The Journey of Gunter Hauer: From Berlin to Shanghai to America
Gunter Hauer was born in Berlin in 1919 and grew up in a city that felt normal—sports clubs, dance classes, school, weekends at the movies. His family wasn’t wealthy, but they lived comfortably, and religion was part of life without defining it.
That changed when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. Anti-Jewish laws appeared slowly at first, then relentlessly. Signs urging Germans not to buy from Jewish stores. Bans from public parks. Jewish students removed from schools. Doctors, lawyers, and business owners arrested and sent to concentration camps. By the mid-1930s, Gunter and his family knew they had to leave.
In 1936, during the Olympic Games in Berlin, Gunter saw Hitler in person for the first time—and watched Jesse Owens defeat German athletes, prompting Hitler to walk out of the stadium in anger. It was the moment Gunter understood exactly what he was living under.
When the persecution escalated, the family attempted to leave through a Russian travel bureau. They paid their savings, received their passports stamped with a red “J,” and waited. It turned out to be a scam. Their savings were gone. But Gunter’s aunt found another way: a Japanese liner leaving London for Shanghai. The Jewish community helped pay for the tickets, and the family escaped Germany just days before World War II began.
Shanghai was one of the few places in the world that did not require visas. Gunter found work, built a life, and—after months of learning English by cleaning typewriters in American and British offices—started imagining a future again. But when Japan entered the war, the refugees were forced into a “Designated Area,” restricted, monitored, and controlled.
That’s where Gunter met the young woman who would become his wife. She had also fled Berlin. Their first real conversation happened on the trolley ride home from a cemetery visit—both mourned their fathers, both were alone in Shanghai, and something clicked. They stayed side-by-side for the next 72 years.
After the Japanese surrender, U.S. soldiers entered Shanghai. Gunter discovered that his neighbor—someone he spoke with almost daily—had secretly been an American spy. Refugees were given the chance to go to Germany, Israel, or the United States. Gunter and his wife chose America.
They arrived in San Francisco in 1947 and eventually settled in Cincinnati. Gunter worked his way into the music industry, first at King Records and later at Atlantic Records, building a successful career and raising an American family. He traveled across the country, worked with some of the biggest labels of the era, and made a life he once thought impossible.
Gunter never described himself as a hero. But he survived Berlin, escaped Europe, lived through the war in Shanghai, rebuilt everything from nothing, and created a life rooted in freedom, family, and determination.
His story stands as a reminder: survival is not just endurance—it’s rebuilding, loving, and choosing hope despite everything.