Thursday, October 1, 2026
The most dramatic chapter of longtime Long Beach resident Kurt Reiner’s story begins in Vienna, where he and his wife, Hennie, lived in the late 1930s. Kurt was a scholar at the Technical Institute of Vienna, now known as TU Wien, and Hennie was a translator for an import-export firm. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, the couple knew it was time to leave.
“That was a time when the real havoc started,” their oldest son, Gary Reiner, who grew up in Long Beach, said. “My parents were on full alert.”
Kurt Reiner looked for many ways to escape to other countries, registering with the U.S. Consulate in Vienna, despite its annual quota of 29,000 immigrants. He also applied for refuge in other countries, including England, Mexico and Uruguay. To avoid being separated, the couple married on July 24, 1938, at the Stadttempel, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Vienna. It was a week before Germany disallowed Jewish marriages.
Less than four months later, on Nov. 9, 1938, Kurt was one of 10,000 Jewish men arrested on Kristallnacht and taken to Dachau, a concentration camp in Germany. He was released three months after that.
“It was before they were interested in the ‘Final Solution,’” Gary Reiner, 81, said of the Nazi regime. “If you could prove that you were able to leave Germany or Austria, they didn’t care.”
Over the next two years, Kurt and Hennie Reiner continued to face religious persecution. They traveled to Italy late in 1938, only to face the leggi razziali, or racial laws, established by the dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1939, after they crossed the area of the Mediterranean known as the Ligurian Sea from Ventimiglia, Italy to Marseille, France, Kurt was arrested for having a German passport. He was taken to Camp De Milles, a French internment camp.
After sending a telegram to Rabbi Simon Scheuyer, of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City — a Greek American woman gave Hennie the contact — the Reiners secured passage to the United States aboard the SS Champlain. They arrived in New York on May 26, 1940.
The couple lived in Long Beach for 50 years. They raised their three children, Gary, Michelle and Nancy, on Illinois Avenue in the West End, before moving to Harmon Street in the East End.
Kurt eventually became a senior engineer at the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Company and the now-defunct Republic Aviation Corporation. He was involved in developing the first Apollo lunar module, and was a principal design engineer for the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the F-84 Thunderjet, aircraft used in the Korean and Vietnam wars. Hennie worked as a beautician and in real estate.
Gary Reiner, who now lives in Rockville, Maryland, said he grew up without much insight into where his parents came from, because they never brought it up. “I knew they had accents and everything,” he said. “But as a young person, I looked at things from a very narrow vision in terms of my immediate environment.” In 1985, however, Gary had his chance to learn more.
His father died that year, but before he did, he asked Gary to finish his memoir, now titled “Counting on America,” which told the story of Kurt and Hennie’s journey from religious persecution to freedom. Hennie died in 2005.
The book was published by Authors Place Press in 2018, and will soon be the subject of a documentary by Citizen Film. Gary will present his parents’ story on Sunday at Temple Emanu-el, on Neptune Boulevard. The event is co-sponsored by the Long Beach Historical Society, and admission is free.
“These events motivate and inspire us to speak up against evil and violence,” Jack Zanerhaft, rabbi of Temple Emanu-el, in Long Beach, said. “To ensure moments like the Holocaust never happen again.”
Zanerhaft appreciated the opportunity to host Reiner and share his family’s story the day before Yom Hashoa — the Holocaust Rememberance Day which marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and commemorates Jewish deaths across Germany.
Temple Emanu-el will recognize Yom Hashoa on Sunday, the day before the traditional day of remembrance, with music, a candle lighting ceremony, and a keynote speech from Reiner.
Jeanne Brown, president of the historical society, noted the significance of having a Long Beach native return, and the relevance of his parents’ story.
“The subject matter is important for the historical society,” Brown said. “There were a lot of Jewish people who settled in Long Beach to escape the Holocaust. It’s an important part of our history.”
Today, Gary Reiner is a Holocaust educator, and a member of the Holocaust Commission of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Washington, D.C. His Facebook page, “Family Holocaust Education Through Family Stories, Documentaries and Videotapes,” has more than 61,000 followers. Asked what he hoped to achieve, he said it was about finishing what his father started.
“I didn’t become serious about my role to carry on my dad’s story until I wrote the book,” Reiner said. “I was selected to do it. I inherited his soul, in a sense.”
