The story of the "Righteous Among the Nations" Heinrich Heinen and Paul Krebs allows for an educational exploration of the following topics:
- Learners gain understanding about Jewish life in Germany before the Shoah by learning about the family stories of German Jews Edith Mayer and Helene Krebs. The fate of the two cousins, who had both chosen non-Jewish partners, shows how closely the lives of German Jews were intertwined with the non-Jewish German majority society. At the same time, it becomes apparent how fragile the status quo of the outwardly well-integrated Jewish minority was after the Nazi policies of exclusion, disenfranchisement and persecution, beginning in 1933, upset this lifeworld's delicate balance.
- The learners deal with the not insignificant segment of German-Jewish relations, the mixed marriages and cohabitation (over 7%). This arrangement should be presented to the learners as quite characteristic of German Jewry before 1933. The majority of the approximately 500,000 German Jews led an acculturated lifestyle that was clearly oriented toward the non-Jewish majority society. About 35,000 Jews lived in German-Jewish mixed marriages and often, the respective Jewish spouses felt that they belonged completely to German society.
This apparent harmony was shattered by the Nazis' racist ideology. Jewish-German relationships were questioned, reevaluated, and often broken off. This happened on all levels, from simple neighborly relationships to friendships and love or marriage unions.
When Edith and Heinrich met and fell in love in Cologne in 1938, they were forbidden to be a couple because of the Nuremberg Laws (LINK) (1935). Edith's cousin Helene, who had already married the non-Jewish German Paul Krebs before the Nuremberg Laws were passed, was initially protected from deportation
- Through this history, the learners finally gain insight into the fact that the National Socialist "Volksgemeinschaft" (Community of the People) was always composed of individuals who interpreted room to maneuver within the dictatorship in the most diverse ways, despite radical measures of equalization. Those who decided to stand by Jewish neighbors, friends, or partners in solidarity and to stand up for them always took - to varying degrees - a risk for their own safety. The four non-Jewish Germans, who are connected to the fate of the two Jewish cousins Edith and Helene in different ways, show a wide range of possible behaviors: Betrayal, greed for profit, helpless rebellion, temporary protection by granting living space and food, and finally the dramatic decision to risk everything to save a fiancée from the clutches of the Nazis.
The fact that the lives of the two Jewish women, Edith Meyer and Helene Krebs, ultimately ended tragically, with their deportation from the land of their childhood and youth to their murder in Auschwitz, despite their association with non-Jewish partners, is primarily attributable to their former acquaintances, the German couple Berntgen, who denounced both Jewish women, as well as their own non-Jewish partners. According to Willi Berntgen's own account, the decisive call to the Gestapo was preceded by a week-long decision-making process in which his wife Paula Berntgen, who had been friends with Edith and Helen, apparently weighed risk, solidarity, and profit opportunities.
