Kurt always wore a leather jacket in Shanghai for his father was a furrier. This made him look so debonair, so Omar Sharif like and amplified his natural charisma.
He was the leading member of our street gang, and ever so street smart. We unscrewed brass bell and letterbox fittings, even from his own house, to trade on the street markets for goods we needed for our various hobbies. We were desperate to make a bomb, but the old chemist refused to sell us the saltpeter we needed. Instead, we purchased some carbide, put it in a tin, and soldered the tin shut. We connected a small tube to the top, and fitted a cock. On the roof garden of my house, in the 343 Ward Road Lane we prepared to launch it. We filled the tin with water, shut the valve, and waited. Sure enough, after about a minute, there was a mighty explosion, and the tin took off. If flew between us up and away, we never did find it. Neither of us lost our sight.
We shared our many porno photos, and terrorized the juniors at the Kadoorie school, as befitted our standing on the street. He eventually was apprenticed to a dental mechanic, I to a hand weaving factory. Most nights were spent on the street, with Ralph, our Russian-Jewish Friend, Rashid, our Sikh friend, and our Chinese friend and his sister. None of us joined the usual Betar or Habonim youth clubs, we made our own fun and adventure. There were others in our extended group, many others, but we were the nucleus.
After the end of the Pacific war, he emigrated (was repatriated) with his parents and sister to Israel, I went to Sydney. He told me of the time they spent at first in tents, and he in the army, until they re-emigrated to the USA.
I met him there, in his house in Queens, when I travelled to New York on business. He had a dental laboratory set up in his house, and an illegal practice in Harlem. Like some of us, perhaps most of us who lived on the streets in Shanghai, he was obsessed by the lure of the female of our species. We did not know it at the time, but growing up without any moral guidance and discipline from a functioning well ordered society and only taking our values from the streets of Shanghai turned us into a special breed of damaged youths.
He told me that he got disenchanted with the humdrum of the dentures and crowns he made to the order of the wealthy dentists, and studied, finishing up with a Master’s degree in psychology. He specialized in personnel vetting for a couple of large US Corporations.
He eventually separated from his wife, married Donna, and moved to Missouri. The last time I spoke to him by phone he was building a rock garden for their home. He, like most, if not all of us, had mellowed with age, and sought solace and happiness in simple jobs to bring joy to our partners and families in our mature years.
by Paul Berg, ex
Wagenberg,
his friend 1940 - 2010