as Ukrainian peasant girls, and arranged jobs for them in German households.