Maria Paasche

Maria Therese von Hammerstein Paasche (1909 – 21 January 2000) was a German anti-Nazi activist and literary researcher.

[1] She and her siblings were encouraged to explore intellectual and political ideas; she had many Jewish friends and planned to move to Palestine with some of them.

[2] Following Adolf Hitler's ascension to power in 1933, she helped Jews and intellectuals escape Germany by taking them to Prague on her motorcycle.

[1] Maria and John Paasche lived for several years in Japan, where all four of their children were born,[3] but migrated to San Francisco in 1948 due to fears of the German exile community and being monitored by the Japanese police.

[3] Paasche was the subject of a 1999 documentary film, Silent Courage: Maria Therese von Hammerstein and Her Battle Against Nazism, which was funded by B'nai B'rith and the German government.