Alfred University News

Retired history professor Gary Ostrower ’61 pens essay on professor with Nazi past

Gary Ostrower ’61, who recently retired after a 52-year career as a professor of history at Alfred University, recently wrote an essay on Edward Sittler, An Ohioan who renounced his American citizenship to join Germany’s Nazi Party during World War II and would later serve on the Alfred University faculty.


Gary Ostrower ’61, who recently retired after a 52-year career as a professor of history at Alfred University, recently wrote an essay on Edward Sittler, An Ohioan who renounced his American citizenship to join Germany’s Nazi Party during World War II and would later serve on the Alfred University faculty.

Ostrower earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Alfred University and taught history at his alma mater from 1969 until his retirement last December. His essay, titled “The Nazi in the Classroom,” was published Feb. 13 on the History News Network, a popular online source of essays and op-eds by prominent historians.

In the essay, Ostrower writes about Sittler, who after obtaining German citizenship and becoming a member of the Nazi Party, broadcast Hitler’s propaganda to American troops in Europe. After returning to the United States following the end of World War II, Sittler taught at several institutions of higher education, including Alfred University.

“I was a student at Alfred University when Sittler taught there in 1958-59.  My roommate, a Jewish student from Yonkers, was a student in a German class that Sittler taught. Neither he nor at least one other Jewish student I knew in that class detected even a hint of Sittler’s Nazi past,” Ostrower recalls. “I know even today a number of people—former colleagues and neighbors—who continue to think highly of Sittler. I think it fair to say that we all were stunned when news broke in 1959 about Sittler’s Nazi past.”

(Note: the photo accompanying Ostrower’s essay on History News Network is of Edward Sittler.)