During World War II, thousands of Jews evaded the Nazis in Berlin, moving from place to place and taking refuge wherever they could. One of them, Walter Frankenstein, died in April at age 100.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
During World War II, thousands of Jews evaded the Nazis in Berlin, moving from place to place and taking refuge wherever they could. They called themselves U-boats, a reference to the German naval submarines that operated in the Atlantic Ocean, diving below the waves to avoid detection so they could attack Allied ships.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Living submerged in the daily life of Berlin, Walter Frankenstein was 1 of around 1,700 human U-boats who survived the war in the city. He died last month at 100 years old.
SHAPIRO: He spent his later years educating people about his experience, keeping the memory of the U-boats alive.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALTER FRANKENSTEIN: (Speaking German).
SHAPIRO: This is Frankenstein, speaking about his experience at an event organized by the Jewish Museum Berlin in 2018.
KELLY: Frankenstein was born in 1924, in a small German town that is now part of Poland. When he was 12, Jews could no longer attend his town’s school, so he moved to a Jewish orphanage in Berlin.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FRANKENSTEIN: (Speaking German).
SHAPIRO: As a young boy, he benefited from the anonymity of the city. He says, back in his hometown, everyone knew he was Jewish, but in Berlin, he could blend in with the crowd.
RICHARD LUTJENS: The sheer size of Berlin – over 4 million people – simply made it easier. It was still incredibly difficult and dangerous, but it did make it easier to fade into the shadows and the background.
KELLY: Richard Lutjens is a professor of modern German history at Texas Tech University. He says this is how many Jewish people hiding in Berlin were able to avoid arrest or deportation. That anonymity helped some people in hiding hold jobs and retain some semblance of normal life.
LUTJENS: One gentleman used to play the organ at funerals. Another individual who was a talented artist, he used to paint anti-Nazi paintings and sell them to support himself. One gentleman went so far as – he was bored and he wanted to learn how to sail, so he got himself a sailboat and used to go sailing. We would consider a lot of these forms of behavior, I think, from our perspective, as foolhardy. But it’s what kept body and soul together. It wasn’t just about surviving. It was about attempting to live.
SHAPIRO: Frankenstein married his wife, Leonie, in 1942, and their two sons were born during the war. As the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, the family moved from place to place, sometimes together, other times separated. They dodged air raids in whatever shelter they could find – an opera house, a stranded car, a brothel, a subway station.
KELLY: After the war, the family spent a decade in Israel, then moved to Sweden. There, Frankenstein studied to become a civil engineer. He frequently spoke about his experiences, and in 2014, he was awarded the German Order of Merit. That’s one of the government’s highest honors for his contributions to Holocaust remembrance.
SHAPIRO: Frankenstein often kept the medal with him, along with the yellow Star of David that the German government forced all Jews to wear during the war.
(SOUNDBITE OF STORMZY SONG, “FIRE AND WATER”)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
