Meet 100-year-old Emil Hopner, Nazi escape artist
He lost 30 family members to the Holocaust, including his parents
When longtime Los Gatos resident Emil Hopner was born 100 years ago on Dec. 29, 1917, there were no cellphones, televisions or video games, and World War I was still being fought across Europe. But it was World War II that would transform Hopner’s life and, decades later, remain foremost in his memory.
Hopner, who is Jewish, lost 30 family members to the Holocaust, including his parents.
He was born in what is Croatia today but left as a teen to begin an odyssey that would take him across Europe and eventually to the United States.
“Six months before I finished high school, I decided to go to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to learn how to build radios and televisions,” Hopner said. “I graduated from a German high school there, and one day later Hitler came to Czechoslovakia. I escaped from Czechoslovakia, returned to Croatia and went to the University of Zagreb.”
When university officials there sent for Hopner’s high school transcript, it arrived stamped with a swastika.
As the Nazis moved through Europe, Hopner moved, too, continuing to evade them. His next stop was Italy, where the Nazistamped transcript facilitated yet another escape.
“At a train stop in Milan, the border police checked my papers and I told them I was Gestapo,” Hopner said. “They were Italian and didn’t understand Czech or Croation. I folded my German high school diploma, with the swastika revealed, together with my University of Zagreb identification card to make false papers. They believed I was undercover Gestapo, so they let me go.”
He headed for southern Italy, where he made another bold move.
“I asked the Italian police to arrest me and send me to France. They agreed,” Hopner said.
He landed in Nice and then headed for the neutral Swiss border.
“There were places where the Nazis had dogs defending the border, so I barked like a dog to get past them,” he said.
But Hopner’s Jewish identity came to light in Switzerland, and he was arrested and jailed for nine months.
“My cellmate told me to fake appendicitis, so the police took me to the hospital and the surgeon cut me open,” Hopner said. “Fortunately, the surgeon and nurse were in charge of an organization that harbored refugees. The nurse asked the Swiss government to let me stay, but they sent me to a refugee labor camp in the mountains. Suddenly, I was free to go for a walk. We were allowed to go for halfhour walks on Saturdays within the confines of the camp. I would chat with a nearby farmer lady through the fence, and that’s where I met my first wife, Heidi.”
Heidi and Emil Hopner were married in 1945, moved to Canada in 1951 and arrived in Los Gatos in 1956, when Hopner went to work at IBM’s Almaden Research Center and the Advanced Systems Development Division.
“I was with the group that invented random access memory,” he said. “Back then, the units were as big as a refrigerator.”
He also worked on the first iterations of email, digital mobile communications, color videophones and color televisions before retiring from IBM in 1987.
The Hopners’ two children, Dan and Victor, graduated from Los Gatos High School in 1964 and 1968, respectively.
Heidi passed away in 1991. Heartbroken, Emil began regularly visiting Heidi’s grave at Los Gatos Memorial Park. One day there, he met another mourner, Hui-Lin Li, whom he married in 1993.
Their son, 23-year-old Ben Hopner, was born in 1994. The elder Hopner was 76 years old when Ben was born.
“We’d read together when I was growing up and listen to classical music,” Ben said. “We’d also visit Los Gatos parks to look for four-leaf clovers.”
Ben is a 2012 Los Gatos High graduate.
As Hopner’s youngest child, Ben has taken it upon himself to chronicle his father’s remarkable life in an as-yet untitled book.
It’s a story his family is proud to share.
“I thank God every day for keeping me in good condition,” Hopner said. “I can’t believe I can still walk, eat, think and plan things, read the paper and pick up the mail.”
Hopner, who never drank alcohol or smoked, attributes his longevity to “good preventative health care.”
“I’m very lucky my wives took good care of me,” he said.
But cunning and smarts also played a role in his longevity, friends and family say. On Friday night, they celebrated Hopner’s 100th birthday in Los Gatos.