Outcast: A Jewish Girl in Wartime Berlin - Paperback

by Jean Steinberg (Translator), Inge Deutschkron (Author)

In 1933, when she is ten, Berliner Inge Deutschkron learns that she is a Jew. At first her family is at greater risk for their leftist politics than because they are Jews. Her father flees to England; Inge and her mother hide in plain sight as non-Jews, dependent on the underground network for their survival, in constant danger of discovery or betrayal. Otto Weidt employed Inge in the office of his workshop for the blind. Toward the end of the war, Inge and her mother manage to leave Berlin, and eventually emigrate to England. Inge Deutschkron became an Israeli citizen and an editor of Maariv."One of the greatest successes of German memoir literature" - Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine"... invaluable as testimony of the war years of one of Berlin's 12,000 surviving Jews." - Kirkus Reviews"[A] simple and charming memoir by a Jewish woman of how she survived as a girl in her late teens in wartime Berlin... Unsentimental, resilient and aware that luck can make all the difference, Inge Deutschkron... has remained a true Berliner." - István Deák, The New York Review of Books

Author Biography

Born in 1922, Inge Deutschkron grew up in Berlin and was brought up as an atheist. Her parents were members of the Social Democratic Party. In 1939, Inge had to leave high school because she was Jewish, and her father Martin escaped to England. In 1941, Inge was sent to work as a forced laborer at a parachute silk factory. Through the Jewish Community, she contacted Otto Weidt who employed blind and deaf Jews to produce brooms and brushes and protected them. Weidt gave Inge an office job, despite the strict ban on Jews working in an office. In January 1943, Inge and her mother Ella went into hiding in several places with the help of friends and acquaintances, and stayed in Potsdam until the end of the war. In 1946 they joined Martin in England where Inge studied foreign languages and worked in the Socialist International Office. In 1955, Inge started working as a freelance journalist in Bonn and became the Germany correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv in 1960. From 1972 until 1987, she worked for Maariv in Israel. In 2001, she returned to Berlin where she now lives.