Early Life
Arno Allen Penzias was born April 26, 1933, in Munich, Germany, the eldest son of Karl and Justine Eisenreich Penzias. He had one brother, Gunther. His father was a self-employed leather broker. The close-knit, middle-class family lived a rather com fortable life in Adolf Hitler's pre-World War II Germany. However, in 1938, when Penzias was six years old, the Nazis deported Jews of Polish origin, including the Penzias family, to that country. (Penzias's grandfather was born in Poland, so the Nazis re fused to recognize the family's German citizenship.) When the family arrived at the border, they were told that that Poland's deadline for accepting immigrants had transpired. The Penzias family was sent back to Germany, a circumstance that most likely sa ved their lives. According to Penzias, the Polish Jews who had arrived on time were placed in an open enclosure where more than half froze to death.
Once back in Munich, Karl Penzias sought ways to get his family safely out of the country and, hopefully, into the United States. In the first step of their journey, they made it to England. The British government accepted 10,000 Jewish children, in cluding Arno and Gunther, on humanitarian grounds and Penzias's parents later acquired the necessary paperwork to enter the country.
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