transcribed
by Howard Wasserman
Summary: As the violence against Jews in Germany
worsened, Mr. Wasserman, one of the founders of the Wasserman and Lemberger
butcher shop, was sent to Baltimore by his family at age 13. Taken in by a kind
family acquaintance, he started junior high in Lower Park Heights. After graduating
high school, he found jobs and lived on his own. He tried to get affidavits for
his parents and siblings to come to America but was unsuccessful.
I was inducted into the army at the
beginning of 1943. I was a non-citizen, but non-citizens were inducted at that
time. I was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland, where I was put on KP (kitchen
patrol) the next morning. I was washing dishes and pans that had been used for treife spareribs. I couldn’t eat for a
week after that. Next, I was transferred to Camp Wheeler, Georgia, and put in
an infantry replacement battalion. I was given basic infantry training there in
preparation for being sent overseas. However, they found out that I had very
bad eyesight in one eye, so I was left behind when the other guys were shipped
overseas.
I was given various duties at Camp
Wheeler until I was finally assigned to a headquarters company, where I did
clerical work. After that, I was transferred to Camp Landing, Georgia, a
replacement training center. Here, too, I was assigned to a headquarters
company. I stayed around other Jewish personnel who were stationed there. I ate
non-kosher food but never any pork or seafood, and I kept Shabbos when I could.
All in all, I didn’t fare too badly
in the service. I got good medical attention, and outside of problems that
everybody had, such as strict discipline and being restricted, I had no
problems whatsoever with anybody. I became a citizen while I was in the army,
in Macon, Georgia, after being investigated by the FBI because of my German
background.
Also, while in Camp Landing, I took
correspondence courses at the University of Wisconsin, which were offered to
the armed forces. I made some very good marks in history, geography,
bookkeeping, etc. I furthered my education quite a bit.
After three-and-a-half years in the
Army, I was honorably discharged and came back to Baltimore in 1946.
*
* *
One of my first experiences after
getting out of the army was when I went to change my clothes. I had stored my
clothes at Senker’s warehouse and found that everything had been stolen. I had
nothing to wear except for a few shirts that someone gave me and my uniform.
GIs were given 20 dollars per week for a year after discharge, until they could
adjust themselves to civilian life and find employment. I applied for that
stipend, but it didn’t work out for some reason. I collected maybe once or
twice. In general, being let out of service and having to adjust to civilian
life was quite difficult. It was like being thrown out of your father or
mother’s house and having to cope on your own. My experience was more or less
the same as that of many other people, but it was worse because I had no home
to go back to. So I had to figure out what to do and where to stay on my own. I
think I stayed with the Senkers for a while – it’s hard to remember.
Then I decided that I had to
further my education and learn some kind of a trade. I contacted a cousin in
New York, where, I heard, they had a school for meat cutting. He investigated
it and gave me the address, and I applied. I was accepted to this school, which
was on 14th Street in New York City, so I moved to New York in the
fall of 1946.
*
* *
Meanwhile, I was trying to find out
the status of my family – where they were, if they survived. My mother and my
brothers all knew where I was, but I was not contacted by anybody. Nobody came
back. My father died, my aunt in Theresienstadt died, and, to my knowledge, my
mother and my brothers and sister were killed in the concentration camp in
Majdanek or Treblinka. I received word through the Red Cross that they were
deported to those camps, and it was known that nobody ever came back. They were
strictly extermination camps. I checked through townspeople and various other
sources that were available at that time that listed people who had
returned.
The only person who ever contacted
me was a lady in Nuremberg who knew my family. She put an ad in the Aufbau, a periodical published in New
York for German-speaking Jewish immigrants.
That was around 1947 or ’48. This lady, Mrs. Tischer, knew where jewelry
that had belonged to my mother and my aunt was hidden, and she got it to me
through some people who came to America. That is how some of my mother and my
aunt’s things came into my possession.
