Hidden Berliners: the Jews who went under, 1941

011933 – May 1945

Of every four people who went into hiding in Berlin, three did not survive

Berlin had about 160,000 Jews in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power. The squares that follow are that community, drawn to area, at the dates its own officials counted it, and then the people who tried to vanish rather than board a train.

The numbers for those who hid are not a register. They are the historian Richard Lutjens’s reconstruction from arrest and deportation records, and other historians count differently; where they disagree, every count is shown.

Berlin’s Jewish community, drawn to area

The community at this dateEarlier counts

1933

160,000 people

Berlin’s Jewish community in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power: about 160,000 people.

A long steel-grated platform edge runs beside an old track overgrown with young birch trees. — Gleis 17 at Grunewald station, the ramp the first transport left from on 18 October 1941. Memorial, photographed 2009.Photo: Andreas Praefcke, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

18 October 1941

The first transport leaves Berlin

The first transport left from Grunewald station on 18 October 1941. The community’s monthly return for October counted 65,479: 7,393 fewer than in September.

December 1942

32,999 left

Fourteen months of transports later, the return for December 1942 counted 32,999.

April 1943

The last count

April 1943 — the last monthly return: 17,810. The returns stop there; the Reichsvereinigung was dissolved in June 1943.

A long brass plate set into cobblestones, engraved in capitals with a German inscription about the Fabrikaktion. — A memorial threshold at Kurt-Schumacher-Damm 41, Wedding, where the Gestapo held people seized in the Fabrikaktion, 27 February – 6 March 1943, before deporting them to Auschwitz.Photo: OTFW, Berlin, 2024. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

1941–45

About 6,500 went under

Of those, 4,700 fled during the Fabrikaktion week, the Fabrikaktion, “factory operation”, when the Gestapo emptied the factories of their Jewish forced labourers. The other 1,800 went under before or after it.

May 1945 · Lutjens’s reconstruction

The smaller group came through at about one in two

By Lutjens’s estimate about 800 of the 4,700 who ran in that week survived: about one in six. Of the 1,800 who had a room arranged and papers waiting, about 900: about one in two.

On Lutjens’s reconstruction, more people survived from the small column than from the large one.

A courtyard of an old Berlin tenement covered in graffiti, with a glass door and a café sign. — Rosenthaler Straße 39, the Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt, which gives one of the counts.Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

1946 – 2019

The count has risen. The survivors have not

Siegmund Weltlinger, 1946
about 5,000 went under · about 1,400 survived — the first count, made in Berlin months after the war
Gedenkstätte Stille Helden, 2008
at least 1,700 survived — the revised figure
Richard N. Lutjens Jr., 2019
about 6,500 went under · about 1,700 survived — reconstructed from arrest and deportation records
Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt
about 7,000 went under · more than 1,800 survived
Beate Kosmala
about 7,000 went under

A pale, faded photograph of a wide boulevard: on the right, burnt-out apartment façades and rubble; people walking on the pavement. — Kurfürstendamm, 1945.Photo: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Michaele Thurgood Haynes and Terry Thurgood, 1945. Wikimedia Commons. CC0.

8 May 1945

8,300 Jews alive in Berlin

At liberation about 8,300 Jews were alive in Berlin. 56.6% never deported — a mixed marriage, or counted as “Mischlinge”, the regime’s term for people of partly Jewish descent; 22.9% came back from the camps; 20.5% had been hidden. The last group is the 1,700.

0227 February – 6 March 1943

In one week, 4,700 people decided not to go

Between 27 February 1943 and 6 March 1943 the Gestapo seized the Jews still working in Berlin’s factories. About 4,700 fled instead: roughly two in five of the Jewish workers still in the factories. That one week accounts for nearly three-quarters of everyone who went under in Berlin.

There was no time to arrange anything. Within days the deportations went on: the 36th “Osttransport”, eastern transport, left for Auschwitz on 12 March 1943; the fourth “großer Alterstransport”, large transport of the elderly, left for Theresienstadt on 17 March 1943.

In the transports that followed the operation, 8,658 people were deported from Berlin. About 1,100 of them had tried to hide and been caught.

Red sandstone sculpture blocks carved with figures of women, standing in a small park among trees. — Block der Frauen, Ingeborg Hunzinger's 1995 memorial sculpture near Rosenstraße. In February 1943, in the same week as the factory roundup, women stood for days outside a building on this street — since demolished — demanding their Jewish husbands back. The men were released.Photo: Niki Sublime from Boston, USA, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Berlin’s Jews, as the community counted them each month, January 1941 – April 1943

The Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland filed a return for Berlin every month; they run from January 1941 to April 1943. Between February 1943 and March 1943, the month of the factory roundup, the count fell by 8,766. Nobody counted again until liberation.

When the survivors went under

Of the survivors whose date of going under is known (425 dated testimonies), two-thirds went under between October 1942 and March 1943. Each band spans its months; its area is its share. Later flights were small: in a roundup in January 1944 of those no longer protected by a mixed marriage, 205 fled; between September 1943 and February 1945 the records list 273 people as “flüchtig”, absconded.

04Eight people

Eight people who went under, and how long each one stayed hidden

Their stories are documented by the memorials and archives that hold them. Seven of the eight came through in hiding. The eighth was caught, and she stands for the larger number.

Eight people in hiding, June 1942 – May 1945

In hidingArrestedThe Fabrikaktion, 27 Feb 1943

September 1942 – September 1943

Samson Cioma Schönhaus

Graphic artist; forged papers. Parents Fanja and Boris deported and murdered June 1942. Forged passes in a rented shop in Moabit; left Berlin on a forged Wehrpass, a military pass, and a faked leave certificate.

