Gustav “Gus” Gutman left Germany with his parents and grandmother in 1939, when he was four years old. His father (the owner of a successful dry cleaning and dyeing company) had been imprisoned during Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews which took place on November 9-10, 1938 in Nazi Germany and Austria. During that time, Gus, his mother and grandmother were confined to their attic after Nazis took over the rest of their home. Gutman remembered Nazis smashing his toy scooter and pushing his face into a bucket of ammonia. His father was released after promising that his family would leave Germany. They stayed with Gutman’s uncle in England while they awaited permission to go to the United States, eventually settling in Chicago. His birth certificate and his German passport are marked with a swastika stamp, the passport also carried a large red “J” to indicate that he is Jewish. Gutman later earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Roosevelt University and his master's degree from Loyola before taking a job at 3M in St. Paul. He and his wife, Greta, raised three children. Gutman returned several times to Germany after the reunification. In 1998 and again in 2013, he gave a speech in his hometown of Hildesheim on the 60th and 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, on the site where a synagogue once stood before it was burned down during the pogrom. Gutman’s father, along with other men who were imprisoned that night, were forced to march around the synagogue while it burned. A play Gutman wrote about his experience called “Guests of the City,” was produced in Hildesheim in 2005; he played his father on stage in a theater where his parents had been season subscribers until Jews were banned. Gus Gutman passed away on January 11, 2014 at the age of 78.