hitler told the german s what they wanted to hear
Double Life: A Jewish Male child In The Hitler Youth 37:38 Copy the lawmaking beneath to embed the WBUR audio histrion on your site
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TL;DL (Too Long; Didn't Listen)
92-year-old Robert Middelmann uncovered a hugger-mugger about himself when he was very young. Keeping it was a matter of life and death. But, afterwards many years, Robert decided to share that secret, along with the residue of his extraordinary life story, online. Information technology all started in Nazi Federal republic of germany…
Links:
-Robert's AMA
-Robert's memoir
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Full Transcript:
This content was originally created for sound. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.
Ben Brock Johnson: You lot're 92. Are you afraid of dying?
Robert Middelmann: Ohhh not at all. I'm ready. I'm so set. If it comes this night or tomorrow or sooner or subsequently, information technology doesn't really matter. It's fine with me. I feel relaxed.
(music plays)
Ben: This might seem like a strange question to showtime with. But the man whose story we are bringing you lot today has spent virtually of his life not ready to die.
Amory Sivertson: He's come up close many times. But he'southward always managed to avoid information technology. At present that he'southward finally telling his life story, he seems ready for his life story to end. So we're getting that story from him. 1 piece at a fourth dimension.
Ben: Hello, Robert.
Robert: Hullo there.
Amory: This is Robert Middelmann.
Robert: Thou-I-D-D-E-50-M-A-N-Northward. I was built-in July 10th, 1927 in Germany in the Ruhr Valley.
Ben: Robert lives in British Columbia, outside of Vancouver.
Robert: Out in the sticks, they say.
Amory: Robert's come a long way, literally and figuratively, to get to the "sticks" of British Columbia. But it'southward the earlier years of Robert's life — in Germany — that we wanted to know about.
Ben: What kinds of things did your family demand to do to survive?
Robert: We put the swastika flag out on holidays to blend in with the rest of the people. And also say, "Heil Hitler," when you get into the store and greet people. Anywhere, in the street, "Heil Hitler," y'all raise your hand, "Heil Hitler," from morn to nighttime, "Heil Hitler." There was no more than good morn and afternoon and skilful evening. It was all "Heil Hitler."
Amory: We learned part of Robert's story on Reddit. Robert himself? Non a Redditor. He barely uses the internet.
Robert: I'm yet slow in that.
Ben: But his granddaughter is on Reddit. And she encouraged him to do an AMA, an "Enquire Me Anything," about his life.
Amory: Robert's AMA post took off. Because his story involves growing upwardly in the Hitler Youth, being forced to join the German Regular army, and keeping a secret to stay alive.
Robert: I don't want to tell the whole thing. I want to take a shortcut. Unless you want to hear the — the whole story?
Ben: I call up nosotros want to hear the whole story.
Robert: You lot desire to hear the whole story?
Ben: Aye.
Robert: Okay...
Ben: I'm Ben Brock Johnson.
Amory: I'm Amory Sivertson. And you're listening to Endless Thread.
Ben: The show featuring stories plant in that vast ecosystem of communities called Reddit.
Amory: We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today's episode…
Ben: Double Life.
(music plays)
Ben: The story we're about to tell you, Robert's story, is a reminder of something that is frequently left out of the fictional or dramatized accounts of war that nosotros hear over and over. Dramatized war is often blackness and white. Real war isn't. People in wartime don't make the expected choices over and over. Sometimes they exercise what's correct. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes, information technology's hard to fifty-fifty tell what'south correct.
Amory: Robert'due south war story is a reminder that things can exist much more complicated at the individual level. And Robert agreed to tell u.s. everything with a small caveat before we got started.
Robert: Okay, one more than thing I'm waiting for my hearing assistance. I'one thousand hard of hearing. So if yous could crank it up a little bit and talk slow.
Ben: At 92, Robert might be difficult of hearing, but his retentivity is incredibly precipitous.
Robert: I take a clear memory when I was iii and a half about a shocking experience.
Amory: The feel Robert remembers from when he was three and a half is part of the larger story of what was happening in Frg in the early 1930s. The Nazi Party was cracking down on communism. Robert'due south parents supported the communists, and put themselves — and Robert — in danger to help them.
Robert: I woke up and someone climbed into bed with me and held me tight and heavy breathing. I could feel his heartbeat and I recognized quick who he was...
