The Danish Peace AcademySinger, Kurt D.: Autobiography
I was born in Vienna, Austria on August 10 1911.Grew up and was educated in Berlin., married Hilde Tradelius in 1932. Both of us edited and published an underground bulletin when Hitler came to power dealing mostly with concentration camps asking for food packages to send to the imprisoned. Much was based on foreign radio reports. Gestapo discovered us in our book store were we published the underground paper. I was able to escape to the Sudetenland but they caught Hilde who was imprisoned for one year and lived in the same cell Rosa Luxemburg had been incarcerated. In 1935 she was able to join me in Sweden where I had started to work as a jounalist and became a contributor to Folket i Bild. The first books published were in Sweden: Det Kommande Luftkriget, Hitlers Olympiad and Tvangssterilisering i Tysland. I had founded the Carl von Ossietzky Committee and was 24 when I wrote the first Carl von Ossietzky biography which was published also in English, German and Danish translated by Ester Gretor. The Nobel Committee in Oslo asked me for 6 copies of the book which gave me high hopes that he would receive the Peace Prize. Ossietzky's daughter Rosalinde contacted me from England asked for a copy and told me she was in troubles. The German refugees in London could no longer pay her boarding school so I asked her to come to Sweden an live with us. She was barely 16 and lived in Sweden until she died in 2001. I worked as jounalist for the Swedish press and the Berner Tagwacht in Switzerland. It was on January 5th 1940 that my biography of Hermann Goering was confiscated by the Swedish Government based on a law from 1814. Goering and the Nazi German Ambassador in Sweden asked for the banning of the book and my extradition. Friends in the Swedish Government told me they had declined the extradition. But I was also told in April that that the war had come to Scandinavia, Norway and Denmark were occupied, Nazi troops were in Finland and nobody knew what Sweden would do if Goering asked for my extradition a second or third time. Mia Leche Loefgren of our old Ossietzky Committee suggested I should see Torgny Segerstedt the courageous anti Nazi editor of the Goeteborg's Handels och Sjofartstidning. Mr. Segerstedt appointed me as their foreign correspondent to the USA, He also asked me to see the US Consul General in Goeteborg Mr. William C. Corcoran. He not unlike Raoul Wallenberg helped immediately and issued visas for me, Hilde and our newly born daughter Marian Birgit. 1940 was the year were no Swedish ships could leave for the USA nor existed an airline to take us. The British press attache who helped to publish Ture Nerman's anti Nazi weekly TROTS ALLT of which I was one of the excutives gave me hope. He said that a British sub may be able to pick us up in Northern Norway around the North Cape. We were packed lightly only to learn that the Nazis had arrived before us. We finally came on a small Finnish cargo ship from Petsamo at the Arctic See. 50 Canadian Finns had fought with the Nazis and Finns against the Soviets and would be repatriated to Canada. So there was hope the Nazi subs would not sink us. We arrived 3 weeks later in Brooklyn and all visas were cancelled since France had fallen while we were on the high seas. We were interned in Ellis Island but released after 2 weeks. I sold my first articles to Norsk Tidende and to the New York Times. Duel for the Northland was my first book published in America and later by Chr. Erichsens Forlag in Copenhagen, followed by Spies and Traitors of World War II, 3000 Years of Espionage, World's Greatest Women Spies, Gentlemen Spies Spies over Asia, The Men in the Trojan Horse even a biography of Mata Hari. While in Sweden I had written a biography of Pastor Martin Niemoeller. Among the various biographies I wrote were Albert Schweitzer, President Lyndon Johnson, Man of Reason, also Ernest Hemingway, Man of Courage which was also published in Denmark and several other countries followed by biographies of Danny Kaye, and Charles Laughton. For a British publisher I compiled and edited anthologies of TALES OF TERROR, TALES OF HORROR, Weird Tales and similar titles. I also did some juvenile books like translating Ester Gretor's KIPPE KO which became a book club selection as KIPPIE THE COW also a Spy Omnibus, a Crime Omnibus. All in all 104 books many published in foreign languages. Yes, I was deeply involved in espionage as my contribution to fight and destroy the Hitler regime. I worked with the Swedish secret service, the British, the American and mostly with the Norwegian secret service of their Government in Exile. Security was needed for the Norwegian and Danish "Handelsmarinen" their cargo ships which has escaped and sailed with the Allied forces. My son Kenneth Walt was born in 1945. I re-married in 1955 to Jane Sherrod a text book consulant I co-authored with her FOLK TALES FROM THE SOUTH PACIFIC and FOLKTALES FROM MEXICO. She died in 1985. I remarried in 1987 to Kyung Ja Han, a Korean business lady now called Katherine who is trying to keep me alive. Closing my connections with spy organizations I started an international newspaper syndicate and literary agency in California. From 1955-1960 I was chief Correspondent for PA Reuters Features in the USA. I am contributing now to the Ossietzky Magazine in Berlin also Aufbau in New York. In December 1994 one of my legs was amputated, my second leg is still weak and I am living the last 8 years with a urinary catheter and am still writing articles since journalism is in my blood it is my life.
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