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Note: Leo was politically active before Hitler's rise to power, and he was in double jeopardy because of that, and the fact he was Jewish. Until about 1936 he thought, like many people in Germany, that the Nazis would not last. However in late 1937, the Stormtroopers came to our house on Mozartstrasse in Heilbronn looking for him. My mother Frieda, was home by herself, and she told them he was in the Hospital suffering from Appendicitis. They tore up some things, took some books and left. My mother had prearranged to get a signal to my father, who was visiting customers of his tobacco business. When she reached him he checked into a clinic, where the doctors were aware of the situation and covered for him.
While in the hospital, one of the top Nazis in Heilbronn (who "coincidentally was in the tobacco wholesale business) visited us and said that if he could get a large order he would take my father off the "list". It was done, and it was after that when we started looking into getting out of Germany. Early in 1938 we had begun arrangements to go to Holland. Frieda and my Aunt Betty actually went to the Hague to rent apartments. Arrangements were being made to move in June, things were packed, when then Queen Wilhelmina closed Holland to all immigration. Near panic set in, and we looked for any country that would let us in. This turned out to be Italy, where we went in July of 1938. That November was the infamous CrystallNight in Germany, where Jews were attacked, synagogues burned and businesses smashed. We missed it by very little. When the leader of Italy, Mussolini got too friendly with Hitler, he demanded the exit of all Jews. With the help of the Fuller family we applied for a visa to the USA, but the Quota for German Jews was filled up, and we took advantage of the opportunity to get to Cuba. We were there 16 months, before finally going to Philadelphia. Leo felt that the Fuller family had done enough, and chose not to settle in St. Louis,Mo. because of that. In Philadelphia he did whatever was necessary to earn a modest living, from going door to door selling Coffee, working in a knitting mill and working as a general all-purpose employee for the Blum Store in Phila. well into his Eighties. He enjoyed smoking a half adozen cigars a day right up to his death at the age of 91 in 1976.
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