Farewell, Berlin

My World War II Story of Surviving Hitler’s Germany
and Embracing Life in America

Farewell Berlin

How could a World War II German soldier survive being held as a POW by three different countries?

What did the relentless Allied bombing of Berlin look like from the lens of a boy who discovered his neighborhood movie theater blown to pieces just hours after sirens blared as a signal for he and his mother to get out?

How did German citizens survive a life so deprived of freedom that a dentist was executed simply for confiding in a patient that he held a shadow of doubt about the fate of Hitler’s war?

The answers to these and other jarring questions unfold in Farewell Berlin, a close-up look inside a world rarely glimpsed by anyone who has ever been curious about the long years of bloodshed and turmoil of World War II.

Growing up in Hitler’s Germany, Wolfram Forster clung to two dreams for his future: to someday live in America and to become a doctor. To have any hope of realizing those dreams, he would need to navigate an endless trail of fear, terror, heartbreak, confusion, injustice and the constant threat of annihilation while living in Europe at a time when life was turned up-side down.

With great courage and tenacity, he found his way—and wound up serving as a Colonel in the U.S. Army

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Farewell, Berlin contains over 30 photographs spanning 85 years of history. It is a beautifully documented journey through an ultimately triumphant life.

Wolfram upon entering school at age 6 in 1931. He is in the first row, the 7th boy from the right, wearing lederhosen.

In the German army, November 1944

Wolfram’s original POW registration card

Wolfram in 1972

Wolfram and wife Sarah

Wolfram with daughters Sharon (left) and Suzie on the Oregon coast June 2017

Wolfram Forster

was born in Berlin on October 22, 1925. As a teenager during WWII, he completed high school and began his medical studies at Berlin University in 1944. He was an eyewitness to the massive bombing attacks by the British and American Air Forces and the strangulation of thought and speech by the Nazi government as well as the dire consequences suffered by those who openly disagreed with Adolph Hitler.

Being drafted into the Wehrmacht only 6 months before the war in Europe ended, he was taken prisoner by 9th US Army forces and spent the next 22 months as a POW in American, French and Soviet custody. Coming home in March 1947, he resumed his medical studies in 1948 at Humboldt University and ﬁnally graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1954.

After his internship in Passaic, NJ (1954/55) he served as a medical oﬃcer in the US Air Force at Bitburg AB. During this time, he married his wife Gertie and prepared for his legal immigration to the US. He returned to America to assume his medical residency in 1957. After certiﬁcation by the American Board of Radiology, he spent his professional life in Washington, DC as a partner in a high proﬁle radiology practice. In 1981, he joined the US Army Reserve (97th ARCOM) and retired in 1991 with the rank of Colonel.

He now lives with his wife, Sarah (Gertie passed away in 1993) in San Diego, CA. His daughter Sharon is a veterinarian practicing in Oregon and his daughter Suzie is a retired pediatrician living with her husband (also a radiologist) in South Carolina.

“He would need to navigate an endless trail of fear, terror, heartbreak, confusion, injustice and the constant threat of annihilation…”