Hillmanns 56 - 1938 - Bronx School Teacher

THE HILLMANNS OF BROOKLYN

CHAPTER 57

1938

It's our heroine, the newly-divorced Marian Hillmann. Marian was living in her parents beautiful new colonial house, built just for them in Port Washington.  Marian was teaching at an elementary school in the Bronx, just across the Whitestone Bridge from her parents' home. Top Songs of 1938 included Begin the Beguine and Thanks for the Memories.

None of the pictures you are looking at in this album or the next were to be found in the Hillmanns albums. They came from a friend's album.

Here we see the Brothers Goldner: Jim and George enjoying their lives in New York.  In 1938 Hitler built the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Five days after Hitler assured the Czechs he had no demands on their territory he declared his decision to destroy Czechoslovakia by military force.

On July 6, 1938 at the Evian Conference on Refugees no country was prepared to accept Jews fleeing persecution. Their prospects were bleak.

I do not know who the older ladies are.  During her teaching career Marian taught fourth and fifth grades.

Aside from the Goldner brothers, Marian's group included the Nakos brothers, this is one of them. As these albums were being put together, one-by-one, it was pointed out to me there is a picture of Marian playing tennis in Album 26 that looks like it does not belong in the year. It may not belong in the year. The original pictures were not categorized by year, I had to guess at some of them. The same person identified one of the men in the Album 26 tennis picture as John Nakos, which would show that he was part of Marian's group for a long time. While Nakos worked on his engine Howard Hughes set a new record for speed, completing a round the world trip in 91 hours.

Here's the picture from Album 26, 1926, what do you think? Does Marian's partner look like Jim Nakos? I think so. He looks the same, but it looks like we're dealing with a much younger Marian.

This is either the other Nakos brother, or the same one as was in the last picture. In September of 1938 President Roosevelt said it was 100% wrong that the US would join a stop-Hitler bloc under any circumstances. He said in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia the U.S. would remain neutral.

One of the major hang-outs for Marian and her gang was a tennis court in the Bronx, near the school where she taught. On September 10, 1938 Herman Goring called the Czechs a miserable pygmy race harassing the human race. The Czech President called for calm.

Back row - Paul Busher, Unknown, Lou - Front row - Jim and Nakos. Major european countries agree to the annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovia. Neville Chamberlain returns to England from his meeting with Hitler calling for peace in our time.

Winston Churchill calls upon the US and western Europe to prepare for armed resistance to Hilter. Germany expels 12,000 Polish jews, sending them back to Poland, but Poland will only take 4,000 of them. Hitler then calls for the liquidation of Czechoslovakia.

In 1938 the first minimum wage law was passed in the US and Orson Welles's radio adaptation of the War of the Worlds was broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States.

I don't know who these people are. In 1938 Adolf Hitler was named Time magazine's Man of the Year. Hillmanns albums come out on Tuesdays, next week it's 1939.