Jim Kurtz holds up the slipper which saved his father's life. PHOTOS BY WES CIPOLLA
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on June 2, 2022.
POTTSVILLE — On Aug. 3, 1944, two children witnessed a horrific sight in the skies of their native Austria. In a vicious dogfight, German Luftwaffe pilots shot down eight American planes.
As young Gerd Leitner and Hilda Richter watched, many men were killed, but Robert Kurtz, of White Plains, N.Y., survived.
Richter saw three German soldiers chase Kurtz over the hill until he collapsed. Knowing no German and feeling exhausted, he pulled out his son’s baby slipper. A reminder of the wife and children he was separated from, it inspired the Germans to show him mercy.
Kurtz spent the rest of the war in Nazi prisoner of war camps until he reunited with his family — and the other slipper, which his wife kept in the hopes that the pair would come together again.
“This slipper saved his life,” said Robert’s son Jim Kurtz, holding the worn, browned garment before an audience at the Schuylkill County Historical Society, Museum and Gift Shop on Wednesday night. “He managed to keep these slippers through three POW camps and a forced march.If it wasn’t for that slipper, I wouldn’t be alive today, he wouldn’t have come back.”
The reunion would be short-lived, as Robert died suddenly from a heart attack in 1952, when Jim Kurtz was 2 years old.
In 2001, Leitner emailed Jim Kurtz, beginning a decades-long journey. Jim Kurtz chronicled his father’s World War II service in his book “Green Box,” T-102’s Local Reads pick of the month.
The Green Box, as well as copies of the book that inspired it.
One of Robert’s closest friends during the war was Joe Spontak, of Pottsville. The two were shot down and imprisoned together
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“Every time these guys flew together, there was a 50% chance they wouldn’t come home,” Kurtz said. “So those guys had that bond alone.”
During Air Force training in Kansas, Robert Kurtz and Spontak ran out of gas 10,000 feet in the air and landed in a cornfield. They took spa days in Bari together. When Robert was 700 miles off course, Spontak used the stars to map out a path to safety. However, the two never saw each other again after the war.
“Most of them never said a word about the war for the rest of their lives, including to their spouses,” Jim said. “I never got into what kind of individual (Robert) was. Did he like playing games, did he like to drink a couple of beers, or did he not drink at all? I tried asking his crew members, but that was wartime. That was a whole different story.”
“Green Box” recounts the stunning discoveries, outrageous coincidences and heartfelt reunions that Jim uncovered as he traveled America and Europe. The book is named after the box in which Robert’s widow, Margaret “Peggy” Curtis, kept his medals and other mementoes.
At the time, when Jim was only 2, the box, whose contents were exhibited at the Historical Society, was strictly off-limits to him and his three brothers. At the age of 6, curiosity got the best of Jim, and he looked inside.
This is what Jim found inside the Green Box.
“I didn’t have any memories of my dad,” he said. “That’s what sent me up there. All these medals and ribbons and the problem being, I could not ask my mother why they were there. Literally 50 years went by before I even knew one thing about my father.”
Leitner organized a commemoration and monument dedicated to the Americans who died in the Aug. 3, 1944, battle. Jim Kurtz attended and met the German fighter pilot who shot down his father, now an old man harboring Nazi sympathies.
“You know, it was like shooting ducks in a pond,” the pilot said.
“He was so happy about telling me this story,” Jim Kurtz said. “He’s telling me he almost killed my dad, and happy for what a great day it was. I’m not liking this gentleman too much right now.”
Through countless interviews, Jim discovered the lives that his father touched.
“I’m starting to collect friends, and they’re all 95 and older,” he said.
In Europe, Jim kept running into people and places from his father’s life. He saw the hill where his father was shot down and collected a piece of twisted metal from the crash site.
“That was an interesting story,” he said, “trying to get that through customs.”
The book is currently being turned into a documentary film, “The Green Box: At the Heart of the Purple Heart.” Executive Producer Holly Stadtler presented a short clip of the film titled, “30 Seconds that Changed the Lives of Hundreds, if not Thousands.” The film will cost $280,000 to produce.
“We still need to buy the animation, get a celebrity narrator,” Stadtler said. “We’re not taking a salary; we’re doing this because we love the project. We see this as a rich mix of genres. You got the romance story, and you got the combat element, and interwoven in all that is Jim’s journey to find out who Bob Kurtz was.”
Stadtler hopes to present a rough cut of the film to PBS and streaming services. She also plans to create a school curriculum based on the movie and use it to “create a dialogue about veterans and how they are treated once they come home.”
“We find that World War II is not taught enough in high school and middle school,” she said, “and these men and their relatives are dying as we are doing this project. We want to preserve those stories.”
Jim said that his story teaches an important lesson.
“You gotta ask questions, especially now with all our electronic equipment,” he said. “If you know someone who’s 70-80 years old, and has a wealth of knowledge, you sit down and ask them about that knowledge.”
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