Born:
Frankfurt, Germany
December 29, 1920
Walter Sommers was born on December 29, 1920 in Frankfurt, Germany where his father owned a chain of specialty grocery stores. As German citizens, Walter’s father and uncles fought for Germany in World War I (1914-1918). He attended a public school where for one hour a week Jewish and Catholics students received separate religious instruction.
Sommers was 12 years old when Hitler was appointed the Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. He remembered how his parents, members of the Catholic Centre Party, thought Hitler might be able to bring “law and order” to the country. Things began to change in 1934 when Jewish students were “socially isolated” at school. Sommers was required to quit his field hockey team after the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.
In 1937 Sommers quit school and moved to Hamburg to work at an import/export firm. During the night of Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938 Sommers avoided arrest by staying at the house of some Romanian friends. Back in Frankfurt his family’s business was burned down. Sommers’ father was arrested and spent three to four weeks in a concentration camp. Early the next year the family managed to leave Germany for New York. Sommers got a job in an export business before joining the U.S. Army in August 1942.
After serving in the Pacific, Sommers eventually returned to New York where he met and married his wife. In 1947 the couple moved to Terre Haute, Indiana where they raised their two children.
In August 2016, the government of Germany awarded the 95-year-old Sommers with the Cross of the Order of Merit for his longtime service at the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute.
Parents:
Julius Sommers, survived
Mother, survived