Born in Germany and fled the Nazis.
Volunteered for U.S. Navy as engineer.
Did not serve overseas. Supervised German prisoners in the USA and did training/jobs stateside.
worked for Raytheon after service.
Has 21 patents on various gadgets, equipment that the Navy or Army uses
Was born in Vienna Austria in 1925. My parents had a small store. They sold cloth. Their dream was for me to become a Rabbi which was the furthest thing from my mind. So they got me a Jewish teacher called a mahamed (?) who came to the house and taught the Bible.
3:17 When Hitler came, my parents had the good sense to send me to live with my mother’s sister. I was 14 ½ and went to Philadelphia and went to high school. Then I got a scholarship at a college called Cooper Union and then spent two years in the U.S. Navy. After that I went to Columbia and got a PHD from there and became an engineer.
4:06 Talks about when he met his wife – in NY couldn’t marry till she was 18- got married in Maryland, lived together 66 years, she died in 2011. Listen to each other and realize we have individual needs and we have family needs and they have to be balanced in some way.
5:45 When Pearl Harbor occurred I was about 18. I remember listening to the radio and hearing President Roosevelt, December 7th. I actually remember hearing the radio broadcast of that. Things changed pretty rapidly with all kinds of restrictions.
6:57 I wasn’t really religious at any time, even today I’m not strictly Orthodox.
7:39 We all knew that if you were captured by the Nazis during the war we would be treated especially badly because we were Jewish.
A lot of people didn’t understand what was happening, there wasn’t a lot of personal contact, it wasn’t like today.
There wasn’t much understanding of why the Germans hated us or why we should get into a war with Germany.
9:01– My parents never managed to come here, they remained behind and I think I got two or three letters from them and that was it and after that nothing. I assumed that they had probably been killed by the Nazis and after the war I found out that they had been. I contacted the Red Cross, and they actually came up with a date and so on of when they had perished at Auschwitz.
9:56- I have a brother who came with me and who lives in Santa Barbara now.
10:26 Exempt from the war because he was in College
11:29- I volunteered for the U.S. Navy and spent two years in the Navy. I was 19.
The Navy gave me an intelligence test and, of course, I came out on the intelligence quota. They sent me to Greata(?) school and submarine school and communication school. They gave me 18 months of advanced schooling to make me an intelligent electronic technician and by the time that was done the war was over. So I spent the last couple of months before I was discharged supervising German prisoners that were being held in the United States during the war.
13:07 They were shocked. They didn’t realize the Jews had come to America – when the war ended they were sent back to Germany.
13:48 Number one, America is a wonderful place not just for the Jews but for anybody that obeyed the laws and the principles and the ideas and behaved themselves. Number two, that it is up to me to structure my life in a way that made me happy and that made use of my abilities. I knew that I was pretty bright, and I knew that I enjoyed electrical engineering and electronics and actually Raytheon found me.
17:10 The Navy was good about that sort of thing; they provided Jewish services on Friday nights and things like that.
17:20 I personally believe that the Jews as a whole tend to be very nicely endowed by the good Lord. If you look at the Nobel Prize winners, half of them are Jewish. But I think that the United States has been a wonderful haven for the Jewish people. I never really run into any amount of discrimination. Occasionally there’s a person but maybe three or four in my whole lifetime.
Son built house
19:46 Story about wife – bought an apartment house in Santa Barbara so she can be a landlord.
21:37 One of the main things that I want is to hold on to my Jewish heritage and I think the fact that I was born Jewish and I maintained my Jewish identity contributed to my life in a major way, it made me feel really satisfied with my life.
22:51 (how he wants to be remembered) as an honest person who tried to do his best with his life under the circumstances and tried to help other people as best as he could.