Ben: A family unit friend, Bruno.
Robert: And he was hiding from the SS considering the SS were hunting him. He was a leader in the Communist Party and he ran into our house for refuge. And my mother came up quick with a solution and said jump into bed with Robert. And they couldn't make out who was in bed with me. That was something, y'all know, it is similar information technology happened yesterday. That's how clear information technology was.
(music plays)
Amory: Robert grew up an just child. Merely he was a scattering.
Robert: Oh, yeah, yes. I was a bad kid, yous know? I was mischievous and curious, which is benign. That's the mode to larn. Only I wouldn't say that my family enjoyed information technology very much, what I was doing.
Ben: His parents, meanwhile, were running a business.
Robert: Candies. Candy manufacturing. Salubrious candies, malt, eucalyptus, menthol, anisette.
Amory: Business concern was good, until the Great Depression.
Robert: No one had coin for candies.
Amory: Let solitary nutrient. Past 1933, more than a third of Germans were out of piece of work.
Robert: So we rented out i half of the factory to Russian Orthodox Jews for the synagogue and the left side to communist families for low price living quarters. And you could hold meetings in there. And upstairs in the house was vii rooms we rented out to eight lovely, beautiful looking prostitutes. Those were my aunties. And that helped united states to keep the boat afloat. We didn't go under.
Ben: Another mode Robert's parents kept the boat afloat, was smuggling goods on the black market for their tenants and neighbors. Everything from food to stockings.
Amory: And from black market deals to the Jewish services, Communist meetings and perchance prostitution taking place on his parents' belongings, it was clear Robert would accept to join the other family business organisation: the business of keeping secrets.
Robert: I was told past my family, if y'all say annihilation that's spoken in the firm, the whole family unit will be taken to Town Foursquare and executed. I took that to heart. And information technology was not a lie, it happened.
Ben: When did you start to realize that Germany was headed for war?
Robert: At age ten, we all had to join the Hitler Youth and that was a one-manner street as far as education goes. Germany. Germany. Federal republic of germany. Hitler was the solution. It's sad, simply they believed that he was sent from God.
Amory: The Treaty of Versailles, which, in addition to bringing an end to World War I, brought the hammer down hard on Germany. Requiring it to have responsibleness for war damages and pay hefty reparations.
Ben: Which, led many Germans to view Hitler equally a new source of promise and pride and strength. Someone who would make the residual of the world respect Federal republic of germany again.
Robert: People felt like revenge. You could read between the lines. He wouldn't say war, but the fact is that I was always amidst adults, not children. I grew up with adults. And what they were talking was there'south a war coming. He will have a war. Definitely.
Amory: But as a x year-onetime in the Hitler Youth, Robert'southward office as a cog in Hitler's war machine wasn't every bit obvious. At least, not at outset…
Robert: I tell you lot what I liked in the Hitler Youth start — the activities, camping, sports. And I love sports. Esprit, subject. But the other side, the songs, for instance, I accept to actually control myself to not get sick, only feeling bad well-nigh it. It was, in German, nosotros sing...( Robert sings in German language)...westward hich means, "When the Jewish claret runs off our swords, things are going twice as good." I even so feel the common cold running down my spine correct now. I do. This was a hard matter to swallow. But I had to. I couldn't speak up for my own safety.
Amory: For anyone to speak out against the teachings of the Hitler Youth would be dangerous. But information technology was especially and so for Robert. Considering of all the secrets he had to keep as a child, the heaviest, was his own.
Robert: How I constitute out? That's maybe interesting.
Ben: It started as 1 of many conversations Robert overheard equally a child that he probably shouldn't have.
Robert: I was four years old and I was playing in the kitchen in my little corner. My female parent was having tea or coffee with her closest friend, assertive that it was safe to talk. And my ears were always similar radar, you know? As I said before, I'm very curious. And the lady said to my mother, well what is going to happen when Robert finds out that Leo is his father. When will yous tell him?
Amory: "Leo?" Robert thought, "Just my father's name is Otto."
Robert: And then my female parent seemed to be, "Oh, shh," like really lowered her voice and whispered. And I could hear that she was frightened.
Ben: Leo, or "Uncle Leo" as Robert called him growing up, helped his parents with their candy business concern. He was at their house every 24-hour interval. Tall, handsome, charismatic, and an outspoken critic of the Nazis.
Amory: Something else Robert knew about Leo: He was Jewish.
