German Resistance Memorial Center
- Biographies

Otto Pfister was born in Munich to Catholic parents. After training as a carpenter in Munich, he went to Italy to practise his craft, learn the language and immerse himself in the art and culture of the country. Otto left Italy in 1926 and went to France. In Paris in 1935, he met his future wife Eva Lewinski in the vegetarian restaurant she and her brother ran together, which served as a contact point for the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK). Otto subsequently actively supported the work of the ISK and took part in smuggling anti-Nazi ISK materials into Germany. When the ISK produced a record with a speech against the Hitler regime in 1936, Otto was chosen to speak the text because of his Bavarian dialect, which was reminiscent of Hitler's pronunciation. The record reaches the German Reich in several hundred copies, which are transported by sea. After Otto is imprisoned in a German prisoner-of-war camp for several months in 1940, he manages to secure his release by pretending to be French. In the spring of 1941, Otto escapes from France on foot over the Pyrenees and reaches the United States with the help of an emergency visa obtained by Eva Lewinski. The couple married in New York in May 1941. Otto joins the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1944 and returns to Europe with the US Army. He served in England, Belgium and France and reached liberated Paris with his unit. He lived in the USA until his death in 1985.