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Like a frightening dream or a subtle smell in the air that you can’t quite make go away, war lingers over the lives of the coming generation. It can shape the course of a life. It can emerge unexpectedly, long after the guns go silent.

Because we lived in neutral Switzerland, most of the fighting went on around us. But not all. My hometown was bombed on April 1, 1944 by the US Air force when I was just over a year old. Supposedly, it was a navigation mistake. About 60 people died, part of the train station was destroyed, museums, a church, factories, part of the medieval town, all were hit. The American government apologized and paid reparations.

Later on, I was affected by a school trip to burned out Oradour-sur-Glane. We stopped there as part of a high school trip to see the pre-historic cave paintings at Lascaux. Located near Limoges in the south-west of France, Oradour-sur-Glane was the site of a massacre of civilians by German troops during the war. On June 10, 1940, 643 inhabitants, men, women and children were killed by a unit of the German 2nd SS Panzer Division, “Das Reich,” four days after D-Day. These civilians were herded into barns and other buildings and into the local church. Then they were shot, and the entire village was set on fire.

After the war ended, on orders from French President De Gaulle, the burned-out village was left untouched to serve as a memorial site. Walking around in the burned-out village where a massacre had taken place affected me much more than reading or watching movies about the Second World War. It made a much bigger impression on me than the cleaned up, empty cityscapes of East and West Berlin I got to visit during another high school trip during the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s.

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Like a frightening dream or a subtle smell in the air that you can’t quite make go away, war lingers over the lives of the coming generation. It can shape the course of a life. It can emerge unexpectedly, long after the guns go silent.

Because we lived in neutral Switzerland, most of the fighting went on around us. But not all. My hometown was bombed by the US air force when I was just over a year old. Supposedly, it was a navigation mistake. About 60 people died, part of the train station was destroyed, museums, a church, factories, part of the medieval town, all were hit. The American government apologized and paid reparations.

Later on, I was affected by a school trip to burned out Oradour-sur-Glane, the location of a massacre of civilians by German troops during the war.

Sometime in the late 1960s, near the end of high school, I got the opportunity to visit Berlin at the height of the Cold War, another lingering effect of WWII.

At that time, the local “MIGROS Clubschule” in my hometown offered short trips to Vienna, Berlin and other European destinations, specially designed for youth, students and apprentices to meet other young people. I was on the lookout for something that fit my holiday schedule and my earnings from summer jobs. The trips to Berlin were really attractive, because they were subsidized by the city of Berlin, which was eager to build lasting understanding and human connections with Western countries after the Berlin Blockade by the Soviet Union and the ongoing political and military tensions of the Cold War. The City offered low-cost accommodation at their newly built youth hostel together with self-serve meals and a cultural program with contacts to young Berliners.



Our bus left in the evening in the direction of Berlin, on the freeways to Nürnberg in Bavaria towards one of the three approved border crossings at Hof/Gutenfürst. However, as we approached the village of Hof, our driver got a message that East Germany had just closed this crossing, indefinitely. Instead of only having to travel a further 160 miles to Berlin, we were forced to make a 425 mile detour to get there. The closest open border point was at Helmstedt/Marienborn, east of Hannover. That was our best alternative, using slow secondary roads which skirted the East German border all the way to the Autobahn connecting Hannover to Berlin.

As we approached Berlin in the morning, we encountered mile-long lineups in the road. The road had two lanes. In the left lane, transport trucks were inching forward. Passenger cars and buses were lined up in the right lane -- stopped and occasionally moving ahead a few car lengths. We were already hungry and tired after a long overnight bus ride, wondering when we would finally arrive at the West Berlin youth hostel.

Once we reached the control check point, a uniformed East German border guard came onto the bus. He collected and took away our passports, told us to stay in our seats and left for a small control office shack. We noticed that the guards were inspecting our passports under ultra-violet lamps. We could also see other guards with long broom sticks and attached angled mirrors on wheels inspecting the underside of our bus and other vehicles besides us, looking for stow-a-ways and suspicious equipment. After a while our guard came back onto the bus and asked for one of the travelers by name. Apparently, this person did not have a Swiss passport like the rest of us, even though our tour description specifically asked for one. This delayed us further, until he eventually was approved to proceed with the rest of us. I never found out what the problem was.

