Bobby’s Oral History 

Following are a few recorded interviews, together with notes from our conversations, edited by Bobby and by me.  Listening, you will hear the story of two young people who escaped to England in the 1930’s, met and returned together to Vienna in 1946 before Bobby’s birth in 1948.  You will learn how they got out and why they came back, about their work, their lives and their politics, and you will hear about Bobby’s grandmother who survived the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and lived with them.  You will learn about Bobby’s years in grammar school and at the University of Vienna, about his growing interest in the sciences,  his graduate studies, his teaching and working years as a physicist, and about his own family.  You will begin to know who Bobby is.  

There is something familiar about Bobby, like a brother or a cousin, despite the significant differences between us, and there is something hauntingly familiar about Austria.  Interviewing him I thought might explain these impressions to me.  They did and they did not.  

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