ERNEST LOWE
Ernest Lowe (original name Ernst Löwy) was born in 1917 at his grandparents’ home in the village of Volenice, Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). He grew up and attended school in Vienna, where his father managed lumber and manufacturing businesses.
He was studying engineering at the Technical University in Vienna when conditions for Jewish residents became increasingly difficult and he was forced to leave school. Following the Kristallnacht riots, his family decided to leave for the United States. They were able to secure visas through the assistance of relatives in the US and escaped shortly before the borders closed to emigration. The rest of their extended family who remained in Europe were killed during the Holocaust.
Ernest, along with his parents and sister, settled initially in New York, where Ernest worked for an electronics firm making radios for the military. During that time, he met and married Valerie Ernei, a refugee from Slovakia who had survived the war in hiding and lost most of her family during the Holocaust.
In 1943, Ernest was inducted into the US Army. While in training, he became an American citizen. He served in a field artillery unit in Europe under famed General George Patton, and was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge near the end of the war. His military unit participated in the liberation of Germany and met with Russian forces entering from the east.
After being discharged at the end of the war in 1945, Ernest was recruited to work as a translator and investigator for the prosecution in the Nuremberg military war crimes tribunals. That was based on his European background and his fluency in several languages.
When his work in Nuremberg concluded in 1948, Ernest was recruited by the US Army Counterintelligence Corps to work in the post-war occupation of Austria. He was stationed in Braunau am Inn, as part of a unit that interrogated refugees, former military officers, and others who had information of military value. The unit later relocated to Camp McCauley, the US Army base near Linz, and then disbanded at the end of the occupation in 1955. During those years in Austria, his two sons (Cary and Dean) were born.
Upon leaving Austria, Ernest took an intelligence position at US Air Force Europe Headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany. In 1961, wishing to have his children grow up in the United States, Ernest transferred to an Air Force intelligence unit at a base near Boston, Massachusetts. Finally, near the end of his career, he worked with the Boeing Aircraft Company on the development of military surveillance airplanes.
After retiring in 1977, Ernest and his wife moved to Southern California, where he lived until his death in 1987.
VALERIE LOWE
Valerie Lowe (original name Valerie Ernei) was born in 1921 in Zilina, Slovakia. Her father owned grocery stores in that town and later became a salesman for a manufacturing company. Valerie’s mother had a home business selling cosmetics. After graduation from high school, Valerie became an apprentice to a dressmaker and planned to study fashion in Paris. The onset of World War II disrupted those plans.
When Nazi occupiers began to detain Jewish residents in 1942, Valerie and her older sister Magda left Zilina and went into hiding with families who were part of a network of Baptists aiding Jewish refugees. Valerie spent two years living with a family in Poprad while Magda hid with a family in a nearby town. Eventually it became too dangerous to remain there, so the two sisters fled and walked over the Dumbier Mountains in mid-winter to Banska Bystrica, where they joined the Slovak Uprising against the Nazis. When the uprising was put down, the sisters fled again and Valerie found refuge with the family of a friend in a village in the Tatra Mountains.
After Russian troops liberated Slovakia, Valerie returned to Zilina, where she learned that her parents and her oldest sister, all of whom had remained behind, had been killed during the Holocaust. Valerie rejoined Magda, who had married a Czech doctor and was living in Karlovy Vary. They were able to contact an aunt living in the United States. With her assistance, the three of them were able to immigrate to New York in 1946.
Valerie resumed her work in dressmaking. In New York, she met and married Austrian immigrant Ernest Lowe. When he was offered a staff position at the Nuremberg military war crimes tribunals, she returned to Europe with him. They moved to Austria and then back to Germany, as he worked for various US military intelligence agencies. During the time in Braunau am Inn, Austria, their two sons were born.
In 1961, Valerie and her family moved to the Boston area. While her husband worked at a nearby military base, she established what became a successful custom dressmaking business with a clientele that included many well-known families. When her husband’s work took them to the Seattle area, she reestablished her business there.
They eventually both retired and moved to Southern California. During the time they lived there, she was interviewed on television about her wartime experiences and spoke about them at local schools. She remained there until her death in 1997.