During the 1938 November pogrom, the Jewish religious education teacher Moses Fernbach from the Eifel region was temporarily interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1940 he moved to Berlin with his wife and their ten-year-old daughter Miriam. In December 1942 the family decided to go underground to evade deportation. They had to separate, however. Moses Fernbach found work and accommodation with Carl Müller, the owner of a foundry in Magdeburg. He had forged papers in the name of Max Friedrich. Fernbach went to Berlin almost every Sunday to visit his wife Lina, who was in hiding there. Their daughter Miriam initially stayed with a couple in Berlin-Kaulsdorf. After the severe bombing of Magdeburg, Fernbach had to leave the city in early 1945. He went to live with Hugo and Emma Tews in Birkenwerder near Berlin, where his wife, sister, and brother-in-law were already in hiding.
In May 1945 Moses Fernbach was able to bring his daughter back to Berlin. She had survived the last months of the war on an estate near Greifswald. In Berlin, Fernbach focused on rebuilding Jewish life. The family emigrated to Palestine in 1947.