When I was 25 my father was the same age I am now… 74. At that time I had only a tiny awareness of what being 74 might feel like. In hindsight his life and what he accomplished seems even more incredible.
At that age he was still sometimes commuting into Manhattan from Queens, but more often taking a taxi as they were happy to have Mr. Bunzel around to look over the operations of an incentive travel agency.
At my age today, I cannot imagine being capable of commuting anywhere by subway; now that I think of it with my brain injury going down into what I remember of the Queens subway, I would probably be knocked over by the noise.
At 74 if he did go into the subway, and he would if he had to pay the cab fare which I don’t think he did, it would be off hours between the morning rush hour and lunch and early return. Maybe grab a pastrami on rye at the corner deli (“Lean! Very lean!”) yeah yeah the waitress nods because she’s heard this order maybe a billion times.
Of course, my father had been through much more difficult trips than the New York subway.
Maybe the worst one was when they took away his house and his career – this would be the German Nazis — probably the SS – and shipped him off with his wife and first son to the “show camp” of Theresienstadt.
It was referred to as the “show camp” because the Red Cross would visit and the Germans would suddenly supply hot meals and be quite jovial during the inspections and then of course when the Red Cross left, things deteriorated quickly.
Life or Death Just a Moment Away
Food was scarce, a real meal unthinkable and the beatings resumed. When I was a boy my father told a story, quite calmly, of standing around with another inmate who was smoking the nub of a cigarette.
Suddenly a German officer appeared (It may have been the German in charge of the camp, I believe his name was Rahm) and smoking was forbidden with a penalty of death if discovered.
Just as the German appeared the man handed the cigarette to my father, who suddenly was confronted by an SS officer looking down at “his” smoldering cigarette.
My father was very fortunate. He was not shot, just warned, but he would tell the story to emphasize how close to death one was every moment of the day or night. As I said he had a young son at the time who I later met when I was in my 20’s.
So my father survived and now that I remember, in addition to his wife and son, he also managed to get his own mother (a grandmother I would never meet) back to Prague when he was liberated.
Affirmation of Who He Was
During a move I found a scroll from his fellow inmates at the time with whom he had worked under the supervision of the Germans to handle some of the affairs of the camp – Juden Eltern – Jewish elders.
They apparently had held my father in very high regard because I could phonetically make out some of the German and this was awarded in recognition of his heroic efforts on behalf of other inmates.
I am ashamed to say I no longer have this item. but I remember finding it and it was quite a moment.
He Prepared for My Mother and My Arrival
Of course, I had also held my father in very high regard. He had taken us out of Vienna, to Queens in 1955 and began with his first job at Macy’s selling skis (on his knees sometimes) at the age of 55. He had never skied a day in his life, he spent his time in cafes playing billiards, but he was Austrian so – skis.
He somehow managed to put me through Tufts University, a fine college, and I don’t remember lacking anything, except now that I think about it, I did yearn for a color TV when I was very young.
We eventually got one, and it was a major event, like when we got our first car, but took a few more years from the time of my request (my friends all had them) and it was my first lesson of “we don’t have to keep up with the Joneses.”
Each Experience Was a Lesson
So many lessons from my father. One time I wanted to buy a portable radio I had seen advertised on the back of the New York Times Sports section. It was a mail order advertisement.
I really wanted it and I guess I had the money but he was adamant that it was a rip-off and I would have no recourse once I paid for it and would be stuck with crap. I was unconvinced and it was a Sunday – his day off – but he took me on the subway into Manhattan to the address in the ad down by some pier on the west side and there was nothing there – just warehouses and trash.
“You see,” he said to me, “This is where you would be sending your money. Crooks.”
But he might have said this to me in German, because my parents decided that raising me speaking that language would be more beneficial than Czech. They saved Czech for when they didn’t want me to know what they were talking about – but I often got the gist with body language.
A Preview of Getting Old
So when my father was my age he still worked a bit, and I was often away at that time but when I came home I would also get a sense of the stiffness and pain he often dealt with.
He often said, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.
And of course, the aches got worse – he lived until 86 and retired in La Jolla, but that is another story.
As for me, when I feel put upon by the fatigue from what lingers of my concussion, or just worn out from what I am witnessing from my view of the Internet, I can tell myself that “this is just what it feels like to be 74.”
And I look around and see all the ways I am still blessed, not the least of which, is his loving memory.
Now when my mother was 74 she wrote her memoir of her time during the war and afterward: The Next Chapter by Eva Miriam.
But that’s another story.
Conversations with Nobody 