Shiff Says

8/24 Fun Fact

Okay, I think this one is really cool. So: Olivia Newton John’s mother was the daughter of a German Nobel Prize-winning physicist who left Germany with his wife in the 1930’s because the Nazis didn’t like jews.  Way to go Mr Newton/Mr John. On the other branch of her family tree: Ms. Newton John’s father came from Wales and, as an officer during the War, was THE officer who took Rudolph Hess into Allied custody when he landed in Scotland in 1941. (Rudolph Hess was Hitler’s chief deputy until 1941, when he absconded with a German plane and flew to the UK, thinking he could single handedly make peace with the Allies on Hitler’s behalf. Instead of being received as a diplomat, he was captured as a prisoner of war and held in a British prison until the Nuremberg Trials, where he was tried as a war criminal in the first major trial, alongside the likes of Hermann Goering. At Nuremberg, there was much debate as to the level, or existence, of his sanity, and he was ultimately sentenced to life in prison, which he served at Spandau Prison in West Berlin until he committed suicide in 1987 at the age of 93. He’s generally considered a nut. But how cool for Olivia Newton John’s dad?! Quite a place to hold in history.)