He had a Santa Claus face, only without a beard, but I could picture him laying a finger aside of his nose. His English was heavily accented and we had talked before when I was watching my friend’s store.
This time he told me more of his past, how in 1933 he and his mother walked from Germany to France to escape Hitler’s arrest of those in the syndicates. She had been a secretary, not a person of power, but no matter. They had no papers, no French. His mother found work in Paris, and they escaped to the Pyrenees as Germans marched into the city and were housed with a peasant family.
He went to school, began English and joined the Marquis and led American pilots to their rendezvous points behind enemy lines because he was the only resistance person who had any English at all, albeit limited.
After the war he became a physicist leading a normal life. He spoke of his experiences in the same way I would say, “I went to a basketball games in high school,” or “I visited with my aunt when I was 10.”
He didn’t treat his experiences as “important” but he and others like him were very “important” and I wonder how many today would have the same courage today?
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