Alice Beatrice Brenner

In June 1941, Alice Licht began working as a secretary for the partially blind Otto Weidt, who had opened a “Workshop for the Blind” in Berlin-Mitte earlier that year for the production of brooms and brushes employing mainly blind, deaf or mute Berlin Jews. As Otto Weidt supplied goods to the Wehrmacht, his workshop was deemed indispensable to the German war effort and thus his Jewish workers were at first afforded some protection. On more than one occasion, Otto Weidt saved his workers from deportation by bribing the authorities and procuring forged documents on the black market. After rescuing his workers from a deportation centre in 1942, he found places for them to hide.

Between 1941 and 1943 Otto Weidt harboured approximately 30 blind and deaf Jews as well as eight “illegal” Jews, one of whom was Alice Licht. She subsequently took her parents, Georg Licht and Käthe née Gundermann, into hiding with her in a storage room belonging to the workshop in Neander Str. 12 in Berlin-Mitte. However, Otto Weidt was eventually betrayed to the Gestapo and the Jews deported. Alice and her parents were sent to Theresienstadt on November 15, 1943 with Transport I/103 where they were incarcerated until May15, 1944 when they were deported to Auschwitz on Transport Dz. Georg and Käthe Licht were murdered exactly two months later. Alice remained in Auschwitz for three months after which she was sent to the forced-labour camp Christianstadt, a sub-camp of Gross Rosen, for a further seven months. Otto Weidt travelled in vain to the camp to try to rescue Alice. However, when the Christianstadt prisoners were sent on a death march at the beginning of 1945, Alice managed to escape and return to Berlin. She remained there until mid-1946 when she emigrated to the United States where she met her future husband Walter Brenner. A son was born and eventually all three left America to live in Israel.

Alice’s grandson Yermi Brenner, an Israel-American-German journalist, now lives and works in Berlin. Alice’s great-grandson was born there.

“How My Grandma Became a Holocaust Celebrity and I Emigrated from Israel to Berlin” by Yermi Brenner Published on medium.com on December 27, 2018: https://medium.com/@yermibrenner/how-my-grandma-became-a-holocaust-...

“I Migrated To The Country That Ethnically Cleansed My Ancestors” by Yermi Brenner, published on August 15, 2019: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/berlin-holocaust_uk_5d541c16...

Otto Weidt was posthumously honoured for his extraordinary courage and humanity by becoming one of the “Righteous Among Nations”: https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/weidt.html

His former workshop has become a museum: https://www.museum-blindenwerkstatt.de/en/first-of-all/ Alice Licht’s survival: https://www.museum-blindenwerkstatt.de/en/ausstellung/themen/succes...

In 2014 a German film was made about Otto Weigt and Alice Licht: “A Blind Hero - the Love of Otto Weigt” https://www.newdocs.de/a-blind-hero-the-love-of-otto-weidt/