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Show !T5S ? f?u by Teri Gomes In the heart of New York City: a meeting and a memory There are certain things, with any luck, which make a vacation and location come alive. Last winter when I traveled to Courchevel, France, with all its genuine glamour and fabulous snow, the magic moment came in sharing a drink with a ski instructor and his girlfriend in their tiny apartment. I had mentioned the hot air balloons in Park City to him and he in turn told me about his summer working crew for Billy Bombard and his famous French balloon tours. I saw his photos, his home; his lady and all the elements apart from the superficial meeting one usually has with a ski instructor. For me, it was the magic click in the trip. I spent this past week with my husband in New York City. And it was . filled with . Broadway shows, glamourous folks, mouth-watering restaurants, and great street people. We saw the under-repair lady the Statue of Liberty. "We saw Ellis Island where all the immigrants first came and we knew New York was a city founded by those people. But all that didn't fit together until midway through the week when I met Arthur. Arthur is my friend Robert's father. I knew he was a longtime New Yorker from eastern Europe and I knew he worked in the garment district, but that was really all I knew. A little background: Robert, my crazy lovable friend, helped me pull off a surprise vacation for my husband's fortieth birthday. He helped me get theater tickets, airline tickets and lent us his Manhattan apartment for a week. Since I'm always looking for a story, even on a trip, I asked if I might talk to his father at his factory in the fashion district. Last Wednesday I went to the narrow street just off Seventh Avenue where Arthur works on the fourteenth floor. He is a designer. His own father was a tailor in Poland. For the past decade he has worked for the same company designing high-fashion coats and jackets. Under what label? Well, let me explain simply. Say you want this season's hottest oversize jacket look. Arthur designs his own version of that and sells it in the Seventh Avenue showroom to buyers from Nordstroms, Castletons and ZCMI and they put in "Specially designed for . . ." labels of their own. Arthur had never met me before in his life. He spent more than an hour with me that day showing me the cutting room, the design room, the beautiful wool fabrics and national ads of his designs. He answered every question (all right every dumb question) I asked with warmth and humor. I was charmed. And I accepted his invitation to join his sons Robert and Lenny and his wife for their Rosh Hashanah holiday dinner Thursday. . , Robert's brother picked us all up at the apartment on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. for the short drive out to Fresh Meadows. After the initial greetings and coat taking Robert's mother was talking of fixing us lunch before the dinner "just to tide us over." So the eating and the drinking and the holiday celebration started early in the day. I decided in the comfortable setting to ask Arthur a few more questions about his business. Like, just when did he come to the United States and why? (Later Robert would tell me he heard stories that never before had his father told. ) Arthur explained to me he didn't come to the States until he was nearly 30. When I pressed, why then? he started to unwind a story I hope to never forget. "I was in a German concentration camp until I was 27 years old. The Russians actually liberated our camp and I initially escaped to Russia. When I saw the papers I would have to sign to stay there I escaped to Germany, if you can believe that, the very country I had escaped from. A group of us left in a mail truck." Did he have any family, I asked? "I have one brother living in the United States now. But I had six sisters. They were all killed. I received word between camps that one sister had actually dug her own grave before she was killed by a firing squad. I never heard exactly what became of my parents. They were just presumed dead. "I worked hard in a munitions factory for the Germans. I was from hard-working stock which is probably why I survived. The Jews who lived in Western Europe weren't used to a great many hardships and many of them died right away. "We were given a slab of bread and a thin, water-soup each night to eat and that was all until the next night. Even in the winter I only had the thin striped pajamas to wear. I took to taking the cement bags from the factory and stuffing them in the pajamas for warmth in the winter. "One German I think took a liking to me because I was a hard worker and I didn't complain. He started bringing me a hunk of bread all wrapped up to work each day and throwing it in my direction but he never said, 'Here, take this.' I just knew." I watched Arthur talk. I watched the pain of his words and the tears in his sons' eyes. "I knew Daddy had been in a concentration camp but I never heard him talk like this before," said Robert. We sat down to meal that started with chicken soup and matzo balls and ended with honey cake all prepared by Arthur's wife, a Catholic from a once-wealthy family in Poland, once a family who were Jewish sympathizers. Except for her brother, her family, too, had been killed by the Germans. "The family," she said, "is everything to us. And why not? We had none left of our own. We wanted everything for our children. But mostly we wanted them to know the value of life." Arthur looked around the table. He raised his glass. "This," he said to my husband and I, "is a traditional Jewish meal, except for the prayers. Those, we say in our heart." And it struck a vein with me(, this,;thi,s was Neffi X.rfc the survivor, his family, his two successful sons and lovely wife with him in his elegant home. Now the Statue of Liberty made sense. The bagels in the delicatessan belonged. And the city with the millions of nameless people in factories turning out garments for the entire nation suddenly had a heart. This trip to New York will be one I'll remember all my life. Not just because of the life-threatening cab rides or the Empire State building or the hot pretzels, but because one man took us into his home and shared with us the very fabric of his life which his loving son, my friend, is made of. |