Frank Werner Kussy lived by his own definition of courage. “The right choice is always the hardest choice,” he said when recalling the details of his tumultuous past. Kussy survived three years of imprisonment in the Nazi Holocaust and is among the few who survived the horrors of internment at the Auschwitz death camp. At 99, he is among the oldest survivors of Auschwitz. A 2005 German court ruling in his favor set a precedent as the only Holocaust survivor who successfully made a claim for reparations against the Nazis and the East German Communists.
Kussy died of natural causes on Oct. 1. He was 99 and lived in Farmington, Mich.
Kussy was born Oct. 13, 1910 in Dresden, Germany. He grew up in Weimar Germany raised in a Bohemian Jewish family. His father founded Rheostadt, a leading German technological company, which manufactured sophisticated electrical apparatuses. Kussy completed a PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Vienna, and ran the company with his brother when the Nazis ascended to power.
Kussy was first arrested by the Nazis during the Kristallnacht and later released due to his family’s Austro-Hungarian citizenship. He escaped Germany with his mother and brother in 1939, and made it as far as Amsterdam, when war broke out. Stranded in Holland, Frank met Adelaide Aleven, a Dutch Catholic schoolteacher who was active in the resistance movement, and helped find hiding for his family. Kussy and his mother and brother were discovered in 1942 in the small coastal town Bussum and incarcerated in Camp Westerbork. He was imprisoned at Thersienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Auschwitz Gleiwitz, and was liberated from Blechhammer, also a subcamp of Auschwitz. Kussy eventually lost his entire family to the Nazi death machine.
In 1945, as a refugee in the Ukraine, he did the unthinkable – he returned to Germany to reclaim his father’s factory. Aleven joined him, and they married in December that year, and soon started a family. As a Jewish industrialist, in 1953 he received a tip that he was on a list to be arrested. He fled East Germany with his wife and two small children. “My crazy life,” he would say with a smile when he spoke of that time.
He was offered a job at Square D and immigrated to Detroit, Michigan in 1954, making national news headlines with his arrival on American soil. “Man Leaves Fortune for Freedom,” were among those he clipped in a scrapbook. Kussy was immensely proud of his work ethic. “I arrived in Detroit on a Sunday night, and I went to work on Monday morning.” He converted to Catholicism that year, but remained somewhat cryptic about his faith.
As an American citizen, Kussy successfully rose to prominence in his field at Square D in Detroit. He retired from Gould in Baltimore, and continued to work as a consulting engineer for a decade. IEEE named him an engineering fellow. He holds over 60 patents and authored three technological books. In the 1980s he volunteered with International Service Corps and worked in Egypt and Zimbabwe assisting in the development of electrical equipment.
He spoke for the first time publicly about his internment at Michigan State University in 1995 and returned several times to speak to students.
After 50 years of diligent fighting for reparations of his family business, in 2005 he won a settlement against the German government, a personal victory though the settlement equated to a fraction of the business’s original value before Nazi occupation. In this action, he sought some kind of vengeance for the deaths of his mother, brother and sister, he said.
Kussy had a zest for life, with a great love for travel, family, friends and laughter. He spoke with a booming voice with a strong German accent. He loved to take long walks and talk politics and he took great delight in afternoon ice coffee and desserts of his childhood — apfel streudel and other Bohemian treats. He took his granddaughter to the same places, such at the North Cape in Norway, which he had visited with his older brother Viktor in the 1920s. Telling stories about life before and after the holocaust was an essential part of his personality, and as he aged, he grew more fervent about repeating these stories.
His survivors include son Edward and daughter Henriette, two grandchildren, one great-grand child, one great-nephew and one great-great nephew. He is predeceased by his wife Ada. Visitation 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tues. at the Heeney-Sundquist Funeral Home, 23720 Farmington Rd., Farmington. Funeral services 10 a.m. Wed. Our Lady of Fatima, 13500 Oak Park Blvd., Oak Park.
Please direct memorial tributes to the Frank and Adelaide Kussy Memorial Scholarship for the Study of the Holocaust, University Advancement Michigan State University, 300 Spartan Way, East Lansing, MI 48824-1005. Checks can be made out to Michigan State University or by credit card https://www.givingto.msu.edu/gift/, keyword Kussy.
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Tuesday 18 January 2011
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