Brigitte should know. She is the daughter of the late Erwin Loewy, an inventor with hundreds of patents to his name and the designer of the world’s largest and most powerful extrusion presses. She told me how her family, escaping Nazi Germany, found refuge and a new life in America.

Her father was born in Bohemia, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents had 13 children. Some died young, but Erwin and his older brother, Ludwig, thrived. Both attended college, studying engineering and found jobs in Dusseldorf, Germany, designing machine tools, rolling mills and hydraulic presses. They have also persuaded their employee, the firm of Edurad Schoemann, to compete in the international market. By 1935, some 90 percent of the company’s earnings were coming from international exports.

In spite of their engineering talent and business acumen, the Loewys were forced to flee Nazi-dominated Germany in 1935. Ludwig went to England and founded an engineering company that helped Britain’s defense effort in the production of the Spitfire fighter plane. But when World War II broke out, many of his employees, former German citizens, were placed in internment camps. It required the intervention of Lord Beaverbrook, the British Minister of Aircraft Production, to release them.

Erwin Loewy, left Germany accompanied with his wife, Margret, for France. There, he established a company that produced heavy presses and metalworking equipment. For five years, he collaborated with the French aviation industry, contributing to the French national defense. Then, in June 1940, as German armies closed in on Paris, Erwin packed his car with members of his extended family, including his 3-year-old daughter, Brigitte, and drove west across France. At the Pyrenees Mountains, bordering Spain, they have to abandon the car, and on foot, were smuggled into Spain. From there they managed to reach Portugal.

In Portugal, a country collaborating with Nazi-Germany, they have spent three nerve-wracking months waiting for available transport to the United States.

“Our family’s arrival in the U.S. coincided with growing efforts of America to help Britain in its defense needs,” said Brigitte, in an interview with the Lake Placid News and the Virginia Gazette. “Thus, my father, who founded the Loewy-Hydropress, Inc. in 1941, urged the Advisory Committee to the President for National Defense to mobilize the aircraft industry by building 100 extrusion presses.”

According to scientific encyclopedias, “Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile. A material is pushed through a die of the desired cross-section. There are two main advantages of this process over other manufacturing processes: the ability to create very complex cross-sections and to work materials that are brittle. … It also forms parts with excellent surface finish.”

In great measure, because of Loewy’s initiative, the number of extrusion presses in America jumped from 16 in 1940 to more than 100 in 1943. It is understood, that the presses played a vital role in the production of the armaments that helped the U.S. and its Allies turn the tide on the war against the Nazis and Japan.

The onset of the Cold War has triggered a new need for innovation and development of heavy machine tools. The U.S. Air Force was interested in making faster, lighter planes. The Air Force established its Heavy Press Program which ultimately funded the construction of 10 forging and extrusion presses at the cost of $289 million. Hydropess built six of them, including the world’s largest, the 50,000-ton “Major.”

The Loewy’s hydraulically-powered extrusion presses, capable of exerting 50,000 to 100,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, enabled engineers to produce much longer structural members for aircraft without the necessity of slicing. It was used in the production of the B-52 bomber and the Boeing 707 commercial jetliner, and other advanced aircraft.

In recognition of his contribution to America’s national defense, Erwin Loewy was awarded the Air Force Scroll of Appreciation.

His only child, Brigitte, became a gifted concert pianist. She married a U.S. naval officer in the Dental Corps who advanced to the rank of captain. Their son, followed in his father’s footsteps. He chose the Navy Medical Corps as a career, and retired also as a captain.

As Harry Golden, the North Carolinabased writer used to say, “Only in America!”

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from the Virginia Gazette. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his selected columns.