User:Bestproofreader/Dr. Oscar Kully Reiss

Dr Oscar Kully Reiss

By Paul Loeffler

Dr. Oscar Kully Reiss was born in Bad Duerkheim, Germany in 1921, the oldest of three children in a Jewish family that later settled in the suburbs of Munich.

He attended a parochial school until the government forced Jewish children into segregated schools. As Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power picked up momentum, life got progressively more and more difficult for a now-teenaged Oscar.

“The Hitler Youth started to really harass me,” Reiss remembers, adding that other Jewish students suffered the same abuse. “They’d throw snowballs at us that had rocks in them.”

They also let the air out of his bicycle tires, and he even remembers being threatened at knife point to hand over math tests to Hitler Youth students who couldn’t match his intellect. In 1937, his parents made what would prove to be a life-saving decision for their oldest child. They told 16-year-old Oscar, who spoke zero English, to leave his family behind and seek an education in the United States.

Relatives in the U.S. had connections at the National Farm School (now Delaware Valley University) in Doylestown, PA, and Oscar enrolled there, majoring in dairy science. “What helped me with my English was that the head of floriculture had earned his degree at Heidelberg University and was fluent in German.”

Reiss went on to be inducted in the U.S. Army, after being taken to a judge to grant him instant citizenship. He served in the 79th Infantry in Germany, earning a Silver Star for gallantry and Purple Heart for being wounded, among other medals.

Returning to the United States, he used the G.I. Bill to go on to college and earn his PhD. He's credited with many medical inventions and was involved in the discovery of the PSA blood test, now commonly used to detect the presence of prostate cancer.

http://www.hometownheroesradio.com/survivor-soldier-scientist/