All these years, we kept in contact
with this very good-hearted lady, and when we traveled to Germany, we visited
her in an old age home. Mrs. Tischer was Jewish, and her husband was a non-Jew.
She told me things about my parents, how they made out during their stay in
Nuremberg. They had been forced into a ghetto in that city in 1938, after the
Nazis expelled them from their village. And how Nuremberg was bombed
mercilessly by the Americans. I would have never known these things if she had
not contacted me.
The Jews, like my parents, in the
ghetto had a very hard time. They could not make a living and were at the mercy
of the Germans and the Jewish community, which supported these helpless people.
Families were thrown together who normally had no contact with one another.
Used to living in houses or apartments, they were now put into apartments
partitioned into rooms: one room to a family. During the war, the Germans had
no space to house people, and they were especially hard on Jews.
With Nuremberg being bombed constantly
by the Americans, there was general confusion, and Mrs. Tischer told us that
she helped people as much as she could. Towards the end of the war, she got
wind that the last of the Jews were to be rounded up and sent to extermination
camps, and amidst the chaos of the bombing, she ran away with a friend. They
subsisted by going to farmers, begging for food, and sleeping in hay lofts –
always waiting for the Americans.
The Germans knew that they lost the
war; it was a just matter of survival, of holding out until the Americans or
someone else came to rescue them. She survived that way by going from place to
place and keeping herself alive on the run. Finally, the Americans came. Coming
back to Nuremberg, Mrs. Tischer was one of the organizers of the Jewish old age
home, and she was in charge of it. She helped people who came after the war to
find shelter. Now she’s an inmate of this home; she seems to be one of the
oldest ones there. We are still in touch with her. Mrs. Tischer’s husband died
a natural death. Her son was drafted into the German army and was killed in
Russia.
* *
*
After I moved to New York, I needed
a place to live. I had relatives in New York, and they took me in. The name of
the woman was Martha Wasserman; her husband was a first cousin of my father,
although he was no longer alive. She had a son, Henry, and daughters, Irma and
Liesel. They were all unmarried at that time and lived at home. Henry was a
butcher with a job in a market.
Later on, while I was living there,
my friend Albert Kimmelstiel came and lived with us as well. I knew Albert from
Germany. They lived in a village a few miles from us, and we went to the Jewish
school in Nuremberg together after Jewish kids could not go to public school
anymore. His parents were killed in the concentration camp, and he was the only
one from his family who survived. He came to America in 1947 or ’48 and was
also taken in by the Wassermans.
Martha Wasserman was a cousin of
the chairman of the Schenley Whiskey Corporation, Emil Schwarzhaupt, who came
from her town in Germany, and he was very generous to the Wassermans and to
others. Yet, despite receiving monetary assistance from this cousin, Mrs.
Wasserman and her children worked very hard in order to support themselves.
They did not want to take anything from anyone. They treated Albert and me like
their own and refused to take any room and board at all. They never had much
education, but they were very good to us. For the first time since coming to
America, I could say that I had a home because they made you feel that you were
part of them.
I lived with the Wassermans at 214
Audubon Avenue, which is in Washington Heights. Lots of people with German
backgrounds lived in the house and in the neighborhood. It was a good feeling
to live there. The Wassermans had a similar background in Germany to mine but
they didn’t keep Shabbos anymore. They always had a kosher home, though, and
they kept the holidays like they did in Europe.
During my time in New York, I went
to the butcher school on 14th Street for six months and had a
part-time job with Ovidus and Lippmann on Audubon Avenue between 187th
and 188th Street. This was approximately 1947. I got a certain
amount of money from the government, and between that and the part-time job, I
made out okay.
