Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman was born 1928 in New York, NY as Steve Wechsler. Growing up in the leftist NYC atmosphere of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s he was politically active at Harvard (1945-1949). His political convictions led him to work in two factories in Buffalo (USWA) until getting drafted in 1951. Luckily sent to Germany not Korea, but unluckily having his leftist past discovered (concealed out of fear of the McCarran Act) and facing up to five years in military prison, he deserted – swimming across the Danube from the US Zone to the Soviet Zone in Austria. The Soviets sent him to the East German Democratic Republic, where he took on the new name (to protect his parents), worked briefly in a factory, became a journeyman lathe-operator, studied journalism for four years, married and moved to East Berlin, where he became first director of a Paul Robeson Archive, then a freelance journalist, lecturer, film subtexter and author, mostly about US history (in German) but, in English, his autobiography (Crossing the River, U. of Mass. Press). He is now completing a new book in English. His very wonderful wife for 54 years died in 2009; he has two sons and three grandchildren.