This is John Batchelor, a conversation with the author Ian Baruma, Staying Alive,

his book of wartime Berlin, 39 to 45 surviving in it, especially the Jews who were not initially

rounded up and persecuted, but then in 43 it all shut down, and the 90,000 Jews became just a handful

at war's end.

How did they survive? Some of them became what are known as U-Boats.

They were always on the move in the air, finding places to sleep and stay and eat,

moving, moving, moving. Sometimes they were caught, and sometimes they were betrayed.

And this is the story of a betrayer, a woman who had a moral choice to make,

her parents' life or work for the Gestapo.

Here's Ian to tell the story.

I think that she had, well, how badly she was tortured, I don't know. She was Jewish from a secular upper middle class, well-to-do family. She dreamed of being a film star. I think she was quite

pretty. And she was arrested. And how badly she was tortured, I don't know, but she was given the choice.

Again, one of these terrible moral dilemmas.

The Gestapo told her that she could cooperate with the Nazis or her parents would be sent to Auschwitz.

If she cooperated, her parents' lives would be saved.

She chose for her parents' lives to be saved.

The Nazis, of course, were completely unreliable

and sent the parents off to be killed anyway.

But she then became one of these betrayers

and would befriend newboats,

pretend that she knew places where they could hide,

and then hand them over to the Gestapo

...