An International Thriller

Some might say the life of Otto Berliner ’65W (Mas) reads a little like an international espionage thriller: As a teenager in Budapest, he escaped the Nazis and helped carry messages for a Hungarian resistance group. And after the war, he and his restaurant-owning family fled their native country as Stalin tightened his grip on the Eastern bloc.

That’s a fertile background for a now retired—and thoroughly mild-mannered—psychology professor turned fiction writer.

“You never know in life how what you prepare for is going to help you later on,” he says.

Berliner, a professor emeritus of psychology at the State University of New York at Alfred, found some of those lessons useful as he turned his attention to creative writing after his retirement five years ago. His first novel, The Cobbler of Normandy, tells the story of an allied intelligence mission in the weeks before the invasion of Normandy in World War II.

Published this year through the BookSurge division of Amazon.com, the book follows a small band of resistance fighters who gather information about German defenses in preparation for D-Day. While the story has little overlap with Berliner’s life, it takes place during a historical moment that has particular resonance for him: In June 1944, Berliner escaped from Nazi troops.

Born in Hungary, Berliner attended high school at the Madach Gymnasium in Budapest in the early 1940s. The school closed in April 1944 when German troops occupied the country. Berliner’s father was taken to a work camp, and Berliner and his mother were forced to share quarters with another family. Then Berliner, too, was taken away.

“The Hungarian Nazis gathered all the males from 16 years and made them march to various work places,” he recalls. “I was taken to an airport to dig mud, dirt, and stones.”

As soon as an opportunity to escape presented itself, Berliner took it.

“One late afternoon, we were told to get our belongings in a hurry to be transported to a different location. But we guessed that the location meant Germany,” he says. “As the people marched ahead, I left the group, tossed my belongings, and returned to the ghetto house” where his mother was.

Berliner contacted a friend who was helping provide intelligence to the Hungarian anti-Nazi underground and who set the Berliners up in a Swedish safehouse. And Berliner began working for the underground as a courier.

He and his mother managed to live out the remainder of the war in Budapest, with Berliner continuing to work as an intelligence courier.

When the war ended, Berliner returned to the gymnasium to earn his diploma before going on to hotel school in Switzerland. His parents, lifelong restaurateurs, opened a large café in Budapest.

When the Hungarian Communists took over the business in 1949, the Berliners’ plans changed, and together they emigrated to New York City.

In 1961, after graduating from New York University with a psychology degree, he spotted a newspaper ad: Rochester was looking for an assistant director of food services. Berliner was hired.

After completing a master’s degree in counseling at the Warner School, Berliner earned a doctorate in psychology at SUNY–Buffalo and soon landed at Alfred State College, where he taught until 2002.

Long interested in history, Berliner was researching World War II and realized that the on-the-ground intelligence work that went into the preparations for D-Day could be imaginatively retold. He followed his research with visits to the beaches of Normandy, where he stayed with local families.

The experience convinced him that he has many stories to tell, and he relishes the opportunity to pursue a new path with his novel writing.

“Not many people really know what they want to do in life,” says Berliner.

—Kathleen McGarvey