The Baby Who Survived the Last Deportation from Berlin

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01][music] [music] [music] One of the things that makes the history of Berlin so interesting ing is that a lot of the most interesting stuff, a lot of the most important stuff happened very very recently. It means that you can see the evidence of it as you walk around the city. But it also means you might bump into somebody who actually lived it. And one of the people who today is helping to unearth these stories and bring them to light in the 21st century is a great friend of mine, uh fellow tour guide and radio presenter, Matty Guy. Uh Mattie, >> hello.

[00:00:57]>> Welcome back. Uh people will have seen you before when we explored the uh Vison Cemetery. Um that's correct.

[00:01:04]>> Tell us a bit about yourself.

[00:01:05]>> So yes, you said it. I'm a tour guide.

[00:01:07]Uh you can find me on tours of Berlin.com. I also work in a radio station when I'm not tour guiding and as part of my radio job as of a couple months ago. I have this amazing well I think amazing podcast where I interview people that have crazy biographies and often very historical biographies that are really linked to the Berlin stories.

[00:01:27]And I think that a lot of their stories, individual stories, make the greater history a bit more accessible almost.

[00:01:33]>> Yeah. In a way, it makes it a little bit more real, a bit more tangible. Um, you had uh a brush with an award ceremony.

[00:01:41]Didn't quite go the way you wanted to, but you produced a really amazing story.

[00:01:45]>> Way to sneak that in there. Yes. Well, I have a segment at the radio station I work at, which is Flux FM, called Bellina Schnips, where I tell the like little Berlin stories like you do on YouTube and Instagram, um, in a fun, informative way. And last year for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, I did one on the final deportation train that left Berlin in 1945.

[00:02:09]>> So, this was a deportation really only about 6 weeks before the end of World War II. Uh even right at the end as the city is preparing for war as the Soviets are ready to invade the Nazis are shipping Jews away to Teresian.

[00:02:23]>> Exactly. And that final trainer I always stress left Berlin two months after Awitz was already liberated and the Nazis were still rounding up a handful of Jews. And I was I wanted to find out who was on that last train. So I did some research. I did that little snippet about that train which got nominated for the German radio awards. Um, >> well done, Matthew. I was very proud of you.

[00:02:45]>> Didn't win. Uh, >> I mean, you did well.

[00:02:49]>> Thank you. And a day after the award ceremony, I get an email in my account from So, on that train, I should say on that final deportation train was a mother with a newborn son. She got busted during well, basically just after giving birth and her and her few days old son are on that train. And that's the little snippet they also aired on the award ceremony. And a day afterwards, I get an email of an 80-year-old man who said, "I heard you did a brief little radio thing about me.

[00:03:22]I am that yes, I am that baby on the last deportation train." Still gives me little goosebumps when I talk about it.

[00:03:27]Was quite a just amazing that you had to have that email. Um then I rang him back. He turns out to live in Hamburg.

[00:03:35]Um he's like I would love to tell my story without me even having to ask whether he would like to come for an interview. He said yes. So he came for an interview to Berlin a couple of months later even though by that point he'd suffered a minor stroke. So he could still walk and talk but it was all a little more difficult which amazing that he traveled.

[00:03:53]>> That is amazing. Um I have to say I listened to the show today to make to make sure I know what I'm talking about.

[00:03:59]And uh uh he he sounded well. sounded well and he was just a really lovely warm person.

[00:04:06]>> Yeah. Yeah, that very much came across.

[00:04:08]So tell us what did he go through?

[00:04:11]>> One of the things that I found out when I talked to him on the phone was that he'd actually written a book about his story which I when I did my research on the final deportation train didn't find because he published it under a false name out of fear of neo-Nazi attacks.

[00:04:24]>> Oh.

[00:04:25]>> So um would have done my research a whole lot easier if I'd found that beforehand.

[00:04:29]>> Yes. Uh what what is his name? his actual name, Misha Misels. Okay, >> obviously he was a baby, so he doesn't remember this firsthand. And in the interview, there's a lot of I wish my mother had told me. His mother never really wanted to talk about this, the Holocaust, the Nazi history, and he was quite young. And as we all know, and this is a theme that often in this podcast when, you know, when we're younger, we don't really ask the questions and then often ask the questions when it's too late. Um, but he does know quite a bit. His parents lived on Kstrasa in West Berlin, which as you'll know is a very wealthy.

[00:05:01]>> Yes, it's a nice area. It's also Yeah.

[00:05:02]Massive street, very well known. Okay.

[00:05:04]Very prominent.

[00:05:05]>> They had a big apartment there. Um and he also had a grandmother. Um those were the people that were alive when the Nazis came to power. His father actually got murdered being um run over by a Nazi in a car.

[00:05:22]>> Oh, okay. So, uh not a random accident.

