The late John Glass, born Joachim Glass, in Berlin, January 15, 1936, was a descendant of German Jews tracing back to the 16th Century. John had one brother, Thomas, was born at home in December 1937, as by that time his parents felt unsafe going to a hospital. They lived at 21 Aneas Strasse in Mariendorf on the outskirts of Berlin, thus avoiding the direct devastation and horror of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, November 9, 1938. He was almost three years old when they left Germany in January 1939.
John’s parents, Paul Glass (1905-1979) and Anni Hoff Glass (1909-1991) were both born in Breslau (now Wroclaw), the part of Germany given to Poland after the war. His grandfather Sally Glass had an import-export business and his grandfather Hoff owned a specialty paper company. Both of his grandfathers had served in the Kaiser’s army in World War One.
Paul Glass was an electrical engineer and Anni Glass studied photography in Vienna. They had married in Berlin in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. Paul Glass lost his job in 1938 solely because he was a Jew. He spent the rest of 1938 traveling to surrounding countries to seek refuge, yet finding none. The family was finally able to go to England in 1939 thanks to the Quakers. American, British, and German Quakers acted heroically before and all through the war doing relief work with victims of Nazism.
In April of 1940, the Glass family sailed to New York from Liverpool on likely the last passenger voyage of the Cunard liner Lancastria. The journey took extra days so the ship could zigzag to lessen the risk of being torpedoed. Two months later, almost 5000 British soldiers lost their lives when the Germans sank the Lancastria.
The family became U.S citizens in 1945 and John was given "Franklin” as a middle name to honor President Roosevelt, his parents’ hero.
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