Righteous Among the Nations


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The Israeli envoy to Germany Avraham Benjamin honored Elisabeth Goes on June 1, 1995 in Augsburg with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” awarded by the state of Israel.


Elisabeth Goes had given the married Jewish couple Max and Ines Krakauer lodging in the parsonage in Gebersheim near Leonberg, Württemberg from August 22 to September 20, 1944, knowing full well that they were fugitive Jews rather than – as she said as a pretense – bombed out persons from Berlin.


Looking back, Elisabeth Goes wrote decades later:


My husband was at war at that time as an army chaplain. I therefore had to raise our three small daughters – ten, eight and five years old – alone. That demanded all of my time actually. There was nevertheless not much to think about when the pastor from Flacht, Otto Mörike, asked for help.


At first, he put me to the test. While visiting at his parsonage he asked me whether I was willing to take in a sick parish assistant from Berlin. When I agreed, I didn’t hear from him for four weeks. And when I nearly no longer expected a guest, he asked me whether my willingness to help would also apply to Jews. (Elisabeth Goes’s handwritten account of Jewish guests in her house. Property of her daughter, Rose Kessler.)


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  • © Photo: Eberhard Röhm, Leonberg