In the last post we saw that four of the Baer siblings were in Baltimore by 1940: Paula, Fred, Klara, and Eugen.

After the war they were joined in Baltimore by their brother Arthur, his wife Erna Kraemer, and their son Eric(h), who had all spent that war years in England. We know that Arthur and his family had left Germany for England by September 29, 1939, because they are included on the England and Wales Register that was enumerated on that date.

In researching their son Eric Baer, who became a well-known scientist (more on that below), I found this quite comprehensive biography online at Grokipedia, an AI generated competitor to Wikipedia. The biography focuses primarily on Eric’s career, but includes this statement about his early life in England:

The Baers emigrated from Germany to England on August 28, 1939, just days before Britain’s declaration of war sealed further entry. In London, they endured the hardships of the Blitz, the sustained German bombing campaign from 1940 to 1941 that killed over 40,000 civilians and tested the resolve of recent refugees.

The source cited for this was just a family genealogy report, so I can’t vouch for its accuracy.  Wikipedia had this additional information about Eric’s early life:

Baer’s formal education began in the early spring of 1941 after the family’s move to England when he was approaching nine years of age.  He entered elementary school and was placed in classes with six-year-old children.  He quickly skipped grades and was accepted into the prestigious Church of England Dunstable Grammar School in the autumn in 1942.

Ship manifests¹ establish that Eric and his parents Arthur and Erna left England on December 19, 1947, two and a half years after the war ended when Eric was fifteen, and arrived in the US on December 24, 1947. They were traveling with Arthur’s cousin, Julius Baer and his wife. Arthur listed his occupation as a tool maker.

Arthur Baer and family, 1947 ship manifest, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715; RG Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; RG: 85, Ship or Roll Number: Queen Mary, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

By 1950 the family had settled in Baltimore where Arthur was working as a jobber in his own business, presumably acting as a middleman between manufacturers and importers and retail businesses selling their goods.²

Eric graduated from Baltimore City College in 1949 when he was only seventeen,  and then he received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in engineering in 1957. He worked for  E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company in Wilmington, Delaware, until 1962 when he joined the faculty of what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and he still is listed as a faculty member in the Case Western engineering department on their website. Eric has had a long and distinguished career in polymer science with an impressive resume of publications and a long list of patents.³

Eric Baer, Ph. D., By Salomedit – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98534378

On the personal side Eric married Ana Golender in 1956. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on January 11, 1934, to Miguel Golender and Fania Kritman. Eric and Ana had two children together.⁴

Eric’s father Arthur Baer died on November 11, 1978, at age 73.⁵ Arthur’s wife Erna outlived him by almost thirty years; she was 101 when she died on April 4, 2008.⁶ Eric Baer was widowed twice; his first wife Ana Golender died on December 11, 1995, when she was 61.⁷ He remarried in 1999, and his second wife,  Phyllis Anne Hiltner, was a colleague at Case Western in the polymer science field. Sadly, she died on September 6, 2010, at the age of 69.⁸ Eric has survived both his parents and his first two wives. On July 3, 2016, he married Jane Glaubinger.⁹

Isn’t this a remarkable story? A young boy is forced to leave his home in Germany with his parents when he was only seven years old. They escape to England, where he starts his formal schooling at age nine and is placed with a class of six year olds. But he soon catches up with students his age. Then at 15 he is uprooted again to come to the US, where he continues his education and ends up getting a Ph.D. from one of the best universities in the US by the time he is 25. And then he becomes a renowned scholar in his field, winning many accolades and obtaining many patents, while a professor at another top university. And it appears that even now in his nineties he continues to be a faculty member there.

This is just one small example of what Germany lost by its persecution of Jews. Not just the war and its reputation with the world, but people like Eric Baer, brilliant scientists who could have contributed to their society. Fortunately for Eric and for his students and colleagues and fellow scientists, he escaped to America, and we here in the US have been the beneficiaries of his work.

Today is Veterans Day. Although I despise the fact that countries go to war and that young men and women get killed or injured in those wars, I appreciate and mourn the sacrifices made by those soldiers. It is particularly awful when those wars are pointless and resolve nothing, as so many are and have been. But I am very grateful to all those soldiers from all the Allied countries who fought against and defeated Nazi Germany. I can’t imagine what would have happened if Hitler had won that war.