Gabriel Berger

Gabriel Berger was born in 1944 in French hiding, as the son of a Jewish communist who had fled Nazi Germany. His father volunteered to go to Poland in 1948 to build socialism there. However, Polish anti-Semitism forced him to transfer his participation in the socialist experiment to the East German GDR in 1957.

Gabriel Berger attended high school in Leipzig and studied physics in Dresden. He then worked at the renowned Central Institute for Nuclear Research Rossendorf near Dresden.

After the renewed anti-Semitic wave in Poland and the violent end of the Prague Spring in 1968, the young physicist lost faith in a democratization of real socialism. Encouraged by the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, he applied to move to the Federal Republic in 1975. In 1976 he was arrested on charges of "defamation of the state." After a year in prison, he moved to West Berlin. There he worked first in the nuclear field, later as a lecturer in computer science.

In the 1980s, he studied philosophy and published articles in newspapers and on the radio. He is now retired and active as a writer.