The Resisters

Berlin women who helped Jewish people evade the Nazis.

An undated photograph of Helene von Schell displayed as part of the exhibit, “Berlin 1933-1945 Between Propaganda and Terror” at the Dokumentationszentrum Topografie des Terrors in Berlin. Translated, the caption reads: Helene von Schell, undated. Until the end of the war, she sheltered the Foß family in her apartment - which many neighbors knew about, but they were still not betrayed.”

The “exhibition trench” of the Berlin Topography of Terror Documentation Center runs alongside Niederkirchnerstraße in Kreuzberg just below the street level. It contains one of the center’s standing exhibits, “Berlin 1933-1945—Between Propaganda and Terror.”

The trench is actually a path adjoining the excavated foundation of the former Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) site of the headquarters of both the Gestapo and the Nazi SS, as well as a notorious basement prison.

Tracing the history of National Socialist politics in Berlin, the exhibit documents how they used propaganda and fea…