In 1944, her childhood friend, Ilse Baumgart, who was half Jewish and lived in Berlin under an assumed identity, where she worked as a secretary, got into great trouble.
[1] In 1984 Gitta Bauer was honored as a "Righteous among the Nations" by Yad Vashem for saving her friend.
The same year Leo Bauer was arrested together with his wife Gitta and his sister-in-law Hilde Dubro (who happened to visit them at the time) by the communist regime, accused of being an American spy, and sent to a Gulag concentration camp in Siberia.
Gitta Bauer was imprisoned by the Stasi for circa 3 years, first at Bautzen and then at the Waldheim women's prison.
Following her release, she became an ardent anti-communist, escaping to West Germany, where she worked as a journalist for the Springer Foreign News Service.