A Different Kind of Resilience

A Different Kind of Resilience 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 and liked being alone. 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 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. My father is on the back row, second from the right. 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, Ryan. Though 82 years old, Bernie possessed his full faculties and, not surprisingly, strong 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. 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?" "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 Zilina. 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 ...