Walter Heiman Walter J . Heiman ( Essen , Germany , March 12 , 1901 – University City , Missouri , United States , March 18 , 2007 ) was a Jewish American man who at the time of his death had become one of the last surviving veterans of the First World War . Born and raised in Germany , he enlisted as a private in the German Luftstreitkräfte in March 1918 , at 17 years of age , after finishing high school . He was sent to an air base in Hanover for flight training , but the war ended before he finished training . He talked vividly about the situation by explaining that the German Revolution broke out on November 9 , 1918 , which caused Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate and flee the country , and since at that point in time each soldier made his own decision about his immediate future , Walter decided to go home to Essen . After the Armistice , the city of Essen was occupied by the French Army . Walter ' s older brother Kurt had also served in the German Army earlier in the war and was wounded in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme . Kurt never fully recovered from his wounds that he suffered in the battle and died in 1920 . After the war he returned to Essen and went to work as an apprentice in the grain distribution business , which later led to him starting his own grain business in 1926 . He was unable to pursue a college education because of Germany ' s discrimination laws on Jewish families that wouldn ' t allow more than one Jewish sibling to attend college , and since his older brother Kurt was already in college this prevented Walter from enrolling . He married Trude Weyl on the last day of 1935 , and they had two children together . After the Nazi s took power in Germany in the 1930s , the hardships became much worse as Jewish assets were seized , and so Walter fled Germany to the United States in 1938 with his pregnant wife and only $ 25 . His older sister Lily , parents and in - laws all died in the Holocaust . After arriving in the United States , he and Trude initially stayed with relatives in Chicago , while he learned the English language in night school and from listening to the radio . They lived in Chicago until 1941 with very little means . Eventually , he became an United States citizen in 1945 . In 1941 , they moved to St . Louis , Missouri , where Walter opened a business selling Belgian light bulbs for a Western Extralite branch . He kept the business as it grew over time , even after his retirement in 1989 , at which time he still remained chairman of the board , but then eventually sold the company in 1999 to the family of his original business partner in 1941 . In the 1950s , they moved to Olivette , Missouri , where he and Trude continued raising their two children . Walter was active in sports like tennis , soccer , snow skiing and swimming . In fact , he was still a swimmer until the age of 103 . Heiman had once dined with Leah Rabin , the wife of Israel ' s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin . They had been at one of Israel ' s Children ' s Centers , which are built by a program that Mr . Heiman supported . These centers are built for Israel ' s immigrant and underprivileged children , and they have both learning centers and tennis courts . After his wife ' s death in 1994 , he moved to an elderly complex in University City , where he resided until his own death at the age of 106 .