Ed Mauser, 94, a member of the “Band of Brothers” who fought in some of World War II’s fiercest European battles, shunned the limelight and kept his service with the Army unit a secret, even from some of his family.
His role came to light only after his brother-in-law got him a copy of the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” said Terry Zahn, who met Mauser during a 2009 Honor Flight trip to Washington, D.C., to see the World War II memorial.
Mauser, who died Friday in Omaha, told his family that some of the things in the miniseries, such as the locations of buildings, weren’t quite what he remembered from being there in person.
But before that, “he never talked about it for years and years and years,” said Zahn, president of the Midwest chapter of the 101st Airborne Division Association.
Mauser was the oldest living member of Easy Company, which is often better known now as the “Band of Brothers.” He was not among the soldiers portrayed in the miniseries.
Tullia Zevi, 91, a pillar of Italy’s Jewish community and an ardent anti-fascist who spent the war years in exile in Switzerland, France and the U.S., died Saturday.
Zevi, the only female president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, died in Rome, said current union president Renzo Gattegna.
One of four children of a bourgeois Jewish family, Zevi was vacationing with her parents in Switzerland in 1938 when Italy passed its racial laws. The family, known for her father’s anti-fascist beliefs, moved to France and later the U.S. as World War II raged. She returned to Italy in 1946. The Associated Press
