Erich Albert Loëwe, born in 1920 in Budapest, Hungary, to an assimilationist Jewish family, relocated to Vienna shortly after birth and to Berlin in 1925. An Austrian Jewish Holocaust survivor, he excelled in mathematics, science, physics, and chemistry, enjoying tinkering with mechanical and electrical devices and skiing. He studied physics and chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry in Vienna (1936-1938), conducting work on the synthesis of the heavy hydrogen atom as a teenager and receiving an honorary doctorate from the institute in 1975. He later enrolled in the faculty of physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne in Paris. Fleeing Nazi persecution, he escaped Germany in 1933 (age 13) with his family to Poland but was sent back alone to Vienna relatives, where he faced rising antisemitism. Post-Anschluss in 1938, at age 18, he was forced by SS/SA to shine boots for hours before fleeing to Paris. There, he worked nights at an aircraft supplier and met his future wife, Nelly Chender. He enlisted in the French Army near Lyon but was assigned to the French Foreign Legion due to a clerical error, serving in Algeria amid antisemitic taunts. After France's fall in 1940, he was interned in a Vichy French POW/labor camp in Kenadsa, western Algeria, enduring over three years of perilous work in Sahara coal mines. He escaped in 1943 (after a prior failed attempt that left him shot in the ankle), crossing the desert with an Arab caravan to Algiers, where he was hospitalized for wounds and malnutrition. He joined the British Army as a sergeant, supervising workers at an Allied airport, then transferred to the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), changing his surname to 'Harris' (resembling 'Paris' to a limited-English speaker). He participated in the U.S. Fifth Army's invasion of Italy, the Battle of Monte Cassino, and the liberation of Rome, undergoing OSS espionage training that caused lifelong nightmares. He parachuted 13 times (3 training, 10 operational behind enemy lines in Austria and Yugoslavia), with final missions persuading Austrians to defect or surrender. Post-World War II, he trained German intelligence colleagues and continued brief intelligence work in Washington, D.C., retiring as a captain due to war weariness. The OSS facilitated his U.S. immigration. He married Nelly Chender in 1946; their son, David Harris (born 1949 in Santa Monica, California, and former AJC CEO), was born the following year. As an engineer, he worked at MGM and Argosy film studios in Los Angeles, advancing to CBS News in New York, where he pioneered television technologies like video replay for sports and special effects. In 1960, he was assigned to Munich, Germany, for a CBS-German network deal despite Holocaust trauma; his family joined briefly before returning in 1961, and he stayed in Europe after their 1961 divorce for irreconcilable differences. He worked in Lugano, Switzerland, for years, remarried (second wife unnamed), and later relocated to Rochester, Minnesota, then northern California (Bay Area) for retirement. In later life, he wore the Star of David proudly and maintained an emotional attachment to Israel, visiting multiple times. He died in 1998 in the Bay Area, California, described by his son David as embodying courage, humility, perseverance, and optimism—a 'Greatest Generation' exemplar who helped save the world from Hitler without boasting.