No. of Recommendations: 13
Last year a cousin shared some family history of which I was unaware.
I've written about the circumstances under which my father and uncle fled Austria right after their school year ended in 1939, deserting the German army that had conscripted them.
My Dad began an internship at Bellevue. My Uncle was hired by Villanova where he taught math, physics, and navigational math to naval officers. He found it humorous that he was teaching NavMath to 'sailors' since he hadn't even seen the ocean until he crossed the English Channel in '39.
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Last December when my cousin visited, he shared that our maternal grandfather, on Dec 7, 1941 was conducting the NY Symphony at Carnegie Hall.
The handbill-
https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/b75... --------------------------
Meanwhile, back at Villanova my uncle was spending that winter afternoon in his teacher's apartment listening to my grandfather conducting the Sunday afternoon NBC radio broadcast from Carnegie Hall. During the Shostakovitch portion the program was interrupted to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor.
4 days later, my uncle said he was surprised that Germany declared war on the USA, and not the other way around. Prior to leaving Austria he was in a street-fighting anti-nazi youth group for several years. He tried to enlist in the army but, not being a citizen, was rejected. He very badly wanted to be an infantry machine gunner. Eventually he was drafted and began infantry training, but to his great disappointment was pulled out of boot camp for his value as a German-speaking physicist. Instead, he was tasked with organizing a team to decipher captured German documents including massive quantities of research material from Peenemünde.
Small world that my paternal uncle was listening to my maternal grandfather conducting on that Dec 7,1941, years before the 2 families would meet.
