My father Felix understood electricity at an early age. That's because his father Richard was an electrical engineer. At one point Richard left home for six months to help South Africa establish electric light. That is the level at which he played. So the Brinkmann boys grew up around it. Felix also had a natural knack at fixing things.
When Felix was in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland he ran a telephone repair factory. One day in the spring of 1944, while tinkering at his work bench he connected a wire and a sound came out of a speaker. Suddenly he looked at what he was working on differently. He quickly scanned his workshop for parts and viola; he created a radio. A device that was highly prized and very forbidden in the ghetto.
It was early June when Felix and Simone were at a party when suddenly there was a knock at the door. The person on the other side informed everyone that the Germans were doing a sweep looking for radios and two people were already hanged. My mother and father quickly excused themselves and rushed back to their apartment. They took the radio from it's hiding place and turned it on one more time. The last thing they heard before taking it apart forever, was that the allies had landed.