A Different Kind of Resilience

A Different Kind of Resilience

Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.
December, 2005
Copyright © 2005

Last month, I buried my eighty-seven year old uncle Bernie next to my parents in a cemetery near my home in Salt Lake City, a long way from his childhood home. A stubborn, independent survivor, Bernie was born in Michalovce, Czechoslovakia in 1918. He was the sixth child of a Jewish cattle merchant. Although Bernie eventually lived only a mile away from my family, I rarely saw him as I grew up an only child in Brooklyn, New York. He would come to dinner occasionally. He never forgot my birthday or holidays but always gave cash. On my sixteenth birthday he gave me a gold coin from South Africa and told me to save it because "gold would always be valuable". I don't think I ever really knew him. He wasn't the kind of uncle that took you to a ballgame or the zoo. In fact I have very few memories of my Uncle Bernie and I actually doing things together. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1969 his visits for dinner would usually culminate in a debate between he and I about the war, from which my mother and father abstained. I accused him of being pro-war, which he gladly acknowledged, repeatedly reminding me about Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust. I never knew how he survived and he never told me.

On numerous occasions I remember my mother telling me he was a lonely man. I couldn't understand why if he was lonely he didn't come to see us more often. Eventually I came to believe he was just a loner. I'll never know whether he liked being alone. He staunchly resisted my efforts to get to know him better except for a few brief moments five years ago.

My father's younger brother of ten years, Bernie was the last survivor of a Czechoslovakian family of eight boys and one girl. My father preceded him in death exactly ten years ago. Technically they each died of the same illness. Alzheimer's arrives like an impending storm at sea. The weather is clear and the ocean calm but even far off the storm can be seen coming and will not be deterred. Relentlessly the storm arrives until you are engulfed and all direction lost. Watching my uncle slowly lose his identity along with his will to live was a bitter rerun of watching my father ten years earlier. Their entire family preceded my father and his brother in death some time in the late 1930's or early 1940's, murdered on one of the killing grounds created for the "final solution". A year and a half ago when it was apparent that Bernie could no longer care for himself, I moved him to Salt Lake City. As his closest living relative I assumed responsibility for his care.

My father's family in Michalovce, Czechosolvakia in 1928

My father was fortunate. In 1928 he was sent as a nineteen year old to live and work in Israel, where he remained for ten years before immigrating to America. In 1940 he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Because he spoke 5 languages he entered Army Intelligence soon after boot camp. He never saw his family again. My uncle Bernie was ten years old when my father left home. The only family photograph I possess of my father's family was taken just before he left for Israel. Bernie is in the center of the photograph, between my grandparents. There is a "twinkle in his eye", a phrase my colleague Dr. Bob Brooks uses to describe mischievous but likeable children. He was probably between his parents for a reason. In fact I suspect that in today's world his parents would have brought him to see someone like me. The young man in the back row, second from the right side is my dad Nat. Our resemblance at that age makes a strong argument for the power of genetics. A few years later our resemblance waned, making an added argument for the power of experience.

In the summer of 2000 Bernie made one of his few trips to Salt Lake City, this time to celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of our son. Though 82 years old Bernie possessed his full faculties and opinions. He began each morning during the week he stayed at our home reading the local newspaper from front to back. He spent a day exploring downtown Salt Lake City on his own, finding his way at the end of the day to my office. During the week we discussed politics. His opinions were still staunchly conservative. In passing I asked as I had many times before if he would relate his memories of childhood and survival during WW II. I expected the usual passive response on his part. But for some reason he agreed, perhaps due to an unconscious awareness that this would be the last time we were together when he knew who he and I were. We sat at our dining room table. Bernie's eyes were alive with his memories. He sat up straight with his hands clasped together on the table, rarely moving them as he spoke. For an hour I listened and recorded his story. The following is an edited version of Bernie's story. This is a story of a different kind of resilience.

	My father in 1933

Bernie's Story

In the fall of 1939, my uncle Bernie was drafted into the Czechoslovakian Army. For reasons that he did not explain he was never fully inducted into the army but instead lived and worked on the fringes of the army, traveling throughout Slovakia selling black market goods to the soldiers. He made a very good living. Some time in 1941 his good life ended. He was placed into a labor camp, subsequently working on multiple construction projects. In the spring of 1942, he escaped the labor camp and made his way home.

"As soon as I arrived home there was an announcement that all Jewish men, women and children had to be registered. I refused."

"Why didn't you register?" I asked.

"I told them not to write my name down. See I was a nobody. I didn't exist. I had been gone for a few years and they didn't know who I was. A few days later the police came. They took four of my brothers away and this was the end of them. I left home with my parents, my younger sister and my older brother. We lived from place to place."

"Were you close to your siblings?" I asked as I noticed his eyes seemed to water but his voice remained unwavering.

