Without financial means, Adolph, Hanna, and Hans Bernheim fled to the USA in the summer of 1939. They were taken in by relatives in Cincinnati. 

On the way to the States, they had met Doris at the ship in England, who did not join them until December, after completing her schooling. 

Hans now called himself John. He later recounted that after they left Hamburg by ship, his father threw the "Iron Cross", with which he had been decorated as a soldier for Germany in World War I, into the sea.