Amable Sanchez

Amable Sanchez was born in 1880 in Guatemala. During the war she worked as a Spanish teacher in Berlin-Kreuzberg. It is not known when or why she went to Berlin, where she stayed until her death in 1966, though she kept her Guatemalan nationality.

On February 27th, 1943, when the last great raid for the deportation of all the Jews still living at the German Reich took place, Amable Sanchez offered her help to her Jewish neighbor Erna Caminer. Erna Caminer, condemned to hard labor, got rid of her arrest at her job by chance.

When the Gestapo pretended to arrest her at her apartment, Amable Sanchez spontaneously accommodated her. Three days after, she took her to the house of a non-Jewish friend who gave refuge to other three Jewish women.

When the staying at this hideout became more dangerous due to suspicious neighbors, Erna Caminer came back to her apartment. By then, her daughter was living there, who by being married to an Arab was not yet subjected to repression. Amable Sanchez registered Erna Caminer under a false name at the police and gave her the key to her place to hide there in case of danger. Besides she supplied her until the end of the war with food.