Berthold Guthmann served as an airman in the Richthofen squadron during the First World War, was decorated several times and survived being shot down. He opened a law firm in Wiesbaden and became involved in the SPD

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Guthmann provided legal assistance with emigration issues in particular - he personally intervened in a number of cases to facilitate illegal escape and border crossings. During the Reich Pogrom Night on November 9/10, 1938, an SA troop raided the family's law office and private apartment, destroying furniture, books and other personal possessions, and Berthold Guthmann, like almost all Jewish men from Wiesbaden, was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp.

He was released six weeks later, as Guthmann played an important role in the "de-Jewification" of the economy as a "legal advisor" to the Jewish community. His daughter Charlotte subsequently had to deliver messages to the Gestapo headquarters in Paulinenstraße as a messenger in "Jewish affairs". On the "anniversary" of the Reichspogromnacht, an SA troop abducted Guthmann and his 17-year-old son Paul and stabbed them. Guthmann, who recovered after six months, had to continue to maintain contact with the persecuting authorities, including the bureaucratic, forced co-organization of the upcoming deportations of Wiesbaden Jews in 1942. The family was initially kept back from the last major deportation to Theresienstadt on 1 September "to process the extermination" of the Jewish community. In November, she was taken to Frankfurt to work on the "liquidation" of the Gau Hessen; among other things, Charlotte Guthmann had to compile lists of Jewish cemeteries that were to be leveled and offered for sale.

In June 1943, the family was deported to Theresienstadt. Claire Guthmann was forced to work on the production of asbestos insulation material. Charlotte, on the other hand, was "allowed" to work as a caregiver in the "youth home". She tried to distract the children and encourage them with games, storytelling and theater. A year later, her father was deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Paul Guthmann was deported to work in the Mauthausen concentration camp, where his work in the quarry was described as "extermination through work". He died in March 1945.

Charlotte and her mother Claire Guthmann survived the concentration camp and returned to Germany in 1945. Claire Guthmann decided to stay in Wiesbaden, while her daughter went to the USA in 1946. In the post-war period, Claire Guthmann was involved in the re-establishment of the Wiesbaden Jewish community, made contact with other concentration camp survivors and fellow believers in the region and was involved in the founding of the local Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. She died in 1957.

Her daughter Charlotte, who had married her childhood friend Heinz Rudolf Opfermann in Mainz in the 1950s, visited her hometown over 30 years later on the initiative of the Spiegelgasse Active Museum for German-Jewish History, where she spoke to schoolchildren about her fate for the first time. In the years that followed, she was active as a contemporary witness in local schools almost every year. Her last wish was to be transferred to the main cemetery in Mainz to be buried with her ancestors.