After I got out of butcher school,
I got various jobs. Some didn’t last long as I didn’t know too much. The school
only gave you the basics; then you had to go out and find a job to practice
what you learned I had to find the jobs myself, and most places wanted
experienced people. These jobs were either union jobs or slave jobs. I went
from job to job until I finally found a permanent job with a non-kosher butcher
in the Bronx. He was a non-Jew, although his wife was Jewish. They both came
from Germany. I never ate anything there; I never took anything home. My cousin
always brought the kosher meat home from his job.
I left this job rather suddenly,
which maybe was not fair to them, because somebody offered me something in
Baltimore, where I had always hoped to return. I never liked New York as a
city, and Baltimore was a smaller community where I felt I could establish
myself better, now that I had a trade, than I could in New York. This happened
later, after my marriage.
*
* *
Meanwhile, I met my wife, Hedy Loeb
in 1948 on Jones Beach. I was on a date with my girlfriend, Susie. And Hedy was
on a date with a fella from Czechoslovakia. After we met, I dropped Susie, and she
dropped the other guy, and we went out with one another. Hedy was working in a
candy shop on 181st Street. Whenever I came to see her, she always
gave me good candies. At that time, she was a little girl, very thin. I found
out she that liked music and liked going to concerts at Lewisohn Stadium. I met
the Loeb family during my courtship with her, and they were very nice people.
We had other friends, but I didn’t take anyone else out, and I don’t think she
did either. We just kept on going out with each other.
Before I met Hedy, I was going with
a girl named Sophie H. She was from Berlin, a very fine girl. I liked her very
much. I started to get serious with her and she with me. Then she told me that
she was in concentration camp, and she had problems there. She didn’t think
that she could have children. After I heard this, I thought about it. Being
that I lost my whole family, I couldn’t marry her if I knew this ahead of time.
So I broke off with her. This was really my most serious romance besides Hedy.
I always felt that if you meet a
person from your own background, from your own experiences, who went through
the same hardships as you, that you had very much in common. Hedy was a very
understanding person. We talked about our experiences and what we wanted out of
life, and sooner or later, it developed into more than just a friendship. We
felt that we were for one another. In March of 1949, I brought Hedy to
Baltimore for the approval of the family. And I recall to this day going to the
Senkers, where I had lived, and he asked one question. He asked me in German,
“Is she one of our people?” I didn’t quite understand at first what he meant.
Of course, there was no question about her being Jewish. But it was very
important to him that she be of German background. This was the second
generation already. He was born in America, yet he still felt that way. This
surprised me considering what the Jewish people went through during the war.
But they liked Hedy, and all was well.
*
* *
After the trip to Baltimore, we
became engaged. Six months later, we were married, on October 30, 1949, at Max
Loeb’s house. Mr. Eshwege married us, and the luncheon or whatever we had
afterwards was at Tanta Hedda Selig’s house. We didn’t have sheva brochos. We had a honeymoon like
everybody else did; we went to the Nevely Country Club in the Catskills. We
stayed there for a week. After our honeymoon, we came back and rented a
furnished room with a family on Seaman Avenue. It was on the QT because they
weren’t supposed to sublease anything.
I was still working in the Bronx,
in the butcher shop. Hedy was working for Mazel Zarazan, a Frenchman who sold
costume jewelry. And that is how we got our start. Neither of us had anything,
and we pooled our resources and started to look for an apartment, which was not
easy to get. But, step by step, things got a little better. We saved our money
and started to live better, and it wasn’t very long before we found an
apartment.
It wasn’t the nicest apartment, but
it was an apartment. We didn’t have any furniture. Uncle Max secured us a
couple of beds, and we had the mattresses steam cleaned. He got us a few old
tables that no one else wanted from a moving job. I believe the only thing that
we bought was a kitchen set. The apartment, on 600 West 192nd Street;
we got it in the early 1950s.
Then, in January 1951, we suddenly
received an offer to come to Baltimore. A butcher in Baltimore got sick and was
very anxious to sell his place. Lou Wise was instrumental in arranging all this
and trying to get me back to Baltimore. I had always wanted to come back to
Baltimore, but I was still working at the Bronx. This all happened very fast.