"Yes but I never saw them again. Then nothing seemed to happen until May 5th. An order came that every family had to leave. The German army started to collect every family. They took people's possessions but they didn't know who I was. I took my older brother and we left. We never saw our parents again."

"So how did you survive?"

My father in the U.S. Army in 1941

"They started looking for people in the street. But we knew this in advance and we disappeared. We played a mouse and cat game like this from May until October. In between I made money. I took inventory for a hardware store and commercial steel company. The owner of the hardware store told me about some friends who had been taken away. They had left money in their attic. He told me where it was and that if I got it for him, he would share it with me. Well I found it and he gave me quite a lot of money. I used this money to buy things and sold them on the black market. My brother and I had money."

Bernie paused and took a drink of water. I waited. He looked at me and shook his head, but remained silent for a moment, perhaps reliving a sad memory.

"After the Jewish holidays, my brother and I decided it would be good to go to the country. My brother had a car. We were sleeping in a farmer's attic but a German woman married to a friend of ours called the police. We were with a third friend that night. My older brother was a little heavier than me. I jumped down and began to run, as did our friend. One policeman grabbed my brother. The other ran after me. I was wearing a trench coat, unbuttoned. He caught my coat and grabbed it. He pulled me down. They took us to the police. The police beat me because I was running away. They put us on a transport to Zillna. Then they put us on to a transport to Poland. Along the way, the train had to pull over to stop. They unloaded us all. We decided the three of us should runaway but the guards were right there. Finally we got to a labor camp. I was picked to bring coffee to the guards each day."

"Why did they pick you?"

"I don't know but I told my brother that I was going to run away. A few days later I got out into the city. I tried to find money to go back home. I never saw my brother again."

Bernie sought out local Jews in the community to hide and help him. He forged a document that indicated he had been released from the labor camp and was a free man. He eventually found his way home but his family was gone and the house was empty.

	My uncle Bernie in his trench coat. This photo was taken in Prague in the late 1940's

"The house was empty but I went in anyway. I knew where there was some money hidden. A neighbor of ours, a shoemaker, found a place to hide me. I slept two nights and left. Then I found out the police were looking for me. They knew I left the camp and somehow knew that I had come home. I decided to travel to the Hungarian border. On the way, I met someone from my town. He knew my family. We bartered for coffee and cocoa. These were worth a lot of money in Slovakia."

Bernie was able to purchase "Aryan papers." These papers included a forged birth certificate. By the end of 1942 Bernie was entrenched in black market activities, smuggling across the Hungarian border.

"I met a Rabbi. The Jews in Hungary were still not in the camps at that time. He was trying to escape. I gave him my papers."

"What did you do then?"

"I found a woman who helped me and gave me Christian papers. I lived in the city. I didn't try to obtain immigration cards but these papers allowed me to receive bread rations."

"You had to have rations to get bread?"

"To buy bread you give them a ticket for two pounds of bread."

"Otherwise you couldn't buy bread?"

"You could buy it on the black market but it was expensive. You could eat other things like corn bread."

Eventually, at one of the many daily police searches, Bernie was found out. A girl that he had been staying with was caught. When Bernie was stopped the police did not accept his papers.

"They put us against a wall in which I had to stand from 7:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night. I wasn't beaten. They didn't let you move. One guy moved and they beat him really badly. They tied his hands and feet with a piece of rope and hung him up. Then I was in jail for six months. In April, 1944 they took us to a camp in Poland."

"Did they know you were Jewish?"

"I don't think so, just that I was a criminal. But when the Nazi's occupied Hungary, Jews, criminals, gypsies, it didn't matter to them. They put us all on a train for Poland. But they needed factory workers. I told them that I was a steel worker and knew how to repair machines. They sent me and some others to a factory. Along the way we spent a few nights in a camp. I don't remember the name. There was a funny smell. The guards told me that the smell came from these large chimneys and this was the only way out. But not for us. We were on our way to the factory."

My uncle Bernie as a machinist. This photo was taken in the early 1950's

By mid-1944, the war wasn't going well for the Germans. One of their means to turn the war around was to create an air force of unarmed V2 rockets. Bernie was sent to work on these rockets. For four months he worked day and night shifts.

"I made small electric motors for the V2 bombs. We started working twelve hours only at night. In the factory I met a man from my town. He showed me how to work a lathe. I told the Nazi's I knew how to run the big machine but it was too much for me so they put me on a smaller lathe. I worked on this machine for seven or eight months. In July 1944 the Nazi's decided I was a good worker. I was given better food and quarters but no one could escape. A man who worked next to me tried to escape. He was caught and hung."

Bernie paused and took another sip of water. I waited. He put his head in his hands and was silent. For a moment I thought he was done, the rest of the story forgotten or too painful to relive. But this story would be completed. In a moment he lifted his head, put his hands on the table and continued.

