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Eric Kruh
Eric Kruh of East Hampton died at his home Friday, March 18. He was 89.
A Jewish refugee from Austria, he was best known for his love of learning, music, travel, and animals and for his scholarship and progressive politics.
Mr. Kruh was born in Vienna on February 19, 1922. From 1932 to 1939 he was an honor student at the Franz Josef Realgymnasium not far from where he lived in the heart of Vienna. But after the March 12, 1938, Anschluss in which Hitler’s Third Reich annexed Austria, he was expelled from school. Subsequently, he and his parents were forced to scrub off signs near his home, his father’s wholesale textile business was taken over by an “Aryan” and in January 1939, along with other Jewish children, in fear for his life he fled Austria for England.
In England Mr. Kruh lived with a Jewish family in Leeds that along with other families had sponsored the exodus of Jewish children from Austria by guaranteeing they would not become wards of the state. But after the fall of France in the summer of 1940, he and other refugees were interred because the British feared they might be enemy agents. Then in 1941, after passing Canada’s university entrance examination, Mr. Kruh aided by a Jewish organization in Toronto, left England to become a student at McGill University in Montreal and then the University of Toronto.
Mr. Kruh graduated from the University of Toronto in 1946 with first-class honors, a scholarship for the student with the highest standing in German, and a Bachelor of Arts in modern language and literature. Then in 1947 he earned an Master of Arts at the University of Chicago in modern language and literature and went on to complete the examination requirements for doctorates in modern European history at the University of Chicago and in Germanic literature and philology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Kruh taught modern languages at the University of Chicago, Indiana University, Roosevelt University in Chicago, Villanova University, New England College in New Hampshire (where he was the dean of liberal arts and sciences), and the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Southampton College in 1964.
He taught literature, history and German and French language classes and served in various capacities as an administrator at Southampton College until his retirement in 1992.
After his retirement, Mr. Kruh taught courses at the Osher Lifelong Institute of New York University, lectured on Thomas Mann and Voltaire to students at the Center for Creative Retirement, and traveled to Mexico, Morocco, Chile and Europe.
For 36 years he lived with his wife Elizabeth Catherine Kruh on Toilsome Lane in East Hampton. After Elizabeth died in April 2000, he met Jean Hoffmann at a meeting of an organization called Community Without Walls.
Mr. Kruh is survived by his adopted family, Jean Hoffman, her sons Paul and Richard Cantor; and her four grandsons.
A memorial service will be held on Sunday, April 10, from 3 to 5 p.m. at 16 Todd Drive, East Hampton. All who knew him are invited to attend.
Memorial donations may be made in his name to the Kemper Foundation for Human Rights Education, 184 Fillow Street, Norwalk, CT 06850 or visit www.khref.org.
on Mar 30, 2011