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Werner Tom Angress, German-Jewish refugee, WWII veteran, and influential history professor, died July 5, 2010 in Berlin. He was 90.

Born in Berlin in 1920, the son of a banker, Werner Angress was initially a German patriot. His nationalism was increasingly challenged by a growing awareness of the Nazi agenda.

Miserable at high school under the National Socialist regime, Werner quit and joined Gross Breesen, an agricultural training program designed to prepare Jewish youth for emigration. His character was shaped profoundly by this organization and by the leader of the program: Curt Bondy. He found a community with his fellow farming apprentices, which lasted for the rest of his life. He was awarded a nickname, Toepper (klutz), which stuck with him, as well (and which was well-deserved).

In 1937 the family fled Germany, but a last-minute plane cancellation forced them to split up. The police issued an arrest warrant for the entire family and sent telegrams to key border crossings. Awoken on a train at the Dutch border, Angress’s dazed condition helped him lie convincingly when he assured Gestapo agents that his father was still in Berlin. Because the warrant was for a family of five, they let him go.

After a brief stay in London, the family settled in Amsterdam, where Angress and a friend successfully petitioned for the release from Buchenwald of recently arrested Gross Breeseners. 

In 1939, leaving his family behind, he emigrated to Hyde Farmlands in Virginia, where department store magnate William B. Thalhimer had purchased a farm for the Gross Breesen settlement project. As shareholders in a U.S. farm, Breeseners were eligible to apply for non-quota immigration status; this was Thalhimer’s strategy for getting them safely out of Europe.

Following the German invasion of the Netherlands, Angress lost contact with his family. His father was arrested, and later murdered at Auschwitz. His mother and two brothers, aided by the Dutch Resistance, went underground.

In 1941 he joined the US Army and trained as an interrogator at Camp Ritchie (subject of the documentary The Ritchie Boys, in which he was featured). He was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. Despite having never jumped before, he proceeded with special authorization from General Jim Gavin to make his first jump into Normandy on D-Day. He was dropped far off target. Captured, he hid both his Jewish and German identities until 12 days later when his guards abandoned the camp in the face of the Allied advance.

He interrogated German prisoners at the French front lines and later at the Battle of the Bulge, consistently ignoring his training officer’s insistence that he shout at and berate prisoners. His quiet, even friendly interrogations were highly effective, and on occasion he was asked to report results directly to General Gavin. In recent years he was dismayed at the US military’s use of torture, which he viewed as immoral and ineffective.

In May 1945 his division liberated the concentration camp at Wöbbelin and required townspeople and SS officers to attend a funeral for the victims. Later that month, Angress received permission from General Gavin to look for his family. He was one of the first two American GIs into newly-liberated Amsterdam, where he found his mother and brothers. His mother, who did not know he was a soldier, fainted when he appeared.

During his time in the army he was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service as well as the Purple Heart. He was characteristically modest about these accomplishments.

After the war, Angress was accepted to Wesleyan University, despite never having finished high school. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in history and went on to earn his Ph.D. at Berkeley. He taught modern European history at Wesleyan and Berkeley, and then for twenty-five years at SUNY Stony Brook. He served on the Board of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of the History and Culture of German-Speaking Jewry for three decades.

Angress was a deeply committed teacher. He was awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the History Department Outstanding Professor Award and many of his students ultimately became close friends.

Along with many articles, he published three books: Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-1923 (Princeton, 1963); Between Fear and Hope: Jewish Youth in the Third Reich (Columbia, 1988); and …immer etwas abseits: Jugenderinnerungen eines judischen Berliners, 1920-1945 (Edition Hentrich, 2005).

In 1988 he retired to Berlin, where he spoke frequently at schools and memorial sites about his youth under the Nazis. It was important to him to be useful, and his retirement was as busy and fruitful as his academic career. In retirement, he continued to mentor students, and to use his skills as a teacher and writer to intervene on behalf of disenfranchised groups, including Turkish immigrants in Germany and East Germans after reunification.

Werner, then Tom, then Grandpa Tom, was a complex person known for his loving heart, his short fuse, his deep intelligence, his tenderness, his sense of humor, and his ability to love many kinds of people with his own brand of skeptical, amused, open-minded tolerance. He knew how to listen. He was beloved.  

He is mourned by his immediate family, including four children and five grandchildren, two brothers and an extended family of students, colleagues, and friends.