[00:05:24]not a random accident. I write his books obviously before the interview. The book is kind of written in a weird way because he himself doesn't know all the details. The book is kind of a talk of him with God and he's asking God questions and so this God figure fills in the details that he doesn't know. But a lot of the book is therefore also a little bit you know filling the gaps the way he thinks things worked out. So a lot of you know me in the podcast interview is like this true and I did ask him like did your dad actually got killed by a Nazi on purpose? Yes. He got run over by a Nazi on purpose who found saw he was Jewish and >> was that they went for him and pro presumably uh suffered no consequences.

[00:06:02]>> Suffered no consequences. Yeah. And then because they had this big apartment on Kstrasa now less people in it. The dad gone. And obviously Jews were supposed to at some point not live in like these apartments. At the same time there's Germans looking for apartments. People get bombed out. You know there's a shortage and Jews are being kicked out.

[00:06:22]and they have this landlord who's in the beginning quite sympathetic to them and helps them by finding them people that can live in some of their rooms. His argument being if we find other people non-Jews that live in your flat I can make a point that no there aren't just Jewish people here there are also non-Jewish people here and then maybe you can stay here as well. The problem was that there were no Germans that wanted to share an apartment with Jews.

[00:06:46]So he finds them some chi random Chinese guy who cooks amazing food but is never really to be seen.

[00:06:54]>> Oh, okay. I mean that sounds like the perfect roommate. No.

[00:06:58]>> Um and he finds them a Spanish um factory worker who was in Berlin doing forced labor.

[00:07:08]>> Oh, okay.

[00:07:09]>> Yeah. And it was a communist. Got arrested in Spain being or you know on his way out of Spain. um trying to flee Spain then after the civil war and was arrested for being a communist and ends up in Berlin being forced labor and he himself doesn't know how this forced laborer was able to just live in apartment and move around the city freely but that seems to have been the case.

[00:07:30]>> Yeah. Yeah, that does sound a bit odd.

[00:07:33]I'm more familiar with the um Spanish communists who are sent to concentration camps. They're made to wear this blue triangle, right? It's quite rare. They're the only only people. But yeah, in doing a bit more, having told a few more stories about forced laborers in town, it seems like in a way they were in a kind of open prison situation. But we don't have answers for everything today.

[00:07:56]>> I've asked him as well and he um wasn't quite sure either.

[00:08:00]>> But either way, they've got this unconventional setup >> and it's supposed to protect >> him. His mother at this point, he's not born yet, right? Remember that? He's not there yet. His mother is quite young. I can't remember if she's like late teenage or early 20s. Quite young. And the Spanish guy moves in. He's a little older. Spanish.

[00:08:20]>> Where's this guy?

[00:08:22]>> Where's it going? Yeah. So, but he has a wife and a child somewhere in Spain also. Um, anyway, it is going where you think it's going. They have a bit of a thing. Uh, and he kind of also encourages her to just kind of sneak out on the streets. Her mother's dead against it. Like, just be careful. But we have to, you know, stay inside. Don't But she >> Yeah. I mean, this is during World War II. They're Jews. They're made to wear the yellow star at this point. People are being deported.

[00:08:49]>> And he's like, "Ah, go for a walk.

[00:08:51]>> Go for a walk." But he's like, "Come and we'll switch a jacket. You know, I'll give you a different jacket and I don't have the star of David and we can just have a stroll." And um ultimately though, they notice more and more people in the neighborhood getting rounded up and they decide It's time to go into hiding. And that's what they do. There's multiple They hide in multiple places of friends and yeah, acquaintances that provide some shelter here in there. But as everyone can imagine, it's it's a risk and people aren't often willing to take the risk for that long or like a house next door gets bombed out and suddenly they have to take in other people and there's always something ultimately they end up in one of those client garden unlen.

[00:09:34]>> Oh, okay. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh actually uh if anyone watched the episode on the Espan murderer, he keeps coming up. Uh we talked about it there.

[00:09:44]So these are like uh a lotment gardens that I mean in England an aotment garden is like quite a small thing, you know, very humble. Uh maybe there's a shed. In Germany sometimes today you'll see a satellite dish on the shed. Uh so there can be some more substantial buildings in there. Uh you could imagine someone hiding in there. They also well they also have the benefit of being very dark.

[00:10:05]>> Very dark. Yeah. People aren't supposed to live in it even today. But >> there there's always a rule.

[00:10:10]>> You think people are doing it today, Matt?

[00:10:12]>> Well, speaking from my parents gardening area, there's definitely several neighbors who live there all year round.

[00:10:17]>> Oh, I was going to say don't drop don't drop your parents in it, please. Thank you. Okay, so they they move out. They hide there.

[00:10:23]>> It's in somewhere Eastern Brandenburgg like countryside. And they stay there.

[00:10:28]At this point, they have different identities as well because there's so many bombed out people across Germany.

[00:10:34]Um, it's sometimes easy to just register as one with no one really asking that many questions like, "Oh, we come from Frankfurt. Our house got bombed out. We end up in Berlin. This is our name. We need papers. We don't have any papers.

[00:10:44]They got, you know, burned."