Robert: I'm half Jewish. And the time was when the Jews were on the listing, y'all know, next to the communists. Communists first, Jews second, gypsies third, and homosexuals quaternary, and Jehovah's Witnesses last, and at that place was no one left, so to speak.
(music plays)
Ben: Learning that Leo was his dad, was a big revelation for Robert. Not but was he dealing with the fact that the human he thought was his male parent was not, But all of a sudden, he had a new identity. One that put his life in danger.
Amory: It also put his parents in danger. For case, the woman Robert overheard request his mother well-nigh Leo, his mother's so-called "closest friend," was actually blackmailing Robert'south family during this conversation. Robert'southward mother gave the woman pork roasts, chocolates, things from the blackness market, anything in exchange for her silence.
Ben: Robert had many questions, only he was afraid to let his female parent know what he had overheard.
Amory: In the meantime, he kept his radar-like ears out for further clues.
Robert: I could feel it that I was on the correct track. Merely one twenty-four hour period, I recall this well, 2nd cousin of my female parent came and visited. And he was, well, I wouldn't say drunk, but he was feeling good. And and he looked down, "Oh, how is the piffling Jew doing?"
Amory: Any other young child probably wouldn't have known what to brand of this comment. Merely curious Robert prepare out to larn more than about the infectiously likable Polish Jew that he now knew was his father.
Robert: He was interesting. He had everything, he had all the qualities a person could ask for. And then I was very interested in what he had to say and I asked questions. The Jewish civilisation, the background and why the Jews were persecuted and and then forth. And he put me direct.
Ben: But Leo never acknowledged Robert equally his son. Leo was married to a German Protestant woman and had two half-Jewish children of his own.
Robert: His two children were saved. He was able to go them out of Germany in early 1938 through Poland into Palestine. And received a alphabetic character when he came into the house 1 day. He was cheering. He was "Oh man!" He was dancing. He said, "Look," he said. He showed me the picture. Benjamin was 16 and Ruth was 14 in khaki uniforms in the Kibbutz in Palestine. He says, those are the ones the Nazis will never become.
(music plays)
Amory: Robert's fate would exist dissimilar than that of his half-siblings. And their begetter.
Robert: He was a tough guy. He was set up to sacrifice his life and permit people know what he was thinking, who he was.
Ben: On November 9th, 1938, the night that would come to be known as Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," the Nazis destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, homes and synagogues. More than 30,000 Jews were arrested that night and taken to concentration camps. Leo was one of them.
Robert: Later, his wife received the ashes and was told that he committed suicide in the fundamental prison of Bochum. Now couldn't show information technology, but it was too obvious. He didn't commit suicide. He was he was murdered and he was not the only 1.
Amory: As things escalated in Germany, Robert'south parents and their tenants added another resource to the list of things they were involved in smuggling, data. They tuned out the propaganda that flooded the German airwaves and instead, listened to Radio Moscow and Grand duchy of luxembourg, BBC London. It was an action Robert says could get you sent to the concentration camps, if you were caught.
Robert: We kept listening during the war to BBC London at dark. It went like the morse code: dee-dee-dee-dah. Information technology sounded like notes in the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. Yeah, It stands for V.
(Beethoven's Fifth Symphony plays)
Ben: V, the British signal for victory. The opening motif of Beethoven's Fifth became the BBC's circulate opening to listeners in Europe. The briefest of anthems for the allied forces, and, as Winston Churchill called it, "the symbol of the unconquerable will of the people of the occupied territories."
Robert: Dee dee dee dah. That's another thing I learned in the Hitler Youth. The morse code. That was beneficial. Heh.
Amory: But Robert was nigh to become from Hitler'southward Youth, to Hitler'due south army.
Ben: More in a minute.
[Sponsor Break]
Amory: Robert Middelmann was just a pre-teen when World War II broke out, but he was a conscripted fellow member of the Hitler Youth. A secretly one-half-Jewish member of the Hitler Youth. And he was finding it more and more difficult to stay silent about the atrocities existence committed by the Nazis. Especially because his peers in the Hitler Youth seemed like they were all-in.
Robert: Most of them were all in favor. Yep. Oh, they couldn't wait. Oh, yeah, they were simply enthusiastic about this. And it's pitiful, children of that historic period, you know. Merely I was really by myself with my thoughts.
