Real estate investment and management was a brand-new business for us that neither Florence or I knew much about. I realized that it would be less risky for us to go into it with a partner rather than as a solo operation. Abraham Scharf was a guy I knew in the neighborhood who ran a mom-and-pop grocery, and like me had been putting money aside to buy real estate. He said to me, “Michael, between the two of us, we know a lot of landlords. Why don’t we look for a piece of property to buy together?”
Pitkin Avenue was the main street in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, which was the historic Jewish neighborhood in the borough. It was a few miles from where I lived in the slightly more upscale Bensonhurst, but I hung out with my friends in Brownsville. Herbie’s girlfriend Sheila lived off Pitkin on Hinsdale Avenue, so the two of us visited Brownsville quite a lot.
It was only our third day in America. Tateh and I had just finished an orientation session for new arrivals at the HIAS headquarters. It was in a grand building that had been designed as a library for the famous John Jacob Astor before it was converted to its current use. Years later it was converted again to become the home of the Joseph Papp Public Theater.
My mind was swimming with all the information they’d given us by that time about American culture and customs—weights and measures, national holidays, public transit, you name it.
The madrich, or squad leader, of the Beitar group in Eschwege was a young man named Zvi Greenblatt. Zvi also was a supporter of the sports club and took an interest in me personally. He once had special soccer shoes made for me by the camp shoemaker, whose daughter Pearl was a friend of mine and who I still know now in New York.
The Army base where my father had been taken was on the edge of the town. Outside the security gate was a public area where Jews were gathered seeking information about family members. I asked around and was told I might be able to get a message through to someone in detention by passing a note to a guard through the perimeter fence, especially if there was something in it for the guard.
I don’t think I would have made it through all the hardships we endured in the bunkers without the companionship of Lonye. Then he went and tragically wasted his survival by joining the Red Army after liberation.
He did it because he desperately wanted to exact his revenge on the Nazis during the assault on Berlin in the last weeks of the war. But all he accomplished was to get himself killed, quite possibly by Ukrainian anti-Semites within the ranks of the Red Army itself.
I tucked away that information and hurried back to the community center to find a harried-looking middle-aged man working at a cluttered desk. But there was something in Mishkin’s manner that seemed approachable. I cautiously introduced myself and began my explanation. I hadn’t gotten far when he held up his hand and said he knew all about it. He said there were quite a few Polish Jews in the Russian Army, and it was his job to get them out.
I explained about my finances but could possibly pay him in goods, perhaps some shmattes from the marketplace, I suggested.
I was born in Skala in 1931 when times were already hard, then was eight years old in 1939, when the USSR occupied Polish eastern Galicia and began snuffing out religious life. I was ten when the Nazis invaded with a diabolical plan to obliterate Jewish life altogether. So why should I have fond memories?
We got lucky again a few weeks later when I ran into another old acquaintance at the HIAS hall. It was Herschel Troyevsky, with whom I’d played soccer at Eschwege. Now he was going by the name Herbert, or Herbie for short. He told us he lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood called Bensonhurst and that he knew of a lady in his building who was looking for a subtenant.
Tateh got permission to bring me with him to his workplace at the Liegenschaft. For me, after spending every day holed up alone, this was a godsend. Here I could breathe the air and stretch my arms and legs.
I had never been inside the walls of the estate before, and marveled at the fine house and property. I remember I was there during the Christmas season in 1942, when the estate gave extra potatoes to the local population.