You asked for it, this may get long but my father was one of the most talented people I ever met so here goes. My father was drafted in the spring of 1944 by the Wehrmacht. He told me that he was lucky because he went to France while everyone else headed East. He was captured near Metz in October of 1944 by the U.S. Third Army. He was sent to a P.O.W. camp near Epernay, France were he stayed until his release in December of 1945. In the camp the Americans found out he was quite a good artist so he traded portraits for cigarettes, etc. He painted movie stars faces on the walls of the an NCO club near the camp, even did some nose art on some planes. He liked to tell about how well he was treated by the Americans. Struck up a friendship with one American Sergeant named Guardsman who later helped sponsor him to get to America
That's my dad on the left with a portrait of Sgt. Guardsman on the easel, picture taken in the P.O.W. camp. Don't know who the other fellow is. That's also some of my dad's work on the wall. After his release he went into the black market back in Germany, he always told me he could make liquor out of anything. He met my mother, also from Germany who lost her husband on the Eastern Front during the war. Her parents were thrown out of Germany in 1937, basically told you have a week to leave, they were the lucky ones, anyway they wound up in New York City. In 1952 they immigrated (legally) and wound up in Memphis, Tennessee were my Grandfather had taken a job at a matress factory. They were married shortly there after and in November of 1954 they had me. He became a very successful commercial artist doing work for a new company called Holiday Inns. Trust me almost everyone has seen some art work my dad did. His best stuff was done for the F.B.I because before Photoshop you doctored up a picture with an airbrush. If you've seen pictures of the late Dr. Martin Luther King marching in a crowd before he was killed in Memphis my dad had doctored up the pictures taking the F.B.I plants out of them before they were released.
If I had 1/4 of his talent I would be retired with quite a nice collection of Lugers now.
I'll leave you with two more pictures, one is P.O.W. art of his mother, my grandmother and my favorite of evey piece of artwork I inherited and the second one is his father, my grandfather who was the Constable of Hannover around the time of WWI. those are Schutzenfest medals he's wearing. Dad said he knew Von Hindenburg, can't say he didn't.
He did old European script writing in the memorial books for some of the Jewish Temples here in Memphis and had to tell the head Rabbis he was a German soldier, are they sure they wanted him to do it because some of the names he had to write were followed by killed at Belsen, killed at Auschwitz. They told him they knew he was one of the good Germans so that's why they hired him. One of my favorite stories.
He died in 1992, two days later I got a call from an 82 year old Sgt. Guardsman telling me my father was one of the most remarkable people he had ever met. Talked to him for almost two hours. He passed away two months later.
I caught most of the nazi resentment at school, I'm sure he did too but two of his best frinds in Memphis were American servicemen during the war so I'm sure they covered for him when needed.
I could write for another hour but I'll cut it off here.