Hans Heilbronner: “I watched the German Jews turn away when disaster struck, hoping that the waves would turn positive. That isn’t so— you can never be silent.” Professor Hans Heilbronner: Dr. Siegel met Dr. Heilbronner after visiting Temple Israel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He agreed to meet with Dr Siegel immediately, even though he was going on vacation the next day I grew up in Memmingen, Bavaria, Germany. On a single day, January 30, 1933, life immediately changed. I went from an assimilated Jewish family life to being prevented from entering my own home by Brown Shirts. My father, an affluent merchant who was president of our congregation, in November 1938 was sent to Dachau. My mother, hoping for the release of my father, went to the Gestapo chief and agreed to give him fifty marks and the keys to our Mercedes in exchange for my father. In March 1939, my brother and I were sent off to Zurich, Switzerland, and spent time in the care of a Swiss organization established to save German Jewish children. At first, I was placed in a school for delinquent boys, but I ran away. A relative then found more appropriate living conditions for my brother and me, and we ended up living with a widow. That was a happy time. We knew no anti-Semitism and got to spend some of our mealtimes at a local elite boarding school for girls. Upon my father's release from Dachau, he and my mother came to find us, and, in August 1939, we escaped to London. We took the last ferry that sailed from France to England. War broke out the next day. Through it all, I didn't feel as if I were suffering. Life just felt like an adventure. My parents, in order to avoid living in the ghetto, moved the family to Detroit where my mother's uncle lived. Still our family remained poor. My father was a cookie salesman, and my mother, who had always had maids in Germany before the war began, cleaned houses. My brother and I served in the armed forces and then, because of the Gl Bill, both of us were able to get an education, and I received my PhD. Hans won a Fulbright scholarship as a Russian History scholar He was accepted by the University of New Hampshire, but disappointingly found there an atmosphere of anti-Semitism. He describes lecturing to a local women's organization in a country-club setting where no Jews were allowed. When he announced that he was Jewish they were forced to accept him on his merit, and from then on was well respected. He maintained his Jewish heritage and is a member of the board of the synagogue. He believes his survival was pure luck. He is a positive person who believes that if you come to grips with the fact that life is tragic and the essence of existence is tragedy, everything else comes into place. His story is part of Shoah. Now retired, an endowed lecture series on the Holocaust has recently been founded at the University of New Hampshire in his name.