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For many years I could not conceive that there were any German Jews who survived the Holocaust living in Berlin. I had heard stories of Jews who were hidden by non-Jews in countries like Hungary, France, and Czechoslovakia, but I had never heard stories of Jewish survivors in Berlin—Hitler’s headquarters—where, I assumed, antisemitism was more virulent than in other German cities.

Then I met Ellen and Erich Arndt, a gracious couple in their mid-seventies who now live in Brighton, a suburb of Rochester, New York. They are a pleasant, no-nonsense couple who share a delightful sense of humor, a lively intellect, and a calm, reserved demeanor. The Arndts have two daughters, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, all of whom are sources of joy and activity. It is hard to imagine that Ellen and Erich lived underground in war-torn Berlin with five other Jews. Here is their remarkable story, a story not only of daring and courage, but of extraordinary human kindness.

In December 1942, Erich Arndt persuaded his father, Arthur Arndt, a successful Jewish physician, to risk living in the precarious world of the Berlin underground rather than face the certainty of deportation to the Nazi death camps.

Erich, only 19, was working as a slave laborer at Siemens, a gigantic defense company. There, he had heard through the "Mundfunk"—the Jewish rumor mill—that a massive factory raid was being planned. Jewish slave laborers would be deported and Berlin would finally be "Judenrein" (free of Jews).

Erich knew that he and all his loved ones—his parents; his sister, Ruth; his
girlfriend, Ellen Lewinsky; and Ellen’s mother, Charlotte—were vulnerable. Erich decided they had only one chance to survive: They would have to go underground and live without legal identity cards, ration cards, or even jobs, depending upon their own wits and the kindness of German non-Jews to protect them.

"Before the Storm"

Ellen Lewinsky, a blond toddler with gray-blue eyes, grew up in Blesen, Germany, a tiny farming village in eastern Germany, with her mother, Charlotte Gurau Lewinsky, and her grandparents, Siegfried and Henriette Gurau. Siegfried, a grain merchant, was well-liked by the townspeople, even though the Guraus were the only Jewish family in the tiny town.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, things changed for the Guraus. Ellen, only 13 and a top student, had to drop out of school. Siegfried’s store was boycotted by German officials. Neighbors began spying on them. “When my grandmother died in 1935, she warned us that more and more terrible things would occur,” recalls Ellen. “And she was right.”

During Kristallnacht the 70-year-old Siegfried was arrested and put into jail. Soon he died of a stroke, and Charlotte was forced to sell the house and business to the
Germans for a ridiculously low price. Then Charlotte wrote to Johanna Kroner, Siegfried’s youngest sister, and told her that she and Ellen were moving to Berlin and wanted to stay with her. The isolation in Blesen was intolerable. At least in Berlin they had family and friends. And there Charlotte hoped to get an exit visa to join her brother, Heinz, who had emigrated to Brazil.

Charlotte and Ellen arrived in Berlin in May 1939. A month later an event occurred that would change—and ultimately save—their lives: At a family party, Ellen met Erich Joachim Arndt, the son of a successful Jewish physician. Erich, not quite 16, was smitten right away. “I proposed on our second date and said we would move to America and have a large Buick and two children,” recalls Erich proudly. “And we did!”

The Arndts lived in Kreuzberg, a largely working-class district in southeastern Berlin, where anti-Fascist sentiment was strong. Dr. Arndt, a World War I veteran who had won an Iron Cross for outstanding service, was known as a thorough and compassionate physician: He had a large clientele of non-Jewish patients, and he charged those who couldn’t pay his full fee only what they could afford.

Germans for a ridiculously low price. Then Charlotte wrote to Johanna Kroner, Siegfried’s youngest sister, and told her that she and Ellen were moving to Berlin and wanted to stay with her. The isolation in Blesen was intolerable. At least in Berlin they had family and friends. And there Charlotte hoped to get an exit visa to join her brother, Heinz, who had emigrated to Brazil.

But soon the Arndts became victims of repressive anti-Semitic laws. Dr. Arndt had to give up his Gentile patients; Erich had to drop out of the gymnasium—where he had been a top student and athlete. Ruth also had to change schools. Dr. Arndt was forced to move the family out of their spacious apartment and into a tiny, drab, noisy two-room apartment on a commercial thoroughfare. Dr. Arndt tried to get visas to America, but he couldn’t. So the family resigned itself to waiting out the war in Germany.

"Working as Slave Laborers"

When the Germans began drafting Jews to work as slave laborers in munitions factories, 17-year-old Erich was recruited to work at Siemens, a huge munitions factory that employed 5,000 Jewish men and women during the war. Erich, worked twelve-hour days, and also commuted four hours to and from work. Ellen worked at Firme Schubert, making parts for guns to go on German airplanes. She worked nine hours a day. Both were paid less than half of the wages that “Aryan” workers received for working only eight hours.

