As the author mentions at the beginning, Berlin had over 160,000 Jews before the nazi assault on their existence began through not only Germany but subsequently in most of Europe occupied by German forces. At the end, when Berlin fell, the Jewish estimate was of 1,123 Jewish survivors in Berlin.
Thousands were deported out of Germany, including Berlin, supposedly for resettlement "east" as the nation was told, but in reality to camps on the way to total extinction, with facilities arranged for the purposes not only of massacre but of complete disposal of bodies, for example bones ground into fertiliser for German fields and soaps made out of rest. Few survived this, in comparison, but they did, miraculously and with help of Germans and others - notably Church of Sweden and its officials in Berlin - who did not agree with the official policy and helped out of not only decency but enormous courage in face of the dangers to their own selves and their families.
On the other hand there were those that were unexpected in either getting them caught, especially the Jews used by Gestapo for catching the Jews in hiding in Berlin, in Germany and elsewhere in occupied regions, with fear for their own selves and families being the hook that was used to make them do this work for the Gestapo.
This book gives detailed stories of such survival of some half a dozen of Jews of Berlin, how they lived day to day, often without shelter, and starvation being a part of life, but for most part in hiding with help of their friends, colleagues, and so on. One such courageous person helping them, Perwe, the pastor of the Church of Sweden in Berlin, helped hundreds, including getting some of them out of Germany and safe to Sweden, until he flew to Sweden for a routine trip and his plane crashed - which most of his colleagues took as murder by Gestapo due to their knowledge of what he was planning further to arrange for helping a lot more escape to Sweden. Considering SS and generally Gestapo were executing all able bodied males not in war as deserters, this is not beyond possibilities.
There are moments of unexpected smile brought to reader, such as when one such surviving male was able to prove he was indeed a Jew, the Russian soldier he was facing offered him a selection of expensive watches and gave a gold watch. There are moments of unexpected horror and worse, such as when it was a gang of Russian soldiers that raped a barely teenage girl who was Russian and helped by a German woman in survival (those soldiers were promptly executed when her German adopted mother, Countess Matzlan, brought a Russian officer to rescue her). And of course, there are moments of heart touching tales, such as the German couple that began by giving a few nights sanctuary to a Jewish couple and ended up being with them for few years till the arrival of Russians - not only them but later with parents of one of them too.
All in all, certainly worth reading.
