Gene Stern

Dear Gail:  I have been asked to give a small talk at our 75+2 party in June 23. I may recount my family histriry so all may kniw about my family's escape from Nazi captirs and how we emigrated to Cincy in 1951.

Philip Spiess

Doug Gordon:  Very interesting film.  I noted two obvious ladmarks in it:  St. Rose of Lima Church on Eastern Avenue (actually Riverside Drive) by the Main Pumping Station of the Cincinnati Waterworks (Eastern Avenue east of Torrence Road), and the main entrance gate towers (Kellogg Avenue at California, Ohio) to Coney Island Amusement Park (the next shot shows the roller coasters, notably "The Shooting Star," in the background).  St. Rose Church, a notable red brick Victorian church with a high steeple, located on the riverbank, has a River Flood Gauge painted on its back wall, showing the heights of the major floods, the highest at 80 feet above the banks being the 1937 flood, followed by 1884 and 1913.  In addition to all the water damage, the 1937 flood overturned gas storage tanks located along the Mill Creek near the Crosley Corporation on Spring Grove Avenue, spilling a million gallons of gas which spread on the flood waters.  A snapped and arcing electrical trolley wire set the whole mass on fire, and the Mill Creek at that point became a sea of flame, destroying at least thirty buildings down to the water line.  (In 1947 the Millcreek Barrier Dam with its massive watergate was constructed along the line of the Sixth Street Viaduct to help control future flood waters; it did little to help with water pollution until very recently.)

Bonnie Altman (Templeton)

Gene, 

I am not Gail, but I think your family's escape from the Nazis would be interesting to many of us.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

One final Cincinnati Chili post. Empress Chili celebrates 100 years. 
https://www.wvxu.org/local-news/2022-10-24/100-years-cincinnati-chili-public-library?_amp=true

Philip Spiess

And remember, to celebrate this anniversary you can find the recipe for Empress Chili at Post # 6092 (9-25-2022).  (It's easy to make!)

Philip Spiess

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM  [per Edgar Allan Poe]

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

Gene,

Please post the story of your family's escape from the Nazis on this Message Forum site. It is the most appropriate venue for engaging our classmates. Although many do not post, many more do view the Message Forum site.

We would enjoy reading your story. It would also give other classmates an opportunity to share their family stories.

Looking forward to reading yours.

Gail

Richard Winter (Winter)

I look forward to hearing Gene's family story. 

Meanwhile, I'll share one story from my family history, no doubt far less dramatic.   

My paternal grandfather, Tevya Winter, was a baker in eastern Poland in early 1914 when he learned that he was about to be conscripted into the army of the Czar (Poland was at that time occupied by Russia).   This would not have been a good place to be, especially for a Jewish man, so we are fortunate that he managed to get passage to the US before they came to get him.

He ended up working in a bakery in Dayton OH, saved money as fast as he could, and within a few months sent steamship tickets for my grandmother and their two children, one of whom was my father, Chaim Moshe.  Then World War One broke out and mail to Eastern Europe was badly disrupted.  According to family lore, the tickets arrived in 1921 -- seven years later.   My Dad entered the US at age 11 as Harry Maurice Winter -- a name no doubt suggested by a helpful immigration agent on Ellis Island.  

So, my ancestors on my father's side came here between 1914 and 1921, which makes them much more fortunate than those who stayed behind.  Two of my grandfather's first cousins left for Israel at the same time he came to America.  They survived and often visited us when I was a child.  One of their grandsons is exactly my age and I met him on a family trip to Israel in 1977.   He was a tank commander in the Israeli army and fought in the Six Day Way and the Yom Kippur War -- quite a contrast with the way I spent my youth.  I admired his courage but was glad I got to spend my 20's in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Cambridge, Massachusetts, not fighting wars in the desert.  Of course, he was grateful to have grown up in Israel, not in Poland.  My father's mother was one of thirteen brothers and sisters.  She was the only one of the thirteen who got out of Poland and thus was the only one not killed by the Nazis.