[00:10:46]>> Convenient. Uh, so they end up in this client gardener. Uh, and she starts also dying her hair a little lighter, but she the thing with the Spaniard keeps on going. And in case anyone was wondering at the beginning, how did she become pregnant whilst, you know, hiding from the Nazis? Very inconvenient time to get pregnant. That's how >> with the with the Spanish communist >> Spanish guy.

[00:11:10]>> As if life weren't dangerous enough at this time.

[00:11:13]>> Yeah. So she gets pregnant and obviously her and her mom the mom do we do now and where do we give birth to this kid?

[00:11:21]They're in this like village in in Brandenburg. this um it's everything's all a bit they're always on edge like someone's going to find out there certain words they're using they don't sound like Frankfurt people you know um but ultimately she decides she'd rather give birth in Berlin so she travels to Berlin into Berlin to the Friedrian hospital which still exists today and gives birth there >> this would be February 45 >> traveling into Berlin when everyone else would rather be leaving I think >> rather be leaving but yeah >> and she's in the situation >> in In the situation, she gives birth and gets busted.

[00:11:59]>> Uh, right. Okay.

[00:12:00]>> By guess who? Well, you listened.

[00:12:04]>> Oh, I listened. But I mean, the detail is not not fresh in my mind.

[00:12:07]>> The landlord.

[00:12:08]>> The landlord.

[00:12:08]>> The landlord that helped him in the beginning to find new tenants, sees them, and somehow >> is the one who says >> the one who says that they're Jewish.

[00:12:18]>> And so they round her up with a newborn child and also waiting for her mother.

[00:12:23]So his grandmother to come into the room so they have all of them basically grandmother, mother and him newborn >> and that's it.

[00:12:31]>> So well it's not it because the three of them are sent away. And one thing when I when I watched your little your little snippet I thought was really amazing was that there's there's about is it 18 uh people who are sent on this train and they do all survive.

[00:12:43]>> Yeah.

[00:12:44]>> Uh which is not words we get to usually say as tour guides. Uh they all survived. Um but they are sent to a concentration camp. They're sent to Tzian.

[00:12:52]>> Yeah. sent to the Jewish hospital in Berlin first.

[00:12:54]>> Oh, okay.

[00:12:54]>> For a little bit. I keep I kept on asking him, "How did your mother make sure you survive?" Um, and I mean, cuz a newborn baby, why would the Nazis keep a newborn Jewish baby alive? We all know, you know.

[00:13:08]>> Yeah. Uh, I mean, they're, you know, rule followers, right? They the baby will be killed, but here I mean, that's the only thing I can I can think of. But she must have done an amazing job in like >> holding on to that child. And then they ended up on that final train which was uh by the way um full of people that those few people that were on that final train were people that had been hiding successfully and were busted or were also quite a few former mixed marriage >> uh >> people. Yeah. People that were >> people people in mixed >> marriage to non-Jewish partners. But as soon as that non-Jewish partner died or wanted a divorce for some reason, that protection was gone and they would round up these people, right? And then they ended up tot uh there was one of the last camps to be liberated. But I mean they were lucky, right? Because they well lucky in a way that they only spent very little time there. But still at that point there's a huge do you say typhus in English typhus outbreak >> in the camp. So for a newborn child >> to survive that yeah >> without any food also very little food and drink you can imagine it's crazy >> and uh hardly anything in the way of proper nutrition.

[00:14:17]>> Yeah.

[00:14:17]>> Um but yeah uh survived he did >> survived he did returned to Hamburg too with his mother later. um big fan of the Beatles, never really wanted I mean both him and his mother seemed like I said very like warm people who never really wanted to like think so much about the history and um just move on with their lives and >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean in my experience it's been when people do reach um very advanced years that they kind of feel like they're ready to share some of this very traumatic uh stuff that happened to them.

[00:14:49]>> Um so yeah, absolutely amazing uh that you were able to get in touch with him.

[00:14:53]Um, what should people do if they want to find out more of these stories?

[00:14:55]>> These stories, they should find the podcast show which is called Vasim, >> which is a bit of a hint that it is in German.

[00:15:03]>> Is in German. Yes.

[00:15:05]>> Well, I listened to it today and uh it turns out my German's better than I think. Um, one thing, if you are learning German and you think this is a great way to do it, I I found that a lot of the interviewees do speak rather slowly. Uh, so that helps. Um, and also these days I use the Apple podcast app.

[00:15:20]I'm sure Spotify, the others do the same thing. uh they like AI um transcribe what's in the podcast so you can actually read through the German as it's being spoken um like a singalong Disney movie you know uh from when you were a child >> and so great way to learn German >> also the episodes are on YouTube as well and YouTube does the >> YouTube also yeah it has a it has a go yeah I'm sure it's getting better um but yeah uh certainly give it a go Matty Hikaya, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:15:54]>> Thank you for letting me talk about this.

[00:15:59][music] >> Uh, thank you so much for watching, especially for watching to the end. If you want to support this, then uh, become one of these Patreon [music] people. I always forget which side it goes on. Um, and support the show because if it weren't for these people, uh, we could not do this. So, we need you.