Under Hitler's Nose: Fugitive Jews in Wartime Berlin

Guest Blog post by Vera Litvin

A varied audience turned up to listen to historian Roger Moorhouse discuss “Fugitive Jews in Wartime Berlin” this Tuesday: from regulars to the centre to media students from Belfast. We were all united by one thing: with our comfortable lives in which food, accommodation and legal status are taken for granted it wasn’t easy for us to imagine life as a “non-person” in Nazi Berlin. However, Roger Moorhouse’s engaging and vivid lecturing style quickly drew us into the underground world of Jews who decided to destroy their papers, leave behind their identity and hide in Berlin from 1935 onwards in order to escape deportation to the camps. 

These Jews were known as the “taucher”, literally “divers”, who dove beneath the respectable surface of society and lived on its margins. There were 10-11 thousand “taucher”, of which 1400 survived the war. This means that roughly 1 out of 8 of Jews hiding in Berlin survived, quite a remarkable statistic considering the hardships they had to endure. Going underground was to commit yourself to a life of lying, cheating and stealing. As a “non-person” without documents you were not eligible for any food rations and always in danger of denunciation and being caught by the Gestapo.

Roger expanded on all aspects of the lives of these hidden Jews, from using peroxide to dye their hair an “Aryan” blonde, to the tough decision to become “illegal” in the first place when previously they had been law-abiding citizens. There are many stories of the kindness of German Berliners in helping “taucher”, ranging from those who provided a few nights’ shelter to those who provided documents, allowing Jews to assume new German identities.

Roger Moorhouse

Despite the mental strains, isolation and exhaustion that life an illegal Jew in Berlin must have carried, there are also positive moments in Roger Moorhouse’s account. “I thought our life was a great adventure…it was great fun” remembers one young illegal Jew. Some Jews, like Larry Orbach, who lied and cheated his way across Berlin and later wrote an uplifting memoir about it, found great freedom in a life lived outside the norms of a repressive society. Ultimately, this is a fascinating story of courage, audacity, inventiveness and sheer will to survive on the part of “taucher” and bravery and kindness on the part of those who helped them. 

Other events not to miss at the LJCC: Rex Bloomstein: The Director’s Cut – Confronting the Holocaust at 7.30pm on Thursday 24 November

Book Launch: Fleeing From the Fuhrer at 7.30pm on Monday 5 December

Survivors Speak: Freddie Knoller at 7.30pm on Thursday 8 December

Roger Moorhouse’s book Berlin at War is available here