H. Frank Brull papers

H. Frank Brull (1921-2011) was born Hans Franz Bruell in Berlin to Victor and Ellen Bruell, and lived with his parents in that city until the age of 12. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 and began implementing anti-Jewish measures, his parents sent him to live with a relative in New York, with a cousin of his mother's. When that arrangement did not work out, and he was on the verge of being sent back to Germany, the wife of Rabbi Stephen Wise arranged for Brull to live with a foster parent in New York. Brull's father was arrested after Kristallnacht and sent to Dachau, but following his release, he and Brull's mother obtained visas for Australia and emigrated there, where Brull did not see them again until the late 1940s. By that time, he had served in the U.S. Army in military intelligence, interrogating captured German prisoners-of-war. Following the war, he remained in Europe, serving as an aid worker with UNRRA. Upon returning to the United States, he attended City College in New York, earning a bachelor's degree, and then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a master's degree in social work. His career as a social worker took him first to Minneapolis, and then Chicago, where he worked at Jewish Children's Services, and then for thirty years as a social worker at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.