Meet the Professor
Professor's father instills interest in the Holocaust
Tara Marinaro
Issue date: 9/27/07 Section: News
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She was born May 6, 1946, in the small town of Terre Haute, Ind., to Werner and Hazel Loewenstein. To know and understand her, it is best to start with her father, the most influential person in her life.
He was born in Germany in 1909 and graduated from University of Berlin Medical School in 1934, the last year Jews were allowed to graduate. He knew he could not receive a license to practice medicine, so he moved to Indiana with the help of family in Ohio.
After becoming a U.S. citizen and a doctor, Werner wanted to fight the Nazis. This decision took him back to Germany where he joined the U.S. Army medical unit behind advancing front lines. Able to speak German, he was put in charge of Nazi soldiers, including SS officers. If they needed blood, Zimmerman said, he would only offer them blood from blacks or Jews as a form of personal revenge. His most traumatic moment, she said, came when he became part of the liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Zimmerman's strong beliefs in education, medicine and the Jewish religion were all deeply rooted in her father.
Before serving in the Army he married Miriam's mother, a Mormon from Utah who converted to Judaism. She already had one master's degree and earned a second masters and Ph.D. after having her children.
"Just having a master's degree in my family is considered being a dropout," Zimmerman said.
She is far from a dropout. Encouraged by both parents and feeling a need to achieve for all German Jewish children who had been killed or deprived of the opportunities she had, she graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in communications. She went on to receive her masters from San Francisco State and was able to put Dr. in front of her name in 1991 at USF.
After receiving a bachelor's degree, she got her first teaching job on the west side of Chicago, which she described as the most horrible teaching experience she ever had. She was traumatized by 35 first graders in a stuffy portable with only herself to rely on. It was a learning experience: She could not teach elementary school!
After her short teaching stint, Zimmerman got engaged to and married Richard Zimmerman in December 1968. She could not marry a man who did not value education as she did, so she knew he was a good catch when they made the trek from Chicago to sunny California where Richard attended Stanford Law School. "Every bachelor couple should live in San Francisco before they settle down and have a family," she said, and that is just what they did.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
George Heller
posted 4/13/08 @ 9:20 PM PST
How wonderful to find on the Internet a story of a lifetime of dedication to effective communications and to making peace among people. Teaching the story of the Holocaust with a goal that perhaps we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past?. (Continued…)
Al
posted 5/26/09 @ 7:33 PM PST
This lady is a holocast educator, yet she loves Obama and all things of the radical left. If she cared about Jews and the Holocaust, she's write about the Iranian president who is the next Hitler, rather than castigating Pres. (Continued…)
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