Harry and Karin Arlin might have looked like any other suburban parents raising their two daughters in Huntington, but their backstories are something out of a film noir thriller.
Karin as a child, and Harry as a preteen, fled the Nazis in war-torn Europe and it was only through an indirect route full of hurdles did they escape death (for the “crime” of being Jewish) and wound up on Long Island living out the American Dream.
Harry’s Beginnings
Harry was born on July 24, 1927, in Brno, the second-largest city in Czechoslovakia. He was an only child and described his family as “middle class,” and “every middle-class family had a maid in those days,” Harry said.
His father was an accountant for an oil company and a promotion sent the family to Ostrava when Harry was three.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took control of Germany in 1933 and in 1938, they occupied Harry’s homeland.
“The antisemitism was so strong at that point that my father stopped going to the synagogue. And it was not a good idea to be seen in the vicinity of the synagogue,” Harry said.
“I was the only Jewish kid in my grammar school class. So our maid, who was Catholic, used to take me to church on Sunday and I was seen there by my classmates,” he said. “So they never bothered me.”
Fleeing the Nazis
“We got advanced notice what the Jews can expect from the Germans,” Harry said. “We heard from people who were in German concentration camp. In the beginning, the Germans rounded up Jewish men, put them in concentration camp and after a while, let them out, so they were telling us the abuse they received from the Germans.
“So my father decided, we gotta get out of here,” Harry said. “The problem was that no country in Europe would accept Jews, so my father bribed a priest and he gave us baptism certificates and with that piece of paper, we could get a visa to go to Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia at that time was still free.”
“Since we had to leave everything behind, my father lost all [his] money,” he said. They hocked his mother’s jewelry for money to live on.
Germany had initially occupied only part of Czechoslovakia and in 1939 annexed the rest. Harry and his parents just missed the advance and were on their way to Yugoslavia as it was happening.
The family settled in “a very small village in Slovenia” where “everybody knew everybody else,” so they took on personas as Catholics.
Not only did the family attend church every Sunday, but Harry learned the Mass in Latin “verbatim” and even served as an altar boy.
Italian Concentration Camp
“In 1941, Germany and Italy attacked Yugoslavia,” said Harry.
A 1938 law in Italy declared anyone born Jewish, regardless of a baptismal certificate, was still Jewish.
The Italian police paid them a visit and gave them a choice: go back from whence they came or go to an Italian concentration camp.
Harry’s father chose the latter.
The family was interned at Ferramonti di Tarsia, in Calabria, Italy.
“The camp, compared to Auschwitz, was a summer resort,” Harry said. “The Italians were humane. Nobody got killed; nobody got tortured.”
Their captors had actually built three synagogues and a church specifically for the families to use.
The British Army
At this point Harry was fluent in German, Italian, English and three Slavic languages.
“In 1943, we were liberated by the British Third Army,” he said. “The British were looking for interpreters. And I was 16 years old and I volunteered and they put me in a British uniform and they sent me to Bari,” he said.
His parents stayed in Ferramonti, which had become a displaced persons camp under Allied control.
After a stint in Naples, he was sent to England. He then went to Normandy, France, but it was several weeks after the Allied invasion.
From there he went to Holland, where he and his unit had the job of securing the port of Antwerp, which was a key location for the Allies and a target for the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge.
“The Germans never made it to the port because the Americans stopped them at Bastogne,” he said.
In 1944, Harry’s parents were allowed into the United States but were required to remain at Fort Ontario, a decommissioned Army base in Upstate New York.
Nazi Atrocities
On April 15, 1945, the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in northern Germany.
“We were in the vicinity of Bergen-Belsen so they put us on a truck, they drove us into the camp, and there we saw some 60,000 prisoners, like walking dead,” Harry said. “And 19,000 dead corpses laying around.
“When I got there, they had a British Army bulldozer pushing the corpses into a common grave because the smell was just terrible,” Harry said.
At 17, most boys are going to high school and chasing girls but at this time those things were insignificant and would have to wait for another day.
Instead, Harry witnessed some of the worst war crimes in world history with the attempted genocide of his people, and the senior prom was the farthest thing from his mind.
“I still have nightmares about that,” he said.
Karin’s Beginnings
Karin was born on Feb.18, 1932 in Berlin, Germany, but her family moved to the Netherlands a year later.
Her father was an aeronautical engineer at Lufthansa but had to look for work elsewhere. Why didn’t he just stay at Lufthansa? “He couldn’t. He was a Jew,” said Karin.
“Then the war came; the Germans invaded Holland,” she said.
She, her parents, and her older brother were living in a small town outside The Hague.
“As foreign Jews, we had to go away from the seashore and move to Eindhoven,” Karin said. “So we lived in Eindhoven for about four or five months because that was wartime and they started to hound the Jews.”
