Note: This post is about a handful of righteous Germans who provided life-saving support to my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck during the 30 months he lived “underground” in Berlin during WWII, hiding from the Nazis. I relate the little I’ve been able to uncover about these “silent heroes.”
There exists in Berlin a museum, the “Silent Heroes Memorial Center,” dedicated to the resistance to persecution of the Jews between 1933 and 1945. A catalog developed by the Memorial Center describes the heroic role played by some people who resisted Nazi persecution of the Jews and provides some statistics about German Jews worth citing. At the time the Nazis assumed power on January 30, 1933, there were roughly 500,000 German Jews. This date marked the beginning of the ostracism, defamation and disenfranchisement of these Jews, key stages of which were the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses beginning on April 1, 1933; the Nuremberg race-laws of September 1935; and the pogroms of November 9, 1938. More than 30,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps following the pogroms in 1938.
Of the 500,000 Jews in Germany when the Nazis assumed power, roughly 300,000 of them were able to flee Germany before the war began in the fall of 1939. Of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Nazi genocide, more than 160,000 of them were German Jews. Between 10,000 and 12,000 German Jews tried to escape deportation to extermination camps and other killing sites by fleeing underground, since emigration by 1942 was prohibited and virtually impossible even through illegal means. About half this number did so in Berlin, including my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, subject of multiple earlier Blog posts. Fleeing underground required that hiding places be found and frequently changed because of the danger of being denounced or discovered. Of the Jews who went “into hiding” in Germany, about 5,000 of them survived, more than 1,700 of them in Berlin. The chances of survival were indeed small, yet my uncle managed it with the help of multiple silent heroes. An interesting quote from the Memorial Center’s publication speaks to the network of non-Jewish supporters required to protect a solitary Jewish fugitive: “In the course of attempts to save Jews, networks of helpers often developed. For every Jew who went underground, up to ten, and sometimes even more, non-Jewish supporters were involved . . .” Clearly, multiple non-Jews placed themselves at risk to try and shelter a single Jew.
In the previous post, Blog Post 40, I discussed Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger and how I discovered she was the wife of my Uncle Fedor’s second cousin, Franz Pincus/Pauly. In a declaration, pledged under oath on February 3, 1947 (Figures 1a-b), Lisa provided a chronology of the timeframes and enumerated the network of helpers who enabled my uncle to survive in Berlin during his odyssey underground:
October 1942 Hidden by Dr. Wolfgang Sieber & Frau von Werner
February 1943 Dr. Wolfgang Sieber arrested by the Gestapo; my uncle hidden by Lisa Pauly
July 1943 My uncle finds refuge with Dr. Otto Berger
March 24, 1944 Dr. Otto Berger’s building bombed; my uncle again hidden by Lisa Pauly
May 1944 Dr. Otto Berger again provided accommodation to my uncle in his new home
December 1944 Dr. Otto Berger found yet another home, and hid my uncle until the capture of Berlin by the Red Army
My uncle’s trying ordeal began in October 1942 when friends warned him the Gestapo was preparing to pick him up for “questioning.” In a letter dated October 12, 1942, he was informed he should present himself to a so-called “age-transport.” (Figure 2) Interestingly, this letter was sent to my uncle by the “Jüdische Kultusvereinigung zu Berlin e.V.,” Berlin’s Jewish Cultural Association, and signed by a “Philipp Israel Kozower,” who two years later to the day, October 12, 1944, would himself be murdered in Auschwitz.
Knowing that an “age-transport” meant deportation to a concentration camp, my Uncle Fedor immediately fled to a good friend in Berlin-Dahlem, Dr. Wolfgang Sieber. He, along with a Frau von Werner, provided refuge for a time. However, on February 15, 1943, Dr. Sieber was arrested by the Gestapo in the very presence of my uncle; miraculously, my uncle escaped. In the ensuing months, Lisa Pauly and other friends sheltered him, in-between periods spent hiding in greenways, coal cellars, and in secluded areas around Berlin.
