Claude Brunswic

Claude was one of five children born to Jewish parents in the university city of Heidelberg. His father, a physician specializing in internal medicine, had his practice on the first floor of the apartment building in which the family lived. Claude was an avid swimmer until November 1932, when local Nazi party edicts forbad Jews to use the city pool where he swam.

1933-39: In January 1933, just after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, hoodlums attacked Jewish-owned businesses in Heidelberg. They broke Claude's father's office windows and destroyed his X-ray machine. His family decided then to leave Germany. They relocated to the Netherlands, and then, in 1937, moved to Paris. Claude worked at a piano factory there until he enlisted in the French army in September 1939. His basic training took place in Orleans.

1940-45: Germany invaded France in May 1940. He was taken prisoner with thousands of other French soldiers and held in a POW camp in Trier, Germany. Over the next few years, he was a slave laborer, working on farms and repairing bombed-out train tracks. In 1943 he escaped to France, but was caught and returned to Trier. He was sentenced to solitary confinement and given little food. Fortunately, Soviet POWs in the barracks above his cell kept him alive by passing him food and cigarettes through the floor boards.

Claude was liberated by Americans in January 1945. After the war, he first returned to Germany to assist Jewish refugees. In 1946 he immigrated to the United States.