William S. Heckscher
In 1932–1933, Heckscher lived in New York where he worked as Panofsky's assistant. During this time, he enrolled in the Graduate Department of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University to study American art history. Heckscher returned to Germany to continue his studies in 1934. He and his mother were detained by the Gestapo and interrogated for ten days after being accused of having pacifist connections.
Joseph Hirsch
The son of physician Charles S. Hirsch and Fannie Wittenberg, he grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Central High School. He was of German-Jewish heritage. At age 17, he entered the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), where he was instructed in the Philadelphia realist tradition of Thomas Eakins. After graduation, he studied privately with George Luks in New York City (1932–33). Luks was a founder of the Ashcan School and one of "The Eight," a group of painters who depicted everyday scenes of urban life. Luks introduced Hirsch to the Social Realism movement.