The Auschwitz Survivor who Kick-Started my Career.

So how did I enter into the world of computer software, where did my story begin?

Well, the story actually begins way back in 1938 where a boy called Idek Trzmiel was born into a Jewish family in Poland.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, his family was transported by the Germans to the Jewish ghetto in ?ód?, where he worked in a garment factory. When the ghettos were liquidated, his family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was examined by the notorious Josef Mengele and was selected for a work party, after which he and his father were sent to the labour camp Ahlem near Hanover, while his mother remained at Auschwitz.

Like many other inmates, his father was reported to have died of typhus in the work camp; however, Tramiel believed he was killed by an injection of gasoline. Tramiel was rescued from the labour camp in April 1945 by the 84th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.

On November 10, 1947, Trzmiel immigrated to the United States and renamed himself, Jack Tramiel. He soon joined the U.S. Army, where he learned how to repair office equipment, including typewriters.

In 1953, while working as a taxi driver, Tramiel bought a shop in the Bronx to repair office machinery, securing a $25,000 loan for the business from a U.S. Army entitlement. He named it Commodore Portable Typewriter. Tramiel wanted a military-style name for his company, but names such as Admiral and General were already taken, so he settled on the Commodore name....and that's where the story into the world of computers really begins.

Firstly in 1956, Tramiel started to manufacture and sell typewriters followed by electronic calculators but into the 1970s and the world was changing and Tramiel's lead designer, Chuck Peddle told Tramiel that calculators were a dead end and computers were the future, Tramiel told him to build one to prove the point.

So he did and in 1977 at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show, the Commodore PET was shown for the first time.

The Commodore PET was massive in the education field, especially here in Europe. They had an all-in-one design so were really easy to set up and use, and they looked really good and stylish.

Enter me....On a school trip to a local tech company, I saw my first computer. It was massive and filled an enormous space but it was impressive, at least at the time.

Following on shortly after that my school decided to start it's first computing lessons and in partnership with a neighbouring college purchased a number of Commodore Pet's. I was lucky and got picked amongst a student group to be allowed in the first lessons as there was limited spaces but high-demand.

So the Commodore PET with its monochrome screen was the first computer I ever touched and used.

At that time I had a double stroke of luck in as much as my parents agreed off the back of this course to purchase a computer at home for me.

At this point, Commodore was getting stiff competition from machines like the Apple II and Atari 800 which both had colour graphics and would hook up to TV screens so Commodore responded by releasing the VIC-20 in 1980. The Commodore VIC-20 was the first computer to sell one million units.

It was during this time that Tramiel coined the phrase, "We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes" and the home computing age had certainly been kicked off.

Back to my parents....they bought me the Commodore VIC-20 followed later by the Commodore 64 which became the best selling personal computer of all time.

I was fascinated by these machines which essentially did nothing unless you programmed them.

Initially, with no tape drive, I had to type in programs from scratch, make them work, use them and lose them when the computer was switched off! I started off by copying programs out of programming magazines and then just messing about with them to see what they did and how they worked and then altering things to see what happened. So a right little hacker!

This is where my love of software and creating and making things work started. Still doing the same today!

There were lots of other home computers that followed on the market in the UK from companies like Acorn Computers, Amstrad and Sinclair Research, but for me, the beginning was on these Commodore machines.

This Auschwitz survivor created a legacy of generations upon generations of computer scientists, engineers, and gamers who had their first exposure to high technology because of his affordable computers.

Jack died in 2012 aged 83 years old.

Click on the image below to see a great TED talk with Jack's son, Leonard Tramiel who talks about his father's legacy.