Paul Pomeranz was born in the Bronx, New York, on December 1, 1924, the middle child of Esther and Charles Pomeranz. His father, a real-estate developer, was a second-generation American whose family hailed from the Czechoslovakian/Polish border region of Galicia; his mother was a second-generation Hungarian-American.

Paul was a Depression-era child whose father was a harsh and unloving disciplinarian, himself the product of a cold father. To hear Paul tell it, he was only hugged by his father once, when he was released from a prison camp at the end of the Second World War. Paul’s mother was submissive and had little will to resist her domineering husband.

Little “Paulie,” an avid student and voracious reader, was accidentally struck by an automobile at age eight while crossing the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx. When his father visited Paul in the hospital for the first time, instead of consoling him, his father threw two pillows at him for not paying more attention while crossing the road.

This life-changing event left Paul with two permanent disabilities: a persistent tremor and an alteration in his personality, which left him slightly withdrawn and an unfocused student. (Today, some might have characterized his subsequent learning issues as attention deficit disorder.) Despite these handicaps, Paulie was admired by his younger brother Alan and big sister Shirley for his persistent love of learning on his own terms – outside the school system, where he failed to excel.

Because his father would force him to go to bed at six o’clock each evening, Paul would draw and read books under his covers. Devouring a book every day fueled his love of history, adventure, and the arts. Paul began to admire both accomplished artists and people he knew personally who could draw. It also spurred his interest in the ancient history of Egypt, Rome, the Muslim world, and other faraway places.

One of his earliest works, “Prophecy Clash of Civilization: The Decline of the West,” depicts a plane dropping a bomb atop the World Trade Center more than ten years before the fateful events of September 11, 2001. The painting, as Paul originally described it, was meant to signal a rift in the relationship between the Judeo-Christian values of the West and the Islamic values of the East.

However, Paul’s passion for art would not take shape and his inspiration would not pour forth for over half a century. In the meantime, he enlisted in the army in 1943, at age 18. Paul began his military career with the 10th Mountain Division in Leadville, Colorado, but seeing limited prospects for action, he decided to transfer to the Army Air Corps and chase his dream of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, pilots were not in demand at that time, so he was assigned to the 381st Bomb Group as a tailgunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress.

At age 19, flying on only his third mission (bombing an oil refinery at Ruhrland), Paul was shot down over Germany and taken prisoner. He was subsequently brought before the feared German Gestapo along with a fellow flyer. Amazingly, Paul’s compatriot proved to be the cousin of the Gestapo chief. Carefully concealing his dogtags, which listed his name, serial number, and religion, the young airman was taken to a prison camp for interrogation and processing, while Paul’s colleague was sent off to tamer captivity.

Once he was identified as a Jewish-American soldier, Paul endured torture, ridicule, starvation, and a brutal 600-mile march across Germany in the bitter cold. He narrowly escaped death on many occasions – including a prison transfer that sparked a riot in Berlin. There he was protected by one of his guards – noted heavyweight boxer Walter Neusel, popularly known as “Der Blonde Tiger.”

After the war, Paul returned to the U.S. in ill health, weighing only 110 lbs., but he eventually recovered, married, had two children, and spent his career in business and sales. Paul subsequently divorced and helped raise three more children with his second wife, whose husband had succumbed to illness. Through it all, he remained a passionate student of the world, with especially broad interests in art and history. Perhaps this preoccupation explains his many mishaps and harrowing experiences. (The most recent of these, at age 84, involved his car being sandwiched between a truck and an automobile at high speed with minimal injury.)

At age 71, Paul retired and decided to pursue his lifelong dream of obtaining a college degree. He enrolled at C.W. Post College on the VA rehabilitation program, graduated with a B.A. degree in history, then pursued and completed his Master’s by age 75. While still working full-time in sales to make ends meet, Paul began his second career as an artist and sculptor.

Suffering from childhood trauma, the ravages of cold exposure during the war, and 40 years of diabetes, he was handicapped by a lack of feeling in his hands and complete numbness in his feet. A tremor and nerve injury have left the artist with limited feeling in his hands, so that he cannot write or draw a straight line, a fact which makes the quality of his works even more astonishing.

When asked what makes him produce these works and select the subject matter, Paul replies, “I don’t know, it just pours out of me spontaneously. Inspiration, I guess. When I finish a work of art, I turn around and look at it and cannot believe it came out of me!”