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This
is a picture of my father and my mother. I don’t know when it
was taken…certainly before 1928, because that is the year when
my mother died. [full
size]
Two
years later my father married again and this is a picture of him and
his second wife.
This
is a picture of my father and mother and my little brother and myself.
I
am on the left I was about nine to ten years old .
This
was when I was fifteen years old shortly before I left Germany sitting
on the banks of the little river behind our store you can see this
sign which was the sign at the back entrance of our store.
This
was the entrance to my father's store, and at the door you can see
my father with a young lady who was his employee.
Our
synagogue, which was vandalized in 1935 and burned to the ground in
1938.
This
is a picture of Gloria and me taken about a year or so after we were
married. We were married in 1949. This was in our second apartment.
This
is myself on the right over here when I was in the army together with
a fellow soldier. I think this picture was taken after the war was
over.
The
brown patch was a shoulder patch of my division, which is the 103rd
Infantry Division, which is called the cactus division. The little
pin in my right hand is the insignia of my artillery battalion, which
is the 928th Field Artillery Battalion. It had a motto—“we
shall return.” It is at the bottom of the pin.
This
is what I brought back from Germany, which I acquired, shall we say.
This is
the cross of honor of the German mother, which the
Nazis bestowed on German women who had a lot of children. I found this
in one place and found the document in another place. This document
attests to the fact that this particular woman received this cross
of honor of the German mother second class – apparently they
had different classes – and it bears the signature of Hitler
and a secretary of state at the bottom.
This
was my father's passport, which he had when he left Germany. You will
see a big "J" on the side, which means Jew. All the Jewish
people had to have their passports stamped with the big "J" at
that time.
Also
you see his signature. His name was Alfred, but there is a middle name
there, "Israel." This was not his middle name, but
all the Jews in Germany had to add Israel. All the Jewish
women had to adopt the middle name "Sarah," and my mother's
passport shows that.
This
also lists my brother's name, Martin, who you also see has the middle
name Israel.
Of
interest, this is the American immigration visa. As you notice,
the American Consulate didn't bother with the name Israel.
This
is a sample from the correspondence between my relatives in Kansas
City, Missouri and Senator Harry Truman, to ask him to help facilitate
my family’s immigration to the United States. He wasn't able
to accomplish this, but he advised my family to get to a neutral country
and wait there until the immigration visa number came up. This is a
letter from one of my relatives to Senator Truman. This correspondence,
the original of this correspondence, is in the Truman Library in Independence,
Missouri.
This
is a copy of the letter that Senator Truman sent to the American Consul
in Germany. It’s not the original because it is just his file
copy. Asking him to help this family.
Pay
was not taxable, so the income was zero. But the year before, in ‘42
before I got into the army, I paid a little - I probably overpaid my
taxes by thirty some dollars. I had an overpayment, and in order
to get that overpayment back I had to file a tax return, even though
I had no income in 1943.
From
our local draft board in Kansas City: Notice of Alien’s Acceptability.
Where they notified me that I was eligible for the draft…to be
drafted into the army, even though I was an alien at the time.
This
is my report card. It shows my name, the son of Alfred Lyon and so
on.
This
shows my grades in the first and second year of elementary school.
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