My ancient history professor, Martin Ostwald, taught me all about Athens in the golden age, the fifth century B.C. — and more.

Somehow he circled back to me early in the year 2024 A.D.

His seminar of four students met once a week, Thursday afternoons, for time travel that raced like chariots. Famous in his field, the pipe-smoking German Jew lavished wisdom on us.

I remember each face and name with clarity but could never forget the old-world pipe-smoking professor. Steeped in Pericles the orator, Aristotle the philosopher, Themistocles the sea general who won the Battle of Salamis.

Ostwald once started chanting and marching in a strange language. He was in character as Darius, the Persian king. Solid, short and square in stature, he could have won an Oscar for acting the role.

“Mr. Ostwald,” I say, “You make history come alive.”

His eyes gleam as he answers, “History is alive!”

And it became so. Largely thanks to his teaching, I majored in history, though English came more easily. I keep the faith in my way, giving history talks here in Washington.

A confession: At 17 or 18, I didn’t know what “classics” was. In the dining hall, I joined a classics dinner in a side room, thinking it was a discussion of great books.

Soon it dawned on me the subject was Homeric Greek and Cicero’s Latin, Athens and Rome. I was starting from nothing but a kind of innocent enthusiasm.

Another memory surfaces now, as we live and breathe in troubled times.

The meaning of Aristotle’s “Constitution of Athens” was not like our constitution. It meant the health and strength of the body politic, in the world’s first democracy, he explained.

How timely is that? How’s the health of the world’s oldest democracy, our own?

Writing papers was always a bit of a drama and challenge. At Swarthmore, they were a life event. I called the professor’s home once on a weekend and spoke to his wife, Lore.

She reassured me not to worry about calling. “He’s quite human.”

I remember the day Mr. Ostwald asked if any students were Jewish. Two of the four said they were. I always wondered why he asked. He never said.

In twists and turns in time, I recently became friends (on Facebook) with his son David, a New Yorker musician and jazz bandleader.

We met at an Israeli cafe when he was in town visiting family.

There the unanswered questions awakened.

Mr. Ostwald and his family were victims of the Holocaust. When he was a handsome youth of 16, he was arrested with his father and brother by the Nazis on the morning after “Kristallnacht,” the Night of the Broken Glass. Hitler’s government inflicted violence and terror on Jews throughout Germany.

Hearing broken glass on marble floors on Jan. 6, 2021, when the mob stormed the Capitol, still haunts me. I witnessed one of the darkest days in American history.

Tragically, Mr. Ostwald’s parents were murdered. The sons survived. Miraculously, he met Lore, his future wife, by writing letters for two years before they met in person.

He became a beloved faculty member at the elm tree-shaded campus in Philadelphia. At graduation, he compared the place to a greenhouse; time to bloom.

We took clear-cut memories with us: “His gentlemanly demeanor and wry smile,” said one classmate. “Full of heart,” another added.

“I was your typical young, impatient lefty … he was kind enough to indulge me,” a journalist recalled.

“I wish I had been … actively curious about exactly how wonderful (he was),” wrote a former diplomat in Athens who resigned in protest at the Iraq War.

His son David confirmed the sense his students had: Mr. Ostwald was not bitter, with every reason to be. He told me of the moment when his father said he was proud of him.

The small stone (“Stolperstein”) for the site of the family home in Dortmund says they were taken in “protective custody.” These “stumbling” stones are all over Germany, in memory. In his last hours, age 88, Mr. Ostwald hummed the melody of a Beethoven sonata: Pathetique.

When we left, David showed me his father’s driver’s license. There was the birth date: 1922.

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com.

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