The long wait was scary. We felt like “undocumented prisoners” locked in on a bus until the guard had handed us back our stamped passports. This was part of their harassment tactics, beyond the normal slow processing of travel documents.

After the 12-hour delay, we finally reached the youth hostel in West Berlin. By then we already seen and knew enough to expect a similar delay on our return trip, shrinking our Berlin visit by a whole day in total.

The following days we mostly went sightseeing as a group, visiting Charlottenburg castle and museums; the new downtown area around the Europa Center; the Kurfürstendamm shopping area; the partially rebuilt Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche Memorial Church; many bombed out city blocks still covered in weeds and piles of stones and bricks; and, of course, there was the obligatory visit to the Western side of the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate.

I also had a chance to attend a political/satirical cabaret performance in the evening; feast on meat/onion/sweet pepper skewers (known as “Schaschlik”) grilled on sidewalk barbecues; and drink the local specialty wheat beer (“Berliner Weisse”) later at night under bright lights. Another night we all went to a downtown disco together with our young Berliner hosts. It was quite an experience for me, who had never been to a disco and who normally stayed away from girls. I even enjoyed dancing and talking with an attractive young girl, Dörte Schwertfeger (Dorothy). We exchanged mailing addresses after I found out that she was a member of an accordion band which was going to be attending a European accordion competition in my hometown within the next few weeks. She also knew another Swiss accordionist, the sister of a high school classmate of mine, whose family lived just a few hundred yards away from home. So, I left Berlin in the hope of seeing her again. We exchanged one or two letters, but never arranged to meet during the accordion competition. Which was just as well. I could not easily imagine myself ending up with a German father-in-law who might possibly have been a member of the Nazi party before 1945.

For my final day, I wanted to get a first-hand view of East Berlin, a look behind the “Iron Curtain.” However, none of the other Swiss group members had any interest in coming with me to cross over at the famous “Checkpoint Charlie,” so I went on my own. I had my passport and visitor visa and purchased the prescribed amount of East German currency at the official unfavourable rate. Bringing back any East German currency was prohibited by East German laws. I either had to spend it all there or put what was left into a donation box to support an East German state charity upon leaving their country.

Suddenly I was on my own for the day in a completely foreign environment -- a drab, grey city governed by the “SED,” short for “Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands” (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), the ruling communist party.

I walked up and down the Unter den Linden parade boulevard which was still within sight of the barricaded Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall, this time visible from the Eastern side. Soon I started to feel hungry for some lunch and looked for street level restaurants. Eventually I entered one and looked around for a table. Unfortunately there were no empty tables. I approached a table with only one person so far and asked the man if I could share it with him. To my big relief, his answer was a welcoming “yes” and soon we were engaged in lively conversation. After ordering Eisbein mit Kartoffeln (which translates as “boiled pork hock with boiled potatoes -- not a fancy dish, but at least I knew what they would be serving) I told him that I was a visitor from Switzerland, and he told me he was a commercial pickup truck driver. I must have gained his confidence rather quickly, because he told me many things about his family and himself. Then he asked me what I had in mind to do for the balance of the day. I told him I wanted to look around town and then go to a performance of a political/satirical cabaret, to be able to compare it with the Western version I had just seen only days before. He immediately offered to drive me in his company pickup truck to his delivery destination and show me some non-touristy parts of East Berlin. I accepted without hesitation, even though in retrospect I should not have been such a trusting person… “Do not talk to strangers…” “Do not accept rides in an unknown car…” Those were the generally accepted admonishments at the time.