Ben: As the war carried on and Robert got older, people in his life started to disappear. Jewish neighbors and family friends taken off to concentration camps. Some were gunned down in the street.
Amory: Robert says he started becoming more daring with his acts of resistance, and this is when his double life really started. He snuck food and information to Jewish families. When he was 15, he formed a youth resistance group. They hung posters in the streets that read "Neider mit Hitler!" — "Down with Hitler!" 1 nighttime, Robert and another half-Jewish friend burned downwards a Hitler Youth office.
Ben: They didn't go caught. Just within a twelvemonth, Robert would find himself caught, in a different sense. During school ane day, 16-year-quondam Robert's class was interrupted.
Robert: All of a sudden, our principal came in and said, "Okay, Form Ten, those born 1927 and 1928 exist sent home and y'all'll written report to the anti-shipping garrison in Bochum.
Amory: Robert was assigned to the anti-aircraft division, part of Germany's Air Strength. It was early 1944, and the Nazis were losing ground. Every athletic German language male was called to activeness.
Ben: Non-Germans, too. Half of Robert's eight-person cannon squad were Russian prisoners-of-war, which freed up more German soldiers to fight on the frontlines.
Amory: Robert's unit was in charge of guarding an ammunition factory. They were instructed to shoot down any Allied warplanes that approached.
Robert: You sit at that place and just follow the radar on the screen. I was responsible for the vertical and the other ane for the horizontal and then forth. And the Russians were the ammunition carriers and loading the cannon.
Ben: Equally the power dynamic of the war was shifting, so were the marching orders in Frg. Robert was discharged from the anti-aircraft unit at age 17 and sent direct to the German regular army.
Robert: Boot camp then along. And I was picked, I don't know why, but I was picked for special commander's, tank destroyers. And I knew what that meant. That it is a suicide mission. And there was no way out. I tried to escape, like in my mind. And if you lot didn't have the proper proof I.D. where you're going and what you're doing, they hang y'all right there, y'all know, it happened. And put a big sign on your back, "I was a coward." And they hang you. They hung teenagers in the trees right on the country road.
Amory: Robert estimated that he had virtually a month before the Allied Forces made it to the German border. The reality started sinking in that he'd have to come up face-to-confront in combat with the side he was secretly rooting for. He decided he had to do something desperate.
Ben: So he started casting about for a drastic thought. One twenty-four hour period, before aircraft off to combat, he found one. A desperate idea, shaped like a boulder.
Robert: We were out in the bush and in that location was an outhouse, a latrine. And earlier we become to the latrine, there was a ditch and the boulder was hanging. I noticed that I was thinking of anything, anything. And at night, I pretended I'm going to the outhouse and I got into the ditch, loosened up the boulder, smashed my pes and screamed. And told 'em that I slipped into the ditch and the boulder fell and hit my foot.
Ben: Smashing your own foot with a boulder, is a desperate movement. Merely the motion paid off.
Robert: Considering I was never sent to the front. The others had to. And past the way, I never saw any of the others in my life again or heard of them.
(music plays)
Amory: Robert spent the next couple of months in the field hospital. He made friends there.
Robert: Three of them. And they were from Poland. They were forced into the German language army and were not very in favor of Hitler, believe me. And I could tell that we were on the same level. So I was, I felt very good. Nosotros take a lilliputian secret group.
Ben: This hugger-mugger group formed a surreptitious program. They were going to desert the German language army.
Robert: So we thought, well, what can we exercise?
Amory: One night, when the explosions in the distance suddenly seemed not and so distant, Robert limped from the hospital to the chief road. In that location were a agglomeration of people in uniform running around, shouting...
Robert: "Get, go, get, become. The Tommies are correct behind u.s.a.. Just a kilometer away." The Tommies ways the British.
Ben: Robert hobbled back to the hospital and told his friends the news.
Robert: And at the aforementioned time our medic came in. "I got orders. Quick, get packed! We have to leave!"
Amory: A truck was waiting outside to accept the wounded soldiers to safety. Robert and his friend, never got on the truck. They hung a bedsheet out of their window equally a white flag, and went to bed.
Ben: The side by side morning, Robert was woken up by one of his friends.
Robert: "Robert!" he said, "Wake up! Look out the window!"
Ben: Downwardly below, Robert saw the ruby berets of the British soldiers.
Robert: He said, "Can yous believe it? Male child, it'south over! Oh they're cheering!"
