| Born: | 10-19-1914 |
| Faculty: | Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Nathan KRISNAPOLLER (later: KRISS), born on October 19th, 1914 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Stanisławów/Poland [Iwano-Frankiwsk|Івано-Франківськ/Ukraine], citizenship 1938: Poland), son of Jakob Krisnapoller (engineer) and Cipre (Cecilia) Krisnapollis, née Rosenbaum, lived in Vienna's 9th district, Wilhelm-Exner-Gasse 2/6, was enrolled finally in the spring term 1938 at the Medical School in the 5th and last year of his studies (spring term 1938 was validated on November 25th, 1938).
In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism he was forced to quit his studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna (Leaving Certificate ("Abgangszeugnis") was issued on November 28th, 1938).
Nathan Krisnapoller had to flee Vienna and was able to emigrate to Switzerland, where he was able to graduate with a "Dr. med." degree from the University of Basel in 1939. He met Dr. Clara Schubiger (1913-2014), a Swiss physician born in Lucerne in 1913, in 1940 while working together at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, but they were not able to marry until years later in the United States. Clara Schubinger worked in the following years in various orphaned Swiss rural practices where she had to substitute doctors who had been called up, and after the end of the war she worked for some time as a doctor for the British Red Cross in the British Occupation Zone of Germany in Gelsenkirchen, NRW. Back in Switzerland, she completed her specialist training as a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital in Basel.
Nathan Krisnapoller emigrated from Switzerland as early as January 17th, 1948, via Southampton, England, on the MS Queen Elisabeth to the United States, where he settled in New York City, NY, and worked as a physician in Queens. He had changed his name to "Nathan Kriss." In 1949, Clara also left for New York City. Upon their arrival in New York, they were married. Shortly thereafter, they moved to Crow Agency, Montana, where Clara supported her husband, who worked for the U.S. government as a doctor on the Crow Indian Reservation. In 1951 they moved to Custer, South Dakota, where he became town doctor and Clara assisted him.
In 1953, they moved to Charlottesvile, Virginia, where Nathan completed a residency in radiology at the University of Virginia.
In 1954, Nathan and Clara came to Geneva, NY, where Nathan took a job as a radiologist. They also had three sons by then - Robert from Geneva, David from Newark, and Peter - and Clara Kriss worked in various capacities as a physician in Rochester in the 1960s and at the Rushville Clinic in the 1970s.
Nathan Kriss eventually retired as chief of radiology in 1978.
Dr. Nathan Kriss, nee Krisnapoller, died on March 11, 2007, in Geneva, Ontario, NY/USA and is buried at local Glenwood Cemetery.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") MED 1937–1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 423; www.genteam.at; www.ancestry.de; www.myheritage.at; obituary Clara Kriss MD in Finger Lakes Times, March 9-11, 2014; information from Mag. Edith Heller, Vienna 10/2022.
Herbert Posch