As he drove the pickup truck and nobody could overhear him, he told me many more things about his family, the economic hardships of the common people, the constant fear of being spied upon even by family members and that he had decided not to join the SED party despite jeopardizing his children’s working career, etc. Then I found out that he was about to deliver a load of silver ingots from his employer in Leipzig to a precious metal refinery. That increased my tension and I suggested that I should wait for him to do the delivery without me in the car. He reassured me that this would not be a problem. As he approached the refinery gate and the walls with barbed wire rolls on top came into view, the thought “too late” entered my mind. But the guard just waived us both through, without “this extra passenger” deserving a single question. In a few minutes the delivery was complete and I was relieved as soon as the factory gate closed behind us after we had left. I had survived some scary minutes.

Before I left the driver to go to the Cabaret performance he gave some valuable advice: “You will notice a number of members of the audience in military uniform. They are not there because they like satirical cabaret, but to spy on the audience and report any non-conformist behaviour, applause, or comments. Only clap in approval if others clap after an anti-western skit, never show any approval for critical comments about the communist regime or any of its leaders!”

After the performance I headed back to ”Checkpoint Charlie” and to West Berlin. It had been a long, but instructive day. It was late. The train was nearly deserted. I had time to myself to think about the lingering effects of war. I would see them for the rest of my life, often unexpectedly and in unexpected ways. That’s what happened much later in my life when I met a man who had twice survived a firing squad, escaped, created a successful business after the war, but could not sign a legal document because, officially, he was dead.

To help you understand why and where I got the raw material for the incredible story of this man, let me start by explaining why I ever became interested in other countries.

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First, I had to pass an entrance exam for high school, survive a three month probationary period and pass written and oral final “Matura” exams in modern languages and math at the end of 5½ years. It was not a problem for me, as I was one of four top students in my class. We rotated the position of class speaker among us four for many years. Two girls and two boys. I am still in touch with the other three at occasional class reunions in Switzerland.

My high grades on the end of high school exams gave me the right to study at any university in Switzerland for a degree in humanities, business, science or engineering, but not in medicine, law or theology, where Latin was a prerequisite.

Rather than studying chemistry or engineering, I decided to study business at the University of St. Gallen, the Swiss equivalent of Harvard Business School. It offered a 4 year program to a “licoec. HSG,” later considered an M.A. in Business within the European Economic Union.

To obtain the degree, students had to have worked for at least six months in the fields of business, banking, insurance, etc. I did even more than that. First, I worked six months as a “computer programmer/trainee” with UNIVAC in Zurich, at the time the “Number 2” after IBM; and then 12 weeks at a copper rolling mill, Hussey Metals, a Copper Range company in Leetsdale, Pennsylvania, just north of Pittsburgh – my first experience of America, memories I’ll never forget.

This is how that happened…

During my second semester at the business school in Switzerland I told my AIESEC chapter that I was interested in a summer job abroad, preferably in America.

AIESEC is the French name for a worldwide student-run exchange program for business and economics students. Students would find work places for foreign students to be traded for desirable placements in the other country. The first offer was for an eight week job on the Atlantic coast of France with a beach chair manufacturer. That was not exactly what I was looking for. So I did not accept it, and asked them to keep looking. Even though summer break was approaching fast, I was willing to gamble, hopeful that something better would emerge.

A few nail-biting weeks later I was offered a twelve week job at the copper rolling mill in Leetsdale, starting at the beginning of July and paying $250 every four weeks.

I immediately took it.

I applied for a student visa at the U.S. Consulate General in Zurich and got the multicolored visa stamped into my passport. I had never seen such a multicolored stamp -- red on one end, blue on the other. Probably to make it difficult to forge.

Then I booked a low-cost flight from Zurich to New York City on a turbo-prop DC6-B chartered by the Swiss Student Travel Agency (SSR). By the time that I could inform the U.S. employer that I was coming, there was no more time for them to reply with details. All I could do was buy a “99 Day Ticket at 99 Dollars” from Greyhound Bus Lines, valid anywhere in the continental US. This would get me initially from New York City to Pittsburgh.

