Joseph Winkler memoir

Consists of one memoir, 660 pages, untitled, by Joseph Winkler, originally born in Sambor, Galicia, in 1903. The memoir was dictated in August 1974 and transcribed. In his memoir, Mr. Winkler describes his childhood, life under Russian occupation during World War I, and seeing his town become Polish territory. He got a job at a petroleum refinery in Drohobycz in 1927, received his doctorate in chemistry, and met and married Eugenia (Genia) Weidenfeld, with whom he had a daughter, Lili. He describes the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and life under the Russian occupation. After the Germans invaded in 1941, Dr. Winkler separated from his wife and daughter and fled into Russia, where he worked until the end of the war. In the summer of 1944, he returned to Drohobycz to discover that his Genia and Lili had been killed in 1942. In October 1944, he married Aniela (Nellie) Lurie and immigrated back to Poland. As a refinery expert, he viewed the IG Farben plant in Auschwitz immediately after the liberation of the camp. Nellie gave birth to a daughter, Maria, in 1945, and Joseph went to the United States as a Polish representative to try to convince Polish scientists to return to Europe. He returned briefly to Poland and immigrated with Nellie and Maria to the United States in 1947, living first in New Jersey, and then in California. Joseph and Nellie had a son, John, in 1953. Also includes a family tree.