Eyewitness Talk with Kurt Salomon Maier

On 22 October 1940, six members of Kurt Maier’s family – his parents, grandparents, brother, and himself – were deported to France during the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population of Baden and the Saarland. They endured several months at the Gurs internment camp in southwestern France before receiving an affidavit from relatives, which enabled them to emigrate to the United States. After passing through Marseille and Casablanca, the family arrived in New York in August 1941.

From 1952 to 1954, Kurt Salomon Maier served in the US Army, stationed in Germany. After studying German literature and history at Columbia University and the Freie Universität Berlin, he became a librarian at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. From 1978 until his retirement a few weeks ago, he worked as a librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

With the support of Berliner Sparkasse