 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 from Kleve on the last day of 1935, and they had two children together.After the Nazis 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.