My old friend and editor Dave Appel was the inspiration for this gathering of memoirs and for the writing of this book. As for the book’s editing and publishing, the credit goes to my publisher Rob Huberman. Each of these two uncommon men saw things in these stories that I didn’t.
Dave, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s book editor for many years before he died, was a rarity among editors. He loved writers. More to the point, he loved the written word.
Our friendship began at a time when I was writing a three-times-a-week op-ed column for the Inquirer. One day I decided to introduce myself to this legend—a man who knew Hemingway, Steinbeck and Michener. Dave was the last of that late, great generation.
Since I had but one book to my name, The Horsemen, I expected a quick hello and goodbye. Instead I was greeted with warmth and enthusiasm, qualities that endured throughout our friendship.
As these things go, we got to talking about his background, and then mine, and as incidents of my childhood came to the surface—memories that I had put aside for so long—finally one day Dave said, "Stop! Stop talking. I don’t want to hear another word. Write! Stop talking it away. You’ve got to write down this material before it’s all gone."
So I didn’t say another word, and I wrote. But with some resistance.
Since I had hastily gotten myself Americanized, I never thought of myself as a survivor. Survivors were those who had endured the death camps. And I didn’t even think of myself as an immigrant. Immigrants have gold teeth and speak with accents, while I played baseball and joined the Boy Scouts and took pliable girls to the drive-in movies in Cincinnati and, later, became part of the Beat Scene in Greenwich Village. Who had time to remember, or to care?
Moreover, when in spurts I finally did quicken to the fact that I indeed was a survivor and an immigrant, the thought of recounting my family’s years under Nazi Occupation—followed by our successful, though terrifying escape—was too daunting. In my apprentice years as a writer, I had tried but always failed to get anything worthwhile down about those events.
I was just an infant when all those exploits transpired and I would have had to undertake much research in order to get the stories right—and I simply could not get up the gumption for such an effort, perhaps because so many writers had already beaten me to the task.
The only road still unmarked was this: the life of a child refugee.
This was terrain not well traveled, and so sketch by sketch I went ahead with this collection, motivated by no greater ambition than to its being a keepsake for my children. And once I got started I couldn’t stop. It all came flooding back. I was in a hurry to get it down, remembering what Dave Appel said about putting it on paper before it’s all gone.
Yes, the children. It’s so important for them (and their whole generation) to know—and to never forget. Their heritage begins with Abraham emerging from Ur of the Chaldees and proceeds with a parent who was also trapped in a godless world, until he was commanded to GO FORTH (Lech Lecha)—and likewise found himself a stranger in a strange land.
The children must be made aware that the freedom they enjoy today in America—and too easily take for granted—comes with a responsibility to appreciate and respect the past.
Then comes the matter of anti-Semitism. To put it bluntly: It’s still as pervasive as ever. I’ve spoken at enough college campuses to know that there are too many ministers of hate who have cleverly targeted the impressionable young and have gained a new world of adherents—among them blacks, whites, and even young Jews.
Thanks to them, I am convinced that for each Jewish kid growing up today, there’s an anti-Semite to match. With some watering, they sprout like weeds.
And…who would have thought…that the greatest calculated massacre of all-time would produce, barely a generation later, an obscene legion of Holocaust deniers…people who say it didn’t happen—just as there once were those who claimed that the earth was flat.
It was mostly for these reasons—that is, to wage against forgetfulness and the terrorism of lies—that the book’s publisher, Rob Huberman—also a lover of words—encouraged the publication of this work, persuaded, as he was, that it possesses a universal message.
Maybe he’s right.
Jack Engelhard
June 2000
My Father, Joe
"The designers — the nobility of a handbag factory — where were they? There I’d find my father."
Now we had it good. Six million never made it out. We…we escaped France when the Nazis and their gendarmes were beginning their roundups in our district in Toulouse. We walked the Pyrenees…hid in Spain…rested in Portugal…and found refuge in Montreal, Canada — much later we moved to America.