“We did not receive ration cards for meat, eggs, milk, or other healthful food,” recalls Ellen. “We had to stand up on buses and subways and we could only shop at restricted hours every day. We worked twice as hard as Germans and received half as much money and food.”

During this time the deportation of German Jews to concentration camps increased. As friends and relatives were sent away, Ellen and Erich feared that their time was running out; the factories would not protect them forever. Then, in the fall of 1942, Erich heard reports of an impending factory raid. He soon decided that they had only one chance to survive; they had to go into hiding. Ruth and Ellen agreed to go with him; they knew it was their only chance.

"Into the Shadows"

But when Erich proposed the idea to his father, Dr. Arndt was thoroughly against it. “Who will protect us and feed us?” challenged Dr. Arndt. “Maybe one single man could survive underground. But not a group of six people. At least in the camps we will have shelter and food.”

“In the camps we will probably die,” rebutted Erich. “Maybe not right away, but soon. At least in Berlin, there are people who can help us. We will have a better chance of making it here.”

Erich pressed the issue for weeks and finally presented his father with an ultimatum: “I told him that Ellen and Ruth and I would go into hiding, even if he and Mutti didn’t. We would rather die on the streets of Berlin than starve to death in a work camp.” Faced with the prospect of splitting up his family, Dr. Arndt agreed.

The next day, Dr. Arndt spoke to two of his former patients, Max and Anni Gehre, seeking their help. Dr. Arndt had cured their daughter, Inge, of diphtheria when she was a child. The Gehres were passionate anti-Fascists and indebted to Dr. Arndt. They had already sheltered the family on several evenings when rumors of a Gestapo raid had surfaced. They offered to shelter Dr. Arndt in their tiny apartment. Anni also volunteered to find hiding places and jobs for the rest of the family.
“They were blue-collar workers, good Lutherans, who knew the difference between right and wrong,” recalls Ellen fondly. “They were determined to help us, no matter how risky it was.”

Anni then called Max Köhler, a pacifist and former patient of Dr. Arndt’s who owned a small loft factory that manufactured spray paint brushes for artists. The factory was located several blocks away, on 20 Oranienstrasse. Max despised Hitler. He volunteered to hire Erich as a journeyman. Another neighbor, Purzel Lefebre, agreed to shelter Erich, Ruth, and their mother, Lina, in the large bedroom of her apartment. (She and her daughter, Ilse, would move into the living room.)

That December was bitterly cold. Erich was on medical leave from Siemens, and nervous that the Gestapo would pick him up. The family packed all their possessions in trunks and brown cartons and, during the last two weeks of the month, they moved them stealthily through the snow to the home of the Gehres, who had promised to take care of them. During this time Bruno Gumpel, a former schoolmate of Erich’s and a co-worker from Siemens, happened by to see Erich. His mother and aunt had been deported to Auschwitz. Bruno, feeling lonely and very depressed, had decided to look up Erich. He pitched in and helped Erich move the boxes to the Gehres.

On January 9, 1943, Lina Arndt carefully sewed her family’s Jewish identification cards into the seams of their winter coats. Dr. Arndt wrote a suicide note to account for their disappearance, and the family ceased to exist legally.

Several weeks later, Ellen found a hiding place for her mother, Charlotte, with Anni Harm, the wife of a German soldier, who thought that hiding Jews was the “Christian” thing to do. Ellen would join the Arndts at Purzel’s.

"Just in Time"

On Saturday, February 27, 1943, the Gestapo raided factories where Jews were working and homes where their families were quietly observing the Sabbath. The coup was enormous: In one day they rounded up about 7,000 Berlin Jews. Most were deported to Auschwitz. Despite the enormity of this action, Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, was enraged. According to his records, they had not arrested everyone on their list. “We have failed to lay our hands on about 4,000 Jews,” Goebbels wrote in his diary. “They are now wandering about Berlin without homes, are not registered with police and are naturally quite a public danger. I ordered the police, the "Wehrmacht" [the army], and the Party to do everything possible to round these Jews up as quickly as possible.”

By this time Dr. Arndt was hidden safely in the Gehres’ apartment, living in a tiny room. Miraculously, Dr. Arndt managed to stay in the apartment for the next two and a half years. The other members of the group were not so lucky; they had to move frequently, often not knowing until the last minute where they would wind up, fearing not only Nazi informers but Jewish informers who had been coerced by the Gestapo into betraying the hiding places of their own people.

Indeed, Germans who helped Jews were in constant danger of being exposed, tortured, and killed. Few Germans wanted to take on these risks, no matter how deeply they opposed the Reich. Yet, there were many unsung heroes who did just that. The Arndts can recall the names of more than fifty Germans who helped them, providing shelter, food, or employment. Many were extremely poor. Others, like the Gehres and Köhlers, were strong-minded middle-class Christians who despised Hitler and were deeply loyal to Dr. Arndt. They took enormous risks to protect these families and requested nothing in return.

