Mr. Kurt Wechsler

Kurt was born on August 29, 1924, in Vienna, Austria. He lived in the Jewish district, aka the second district, not too far from the Spanish riding school with the Lipizzaner stallions. His father owned an upholstery shop. In 1939, Kurt was transported along with many Jewish youths to Denmark in response to the Nazi persecution of Austria’s Jews. Kurt became familiar with the Danish underground’s attempts to keep Nazi control at bay, but with an increasing threat of a Nazi roundup, he was transported with many other Jews from Denmark to Sweden, one night, in a boat. In Sweden, he was adopted by a Swedish family who treated Kurt as one of their own children. Kurt was able to maintain correspondence with his parents, but towards the end of World War II that correspondence came to a sad silent ending.

It was in Sweden Kurt met his future wife, Rose. They were married in 1950. They moved to Denmark, then Israel, where their first son was born. They immigrated to America in 1956. After living in Youngstown, OH, Pittsburgh, PA, they moved to Hyattsville, MD, where their second son was born, and finally, to Silver Spring, MD. Kurt was an avid photographer and his black and white photos in many family albums, some with Kurt’s drawings, too, showed he was pretty adept with his completely manual Agfa camera.

Kurt worked throughout his life as an upholsterer wherever he lived. In the late 1960’s, he became owner of Georgetown Custom Upholstery in Washington, DC. A shop on the bottom floor of 2323 Prospect Road NW accessed by a narrow alley just inches wider than the side mirrors of his blue window van. It had two large sliding barn doors (because it supposedly had been a repair facility for horse drawn carriages) and long wooden slat floors spaced just enough to see dirt below them, lit by the shop lights. Old AM radios played WMAL 630 all day and at home except during the morning reading of the Washington Post, and the evening watching of Walter Cronkite or All in the Family. Every Saturday was pickup and delivery day.

In the early 1970’s Kurt had to move his shop to a more modern strip of industrial bays with garage doors and concrete floors on Montgomery Steet, in the Linden section of Silver Spring, MD. He continued his long-term relationship with interior decorators, furniture refinishers and private customers developed in Washington DC and developed new friendships with his new neighboring business owners. Kurt, like many of his small business friends and associates, never advertised – all his business was obtained through word-of-mouth recommendations. His vans and his shops never wore his shop’s name. Yet, he had many customers throughout Washington DC, Maryland and Northern Virgina – including the White House and Camp David.

It is not clear when Kurt really retired because he continued to do the occasional upholstery job at his home. The tools of his trade had become a part of him - upholstery tacks were held in his mouth and delivered one by one to the magnetic end of a slim hammer. And his home basement was in all appearances Georgetown Custom Upholstery without a carriage shop or garage door but with two Herbert Wechsler paintings – a small bird and a slender vase.

Kurt is survived by his wife of 73 years Rose and sons Herb and Gary and daughter-in-law Roberta, his Swedish foster family siblings and their offspring, and friends he made through German language chat rooms online.