Gerd Ehrlich performed forced labor for the Ehrich & Graetz company in Berlin. His family were deported to Auschwitz in November 1942. Gerd Ehrlich went underground in Berlin, adopting various false names. He frequently changed accommodation for safety reasons. He spent some time hiding with the Heilmann family in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Other people living in hiding told him about Luise Meier’s escape aid network. She was prepared to help him, along with his friend Ernst Schwerin and Schwerin’s girlfriend Ruth Michaelis. In early October 1943, the three of them went to Singen, near the Swiss border. They changed trains several times to evade discovery. From Singen, Luise Meier took them to her ally, the local man Josef Höfler. He led the refugees to the border at Ramsen and gave them precise instructions so that the guards would not notice them. They used the lights of the Schaffhausen border villages for orientation, since there was no blackout in Switzerland. They had to crawl most of the way for around a kilometer, before crossing the border on the evening of October 9, 1943.
Gerd Ehrlich emigrated to the United States in 1946.
The penultimate graduating class at the Jewish high school on Berlin’s Wilsnacker Straße, including Gerd Ehrlich (front left), Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (front, 2nd from left, no relation), and Walter Joelsohn (back row, 3rd from left, standing). Source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand
Gerd Ehrlich (3rd from right) with fellow students before their school leaving examination at the Jewish high school on Wilsnacker Straße, Berlin, March 1940. Source: Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Inv.-Nr. L-1999/241/6/017, Dauerleihgabe von Sibylle Ehrlich
Gerd Ehrlich’s passport photo from the forced laborer files at Ehrich & Graetz, Berlin, December 1942. Source: Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Inv.-Nr. FOT 89/500/110/002
Gerd Ehrlich (left) and Hans Steinitz (center) in the Swiss refugee camp Lostorf, fall 1943. Source: Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Inv.-Nr. L-1999/241/6/014, Dauerleihgabe von Sibylle Ehrlich
