Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral History Project: Part II: Interview with Eugene Sylvestre

Titles: Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral History Project: Part II: Interview with Eugene Sylvestre (Supplied title)

Description: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Eugene Sylvestre was born in Chicago. He was raised in California and in Minneapolis. He worked in the defense industry for a year after graduating from Washburn High School. Drafted in 1943, he received basic pilot training in the Army Specialized Training Program. When the program was ended, he was sent to the 65th Infantry Division and served in France, Germany, and Austria from January 1945 to the spring of 1946. He participated in the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Returning to Minneapolis, Sylvestre attended the University of Minnesota, married, and started a career, first in sales and then in advertising. He started a non-profit business designed to foster social communication through town meetings. SUBJECTS DISCUSSED: Growing up in California and Minneapolis; social life; jobs and school prior to and early in World War II; how war changed friendship patterns and communities; army training and service in the infantry; the lifelong effects of participating in a concentration camp liberation; homecoming; student life; working in sales and in advertising; seeing television for the first time and then learning to use it first in advertising and later in his non-profit work; using his wartime experiences to develop a non-profit company to foster communication and resolve conflict.

Dates

• 01/02/2006 (Creation)

Creation

• interviewee: Sylvestre, Gene (E. Eugene)
• interviewer: Bekke, Douglas

Identifiers

• Library Call Number: OH 115
• Accession Number: AV2008.26.34

Holding Type: Oral History - Interview

Project

• Oral History - Project, MHS Collection, project: 'Minnesota's Greatest Generation Oral History Project: Part II' <OH 115>

Quantity: 3 hours sound cassettes 72 pages transcript

Format

• Content Category: sound recordings
• Content Category: text

Measurements

• 180 minutes length

Subjects

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