“Indeed many became American solely on the strength of their experiences as Holocaust victims; for them, the Holocaust was the beginning of their becoming American, making the Holocaust an essentially American experience.” — James E. Young
Upon his arrival in the United States on July 26, 1946, Peter was met at a dock on the Hudson River by his grandmother, Flora, with whom he first lived with in Manhattan, her daughter, Anneli, and Anneli’s husband, Joseph Blumberg, whom had emigrated together from France to the United States in 1941. Peter worked various jobs until shortly after his eighteenth birthday, he joined the U. S. Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Due to his extensive language fluency, he was assigned to T-2 intelligence. The technical knowledge he gained there by analyzing and translating captured German aeronautical documents during his three-year enlistment would be key to his future success. In the decades following his Air Force service, Peter moved through careers in several parts of the U.S., including a highly successful position in military equipment sales for the U.S. Department of Defense.
At the time of Peter’s interview with the USC Shoah Foundation in 1997, he and his now deceased wife Leonie, also a Holocaust survivor whose family arrived in America the day after Kristallnacht, had two daughters, Joyce and Michele, and two grandsons. Retiring with Leonie in Palm City, Florida, Peter dedicated much of his time sharing with area youths and teachers his experiences during the Holocaust, and, as fate would have it, he was reunited with his first diary. They moved to Maryland in 2016, where Peter continued to share his wartime experiences as a survivor volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and at educational venues in the United States and abroad. Both diaries are now part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s collection.