Ernst von Stockhausen - German who served in WWII. My son met this well-dressed distinguished man in a first class drawing car on a train going from Vienna to Brussels on March 5, 1980. He appeared to be in his 50's, introduced himself only as "Ernst," and spoke perfect English w/a British accent but was clearly German and a Nazi sympathizer. He asked a lot of questions of the young American: Where he was from, what he did, how he liked living in Europe, etc.? (My son is the great-grandson of German emigrants, has relatives still living there, and in 1980 was a teacher at the American International School in Vienna on his way to Brussels for the ISST Basketball Tournament.) Ernst turned the conversation to politics & what he knew about WWII (verboten subject to discuss w/the losing side on their turf) & became most passionate about Hitler & the Nazi cause during the 9-hour train trip, giving what appeared to my son to be a well-rehearsed WWII propaganda speech. Becoming most uncomfortable, when the subject drifted to the concentration camps, he subtly steered the coversation to Ernst which finally revealed that von Stockhausen (noted from the tag on his briefcase, not volunteered) had "served in WWII" (didn't volunteer in what capacity) and "moved" to Brazil soon after the war [where there was a large ex-patriate community in Rio de Jeneiro of high-ranking Third Reich Germans who fled the country before the war crimes trials began] and met his wife whose family had also "moved" there soon after the war. She'd just flown in from South America w/their 2-year-old son, & Ernst was meeting her in Brussels. A beautiful, much younger blonde woman w/a perfect Aryan poster child met Ernst at the train station. We've always wondered just who was this erstwhile traveling companion, Ernst von Stockhausen and what was his role in WWII? Does anyone out there in cyberspace know?
