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Hermann Maas was an evangelical minister from Heidelberg who, from a very early age had a great interest in the Jewish faith and empathy for the Jewish people. In 1903 he attended the 6th Zionist Congress where he met Theodor Herzl and even before the Nazis came to power he became a member of an organisation which campaigned against antisemitism. During the Nazi era he continued to help persecuted Jews and in 1944 he was deported to France as a slave labourer for these actions. He was the first German citizen to be formally invited to the state of Israel and in 1967 he was awarded the Yad Vashem medal of the 36 Righteous amongst the People of Jerusalem.
Paul and Martha Rosenzweig, came from a village in the Palatinate. They had the same mother, who was Jewish, became a Protestant and died at Auschwitz. The siblings had difficulty obtaining assistance from Jewish organisations because of their Mischling status- in fact Paul spent some time in Dachau. Hermann Maas saved them from Nazi persecution.