As an immigrant Jew, my father faced a lot of discrimination here from the 1920's through the 1960's.  His high school counselor told him in 1928 that Jews, especially Jews from poor families, couldn't expect to go to college.   He ignored that and worked his way through the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering on the Co-op Program.   He faced employment discrimination through most of his career but managed to find his way and played a significant role in the manufacturing that helped us win World War Two.  My Dad was a patriot, proud of his country, and aways grateful for the life he was able to have here, where he could have a Jewish family, live in safety, and give his children education and opportunity.

Considering all this, I feel extremely grateful to have grown up in the United States and to have gone to Walnut Hills High School.   

 

Gene Stern

Me my Mother and sister on the USS General Muir, a WWII military transport, crossing the Atlantic and landing at Ellis Island on June 14, 1951 I was sired at the Essen slave labor camp and born on Jan 4 1946. 

All of the slave laborers were forced march out of the Essen camp near the end of April with the Americsn army fighting their way south. My Dad said to my Mom, "they are not taking us to a picnic but will probably  shoot us" As they came to a 90 degree turn, with one armed guard at the end of the line and one at the beginning, my Dad pulled my Mom and they ran and hid in a barn. While in the barn, A Nazi soldier came upon them, raised his rifle and my Mom begged him not to shoot the father  of her unborn child (Me!)

Shortly thereafter an American soldier from Chicago found my parents and as he and my Dad could converse in Polish, my Dad ended up working for a British General as s physician in Latvian displaced persons camps until the First United Presbyterian Church of Avondale sponsored our family in the USA  I attended South Avondale, Rockfdale Temple and North Avondae elementary until my parents bought a house in Winton Place  Upon graduating from Winton Plaсe elementary I was accepted at WHHS and  started my history that we all did ending with our graduation in 1964.

Philip Spiess

These both are important stories.  That is why we must maintain this Forum -- in whatever form in the future, and perhaps Walnut Hills High School should as well (it could be a source for history classes) -- as an historical archives.  I myself will readily admit that, although it is a bit of a stereotypical statement to say (as was often said in our day at school) that "Walnut Hills was 1/3 white Protestant, 1/3 Black, and 1/3 Jewish" (and the equivalents were no doubt wrong), nevertheless the fact that I grew up with -- and studied with -- and associated with -- my own kind (white Protestants), but also with African Americans, and with folks of several stripes of the Jewish faith, I feel was terribly important, not only to my upbringing as a spiritual and loving person, but also to my development as a world-conscious cultural person as well.  (Hail, Walnut Hills!)

I would like to add a slightly different story of the Nazi regime's Holocaust, not just about Jews but about Protestants as well.  This is not my story, but the story of my former boss, now deceased, at Browne Academy, whose picture you can see at Forum Post # 6122 (10-21-2022) (he's on the left).  His name, as I knew him, was Alex Clain-Steffanelli, though that, as you will see, was as newly created as Gene Stern's new family name.  Alex's parents, father an Austrian, mother a Romanian, had both been professors at the University of Berlin when the Nazis took over.  As anti-Nazi Party intellectuals, they were rounded up in the 1940s and quarantined (yes, my boss said it was viewed as a "concentration camp") in Berlin itself; as a result, my boss was born (circa 1943) in a Berlin hospital "in concentration."

His father and mother were freed by the Allies at the end of World War II, but, "being German" (remember that one was Austrian, the other Romanian), were viewed with suspicion.  So the family -- father, mother, and son -- emigrated to post-war Italy, namely Rome, where they were viewed much more tolerantly.  The family Clain (an Austrian name) adopted the postscript name "Steffanelli," as sounding much more Italian, and therefore hoping to blend in.  Thus my boss, as a child, grew up playing on the hills of Rome (a matter which led to his teaching Roman history, as did I after him).  His father, unable to pursue any further academic career, took up the trade of being a dealer in coins and medals, namely, a "numismatist"; his mother became his father's assistant.  Eventually they migrated to New York, and thence to Washington, D. C.

