Fancia Grün née Glück

Fancia Grün, née Glück, was born on 22 August 1904 in Stryj, Galicia (today Ukraine). In 1911 she moved with her family – her devoutly religious mother, her father and her older brother – to Berlin. Having served in the First World War, her father took on various jobs, mostly in trade, to provide for the family. After grade school, Fancia attended a commercial college where she trained to be a secretary. In 1928 she married Gerhard Grün, a merchant, probably to escape her parental home. In 1938 the couple divorced.

In the 1930s, Fancia worked for the Jewish Community registration office in Berlin. Here she met Werner Scharff, with whom she tried to protect members of the Community from deportation. On 10 July 1943 she went underground with him. Just a month later, Scharff was arrested and they were both deported to Theresienstadt in August that year. It is not clear whether Fancia went voluntarily or whether she was also arrested. After a month in the ghetto, they managed to flee. Back in Berlin, they founded a fellowship for peace and reconstruction, Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau, with Hans Winkler in Luckenwalde, whom they had met through mutual friends. The group hid Jews in Luckenwalde and Berlin from the Nazis and issued chain letters in a bid to raise awareness of Nazi atrocities and inspire resistance among the population. The group’s cover was blown and Fancia Grün was arrested on 10 October 1944 in Treptow. She was interned in the police prison at Alexanderplatz and in the Gestapo camp at Schul Strasse before being sent to Theresienstadt. On 3 March 1945 she was shot in the small fortress “as a deterrent”.