Harry Lindauer papers

Heinz S. Lindauer (1918-2006) was born in 1918, the son of Karl Lindauer (1880-1969) and Emma Östreich Lindauer (1884-1974). The Lindauer family settled in Buttenhausen, Germany in 1787, one of twenty-five Jewish families who received the right to do so from Freiherr Philipp Friedrich von Liebenstein. Karl Lindauer and his brothers established a cigar factory in town. The family home, store, and factory were all adjacent and located close to St. Michael’s church, the steeple of which was funded by the Jewish community. Emma Oestreich was a pediatric nurse who had come to Buttenhausen from Seligstadt to care for a newborn in the Lindauer family. Their daughter Lotte Gretel was born in 1914.

While maintaining the Lindauer home and business in Buttenhausen, in 1930 the immediate family moved to Darmstadt. There Heinz completed his high school studies and then apprenticed at a banking firm until 1935. Actively involved in local sports clubs, he won a number of prizes. A badge that he received for cycle racing was rescinded just days later as he was informed that the event was only open to cyclists of Aryan descent. After receiving this notification, Heinz began trying to make arrangements to emigrate. A cousin, Philip Reinauer, who lived in Chicago supplied an affidavit for Heinz, and he left Germany in July 1936. Emma Lindauer made every effort to convince other family members to emigrate, and all of the relatives were able to evacuate their children. Lotte left for the U.S. in 1937, and Karl and Emma were finally able to leave for London in 1939. After the Blitz they were evacuated to the Scottish Highlands and in 1943 were able to join their children in Chicago.

Heinz, now Harry, was drafted into the Army in March 1941, one of Chicago’s first draftees. He served on the West Coast and in Alaska until 1944. After graduating from Officers' Candidate School, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Transportation Corps. Harry was a translator and prisoner-of-war interrogator on the staff of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. After the war, he helped establish denazification procedures for the city of Nuremberg and assisted the civil-military governing authority until his discharge in January 1946. He was awarded the Bronze Star.

After returning to Chicago, he met Thea Kahn, also a refugee from Nazi Germany. They married in 1946. Harry worked for Pabst Brewing Co. before he rejoined the Army in 1951 and worked in intelligence in Korea. Making the military his career, he was stationed in Japan, Germany and Vietnam, where he received a second Bronze Star with an Oak Leaf Cluster and the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Gold Star.

The Lindauers moved to Annapolis in 1967, and he retired in 1970 from his last post at the Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird in Baltimore. The Lindauers volunteered at the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing and Information Center in Baltimore. They championed the construction of the Naval Academy All-Faith Chapel in 1980 and the Academy's Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel which opened in 2005. A lamp which had been rescued from the Buttenhausen Synagogue on Kristallnacht and left at the Lindauer home was preserved by the family and donated to the chapel.

Col. Lindauer’s decorations also included the Commander's Cross of the Federal Order of Merit, awarded in 1988 by the German government in recognition of his efforts to facilitate German-American friendship during his military career and as a civilian including designing a Judaism and Holocaust study program for German 10th-grade students.

Harry and Thea Lindauer had three children, a son, David, and two daughters, M. Joan Gregory and Robin Lang of Severn. Harry Lindauer passed away in 2006.