Helped by Ludwig Lichtwitz, Werner Scharff

Reached Switzerland by bicycle, early October 1943.

June 1942 – April 1945

Marie Jalowicz Simon

Student; refused her deportation. At Kaulsdorf from the end of April 1943. Dictated her account onto 77 tapes for her son Hermann Simon shortly before her death.

Helped by Gerrit Burgers

Survived in Berlin.

A plain room with bare floorboards and exhibition panels of photographs along the walls. — Inside the former Blindenwerkstatt of Otto Weidt, where Inge Deutschkron worked: today the museum. Photographed 2023.Photo: Ehud Amir, 2023. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

January 1943 – May 1945

Inge Deutschkron

Worked at Otto Weidt's Blindenwerkstatt. Went under with her mother Ella on the Gumz family's initiative. Weidt obtained a non-Jewish woman's employment book and had works papers forged in the name Richter.

Helped by Otto Weidt, the Gumz family, Ella Deutschkron

Survived, as "Inge Richter", in Potsdam.

February 1943 – March 1945

Ralph Neumann

Forced labour at Osram; under with his sister Rita. Mother Gertrud seized in their former Levetzowstraße flat, died in custody June 1943.

Helped by the farmer Fleischer (Melchow), Agnes Wendland, Dr. Aub, Elisabeth Abegg, Harald Poelchau

Arrested in a police check; he and Rita escaped from the Iranische Straße hospital during an air raid, late March 1945.

February 1943 – April 1945

Konrad Latte

Musician, born Breslau 1922. Organist at the Wedding crematorium while hidden. Parents Margarete and Manfred deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Founded the Berliner Barock-Orchester in 1953 and led it to 1997.

Helped by Ursula Meißner, Harald Poelchau, Ellen Brockmann, Gottfried von Einem, Edwin Fischer, Leo Borchard, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Anne-Lise Harich

Survived in Berlin; escaped the collection camp 23 November 1943.

January 1943 – April 1945

Ruth Abraham

With Walter, and Reha, born into hiding. Reha born 19 January 1943, delivered with the help of the Jewish doctor Benno Heller. Maria Nickel, a stranger, gave them her postal identity card and her husband's driving licence, and later registered Reha as her own daughter so the sick child could be treated. Yad Vashem honoured Maria Nickel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Helped by Maria Nickel, Willi Nickel, Benno Heller

All three survived.

A low concrete block by a hedge carrying a long information panel with an old photograph of a snowy allotment colony and portraits; graffiti on the block below. — The memorial to Hans Rosenthal and the three women who hid him, on the site of the former garden colony “Dreieinigkeit” in Lichtenberg (Bernhard-Bästlein-Straße, Fennpfuhl). Photographed 2013.Photo: Lotse, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

March 1943 – April 1945

Hans Rosenthal

Hidden in a garden shed in Berlin-Lichtenberg. In the Gartenkolonie "Dreieinigkeit". Ida Jauch died in 1944; Maria Schönebeck fed him afterwards, and Emma Harndt brought newspapers and the war news. Liberated when the Red Army took Lichtenberg, 25 April 1945. The 4 m² shed is his own memoir's figure.

Helped by Ida Jauch, Maria Schönebeck, Emma Harndt

Survived; liberated in the garden colony.

Margot Friedländer speaking at the European Parliament on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2022.Photo: European Parliament, 2022. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

January 1943 – May 1945

Margot Friedländer

Née Bendheim; went under alone. Went under after her mother Auguste and brother Ralph were seized; her mother's last message, passed by a neighbour: “Versuche, dein Leben zu machen” — “try to make your life”. Fifteen months hidden, through some sixteen places. Auguste and Ralph were murdered at Auschwitz.

Arrested — Deported to Theresienstadt; survived.

Margot Friedländer is not one of the 1,700. She was caught. Of every four people who went into hiding in Berlin, three did not survive.

Margot Friedländer speaking at the European Parliament on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2022.Photo: European Parliament, 2022. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Margot Friedländer is not one of the 1,700. She was caught. Of every four people who went into hiding in Berlin, three did not survive.

Margot Friedländer (née Bendheim; went under alone): hidden for 15 months. Arrested, April 1944. Deported to Theresienstadt; survived.

05May 1945

The survivors were the young: only 24% were over fifty

Lutjens’s profile of the survivors who had hidden rests on 1,074 individuals (63 % of survivors). Set beside the community’s own census of 1939, it shows who could survive a life underground, and who could not.

The 8,300 alive in May 1945

56.6% were never deported, protected by a mixed marriage or counted as “Mischlinge”; 22.9% came back from the camps; 20.5% had been hidden.

Women and men

Almost exactly the community’s own proportions. Historians read this not as women and men hiding alike, but as more men going under and more men being caught.

Over fifty

The average survivor was 37 (women) or 39 (men). The people who could not run were the people who did not survive.

The people in this story were not hidden by a resistance movement. They were hidden by a landlady, a chaplain, three women with an allotment, a stranger on a street who handed over her own identity card. Almost none of them were ever counted, and most of their names are gone.

What can be counted is the arithmetic at the top of this page: about six and a half thousand people in Berlin decided not to go when they were called, and about seventeen hundred of them were still alive when it ended.

By one historian’s reckoning, the ones who planned it lived at three times the rate of the ones who ran