During my uncle’s underground odyssey, the dentist Dr. Otto Berger (b. 4/15/1900-d. 5/22/1985) (Figure 3), was especially helpful. Among all the righteous Germans who aided my uncle, Dr. Berger placed himself at risk for the longest time. In a letter my Uncle Fedor wrote in 1964, he described his initial contact with Dr. Berger:
“I met Mr. Otto Berger in the spring of 1943. When he learned on this occasion that I lead an illegal life as a persecuted Jew, he provided me with food at that first meeting and offered to take me in. This happened a short time later and I moved in early July 1943 into the apartment of Otto Berger.”
Not only did Dr. Berger provide food and shelter to my uncle, but, perhaps most critically, he obtained illegal papers for him under the false identity of Dr. Friedrich Burkhardt, matching my uncle’s own initials. (Figures 4a-b, 5a-b) The identity cards for “Dr. Burkhardt” show he was born on July 18, 1890 in Jägerndorf, Upper Silesia, today Krnov, an Upper Silesian city in the northeastern Czech Republic. Why my uncle selected this alias and location are unknown.
In July 1943, Dr. Berger lived at Händelplatz 1 in Berlin-Lichterfelde (Figure 6), in southwestern Berlin, but on March 24, 1944, aerial bombardment by the Allies resulted in destruction of the building where Dr. Berger and my uncle lived. Both barely managed to escape; of the 44 people cloistered in the bomb shelter, only nine survived. Following this close call, my uncle temporarily again found refuge with his second cousin’s wife, Lisa Pauly, until Dr. Berger was able to secure new lodgings, a house with a garden in Berlin-Zehlendorf. Here he spent the summer of 1944. By this time, my uncle had lost all his personal property, given to friends for safe-keeping but incinerated, as well as his dental equipment, placed in a dental depot but likewise destroyed during aerial bombing; all he had left were a few items of clothing and a portfolio with his most important papers. In December 1944, Dr. Berger was assigned new living quarters in Berlin-Steglitz, to which he and my uncle moved, a place fire-bombed on April 25, 1945, a day before Steglitz was conquered by the advancing Russians.
Dr. Otto Berger received various awards for his courageous commitment to helping those persecuted by the Nazi regime. In 1964, he was honored by Berlin’s mayor Willi Brandt for his outstanding human commitment, followed in 1974 (Figure 7) by an invitation from the Federal President to the Bellevue Palace in order, as the President of the Confederation wrote, “. . .to get acquainted with Otto Berger, the man who gave unselfish help to the persecuted during the Nazi era.”
Posthumously, in 2008, Dr. Otto Berger was awarded the “Ewald-Harndt Medal” by the Dental Association of Berlin, a medal to “. . .honor colleagues who have made outstanding contributions to the dental profession.” In bestowing this award, the Dental Association recognized “. . . Otto Berger, who in a selfless and exemplary manner, courageously and at the risk of his own life in the time of National Socialism. . .” actively helped my uncle and others persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Then, again posthumously, in 2009 Dr. Berger was recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations” (Figure 8), an honor the State of Israel gives to non-Jewish individuals and organizations who opposed the Nazi regime to save Jews.
With the assistance of one of my German cousins, I was able to establish contact with Dr. Otto Berger’s grandson, Dr. Oliver Speyer, like his grandfather also a dentist. Ostensibly, my reason for contacting him was to obtain a few photos of Dr. Berger for use in this post. Much to my delight, Dr. Speyer sent me photos of the Ewald-Harndt and Yad Vashem awards given to his grandfather, awards prominently on display in Dr. Speyer’s dental office. (Figures 9a-b, 10)
Briefly, let me say a few words about some other silent heroes who played a role in my uncle’s survival, limited only because I’ve uncovered very little about them. My uncle’s friend, Dr. Wolfgang Sieber, with whom my uncle straightaway sought safety in October 1942, was, as previously mentioned, arrested by the Gestapo in February 1943. His name appears in Berlin Address Books only in 1940 and 1941 (Figure 11); what to make of this is not entirely clear but depending on the extent of Dr. Sieber’s involvement in sheltering other persecuted persons, he may have been incarcerated and not have survived the war.
