He attended nearby Forest Hills High School. In January 1949, at the age of four, Springer emigrated with his parents to the United States, settling in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York City. Selma Springer's brother, Hermann Elkeles, was a renowned Berlin doctor who also died at Theresienstadt concentration camp. His paternal grandmother, Selma Springer (née Elkeles), died at the hospital in the Theresienstadt concentration camp ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). His maternal grandmother, Marie Kallmann, who was left behind, died in the gas vans of Chełmno extermination camp ( German-occupied Poland). His parents, Margot ( née Kallmann a bank clerk) and Richard Springer (owner of a shoe shop), were German-Jewish refugees who escaped from Landsberg an der Warthe, Prussia (now Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland). Gerald Norman Springer was born in the London Underground station of Highgate while the station was in use as a shelter from German bombing during World War II, and grew up on Chandos Road, East Finchley.