IG Juliane Gaertner has had a brass plaque laid in her honour

FREE now and never miss the top politics stories again. SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Sign up fornow and never miss the top politics stories again. We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Juliane Gaertner, 80 at the time, never lived to watch her boy Willi grow up as three years after her intervention resulted in his freedom, she was transported to a death camp and murdered. But those alive now because of her bravery in standing up to the Nazis back then in 1939 paid homage to her when a 'stumbling stone' - a brass plaque - was cemented into the pavement in front of the house where she used to live. Her great-granddaughter, Naomi Juliane Lewin, who is a journalist, said: "My 80-year-old great-grandmother put on her hat, marched into Gestapo headquarters, and told them, "I gave two sons to Germany in the Great War, and you will give me my third one back!"

I grew up with the story of Juliana and her courage, and I feel proud to be carrying on her name Naomi Lewin, Juliane's great-granddaughter

The Gestapo men were apparently so shocked they released the boy who was able to join his mother and father at the family home in Kaiserstrasse in Mainz. He son was able to make it to America where he did his best to try to save his parents. She added: "She saved his life and when my grandfather got to America, he wrote letters to everyone he could, including Joseph Kennedy, trying to save hers. "But in 1942, she was deported to Theresienstadt, where she died." Theresienstadt, now in Czech Republic, masqueraded as a perfect camp where Jews were decently fed and paraded before Red Cross cameras by the Nazis to show how well treated they were. But when the cameras stopped rolling they were either murdered or sent on to places like Auschwitz to be gassed.

GETTY Centre right, Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the Gestapo

Lewin was a guest of honor in Mainz for the laying of the stone in memory of her great-grandmother and great-grandfather Simon who died of natural causes two years before she was deported. The commemorative stones are now in cities across Europe, the work of German artist Guenter Demnig. They simply state the name, ages and places of death of the Jews who once live in the properties outside which they are cemented into the pavement. Ms Lewin said: "Juliane was a remarkable person.

GETTY Juliane marched into Gestapo headquarters and demanded her son be released