“The Germans who helped us were the bravest people I ever met,” says Ellen. “If the Gestapo had ever discovered what they were doing, they would have been hung up on lampposts or shot.”

"Life in the Shadows"

In the spring of 1943 the Nazis told Purzel they needed her bedroom for bombed out Berliners. Max Köhler said Erich could sleep in the factory. Max’s son, Hans Köhler, who ran the factory with his father, helped Erich settle in and set up a warning device on the door leading into the loft.

Ellen, Ruth, and Lina hastily moved into a tiny room in the back of a local delicatessen that had one single cot. The indefatigable Anni then contacted “Tata” (Anni Schultz), the Arndts’ first nanny. Tata had hidden much of Dr. Arndt's medical equipment in the ground surrounding her small country house, and she agreed to put up Lina.

Anni then conned a Nazi neighbor, Frau Liebold, who was a cleaning lady at the Berlin Opera, into hiding Ellen and Ruth in her pantry. “Anni told her we were on a secret mission for the Führer and we needed a place to stay during the daytime,” recalls Ellen. “And she was so gullible and stupid that she believed us!” Then Frau Liebold’s son, a German officer, began to visit regularly. “We knew then it was time to look for a new hideout,” recalls Ellen. “We figured he could not possibly be as stupid as his mother and would soon be onto us.”

So Ellen moved into the factory with Erich. “If they are going to kill me for hiding one Jew, they might as well kill me for hiding two,” said Max, who did not tell his wife, Klara, for fear that she would be afraid and pressure Max to move them both out. Ruth moved in with her mother at Tata’s. Then Charlotte had to move, because the neighbors were becoming suspicious. Ellen found her a room with a prostitute. But the neighbors there also became suspicious.

“It seemed we were always looking for hiding places for my mother,” says Ellen. “But she was incredibly good natured, and always managed to endure.”
Charlotte was also extremely feisty. She had insisted on taking a fancy dress, feathered hat, and two silver-fox boas into hiding; sometimes she would brazenly put them on and take a train into the busiest section of Berlin. There she would find a restaurant packed with German officers, ask to be seated next to a high-ranking one and, before ordering from the waiter, fumble in her purse, pretending to look for her ration stamps. “Ach,” she would exclaim, “I left them at home.” Inevitably the officer would give her some of his cards. She would then feast on a meal of roasted goose and the trimmings, often slipping portions into her purse to share with the others!

"Kohler’s Factory"

Soon enough, Köhler’s factory became home base for everyone. Ruth would stay there from time to time. Bruno Gumpel, who had helped the Arndts move, looked up Erich and became a regular visitor. Dr. Arndt would try to visit late at night, every couple of weeks, bringing medicine and checking up on his family’s health. “We did not see each other often, or even on a regular basis,” recalls Ruth. “Sometimes my father would come up to the factory. Sometimes we would meet in the dark, at a prearranged street corner, where we exchanged little bits of food or soap we had gathered. He would bring us food from the Gehres when he could, and give us medicine and vitamins.”

On weekends, the group would sit around a large table, playing gin rummy and listening to the BBC on Hans Köhler’s radio. And they would also intercept military reports on a wireless set up by Erich. They would take turns bathing and washing their clothing in a basin. Ellen cooked meals on a Bunsen burner. Socks were a continual problem, and Ellen—trained as a seamstress—would carefully make new soles by cutting off and using the tops of the worst of them.

“We tried to look as well-dressed and normal as possible, since we didn’t want to appear conspicuous,” says Ellen. “We were scared of the bombs, but we knew that the more bombs came, the more chance we would be rescued soon.”

Since Ruth and Ellen had to be out of the factory by the time workers arrived, it was Ellen’s job to assign jobs and make sure everyone would be accounted for. They found most jobs through word of mouth. “Help was extremely scarce,” says Ellen. “People did not ask many questions. We never revealed our last names to them. We left nothing to chance.”

One such employer was Herr Wehlen—a colonel in the German army who used his connections to buy goods from occupied countries and sell them for huge mark-ups on the Black Market. Herr Wehlen and his wife had few scruples—about harboring Jews or anyone else. He hired Ellen and Ruth to take care of his children, clean his house, serve his guests when they came to dine, and cook an occasional goose. They were warm and well-fed; they could also take food home to share with the others.
The following April 1944, Ruth and Lina were introduced to a Spanish diplomat, Dr. Santaella, a devout Catholic who was hiding another Jewish woman in his large home in the German countryside, right next to the Japanese consulate. He hired Ruth as a nanny for his four children; then he hired Lina as a cook. None of the servants knew that the two women were related; they would make faces at each other as they passed on the stairways.