The rest is not long to tell.  The Clain-Steffanellis, father and mother, became the Curators of Numismatics at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, and basically created its collections of coins, paper money, and medals in the Smithsonian as they exist today.  The son, Alex, my boss as head of the Middle School at Browne Academy in Alexandria, became first a teacher and then a head of school at several Washington-area private schools, eventually ending up at Browne Academy, where he was my son's middle school history and geography teacher before becoming head of the Middle School there and hiring me to replace him as teacher of History and Geography. 

Gene Stern

Phil:  I recall that Dave Schneider and I were doing the "grand moose" outside of Bailey's classroom and that was the reason for us getting wacked by Biff. Maybe you can give us a history of the "grand moose"?

Richard Winter (Winter)

Gene,

What a story! And, what a great photo! I'm so glad that it all worked out for you and your family.

Richard

Dale Gieringer

        Our classmate Ruth Carter's parents were refugees from a Polish concentration camp  (I believe it may have been Auschwitz).  And the Rothfelds, Katie and Anita, one grade below and above us, were children of Austrian Jewish refugees.  

        As another portestant resident from the white Anglo-German ghetto of Westwood, let me second Philip's remarks about the diversity of our class.  The one thing we were short on was Catholics, but that's because they had their own college prep school.   Of course there weren't any evident LBGTQ's, either,  but that was a different era.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

If any of you are on Facebook, here is a cleverly done graphic history of Empress Chili https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10103670697995231&type=3

Philip Spiess

Gene Stern asks for a history of the "Grand Moose."  Okay, here goes!

"Grand Moose is a small town located on the Bugshyster River in upper Minnesota.  Considered by many to be the world capital of ". . . .  Wait a minute!  That's not right!  Google must be guzzling something.  Let's try again!

"The Grand Moose is a fraternal order in northern Maine, consisting of nothing but lodges -- wooden, of course --  scattered amongst the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, as well as the muttering outhouses.  Membership is confined to twenty old men, preferably whittlers (no, not whistlers, you twit!), who carve the lodges through years of whittling (hence the "old men" part). . . ."  No!  No!  That's not it, either!  Where's an almanac when you need one?

Here we go.  Looking into the Annals of Ancient Maine and Tales of the Maine Woods (Ogunquit, 1888), we find:  "Grand Moose:    A traditional mythical beast often said to be spotted (some of them are merely moth-eaten, with no spots at all) in the far reaches of the Maine woods [note:  this is in the Maine woods, not the lesser, or scrub-pine, woods].  It is of enormous size -- those who have shot one with a small-bore cannon [not quite as boring as a large-bore cannon, but still a gun of high caliber] have tried to hang the stuffed head [not to be confused with a stuffy head] on their den walls, only to have the wall collapse from the weight and the ceiling fall in.  (Do Not Attempt This On Your Own At Home!)  This mythical animal lends its name and character to a fraternal order of men in northern Maine, who. . . ."  Okay!  Okay!  We've been here before!  Give it up!  When all else has failed, we will look into --

The Spiess diary, entries real and imagined [Spiess was often in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land for much of the 9th grade], for the date of November 13, 1960.  Ah, here we are!  "A momentous event occurred today in Room 118, Walnut Hills High School, the homeroom of math teacher Mr. "Biff" [was this nickname a reference to his paddling?] Bailey and a series of dissolute 9th-grade boys.  In a moment of inspiration (and not a moment too soon -- say, yesterday), David M. Schneider creates, from the back of his throat, a remarkable noise he calls the "Grand Moose."  It is a sort of forced grunting, pushing the air from the back of the mouth forward, while suggesting that the contents of one's stomach have now entered the lungs and are likely to erupt with alarming force onto the floor forthwith.  With gladsome minds, the gallant youths of Homeroom 118 take up the challenge, and soon their voices -- er, throats -- join the mighty chorus that inevitably swells forth and fills the room!  [It would have been the pride of Nellie Custer Murphy -- or her death.]  Needless to say, Teacher Bailey is not present in the room on this day; rather, the honor of this memorable event, inaugurated strictly at 8:25 a.m. by the stroke of the clock, is bestowed on one worthy of the gift, Substitute Teacher Mr. Fish, who takes it like a man, albeit like one who has been around for a long time dealing with hooligans.  This "trick" of what we might loosely call "glossolalia" is undoubtedly to be repeated a fine number of times in the future, given its joyous welcome and "bell-like" sound [the ink of the diary is rather smudged here; I think "bull-like" sound is what is meant], though never when Mr. Bailey is present.  (Nevertheless, it is sometimes erroneously known as "the Bailey Belch" by those not in the know.)  After all, 'One who paddles does not deserve the honor' was the general consensus of the boys."  Thus endeth the reading of this rather seedy diary entry.