Amazing how so much can be summed up in a single paragraph. And life, as we know, is not lived by the paragraph. Take my word for it that our escape was a tremendous adventure — two years of running, evading, a hundred close calls in cars, trains, ships, a thousand moments of doubt, fear, helplessness, and being spooked at every turn by the sights and sounds of Nazi boots.
But I won’t go into all that — that’s another novel, and frankly, it’s a story that’s already been written by others — even cheapened and trivialized and, to tell the truth, unless you lived it — you’ll never know. But maybe I can share with you what it was like being a refugee.
As for my father, and so much of this story is about my father, let me say that he was no ordinary man. He was a man of great learning. He knew Torah, Talmud, Mishnah, Kabbala — all of which had been crammed into him as a Yeshiva-boy in Poland. He was also a man of action. When he found out that we were on "The List," no words of caution from my mother could detain him. He knew just what to do...
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Now here we were in Montreal.
My father was a businessman. Like Rockefeller was a rabbi, so was my father a businessman. He tottered from failure to failure, but with pride. He was his own man.
He used to say, "I don’t know what it is with me. I can’t work for another man." This was no weakness in his eyes. No, it was strength — a sign of character.
To which my mother would say, "Yes, a character you are."
But, for a spell, my father did work for another man, and Mr. Snow was his name.
Mr. Snow was a handbag manufacturer. He had a factory on St. Lawrence Street where he employed 25 workers — designers, cutters, and sewers. In Europe, my father had had a handbag factory of 40 workers — or 50, or 60, or maybe 100.
The number grew along with my father’s wrath, for he did not like working for Mr. Snow. So he’d come home and say, "He calls himself a fabricant?
"I had a factory of 50 and he’s going to teach me about handbags?" The next day it was a factory of 60, and so on.
My father was a designer for Mr. Snow. Father designed handbags with frames, following the classic European fashion and the style that had made him revered in the trade. Now he’d bring home his designs for my mother’s review...designs which Mr. Snow had rejected again and again.
Mr. Snow, you see, had no faith in handbags with frames.
Frames were out.
Zippers were in.
"Zippers," my father said.
In time, though, he stopped being contemptuous. And he stopped bringing home his designs.
Gradually, he fell into one of his great, trance-like silences.
Mother would ask him how things were going in the factory and he’d say, "Good enough." She’d ask him why he stopped bringing home samples. He’d respond by staring off in the distance, and I never knew what he saw there, except Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He lived more in their world than in his own.
Naturally, one day he forgot his lunchbag.
"Go bring this to your father," my mother said.
I walked past the Ste. Lawrence Street grocery stores, butcher shops (Kosher-Bosher), bakeries and everything that was retail and wholesale. Further up, factories had been turned into tenements, tenements into factories, and in such a place, warped from top to bottom, worked my father.
Approaching the landing you could hear the roar of the sewing machines. Closer, you smelled the adhesives and the leather. Inside, I did not know where to begin. Cutters were bent over huge tables slicing up giant stretches of animal hides. Sewers were grinding in frenzy, never once gazing up, as though somewhere in their urgency of livelihood they had lost the human sense of wonder and curiosity.
For the most part, these were Jewish refugees who were paid by the piece. But the rush of their machines were like wails. These people were in a hurry to forget the past and catch up to the present.
The designers — the nobility of a handbag factory — where were they? There I’d find my father.
I stepped into the stock room where rough-talking characters were packing finished handbags into cardboard boxes. These types had a word and a look for everybody.
I heard them yell, "Joe. Joe, where’s my Coke?" Then they’d laugh.
There must be an errand boy here, I thought, named Joe. Every place has a Joe.
I heard others in the factory take up the same chant. "Joe. Joe, where’s my Coke?"
This Joe, some joke he must be.
Then I saw my father. He was carrying a tray of Cokes, but not moving fast enough.
"Over here, Joe. Atta boy."
How, I wondered, does a man go from Noah ben Jacob to Joe?
My father would have had the answer…but I would never ask.
