"Born on December 10, 1921 to a Jewish furrier family in Vienna, he was taunted for his Jewish heritage on the streets and by schoolmates. "You had to live with it, and it got worse under the Nazis," he once recalled. Troller's father however ensured he got a good education and made him read all the classics; he knew the words to the Faust monologue by heart."
"In 1941, he secured an American visa in Marseilles, and was drafted into the US military service in 1943. As the Allied troops advanced through occupied France and Nazi Germany, he served as an interpreter in interrogating German prisoners of war."
""Back then, I never heard the word 'liberation,'" Troller often said in interviews, adding that freedom and democracy weren't even part of the German way of thinking. "They all admired our jeeps, the walkie-talkies. No wonder you won the war, with that equipment, they would say," he said in a 2005 TV interview with German public broadcaster WDR."
Georg Stefan Troller was born in Vienna in 1921 to a Jewish furrier family and endured antisemitic taunts that worsened under Nazi rule. He trained as a bookbinder but fled the Nazis at 16 via Czechoslovakia to France, carrying Karl Kraus' The Last Days of Mankind. He obtained an American visa in Marseilles in 1941 and was drafted into US military service in 1943. As Allied forces advanced, he worked as an interpreter interrogating German prisoners of war and assisted during the liberation of Dachau. He spent the rest of his life in Europe as a writer and reporter famous for unconventional TV interviews. He died on September 27 at age 103.
Read at www.dw.com
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