BONUS SELECTION:  RECIPE FOR "GRAND MOUSSE":                     (Serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

8 oz. semisweet Chocolate          1/4 cup fresh Orange Juice          4 Eggs (separated)                  1/2 cup Sugar          2 Tbls. (to 3/4 oz.) Grand Marnier liqueur          1 cup Whipping Cream

Instructions:

In a small saucepan (or microwave), melt chocolate over low heat; add orange juice to the melted chocolate.  With a mixer, beat the egg yolks, sugar, and liqueur until mixture has become lemon-colored.  Then, beating on high, add the melted chocolate and orange juice.  Now -- with clean beaters and bowl (or it won't beat right) -- beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Again, with clean beaters and bowl, whip the whipping cream, also until soft peaks appear.  Gently fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture, then fold in the egg whites.  Chill the entire mixture in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.  Serve in individual dessert cups or coupe glasses, garnished with drizzled chocolate sauce, chocolate curls or sprinkles, fresh whipping cream, and a sprig of fresh mint and/or a fresh raspberry.

Gene Stern

David M Schneider taught me the Grand Moose but I never knew the genesis of this worthy adolescent sound!

Gene Stern

I only attended North Avondale elementary for 1/2 year and was in the third grade with Mrs Schnoor. I ended up sending her Christmas cards until I graduated WHHS. The third grade picture had many of our WHHS classmates in it 

Linda Karpen (Nachman)

Gene, I was in that class too, in the annex. Mrs. Schnorr was my favorite teacher! Thank you for sharing your unique and fasciating family history. And Richard, you too!!

Gene Stern

Linda:  I do recall you and Arn Bortz being in that pictiure. I must have been very taken by Mrs. Schnoor for me to have been sending her Christmas cards for nearly 10 years!

Philip Spiess

Read the sign (then think about it!)  [Courtesy of your National Park Service]

Philip Spiess

The  Spectre of All Hallows' Eve  [Relics of Smeagol]

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

The on-line Chatterbox just popped up on the WHHS Alumni Facebook page. I thought I'd share. 
https://whhscbox.com/7532/showcase/short-and-sweet/#photo

Paul Simons

Thanks very much for this article Ann. I woke up feeling gloomy and tried it both ways - one with water tinged with a kind of tan sugar like in the article to look about the color of bourbon and one with real bourbon, Jack Daniels of course. I don't drink a lot so I used shot glasses. At first I didn't feel any change of mood so I tried another shot of each. Still feeling a bit glum. After two more shots of each I figured wait a minute, the photo with the article shows a regular on-the-rocks glass so I'd better start using that too. But after four full glasses like that, no mood change and I was running low on the Jack Daniels. So I'm going to take a drive down I-75 to the liquor store in Covington where the prices are better. I'll let you know how things progress.

Nelson Abanto

I wish a very happy day to all the Vets.  Thanks you for your service.

I also wish a Happy Birthday to all my Brother Marines.

Nelson

Gene Stern

November 11 1918 at 11AM, WW1, the war to end all wars, was officially ended. Novenber 11 was set as a date to honor all military veterans as Remembrance Day with the red poppy as the official flower (see In Flanders Fields the poem written by a Canadian medical doctor named McRae). We now honor all veterans on that date, naming it Veteran's Day and I, like Nelson Abanto, congratulate and honor all veterans for their service to our Country.