Page - 55 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

SS constitution, 1956 New York–Naples contact clippings of photographs taken by nuclear physicist and electrical engineer Anatole M. Gurewitsch, on his way with his family to his new job in Switzerland.1 SS constitution left New York on July 21, 1956 to Algeciras, cannes, Genoa, and Naples under captain Ernest h. Nelson.2 This sea voyage is in some sense symmetrical to a lifesaving one made twenty years earlier. Aged 26, A. Gurewitsch, of Russian-Jewish origin, had embarked in November 1936 SS (RMS) Aquitania of cunard White Star Line in cherbourg, bound to New York.3 The trip back to Europe exhibits inverted feelings of farewell, with an optimistic future, shared by his wife and three children, Sonya, Matthew, and Kathryn. “The first indications that we might really be going abroad came into my life casually. I guess this is usually the way, though we imagine important events should come announced by a blare of trumpets and a roll of drums. Toli [Anatole] and I were drinking a second cup of coffee, enjoying the quiet which exists at the dinner table after the children have been excused. ‘Do you want to hear something interesting,’ he asked. After years of married life, any wife knows that the question can only be answered in the affirmative. The interesting news may prove to be that the windshield wipers have been replaced on the car, a snow shovel purchased, or a long-forgotten friend glimpsed on the street. But the well-trained wife answers as she should. ‘By all means. What’s new?’ And she listens attentively for the answer. Then, in much the same tone that he would have used to tell me about a windshield wiper, Toli announced that he had been offered a job in Europe. What did I think of the idea?” Eleanor Gurewitsch-chestnut (1922–1991)4 1 Alison Starkey/Archives in Order, Anatole M. Gurewitsch Collection, 1927-1991. (Anchorage) <http://archi- vesinorder.com/sites/default/files/Publications/Gurewitsch_VersionhTML_PDf.pdf> [accessed 2014-12-07]; ETh Archiv für Zeitgeschichte. 2014. Nachlässe und Einzelbestände, F-M, Gurewitsch-Chestnut. (Zürich) <https://www.afz.ethz.ch/bestaende/a0e32fb81dda4d9f9915603004ff35a1.pdf> [accessed 2014-12-07] 2 American Export Lines. 1956. List of Passengers. (New York: AEL Inc.) 3 International Marine Radio Service. [1936] Radiogram, Max Schott to Anatole Gurewitsch, S.S. Aquitania 4 Eleanor Gurewitsch-chestnut. [1955] Schenectadians about to be abroad. Typoscript. (Excerpt) Mobile culture Studies. The Journal, Vol. 1 2015, 54-55 Open Access: content is licensed under cc BY 3.0 Documents edited by Justin Winkler. We owe this documentation to Kathryn Schneider- Gurewitsch (1951-2014) and wish to thank as well Sonya Teter and Matthew Gurewitsch.