Survival in the Shadows: Seven Jews Hidden in Hitler’s Berlin

When the Red Army soldiers discovered the Arndt, Lewinsky and Gumpel families in April 1945, there were seven survivors, the largest known group of German Jews to survive in hiding in the heart of the Third Reich.
Alarmed by rumors of immediate deportation, the four Arndts went into hiding in January 1943, soon joined by Ellen and Charlotte Lewinsky and Bruno Gumpel. For two and a half years the group managed to stay alive in the shadowy underworld of Berlin, without identity cards, food ration books or any secure accommodation, fending off starvation and discovery, in an area less than two miles from Hitler's bunker.
Throughout their perilous saga, they were protected by more than fifty non-Jewish Germans, who risked their own lives to give them aid.
Erich Arndt, his wife Ellen (nee Lewinsky) and his sister, Ruth Arndt Gumpel, who now live in the U.S., here tell their incredible story in detail for the first time. The Arndts want to show the world that anti-Semitism was not as ubiquitous among ordinary Germans as is commonly thought.