In the case of two other known silent heroes, specifically, Lisa Pauly and Frau von Werner, both survived into the late 1970’s, at least. Because both Lisa and Frau von Werner’s addresses are provided in Lisa’s 1947 affidavit, I was able to track them through Berlin Address Books. Frau von Werner’s full name was Lisa Lotte von Werner. She is first found in a 1928 Berlin Phone Directory (Figure 12), then, again between 1951 and 1978 listed in Berlin Phone Directories at Petzower Straße 7 (Figure 13), the address in Lisa Pauly’s affidavit. Similarly, Lisa Pauly is living at Massmannstraße 11 in Steglitz between 1966 and 1977, the address shown in her affidavit of 1947. It is safe to assume both died of natural causes sometime after 1977-1978.
Let me briefly pick up the narrative as to where my uncle went following the capture of Berlin by the Russians, in his own words, cited only because it provides the identity of another, entirely unexpected, person who assisted my uncle during his underground odyssey:
“On April 26, 1945, Steglitz, in the southwestern part of the city, was occupied by the Russians. Behind the advancing troops, I arrived, on May 4th, in the apartment of my former assistant Käthe Heusermann. This apartment was situated at Pariserstraße 39-40 near Kurfürstendamm [in Berlin-Charlottenburg]. A friendship of twenty years tied my person and the family of Käthe Heusermann. . .”
To remind readers what I wrote in Blog Post 31, Käthe Heusermann (Figure 14), who’d once been my Uncle Fedor’s dental assistant in Liegnitz in Silesia [today: Legnica, Poland], eventually became Dr. Hugo Blaschke’s dental assistant; Dr. Blaschke was Hitler’s dentist. Almost immediately after the end of WWII, Käthe Heusermann, who’d known Hitler had killed himself, a fact Stalin sought to conceal from the world, was arrested by the Russians and detained for many years. Käthe Heusermann told her captors she’d occasionally supported my uncle during his time underground. Quoting from Yelena Rzhevskaya’s book, “Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler’s Bunker”:
“I liked everything about her [Käthe]: the lightness with which she walked on high heels, her voice, her womanly stoicism even in her present unclear situation. Käthe was just somebody people liked, I sensed; she was a splendid person. For many years she had supported Dr. Bruck. Käthe got food vouchers for him in the Reich Chancellery, in Berchtesgaden, and at the Führer’s headquarters in East Prussia, it could, as Dr. Bruck pointed out to me, have been fatal. Käthe herself never once spoke about that.” (p. 265)
This is difficult to wrap one’s head around that the dental assistant to Hitler’s dentist provided aid to my Jewish uncle during the war, a most unlikely ally.
There may have been other individuals, whose names are lost to us, who played lesser roles in keeping my uncle from being deported. Perhaps, they were former dental patients of his who recognized him or army veterans with whom he fought during WWI who passed him on the street? We will never know. We only know the names of the people who provided most active support.
The motivations for people to help persecuted Jews were obviously varied. A few felt an obligation as family or friends, some probably did it out of human compassion, and others for religious or political reasons, but whatever their rationale, they placed themselves at risk and for this reason alone should be recognized.
REFERENCES
Lutze, Kay
2006 Die Lebensgeschichte des jüdischen Zahnarztes Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) Von Liegnitz nach New York. Zahnärzttliche Mitteilungen 96, Nr. 10, 16.5 (p. 124-127)
Rzhevskaya, Yelena
2018 Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler’s Bunker. Greenhill Books. London.
Silent Heroes Memorial Center
N.D. Catalog: Resistance to Persecution of the Jews 1933-1945. For detailed bibliographic data online, go to http://dnb.d-nb.de