I vividly remember the day of my arrival in New York, taking the Airport Bus to the Manhattan Terminal. It was July 3^rd 1966. Everybody was saying that it was one of the hottest days ever in New York -- 107 degrees Fahrenheit, something I had never experienced in Switzerland before. And there I was wearing a business suit and tie, on a blazing hot and humid midday, dropping off my suitcase in a locker until evening, when the overnight Greyhound bus was leaving for Pittsburgh.

Culture shock started quickly. The neon lights at Times Square; Orange Julius booths; alternating green (Walk) and red (Don’t Walk) signs at pedestrian crossings; yellow taxi cabs, etc. As I was getting hungry, I started reading menus on the outside of air-conditioned diners and restaurants, looking for familiar items at affordable prices. I thought I had found something familiar when I saw the term “Cottage Cheese.” Since I liked anything with cheese in it, I went inside the drugstore diner and ordered it, waiting, sitting at the unfamiliar long counter. To my dismay, Cottage Cheese was nothing like hard Swiss cheese. Instead, it was soft crumbly white fresh cheese with pineapple pieces and it came with little cellophane two-packs of salty crackers. I had never seen cottage cheese before, nor such crackers.

But lucky me, I would be travelling by bus. The record heat had buckled some of the railway rails, cancelling a number of evening trains. Overheated cars were stuck in one of the tunnels under the Hudson River. Our bus probably used a bridge to leave Manhattan, avoiding the traffic jams.

The next culture shock came in the middle of the night somewhere along the Pennsylvania Turnpike at a rest stop. Everybody got off the bus to have a drink or snack. I was thirsty and picked up a little cardboard container of milk out of the cooler. I looked at it, turned it around multiple times, read the instructions on how to open it. Somewhere it said “Pull [or push] to Open,” but I did not know where or how. Thankfully, another passenger noticed my problem, showed me how to separate the two “wings,” spread them apart and then push/pull to make a spout. Finally, I could quench my thirst.

It was probably around five o’clock in the morning when the bus finally arrived at the deserted terminal in Pittsburgh. I should not have been surprised. It was early Monday morning on July Forth, U.S. Independence Day, a public holiday. Not expecting anybody to meet me to tell me what to do next, I asked the only waiting taxi driver to take me to the Hussey Metals plant in Leetsdale. The driver was black, one of the first black people I ever met. (There were hardly any black people living in Switzerland at the time.)

I got scared as the driver got lost in a warren of alleys with scrap yards in what is now known in Pittsburgh as its Golden Triangle, coming up to the unfinished bridge across the river, turning around and finding the real bridge to the Ohio River Boulevard leading to Leetsdale. It seemed that we had been driving quite a while and still were not in Leetsdale. The driver admitted that we were outside the area he was familiar with. And the taxi meter kept ticking.

After we finally made it to Leetsdale, he drove up to a motel where we could see guests outside. It was the “Sewickley Motor Inn,” a fancy place with an outside swimming pool. The taxi driver asked about the rates at the motel, $35 per night, which was way unaffordable for me on $250 pay for four weeks. We found out that there were no other “affordable” accommodation in Leetsdale at all, that it was strictly an industrial town. We were told we would have to continue north on the Ohio River Boulevard to a company town called Ambridge, named after the famous company called “American Bridge Company.” There we would have to turn west at the only traffic light in town and go one block to a small inn, called a “rooming house.” What a relief. They did have a vacancy for me, at affordable weekly rates.

I checked in and immediately had a shower, as the day again was sunny, hot and humid, and I had not changed out of my business suit since leaving Switzerland. I also had not shaved in three days and felt uncomfortable. Therefore, next, I had to find some electric pre-shave. I found it at a drugstore on the main street, which was open, even on Independence Day. Outside I noticed numerous American flags on six foot wooden poles set into matching metal rings along the concrete sidewalk. It was quite an impressive wall of flags on both sides of the main street.

Back at the inn, I asked how I could get to the factory in Leetsdale the next morning to report for work.

“No problem,” was the answer. “Our son works there. He will give you a ride when he leaves in the morning.” – Another lucky coincidence.

