Read Online Measure of a Man by Martin Greenfield, Wynton Hall - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Martin Greenfield, Wynton Hall
Tags: Biography, Non-Fiction
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and photo bulletins , I thought . You can check them any time and use the DP camps as a place to land when needed . Same goes for HIAS. You can depend on them for help. Why not get well and start looking for my family?
The bus ride from Buchenwald to Prague felt surreal. I stared out the window and watched the German towns and countryside race past my face and recede from my mind. I had to make a mental break. I had to bury the childhood innocence that died an agonizing death in Auschwitz, Buna, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. I was sixteen. I had seen more death and destruction than a hundred civilian men combined. My father had told me if I survived I must honor our family, not by feeling guilty, but by living life to the fullest. I would not disobey Father. In fact, I did him one better: I signed up to fight the tyranny that had taken my family from me.
We stepped off the bus at Prague and experienced a registration line far different from the ones the Nazis administered. Instead of shaving our heads and stealing our clothes, they gave us medical attention and plenty of civilian food. I had processing papers from the Buchenwald camp but chose not to show them. Instead, I told the registrars I was eighteen years old and wanted to enlist in the Czechoslovakian army. They were unwilling to take me when they saw my weakened condition. But after I had rested and healed inthe local sanitarium for several weeks, I was signed up and shipped off for a couple months of basic training. The army issued me a uniform. The fabric, the styling, the angular military cut and silhouette—I beamed every time I wore it. It made me look and feel like a man, like someone my family would be proud to call their son. I had finally reached that moment of maturity every boy passes through on the way to adulthood when he embraces, not rejects, wearing a suit. You can always tell when a boy has reached manhood by the clothes hanging in his closet.
I liked wearing a suit so much I decided I needed a civilian suit or two of my own. On one occasion our unit was sent on a quick mission to Germany. During the trip we stumbled upon a textile warehouse packed with bolts of fabric. I knew nothing about weave and thread counts, so I chose four large cuts that looked handsome and felt nice between my fingers. When we returned to Czechoslovakia, I took the four pieces of fabric to a tailor in the city. I told him I would give him two cuts of cloth if he would take the other two and make me two suits. He agreed, measured me up, and made me two simple suits. I was building a young man’s beginner wardrobe. For what, I wasn’t sure. But if I’d learned anything in the camps, I’d learned that what you wore could change your life.
The war effort was dying down, and the army discharged me after a few short months of service. They let me keep my uniform. I was proud of that uniform and to have served my country in it. But it proved useful on another level as well. Every time I traveled and wore my uniform, girls noticed it. More importantly, Russian soldiers respected it—not me, but the suit and what it represented.
Following my stint in the Czech army, I felt entrepreneurial and homesick. I wanted to earn my own money, to travel, and to find my family.
I frantically sought news of my family in Budapest and Romania, never giving up hope. I had heard so many horror stories of other families separated in the camps never to see each other again that optimism became nearly impossible.
With an increasingly heavy heart, I searched.
My quest to find my father ended the summer of 1946 in Budapest.
For some reason, I always felt that if I ever found my father alive, it would be in Hungary. I made a special effort to register my father’s name at HIAS gatherings when traveling there. But that ended when I ran into a man named Mendel.
I knew Mendel before the Shoah. He lived near my hometown of Pavlovo. When I stopped at a Hungarian HIAS location, Mendel and I
The bus ride from Buchenwald to Prague felt surreal. I stared out the window and watched the German towns and countryside race past my face and recede from my mind. I had to make a mental break. I had to bury the childhood innocence that died an agonizing death in Auschwitz, Buna, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. I was sixteen. I had seen more death and destruction than a hundred civilian men combined. My father had told me if I survived I must honor our family, not by feeling guilty, but by living life to the fullest. I would not disobey Father. In fact, I did him one better: I signed up to fight the tyranny that had taken my family from me.
We stepped off the bus at Prague and experienced a registration line far different from the ones the Nazis administered. Instead of shaving our heads and stealing our clothes, they gave us medical attention and plenty of civilian food. I had processing papers from the Buchenwald camp but chose not to show them. Instead, I told the registrars I was eighteen years old and wanted to enlist in the Czechoslovakian army. They were unwilling to take me when they saw my weakened condition. But after I had rested and healed inthe local sanitarium for several weeks, I was signed up and shipped off for a couple months of basic training. The army issued me a uniform. The fabric, the styling, the angular military cut and silhouette—I beamed every time I wore it. It made me look and feel like a man, like someone my family would be proud to call their son. I had finally reached that moment of maturity every boy passes through on the way to adulthood when he embraces, not rejects, wearing a suit. You can always tell when a boy has reached manhood by the clothes hanging in his closet.
I liked wearing a suit so much I decided I needed a civilian suit or two of my own. On one occasion our unit was sent on a quick mission to Germany. During the trip we stumbled upon a textile warehouse packed with bolts of fabric. I knew nothing about weave and thread counts, so I chose four large cuts that looked handsome and felt nice between my fingers. When we returned to Czechoslovakia, I took the four pieces of fabric to a tailor in the city. I told him I would give him two cuts of cloth if he would take the other two and make me two suits. He agreed, measured me up, and made me two simple suits. I was building a young man’s beginner wardrobe. For what, I wasn’t sure. But if I’d learned anything in the camps, I’d learned that what you wore could change your life.
The war effort was dying down, and the army discharged me after a few short months of service. They let me keep my uniform. I was proud of that uniform and to have served my country in it. But it proved useful on another level as well. Every time I traveled and wore my uniform, girls noticed it. More importantly, Russian soldiers respected it—not me, but the suit and what it represented.
Following my stint in the Czech army, I felt entrepreneurial and homesick. I wanted to earn my own money, to travel, and to find my family.
I frantically sought news of my family in Budapest and Romania, never giving up hope. I had heard so many horror stories of other families separated in the camps never to see each other again that optimism became nearly impossible.
With an increasingly heavy heart, I searched.
My quest to find my father ended the summer of 1946 in Budapest.
For some reason, I always felt that if I ever found my father alive, it would be in Hungary. I made a special effort to register my father’s name at HIAS gatherings when traveling there. But that ended when I ran into a man named Mendel.
I knew Mendel before the Shoah. He lived near my hometown of Pavlovo. When I stopped at a Hungarian HIAS location, Mendel and I
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