Amory: Robert was the only ane of them who spoke English language. Then he grabbed his pikestaff and crossed the road to talk to a British soldier, who was sitting in a windowsill.
Robert: They could encounter I was a harmless person. And I told him there are three more upstairs, we would similar to surrender to you. "Alright," he said, "The war'south over for you lot." And he jumped out the window, pulled his handgun, loaded it. He said, "Deplorable he said, these are orders." Aye. Don't feel bad. And he pointed it at me. "Yous go beginning. I follow you lot."
Ben: Picture this for a second, Robert has just surrendered to the British. He's walking back to the hospital to become his friends, with a loaded gun pointed at his dorsum.
Amory: Robert and the others are in German uniforms, and the British soldier knows zilch nigh their backstories. Their lives are potentially in great danger in this moment. And the British soldier says to them…
Robert: "How about a spot of tea, eh?" So I did, I thought, ohhhhh, I'm dreaming.
(music plays)
Ben: Robert and his friends drank tea with the British soldiers, smoked cigarettes, talked sports, and showed each other pictures of their families.
Robert: I felt like I won the jackpot, so nothing could happen to me anymore.
Amory: And for a picayune while, nothing did. Robert was taken to a British camp near the Dutch border. He became a prisoner-of-war. But life as a prisoner was surprisingly peaceful.
Robert: There was singing and joking and and optimistic and happy and made friends with the guards. It was actually pleasant. Very pleasant. The British were nice, I must say.
Ben: But Robert wouldn't be there for long. This is another thing that is piece of cake to forget about war. Fifty-fifty afterwards the Allies pushed the Germans back, the areas given up were in chaos. People like Robert who surrendered happily had a long road ahead, even subsequently having tea with British soldiers.
Amory: Robert wasn't headed abode. Far from it. He was headed to a coal mine in Belgium. Where POWs faced backbreaking work with no cease in sight.
Robert: And rumors were yous stay here till the terminal penny has been paid by Germany for all the damage they did to the other countries. I thought, well, i lifetime wouldn't be enough for that. I knew nearly the damage. And I don't desire no part of this. So I escaped.
Amory: Robert hopped a freight train that took him to southern Belgium. Civilians there wanted him lynched, but some American soldiers in the town brought him to the police station. He had some unpopular visitor in in that location, SS officers who had been picked up on the Russian front.
Robert: And they were really beaten upwardly and so forth, and the door was open up to anyone to come in and let your frustrations out on them. At least I was innocent. I was not i of them, but American soldiers, two of them, came in and I recognized that 1 was Jewish. He asked me if I was a member of the Hitler Youth. And I was trying to explicate my situation, that really I'one thousand half Jewish and I had to hide it. I couldn't, I had to bring together the Hitler Youth. Well I didn't become that far. He'd grabbed — he was furious, then he grabbed me and smashed me confronting the wall. Broke my jaw.
(music plays)
Ben: The beatings continued, and Robert couldn't run into a way out.
Robert: Tortured and starved. And we were thirsty and it was bad. I thought, okay, now suicide is painless. My mentum wasn't up anymore. I thought not earlier they torture you to death. I do information technology myself to escape more than. If I would have establish annihilation like a sharp thing would have cut my wrists. Definitely. To finish me off.
Ben: He was in a desperate land of mind, merely his days in that prison would soon be over. He was sent back to the coal mine in Kingdom of belgium. The work hadn't changed, but the war itself, was well-nigh to.
Amory: In May of 1945, Germany surrendered. In that location was celebrating in the streets.
Robert: I could see all the flags hanging out the windows. There was American flags, British flags, Russian flags, Belgian flags, French flags. No Germans.
Amory: When Robert got back to Germany, he was in rough shape.
Robert: I suffered liver damage and was starved, I was skin and bones. Yellow all over, I had hepatitis.
Ben: Germany's economic system was in even rougher shape after the state of war. Its people had to get creative to survive.
Robert: Everybody, I mean, everybody, without exception, had to trade to get food. And the identify to go was on the farms. They traded for nutrient.
Amory: But Robert had connections, and he started working them on the black market, smuggling goods into French republic. Medications, cigarette papers, Chanel perfume.
Ben: Robert says his family's history of smuggling helped him live high on the hog. He was making money off of the black market while other people were on the verge of starvation. But, he says, he did endeavor to make a difference.
