“From Refugee to Interrogator: The Wartime Experience of Paul Raber”

On view May 12 – November 12, 2023, on the 3rd Floor.

Paul Raber was born in 1912 in Vienna, Austria to Jewish parents. His father owned a paint manufacturing shop, where Paul worked.

When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the lives of the Rabers changed immutably. Paul and his family were fortunate; they were able to flee to New York, where they established a new paint manufacturing shop.

In 1943, Paul joined the U.S. military as an intelligence officer as part of a group known as the “Ritchie Boys”, so named because of their training at Fort Ritchie in Maryland. At the end of the war, Paul served in Germany as an interrogator of Nazi prisoners. In 1946, Paul returned to the United States where he started a family and resumed his work in the paint and pigment industry before retiring to North Miami Beach, Florida, where he lived until his death in 1995.

This exhibition features photographs, archives, and artifacts donated to the Museum by Paul’s daughter, Susan Nolan.