"City Under Siege"

In September of 1944 Dr. Santaella was transferred to Switzerland. Ruth and Lina had to return to Berlin, where they moved constantly, from hiding place to hiding place. “It seems I never knew where I was going to sleep; I kept all my possessions with me in a small tote bag so I could move instantly,” recalls Ruth. As bombs tore up Berlin, it became harder and harder to find refuge. Charlotte was bombed out of her hiding place; then Bruno was bombed out. They moved into the factory because they had no place else to go.

Bruno and Ellen—who looked the most “Aryan” because they were blond — would steal food and ration cards whenever possible. Bruno would sometimes trade cigarette butts for edibles and, after bombings, he stood in food lines impersonating a homeless Berliner. Ellen and her mother would sometimes ride the subway for hours and hours, when they had no place else to go. Then, early in 1945, Lina and Ruth ran out of hiding places and moved into the factory. From that time on there were six of them in Max’s factory full-time: Lina and Charlotte slept on cots in a front office; Ellen and Erich slept on thin blue mattresses on the floor, and Bruno and Ruth stayed on bunk beds in a small storage room in the back.

During the day, Erich and Bruno worked side by side, posing as Gentile journeymen. Ellen sometimes worked on the floor with them, while Lina, Charlotte, and Ruth hid in the tiny, windowless storage room. There they could not talk, for fear of alerting the other factory workers. Even urinating into a pail was dangerous, since it could bring detection by the workers. (Max’s wife, Klara, still didn’t know they were there.)

As bombing became more intensive, they had less and less to eat. One day the vibration from an air raid near the factory shattered the factory’s windows. Glass flew into a pile of noodles that Ellen had made, almost ruining their small ration of food. Then Bruno found ration cards—for 100 pounds of chicken feed. Ellen cooked them for several months.

“Then they began to walk!” recalls Ellen. “They eventually became infested with worms. I tried to remove them, but I couldn’t. So I cooked them anyway and served them to everyone in the dark.” They would have starved without the feed.

"Deliverance"
When the Russians arrived in late April, Erich weighed a mere 100 pounds; Ellen and Ruth weighed only 90 pounds and the others were similarly gaunt. The Russians did not believe that they were “Juden” until Erich recited the Shema (a Hebrew prayer) to a Russian Jewish officer. The officer then brought them food and put up a sign alerting the Russian soldiers to leave them alone during the looting, raping, and pillaging that soon occurred.

On June 16, 1945, Ellen and Erich married in a registrar’s office and held a wedding reception in the factory. It was attended by many of their Gentile protectors. When Ruth and Bruno planned to marry the following fall, both couples decided to have a double ceremony in the small synagogue at Kottbusser Ufer, where Erich had been bar mitzvahed. It was the first Jewish wedding ceremony to occur in Berlin after the war, and the sanctuary was filled with friends and protectors, as well as a few high government officials.

As life in Berlin normalized, Dr. Arndt returned to his medical practice and moved the family into a large, nine-room apartment that had been occupied during the war by a Nazi. In the spring of 1946, Erich and Bruno applied for entry to the U.S. under President Truman’s special legislation. In May the two couples and Charlotte boarded the "Marine Flasher", an 11,000-ton former troop carrier that was the first to transport Jewish war refugees to America. Ellen was six months pregnant at the time and one of the few people aboard who didn’t become seasick. When they arrived on the docks of New York on May 20, 1946, they were met by reporters, relatives, and members of the Jewish community. Six months later, Dr. Arndt and Lina joined them in America.

Erich and Bruno both got jobs on Long Island as tool-and-die makers, a skill they had learned in Max Kohler’s factory. Erich and Ellen moved to Hempstead, New York, and raised two daughters. In 1957, they moved to Rochester because Erich received a job offer as a production manager with Rochester Alliance Tool and Die Company. Dr. Arndt got a job with a nursing home in New York City, then continued his practice at the Hebrew Home for the Aged.

In 1954 Bruno was hired as a technician with CBS. Eventually he became a chief technical supervisor. He stayed there for thirty years, commuting most of the time from Queens, where he and Ruth had purchased a house and were raising two sons. Ruth, trained as a nurse, finally got a chance to work as a pediatric nurse with St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital. The two families visited each other frequently through the years and remained the best of friends, bonded together by their perilous journey through the darkest hours of Berlin.

Kohler’s factory on 20 Oranienstrasse also survived the war. The original building still remains (replete with remnants of an electrical wiring system that Erich had installed as a warning device). It is located less than five miles from the Reichstag

Excerpt from "Perilous Journeys: Personal Stores of German and Austrian Jews Who Escaped the Nazis" written by Barbara Lovenheim and Barbara Appelbaum