"In January 1945 the Russian Army was in Poland about 100 kilometers away from the V2 factory. The Americans were bombing every night. They put all of the machines from the factory on a train with the factory workers and traveled into Czechoslovakia. We traveled for six days in a cattle train, stopping to be fed only once a day. On one side were the Russians and the other the Americans. The Germans moved us to a factory in Buchanwald making artillery shells. There was a big factory in the woods. One night the six big garages were bombed so they put us on another train to take us to another factory in Saxonhausen. It was February, winter. Two thousand of us got on the train. Eight hundred got off. Everyone else froze to death. There was no food or water. I was sitting besides the dead for three days and three nights. When we arrived in Saxonhausen, the Nazi's asked if anyone knew how to repair watches. They wanted the watches they had confiscated from the Jews repaired and given to the German field soldiers and the SS. I told them I could fix watches and did that for a month. The Americans and Russians were bombing every night. We weren't far from Berlin. One morning when we were cleaning up, I found a box of Cigars. I traded them for some potatoes. Then one day they took us all out into the forest. I thought this was the end. The Russians were shooting on one side. The Americans on the other. When we turned around the soldiers were gone. The next day the Americans and Russians arrived. I was officially free and told to go home."

Bernie returned to Prague on a transport train. He met a cousin on this train. He found a place to live in Prague as the war ended and started to work again as a machinist. By chance he met another friend who had just returned from Paris. He told my uncle that my father was there working as a translator for General Eisenhower's staff.

"They got word to Nat and he came to see me. He told me he would try to help me come to America."

	My uncle Bernie in Brooklyn

These were difficult times but Bernie's life style and knack for survival would serve him well. He once again entered the black market selling cigarettes and chocolates. He became a bootlegger, mixing water with plain alcohol and selling it as Vodka. He began trading in various currencies. He made a lot of money.

"I went back to our family home in Michalovce."

"Was anyone there?"

"No one came back. I was alone. I knew a lawyer. He prepared papers proving the house was mine and I sold it."

"The house stood throughout the entire war?"

"The house was over 200 years old. It was finally torn down sometime in the 1970's. It was brick and stone. It was a big house. There were three big rooms, a kitchen and a pantry. After I sold the house I continued living in an apartment with my cousin in Prague. I kept trying to leave the country. I couldn't get papers to go. Finally in 1948 I was called and told I could obtain a visa. All during this time my uncle Meyer helped me. He immigrated to Israel."

"Why didn't you go with him?."

"I let somebody go in my place instead. Somebody who needed to go. In exchange, this person left me her car. I drove her car to Vienna. I had a visa but couldn't get a passport. I bribed a police detective by giving him my car and he took me over the border."

"Which border?"

"I went to West Germany. I went to the American Consulate and told them what had happened. That I have a visa, that I have papers from Prague. If they took away my visa I would have nothing. Every day I went to the American Consulate. I had a letter from Nat. Then one day I was told that I would be given a passport. My travel arrangements were paid for by an international refugee organization."

My father Nat, myself and my uncle Bernie in 1961

"How did you get to the United States?"

"I took a boat from Germany all the way to New York. It took about seven days. I arrived on May 5, 1949. We arrived at 6:00 in the morning. Everyone stood on the boat looking at the Statue of Liberty. It was dark. We docked at a pier on 42nd Street. It was 6:00 p.m. before they let us off the boat. Your father was waiting for me. That is how I came to the United States."

Bernie rented a room with a couple in Brooklyn. He found work of all things, as a machinist, eventually employed for over thirty years by one company in the Aerospace industry. He never returned to the black market or shady dealings. He never told me his reasons. Perhaps he felt he no longer needed to engage in criminal activity to survive. Perhaps coming to America was his transitional moment, a moment in which he decided the future manner in which he would conduct himself and his life. Yet considering how he spent the last fifty-six years of his life, I wonder about the price he paid for survival. Bernie never married. I don"t think I ever met any of his friends, if he had them. He lived in the same studio apartment in Brooklyn for nearly forty years. He had few possessions. He attended synagogue but not religiously. He traveled but as far as I knew, only to Israel to see cousins and relatives. He left no will nor instructions for his care should illness befall him.

In that one hour five and a half years ago, I learned more about my uncle's life than I had learned in the previous forty-five years. I still didn't really know him but this was all I would ever know. Millions of people died in the eight years from 1938 to 1945, but millions of others, including my uncle Bernie survived. I don't know that he ever thrived after coming to America but he lived a long life. If resilience is equated with survival then my uncle was resilient. But certainly his was a different kind of resilience driven by a stubborn, independent mindset. Resilience with an attitude. May he rest in peace.