“I remember the German soldiers in Holland marching in the streets, and general fear of what happened to the Jews,” she said. “My mother talked about Poland.”
“And from what I understand, my father’s [former] boss came to Holland and warned him to move the children out. ‘Get them out of Holland as fast as you can,’” she said.
“So the next day, […] my father said to me, ‘You’re going to America tomorrow.’”
She didn’t say goodbye to anyone, and just as Harry did, left everything behind, when she, her brother, and her aunt left for the New World.
Well, almost everything. She took her most prized possession, a Dutch children’s book featuring Bolke the Bear.
They almost didn’t make the connecting flight out of Munich because they were told, “No Jews and no dogs.” However, Karin’s aunt “made a big fuss” and got them out of the country.
Karin’s parents were ordered to stay behind because her father would be working in a factory in France for the Germans, although that never happened.
There were several stops, including ones in Spain, Cuba, and Massachusetts, but eventually they wound up in Forest Hills, Queens, and were reunited with her parents.
Although she was still quite young, “I was old enough to be very afraid and to be very happy when we arrived here,” Karin said.
Post War
After World War II ended, Harry remained in the service and returned to Czechoslovakia, where he was a military policeman for six months.
Next stop was in Prague, working in the motion picture industry, followed by a move to the US.
After a 24-hour flight with multiple stops in several countries, he reunited with his parents in Astoria, Queens after three years. This was his first time on an airplane.
Harry was in the US for three months – and not yet a citizen – when he received a letter from the Selective Service System saying he must register for the draft.
He was told if he enlisted in the US Army Reserves, he could choose where he wanted to serve. He picked the Signal Corps. He was already working in the film camera rental department at Willoughby’s in Manhattan, which was the B&H of its day.
Korea
As a reservist, Harry got called up for the Korean War. He was never deployed overseas but was sent to Ft. Monmouth, N.J., to teach combat cameramen how to make emergency repairs to their Eyemos, which were lightweight, handheld movie cameras used to shoot combat footage.
A Jack of All Trades
Harry learned several more trades over the years, including typewriter and business machine repair but saw electronics was the future, and attended RCA Institute in Greenwich Village which led to a job with Western Union, working on teletype machines.
Western Union was commissioned by Delta Airlines to build its first, international computer system for payroll. They built the thing using telephone relays, which were very slow.
After taking classes at Queens College for engineering, Harry became a draftsman, eventually working for Gyrodyne, which made drone helicopters for the US Navy. They were used to rescue downed pilots behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War.
The military actually had drone technology back then, but it was so bad, that “they lost too many in the war,” and the Department of Defense did not renew the contract, resulting in hundreds of layoffs.
Except Harry.
He had multiple skills that transversed several departments, so they kept him on until he quit after 10 years in 1972.
A Marriage Made in Staten Island
“Harry and I met at a gathering for […] European immigrants,” said Karin.
Specifically, it was a picnic in Staten Island for young, German Jews arranged by a German-Jewish newspaper.
As with many successful marriages, one of the pair wasn’t game at first.
“I was not interested,” said Karin. “I had come off a very unhappy love affair with somebody and I was not interested in finding a new boyfriend. But at the end of the day, Harry was trying to catch my attention.”
He was and it worked, although at first Karin wasn’t sure a typewriter repairman with no formal education was husband material.
They were married in 1954 and celebrated their platinum anniversary this year.
In addition to their two daughters, they have four grandchildren and a cat named Katyushka.
Huntington
When the Arlin family first relocated to Long Island, they landed in Levittown and then Commack. It was there Harry and Karin started a printing business out of a rented, two-car garage.
The business continued to grow and eventually Shortstop Printing had several presses, its own building (which Harry owned and added a top floor to), and 20 employees.
He sold the business in 1986 but still owned the building.
By the 1990s, just about every skill Harry had was obsolete.
“Today, everything that my printshop was doing I can do right here on my computer,” he said. Karin added, “He managed to survive quite nicely.”
Karin felt “Commack was alright, but Commack was not a town, it’s a conglomeration of houses” and “I always thought Huntington was upper class, kind of nice, where nice people lived” and that’s where they made their home for 40 years.
Harry has been active in the Jewish War Veterans for 30 years and was commander of Suffolk County Post 488 in Huntington.
As many retirees do, the Arlins downsized and now reside in a luxury, senior-living apartment building in Roslyn, which has several amenities specifically for seniors.
Karin recalled when she first heard Harry’s story early on.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this guy’s something special.’ And he turned out to be something special.”
Harry is indeed something special. And so is Karin.
Caption:Ninety-six-year-old Harry Arlin holds a photo of himself in the British Army circa 1943 and his wife, 92-year-old Karin, holds the one possession she took with her when escaping the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands as a child. Photo by Dave Paone
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