Robert: I helped a lot of people, believe me, without making a profit. And I felt practiced near it.
Amory: How did you help people?
Robert: Past giving them food. The less the less fortunate. They were former people and some more timid. I was a hazard taker. And I paid for it dearly. I was imprisoned several times.
(music plays)
Amory: Were you able to reconnect with whatever of the people your family had helped or any of your friends from before the war?
Robert: Yes, nigh of them. Almost of-- One person — this is great — Bruno Betanatski.
Ben: Bruno, the Communist leader who had evaded the SS by hiding in Robert's bed when he was iv years quondam.
Amory: Robert was also eventually reunited with some of the people he'd seen taken away to concentration camps.
Robert: And Jewish people who survived. A few. A scattering, believe me. Just a handful.
Ben: Some of these people he wouldn't observe until decades subsequently.
Robert: It was something that money tin can't purchase. My heart was cheering. Even so is. I have tears in my eyes right now. It was great. Yeah. That was wonderful.
Ben: A number of people might read your story and say that they would have been braver in the circumstances. Similar, for case, non hide their identity or refuse to take function in the Hitler Youth training or join the Nazi regular army. What would you say to those people?
Robert: Well, would you volunteer to go to the gallows?
Ben: Robert doesn't have to hide his secret whatsoever more. But he'due south been hiding it anyhow. He says he still keeps quiet about the fact that he'southward half-Jewish.
Robert: I still have that in me. Keep serenity, you know. Considering antisemitism is really a global thing. Everyone has it.
Ben: Robert says he did teach his children what he knew well-nigh Judaism, but as his biological male parent had done for him. His ain personal beliefs aside.
Robert: I'm an agnostic, spiritually, religiously spoken. I don't know. I'll find out when I go there.
Amory: Whenever Robert gets there, possibly his final act volition be the memoir he'due south just published. Information technology's called Fearless: A Jewish Boy in Nazi Frg.
Robert: In that location'south an old like it sounds like a cliche. Those who don't want to learn from history, are condemned to repeat it.
Ben: And yet, for well-nigh of Robert's life, he didn't experience set up to share his own full history. For years he was fearful of repercussions.
Robert: At age 90, I thought, oh, look, I don't have to fright annihilation. What can they practice with a 90-year-old i, what I put down? You know, the governments, similar not only one, several governments that I ripped them off and all these things. What can they exercise, huh? Big deal, you know? And so I thought I'm brave enough. Furthermore, I add together to historical facts that should be told and should be noticed because it did happen. And as things are today, and in full general, the world, details. We all know what's going on. Information technology's not squeamish, you lot know. And so it'southward high time to to showtime thinking about it, eh?
Ben: Are yous talking about the rise in antisemitism that's happening in the U.S. and elsewhere?
Robert: That's 1 matter. Yeah. And not but antisemitism, likewise anti other minorities. Y'all know, Jews are non the only people who are hated and persecuted.
Amory: Robert'due south story, is just that. One account. It cannot shed low-cal on what tens of millions of people had to endure during the Holocaust. But by sharing information technology, he'southward attempting to offer his one piece.
Robert: When I'k by myself, I live in the past, but with a positive attitude not regret. I'm quite happy nearly what I was able to attain.
Ben: Do you experience regrets from the war or pre-war period of your life? Do you wish you had handled annihilation differently?
Robert: Well... I don't regret nothing. You know? Information technology happened and I can't undo information technology. Merely what I did, I did my best to my best ability. And I couldn't do any different. Simply with cognition of today, if I had to relive information technology over again, which is incommunicable, it's just a dream, I would do things totally different. Yeah. I would've left Germany before it all got worse. You know, I would have found a fashion to go out. Just easy to say subsequently the game is over. After the game is over, you see where you went wrong, eh? Hmm.
Amory: Robert left Deutschland for adept in 1955. He went to Canada, where he raised his family. His entrepreneurial spirit carried over into a variety of jobs. He worked as a miner, a woods plant operator, a jewelry salesman, and even sold dwelling house-brewed kombucha. He married his third wife, Dorothy, in 2014, and she helped him put his life story on paper. He calls himself "the luckiest of men."
Ben: Robert, thank yous so much for telling u.s.a. your story.
Robert: Well cheers very much for giving me the opportunity.
Source: https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2020/01/31/robert-middelmann-nazi-germany
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