Berlin Goodbye

By Ralph Moratz

The true account of Ralph Moratz's escape from Nazi Germany as a young boy. His journey took him through France and Spain, finally reaching freedom in America. 

This is his story, in his own words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ruth Moratz
• Release date: Sep 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536587197

Book preview

Foreword

Shortly before his death, I promised my father I would put together his blog and website postings into ebook format. Although the story is condensed (he didn’t have a lot of time left and wanted to be sure to finish it), it still has the ability to bring you along on his journey and put you into the moment, feeling the constant fear and eventual excitement he felt.

This is his story of his escape from Berlin and journey to America in his own words.

Ruth Moratz

Chapter 1: Berlin Goodbye

By OTFW, Berlin (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This sculpture is described as follows:

"An almost life-size sculpture of children depicted in bronze stands directly adjacent to the Friedrichstraße station at the intersection of Georgenstraße and Friedrichstraße. Seven boys and girls represent the Jewish children of the 1930s. The arrangement of the group reflects the contrasting fate of the children in the Nazi era.

Five figures in grey bronze look to one side, symbolising the suffering of those deported to concentration camps to meet an early demise. Two lighter bronze figures, however, gaze in the other direction. They represent those Jewish children whose lives were saved by the Kindertransports."

As I look at this sculpture, in my mind I see those hapless innocent children stoically marching down the path at Auschwitz to the gas chambers. I still cannot comprehend the mindset of the dreaded SS watching this inhumane transgression day and night without twinge of conscience. It was not until years later that I realized how close Wolfgang and I came to being deported saved by the selfless efforts of many organizations who devoted all their energies to bring as many of us as possible to safety.

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I was born in Berlin, Germany on 10/10/31. As Hitler's power increased we were subjected to ever increasing incidents of harassment: on Kristallnacht, we were locked in the Synagogue in the Auerbach, the Jewish orphanage where I was living and the eternal flame was disconnected from the gas supplying pipe, an early attempt to gas us by the Nazis. One of the older children broke a window and the fresh air mercifully revived us. From then until we left, the Gestapo kept two machine guns trained on our orphanage from the surrounding rooftops to prevent us from forming any kind of resistance.

During June, 1939, I and several others at the Auerbach Orphanage had been informed we were going to France for a two week vacation. Late in the afternoon of July 3rd, 1939, indeed, we were assembled and left for the Potsdamer Banhof (station) pictured above.

We were excited to be able to go to France just to get away from the deadly atmosphere in Berlin and the harassment we were subjected to by the Hitler youth.

When we were still able to go to the Jewish school, as we left the school to come back to the orphanage, we had to run between two lines of Hitler youth who beat us mercilessly with belts and buckles. Two SS troopers stood by laughing and made sure we did not fight back against the Hitler youth. We ran as fast