Fritz Kittel had hidden their mother and sister, the Jews Hella Zacharias and her daughter Hannelore in 1944. The railroad employee first convinced the two to accompany him on his transfer from Sorau (Poland) to Heringen (Hesse) and then passed them off to the authorities there as his wife and child. Thanks to Fritz Kittel, Hella and Hannelore Zacharias survived the Shoah. Later, the railroad worker never told his own family about the courageous act.
Esther Dischereit, the daughter from Hella Zacharias' second marriage, contacted Fritz Kittel's descendants after discovering her mother's story. Both families embarked on a joint search for family traces from Poland to Hesse in 2019. The cabinet exhibition "Who was Fritz Kittel?" presents a film documentation of this search for traces together with historical testimonies and autobiographical as well as literary texts by the writer Dischereit.
