Berlowitz was born in Elbing in Germany in 1934. His parents were Heimann and Gertrud. His mother was Jewish but his father was a Christian. He had been in a children’s home in Hanover.
He was taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, with his brother and sister, on 16 March 1942 on a transport from Berlin. He was liberated there by the Red Army on 8 May 1945.