Underground in Berlin
A Young Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
By turns thrilling and terrifying, Underground in Berlin is the autobiographical account of a young Jewish woman who ripped off her yellow star and survived the war by going underground from 1942 to 1945.
Berlin, 1941. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie decides to survive. She takes off the yellow star, turns her back on the Jewish community and vanishes into the city.
In the years that follow, Marie lives under an assumed identity, moving between almost 20 different safe houses. She is forced to accept shelter wherever she can find it, and many of those she stays with expect services in return. She stays with foreign workers, committed communists and even convinced Nazis. Any false move might lead to arrest. Never certain who can be trusted and how far, it is her quick-witted determination and the most amazing and hair-raising strokes of luck that ensure her survival.
Underground in Berlin is Marie's extraordinary story, told in her own voice with unflinching honesty, for the first time after more than 50 years of silence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this captivating story, Simon tells of her years in hiding as a Jewish woman during WWII. While still a teenager, she works as forced labor in a factory, leaving her middle-class life behind. Before Jalowicz is 20, she's orphaned, losing both parents to illness, and must grow up fast. Having decided she won't voluntarily submit to the Nazis, she's even more determined after her aunt receives deportation papers in late 1941. She arranges to get herself fired from a factory and then convinces the authorities she's already been sent away. She utilizes her time to walk different neighborhoods in Berlin, testing whether she will be harassed by police for not wearing the Jewish star and gaining the confidence she needs to mask her fear in encounters with Nazis or anyone suspicious of her. Jalowicz gets by on her wits, able to lie her way out of trouble when she's threatened with arrest, and, amazingly, is never "denounced" by those who know the truth. Even more critically, she's aided by family and friends, Jews and not, who give her food, money and most importantly, refuge. When friends learn of a foreign worker in need of a "wife", she has the great fortune of being able to live in relative safety for the last two years of the war. Jalowicz's story is unquestionably tragic in so many ways, but is also full of miracles, hope, and a future.
