Emma Holleis was the daughter of the master baker Kaspar Holleis and his wife Maria. She had fourteen brothers and sisters and grew up in Rosenheim. After completing school, she trained as an accountant. She met Hans Hutzelmann in 1923, and the couple’s son Herbert was born the following year. Unconcerned with convention, Emma and Hans Hutzelmann did not marry until 1937. The family lived at Margaretenstraße 18 from 1925 onwards. In August 1943, Emma Hutzelmann, her husband Hans, and some of their friends joined to found the Antinazistische Deutsche Volksfront (ADV, Anti-Nazi German People’s Front). Their chief aims were affiliation with other resistance groups and a political overthrow. Emma Hutzelmann worked as an accountant for the Saumweber grease factory and there met a Soviet prisoner of war. He told her about the underground movement Bratskoje Sotrudnitschestwo Wojennoplennych (BSW, Fraternal Cooperation of Prisoners of War). At their initial meeting in the summer of 1943 at Emma Hutzelmanns home in Margaretenstraße 18, the two groups resolved to collaborate. Emma Hutzelmann contributed significantly to the resistance activities: she traded grease stolen from the factory for food and weapons and, with others, organized the escape of two Soviet men. After the BSW was exposed, the members of the ADV were arrested. Emma Hutzelmann’s brothers Ludwig and Andreas Holleis, her sisters Rosa Holleis and Dora Eckstein, and Dora’s husband Stefan were imprisoned although they were not involved in the resistance group. On January 6, 1944 Emma was committed to the Gestapo prison at Brienner Straße 50; later she would be transferred to the Stadelheim prison in Munich. She managed to escape on July 31, 1944 and went underground. During an aerial attack on November 27, 1944 she died in her hiding place. Emma Hutzelmann’s husband likewise did not survive to see the war end: he was executed on January 15, 1945. Her brothers Andreas and Ludwig Holleis died of the after-effects of their torture at the hands of the Gestapo. (text Peter Hutzelmann, editor C. Fritsche, translation J. Rosenthal)
