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About Steve Schanzer's Website In the late 1960’s, when my family was living in New Jersey, my father and mother would periodically record and send audio tapes to my Dad's sister, Susan Aldor, in New York. I think Dad liked doing this because it was a “new” technology; the audio cassette tape had just arrived on the market in 1966. I imagine at the time sending a tape was less expensive than a p hone call. In 1970 at the age of 15, my brother, Thomas, had his own tape recorder. Tom believes that he began recording our Grampa Steve's stories at the request of either our mom, Doris, or Steve himself. The interviews and audio recording began on January 1, 1970. Many, if not all of the interviews took place at the home of our parents, then living in Boulder, Colorado. Tom and Grampa Steve finished on June 22, 1971 after a year and a half and four separate sessions. Tom has some recollection of Steve reading from handwritten papers, but at this point we are uncertain of the location of these papers. To Tom's surprise, thirty three years later (2003) the old magnetic tapes were still intact and he was able to transfer Steve's voice to a set of four CDs. In 2005 and 2006, I transcribed Steve's World War One and World War Two stories verbatim, adding photo's, cultural and historical footnotes for clarity. As we were living in Belgium until July of 2008, and France is not far away, I chose to begin research on Steve's WWII story first. With the help of my French speaking friends, Susan Kent and Olivia Perilleux, we located each village and city that he mention s in the story. Susan and Olivia were also instrumental in clarifying Steve's French. Julie McDermott was a fun and wonderfully pat ient companion who traveled with me by car along the route that Steve described. Many of the photo's in this site were taken during t hose voyages. The main portrait of Steve was taken by Ferenc Berko in Aspen. Grampa Steve's World War I adventure is much longer and more complicated. It is about Steve’s life as a young man in Vienna and France, how he joined the Austro-Hungarian war effort in 1914, was captured and exiled in Siberia Russia. To research the camps where Steve was held prisoner, my courageous friend, Bonnie Frantz, joined me for a three week excursion from Moscow to Vladivostok in the summer of 2007. With the aid of several translators and only a small Russian phrase book we found each of the POW camps. It was exciting to find that, although not all the buildings are still being used, the actual barracks where Steve was held are all still in existence. Many of the photos from that trip have been included in his story. My sincere thanks to Fonda and Charlie Paterson for contributing important details. Thanks also to Janet Beck of York, England, daughter of Max Beck, who has not only allowed me to photograph actual letters that Steve wrote to her father from Portugal, but has given me much support over the years. This project has not only been fun, but it has been an interesting way for me to visit many parts of the world, learn a bit of history, and learn how to make a website. As I am not a historian, please feel free to con tact me with any inaccuracies, or comments. If you would like to visit our family web page click here. Enjoy a step back into history! Technical stuff: The site works best at a Screen Resolution Setting of 1024 by 768. To find the setting, right click on your wallpaper, left click on PROPERTIES, then click on the tab SETTINGS. You should be able to see the setting and put it to 1024 x 768. You will also need to allow pop-ups for this site and windows media player to hear Steve's voice. |
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