Werner Mosler

Werner Mosler (also known as Vernon in England) was born on November 23, 1922 in Berlin-Lichterfelde, the son of Frieda and Kurt Mosler. He had an older sister, Traud, who had been born three years earlier on September 8, 1919. The Jewish family moved into Rothenburgstrasse 24 in 1924, when Werner was a small child. The new house had been built by Werner's father, the banker Kurt Mosler. Werner attended the elementary school on Ringstrasse from 1929 to 1933 and then moved to the Paulsen Gymnasium in Steglitz. However, he had to leave after two years - partly because of constant hostility from his classmates. 

His parents sent him to Amsterdam in 1935, where he lived with one of his Mother’s cousins and his family because they feared the persecution that many Jewish children were already facing.  Werner learned the Dutch language, which he spoke fluently for the rest of his life and went to school. In the summer of 1936, Werner left Amsterdam and returned to his parents in Berlin because his father’s health was deteriorating. 
On his return to Berlin he attended the Kaliski School in Dahlem until Easter 1938. As a teenager, Werner was interested in the theatre and took part in a theatre club called "Theatres of the Jewish Schools." 
 In 1938 Werner began training in the Jewish community's training workshop, which was abruptly ended by the November pogrom of 1938. He then concentrated on intensively learning English; he earned the tuition money for this by doing repair work at the Kaliski School. 
In July 1939 he succeeded in obtaining sponsorship from the Quakers in England for emigration to England. In his CV, which he prepared in 1957 to apply for compensation for lost school and vocational training, Werner described the time in 1939 and his start into a new life in England as follows: 

"I then took a job as a cyclist for a man who sold water fleas. My job was to collect these water fleas from him early in the morning and deliver them to his buyers, ie pet shops. I had no official work book for it...I obviously earned very little from it. On July 27, 1939, I emigrated to England and was taken by the Refugee Committee to a YMCA training farm near Henley-on-Themes. In November 1939, I was taken from there to another farm, or rather a camp, in Great Bartfield/ Essex. This was closed in January 1940 and I came to Bister/ Oxfordshire to help look after difficult-to-educate, evacuated children. At Easter 1940, the Refugee Committee put me in a boarding house in Leeds, and then in a hostel in Leeds.

From May 1940 to October 1941 I was interned as an "enemy alien". After my release I went to London to work as a labourer at the Brandt Company, 27 Perey Street, earning £2.10 a week. After 6 months I moved to Cinetechnic Ltd. in Greenford. After 2 or 3 months I went to the Mechanical Utilitas Company in Hammersmith, Brook Green Road, where I stayed until December 1943. I then went to Stanford Trading Co as a clerk earning £3 a week until September 1944, and then to the book publishing company, Alliance Press, as a sales representative earning £4. I eventually took on a sales representative role for Books of Today Ltd, so that I was earning £12-15 a week. In August 1946, I became self-employed by opening a printing business, which I still run today.” 

Werner was awarded a Civil Defense Medal for his services as an auxiliary firefighter helping to extinguish fires caused by the bombing of London. 
In 1943 he married Anneliese Saloman, his childhood sweetheart and daughter of a family friend. The marriage ended in divorce and Anneliese left England to live with her parents in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. In August 1952 Werner married Sylvia Lewis. Their son Nicholas Kurt was born in April 1953. This marriage also ended in divorce. The son Nicholas (known as Nicky) was adopted by Sylvia's next husband, Wally Margolis, causing Werner to lose contact with Nicky. Fortunately Nicky and Werner met again a few days before Werner's death. 

In 1943 Werner's parents were murdered in Auschwitz : His father Kurt was deported on March 2. 1943, his mother Frida on March 4, 1943.

In 1959 Werner remarried for the last time: Anne-Marie Gross, born on June 6, 1929 in Vienna, a Czech national, who had fled the Nazis like Werner before the war. Werner and Anne had two children: Lynne, born in May 1961, and Jeremy, who was born in August 1964. Werner also became the proud grandfather of Laura (Lynne's daughter), born in 1980. Unfortunately, Werner never met his son Nicky's children - Kate and Oliver Margolis. 

Werner had several jobs in England: for several years he ran a successful acting agency called "Anglo German Artists" and enjoyed the opportunities that this business offered him. He was often involved in dubbing films and commercials into German and also acted himself from time to time. For several years he was a co-organizer of the Vienna Boys' Choir's tours to England. 
Werner also specialized in printing restaurant menus, invitations and similar items. From 1972 onwards he worked as a financial advisor in cooperation with various financial companies. 
In 1998, Werner gave an interview to Steven Spielberg's Shoah project as a contemporary witness and thus contributed to documenting the memories of those persecuted by National Socialism. 

Werner died on 27 April 2000 at Northwick Park Hospital in London. His ashes are buried in the Garden of Remembrance at Hoop Lane Crematorium in Golders Green, London.

His sister Traud Heller, née Mosler, died on January 5, 2006 in London.