Lou wanted me down right away. I did come down right away and stayed in
Baltimore, not knowing exactly what I should do or what I wanted to do, being
that we didn’t have any money to buy a business.
After I got here and I explained
the situation, they told me not to worry about it. Lou Wise was the husband of Judy Wise, who
was a second cousin of my mother’s. I had become friendly with them when I
first came to America, and Lou took a liking to me. He told me not to worry
about the money for the business, which cost $2,000. I had $2,000 but felt that
being that I had a wife, I couldn’t sink every last penny in the business. So,
they agreed – Lou Wise, Ernst Oppenheimer, Morty Sugar, Daniel Senker, Jerome
Senker, and Ludwig Loeb (Hedy’s Uncle) – to loan me $500 each to start this
business. I signed notes for each one that in case I would fail, I would honor
my obligation to them.
These men were very nice to loan me
this money because it was risky proposition. I worked as a butcher, but I was
not a businessman. It was an old established shop. It was a kosher shop, which
is what I always wanted because I wanted to live a religious life, where I
wouldn’t have to work on Shabbos, and this was my beginning in reaching this
goal.
Hedy didn’t move right away. She
had to liquidate things in New York before. I spent a couple of weeks with the Wises,
who lived on Menlo Drive. And after Hedy came, we spent a few weeks with the
Oppenheimers on Callaway Avenue. Finally, we got an apartment on Brookfield
Avenue from a Mrs. Tiefenblum on Brookfield Avenue very close to Whitelock
Street, where the store was located.
*
* *
I bought the business from Jonas
Morganruth, who had a stroke and was forced to sell. It was very run down. Both
the way the business was run and the equipment were very old-fashioned. I had
to modernize from the bottom up because there was nothing there except a small
icebox. At the beginning, it was very, very hard. But little by little, I got
into it and made progress in building up the business.
First, I had to worry about living
conditions of my own, moving from one town to another. Then I had to learn how
to deal with the customers. They were used to somebody else; they see a new
person coming into the business, and right away they take advantage of him and
tell him “the other guy did it this way,” etc. It was a very difficult thing to
start and to keep it going, but it seems like I was successful in overcoming
these difficulties.
It got better as time went along. I
had my own style of doing things after a while. I kept a certain portion of Mr.
Morganruth’s customers, and I lost some. But I was not a total stranger in
Baltimore; I got new customers, and as time went on, we made out okay. Hedy
helped me in a store, which was also totally new to her.
After about a year, we rented an
apartment on 600 Whitelock Street, where we lived a good number of years, until
1960. Michael was born there on April 10, 1954. I went to shul Friday nights
and Shabbos on McCullough and Bloom Streets, which was the old Shearith Israel
congregation, before they moved to Glen Avenue.
After Michael was born, it became
necessary to take in a partner because Hedy was not able to be of much help
anymore. Michael was born the week before Pesach, and during her stay in the
hospital, I was unable to come to see her because I was so busy in the store. I
just couldn’t handle it all on my own.
In November 1954, I acquired a
partner. We got him with the help of our friend Albert Kimmelstiel, who knew
Sol Lemberger in New York. Sol was anxious to go into a partnership and move
out of New York. Albert introduced us, and we came to an agreement. Sol became
our partner, and we were partners for many years. I believe Sol paid us
approximately $5,000 to buy into the business. He paid about $1,000 down and
then paid us on a monthly basis for a number of years. Our second son, Howard,
was born in 1960, shortly after we moved to Dorset Place.
*
* *
Postscript
by Howard Wasserman
My father passed away in March, 1986, two weeks before Pesach. His story is one of perseverance, strength, and survival.
It’s a reminder of the importance of family, faith, and the courage to start
anew, even after everything is lost. To his testament and that of Mr.
Lemberger, Wasserman and Lemberger is still operating today, operated by Mr.
Arie Benjamin.