The next morning the inn keeper’s son got me past the gate house and into the office building of Hussey Metals to report for work.

The acceptance letter had mentioned that I would be working in the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable departments. However, those were the departments the President’s daughter, Alice, had been assigned to. It was going to be her summer job before going to Stanford University on a scholarship. So, instead, I got assigned to the Industrial Engineering Department for the first eight weeks, followed by four weeks with the Plant Scheduler. That was fine with me. Even though I was a business student, I did not like accounting in the narrow sense, or being labelled a “bean counter.” Financial and inventory analysis, performance improvement and planning was what I was interested in.

The industrial engineers showed me what information they had about order volume and inventory levels. I worked on their numbers, hoping to find statistically relevant patterns to calculate optimal re-order quantities.

Everything reminded me of World War II. Army-green steel furniture was the standard look, likely the original war issue style left-over from when the factory manufactured landing barges. The barges were pushed from the back of the plant to the river bank, floated down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, and ultimately served on the European and Pacific landing beaches.

The four or five industrial engineers in the department welcomed me and made me feel at ease. Every day at noon they invited me to join them for lunch at restaurants on Main Street in Ambridge, the closest town for sit-down meals. Our small group drove in two of their monstrous 1960’s “cruisers,” the size of which I had not seen in Switzerland before.

Then I learned the standard way little restaurants and drug store diners operated. At the entrance, there was always a neon sign advertising one of the local beers. Upon sitting down, there followed the daily soup together with those cellophane two-packs of salty crackers and a glass of ice water. Normally everybody ordered the home-cooked daily special. Everything was new to me.

The Industrial Engineering Department was located separately from the main World War II military style administrative building and gatehouse, but not inside the plant itself. It was attached to the west side of the tall rolling mill building facing the Ohio River. Fortunately, the attached office had air conditioning, unlike the main factory building with its annealing ovens and hot rolling mills.

After a few weeks of number crunching in search of a formula to fit the numbers to statistical equations based on graphed information, I realized that there was too much variability in the demand for any one production item and too many one-off product orders.

Then I was re-assigned to work with the Plant Scheduler to track and locate slabs to be rolled and rolled coils to be grouped for shipping. The Plant Scheduler’s office was inside the large factory, among the rolling presses, annealing ovens and work-in-progress areas. His office was located up in a “box” on stilts to give him a panorama view of the plant. From there he could give instructions by loud speaker to the various departments.

In the plant it was even hotter than the 100 degree Fahrenheit summer temperatures outside. To compensate for the loss of electrolytes from sweating, there were self-serve dispensers with brown “salt” pills attached to a few of the steel pillars of the factory structure. I gladly used the pills when I was working for extended periods in the mill part.

My role was that of a “roaming scout” on the plant floor to find and locate “missing” slabs and “lost” coils. Whenever I found a slab or coil with thick layers of dust, I would wipe off the dust until I could read the order number which had been marked by chalk weeks earlier. Then I reported it to the Plant Scheduler who could then “re-unite” it with the majority of that particular order, and have it shipped and invoiced to the customer.

During my days on the plant floor I met an “acceptance engineer” from a major client whose role was to verify that their slabs had been rolled to specification. Then he could approve them for shipping. It turned out that he was a co-inventor of a patent for an “Explosion Bonding” process used by the U.S. Mint to produce new quarters. A little earlier the price of silver had increased dramatically. People began melting the old, pure silver quarters into silver ingot to sell on the world metal markets, casing a shortage of quarters for daily business transactions. It was therefore necessary to reduce the silver content of the coins by layering it between two layers of nickel. The “Explosion Bonding” process was used to anneal the layers. No welding or gluing would do the job that explosion bonding would do. Carefully look at current quarters from their side, you will be able to see the three layers. You will notice that five cent and ten cent coins are solid nickel.

My experiences at the rolling mill plant and staying with an American family helped my English. Nobody that I ever met in Leetsdale spoke German or French.