Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman (actually: Stephen Wechsler, born March 11, 1928 in New York City ) is an American journalist who lives in Germany.

Life

Stephen Wechsler was born the son of an art dealer and a librarian. His Jewish grandparents came from Odessa and from the Baltic. They had fled the late 19th century for fear of the anti-Jewish pogroms from Russia to the United States. 1942 changer member of the Young Communist League and in 1945 a member of the CPUSA. From 1945 to 1949 he studied at Harvard University economics and trade union history and graduated in 1949 with a diploma. He then worked at the request of the Communist Party as industrial workers, because there were too few Communists among the workers. In 1950 he was drafted into the U.S. Army, his unit was stationed in Bavaria. When it became known that he was a "linker", which he had not as necessary " confessed " to the hysterical times, he received the invitation to appear before a U.S. military court. On it was written officially to five years in prison. Then he deserted, swam on 12 August 1952 Linz on the Danube in the Soviet-occupied zone of Austria and came to the Soviet Army. After two weeks of interrogation, he came over Czechoslovakia in Potsdam, East Germany. There he was again two months in Soviet custody. To protect his family, who still lived in the U.S., he took on a new identity as Victor Grossman. Then he lived until 1954 in an open camp for Western deserters in Bautzen, where most western deserters were living. First worked as a transportation worker in VEB wagon Bautzen, and later as head of a club culture for deserters, where he then like the others learned a profession - Dreher in his case. From 1954 to 1958 he studied journalism at the Faculty of Journalism of Karl Marx University in Leipzig. By his own admission he is "the only one who has acquired both from Harvard and at the Karl Marx University, a diploma ". After graduation, he was an editor at the publishing house 1958 Seven Seas Publishers in Berlin. From 1959 to 1963 he was assistant at English German Democratic Report, a newspaper for the GDR foreign propaganda, which was published by the British journalist John Peet. From 1963 to 1965 he worked in the editorial department for North America at Radio Berlin International. 1965 to 1968 he headed the Paul Robeson Archive at the Academy of Arts of the GDR. From 1968 he is a freelance journalist, interpreter, translator and English teacher. He is involved in the German solidarity movement for the African-American journalist Mumia Abu -Jamal.

In 1994, he traveled for the first time in the United States. After a hearing, he was officially discharged from the U.S. Army. Grossman lives in Berlin. He still holds lectures, writes for various publications, is engaged in the Left Party. Among other things, he writes a blog comment in English for American readers who are interested in the German developments.

Writings (selection )

  • Hippo and stork. Children's book Verlag, Berlin, 1965
  • From Manhattan to California. From the history of the United States. Children's book publishing house, Berlin 1974
  • Hitchhiker's Guide to the United States. Berlin 1976
  • The way over the limit. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin, 1985
  • If I Had a Song - songs and singers of the United States. Song of Time, Berlin, 1988, ISBN 3-7332-0023-3
  • Crossing the River. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, Boston, 2003, ISBN 1-55849-385-9 ( Autobiogr. )
  • Madrid, you miraculous. An American flips in the history of the Spanish Civil War. GNN -Verlag, Schkeuditz, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89819-235-4
  • A Yank overlooks the GDR back, Spotless, Berlin, 2011, ISBN 978-3-360-02039-0
  • Rebel Girls: 34 American Women in Portrait, PapyRossa, 2012, ISBN 9783894385019
  • Crossing the River. From Broadway to the Karl -Marx -Allee: An Autobiography, published by Wiljo Heinen, Berlin and Böklund, 2014, ISBN 978-3-95514-015-1
Volkseigener Betrieb John Peet (1915–88) Integrated Authority File
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