Charles K. Bliss (September 5, 1897 – July 13, 1985) was a chemical engineer and semiotician, best known as the inventor of Blissymbols, an ideographic writing system. He was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but immigrated to Australia after the Second World War and The Holocaust. Early life Bliss was born Karl Kasiel Blitz, the eldest of four children to Michel Anchel and Jeanette Blitz, in Chernivtsi in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (current Ukraine). The family were impoverished and the senior Blitz supported the family as an optician, mechanic, and wood turner. Later on Bliss said that the symbols on his father's circuit diagrams made instant sense to him. They were a "logical language". He was similarly impressed by chemical symbols, which he thought could be read by anyone, regardless of their mother tongue. Bliss's early life was difficult. It was cold and his family were poor and hungry. Because the family was Jewish, he suffered anti-Jewish taunts. When Bliss was eight years old, Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War, Russian pogroms against the Jews accelerated, and refugees came into Bliss's town from the nearby Russian town of Kishinev. Also in 1905 Bliss saw a slide show of the Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition of Weyprecht and Payer. It inspired him to study engineering to improve technology for ordinary people. In 1914 Bliss entered World War I, first as a helper with the Red Cross field ambulance, then as an army soldier. After the war he entered university. He graduated from the Vienna University of Technology as a chemical engineer in 1922. He joined Telefunken, a German television and radio apparatus company, and rose to be chief of the patent department. Detention and Second World War In March 1938, the Third Reich annexed Austria via the Anschluss, and Bliss, as a Jew, was sent to Dachau concentration camp. Later. he was moved to Buchenwald concentration camp. His wife, Claire, a German Catholic, made constant efforts to have him released. He was released in 1939 but was required to leave the country for England immediately. In England, Bliss tried to bring his wife to him, but the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 made that impossible. It was there that, because the Nazi bombing of England was called the "blitz," he changed his surname to Bliss. Bliss arranged for Claire to escape Germany via his family in Cernăuți, Romania (now called Chernivtsi