A Leica story

[Ian Grant]

While Charles Noble was a US Citizen he was born in Germany and went to the US as a minister & missionary.

Ian

[cowanw]

I have often wondered about the John Noble story. It was dramatized in the early 1950s in a program "Reader's Digest Presents." How did two U.S citizens manage to survive in wartime Nazi Germany. I guess running a factory and contributing to the Nazi war effort was an help.

you got me interested too.
I wonder if Agx has a different perspective?
http://randcollins.wordpress.com/category/photographic-history/
http://www.businessweek.com/archives/1994/b335583.arc.htm

[AgX]

Bill,

John is right. That was really extraordinary. One can try to make a story out of details known. But a person's motivation will stay veiled. Which ever perspective I take, it will be from my, from our time into history.
That's the dilemma of any historic research.

[Ian Grant]

I guess with the Noble story the missing piece is what happened to the former owners, nothing more is said.

Ian

[cowanw]

apparently Benno Thorsch resurfaced in 1944, when, in a corner of Ventura Boulevard in North Hollywood, Thorsch and his family founded the Studio City Camera Exchange. This shop was run by the Thorsch family for 62 years until it closed in 2006.

[Ian Grant]

Thanks Bill, that part is never written alongside the Noble's.

Ian

[Joe VanCleave]

Dan,
I agree with you, but the word is cojones (balls). Cajones has a different meaning (crates) :)

Leitz sure had a set of crates! ;)

This is the kind of story that deserves to be made into, if not a feature-length movie, a PBS/BBC documentary.

~Joe