Sweeping the Sidewalk

Remembering my father with each push of the broom

I like to sweep the sidewalk in front of my office building.  It reminds me of my father. 

As the broom flicks up the dust and leaves that seem to gravitate toward the entrance to the building every morning, I recall the dust clouds that my father’s push broom would launch, as he swept up his building site at the end of each day.

I could delegate this particular task to the company I pay to clean my office building every day, but I haven’t, and I believe that this is the reason.   

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is fitting for me to remember my father in the words of this blog, because he and my mother were survivors of that most infamous period in the history of mankind.   My mother survived the death camps by the grace of G-d.  My father survived the war in the woods in Poland for two and half years, through a combination of grit, cunning, iron will, and fortitude.

My parents met and married at the end of the war and arrived in New York aboard the SS Marine Flasher on May 28, 1948.  Their first stop in the America was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where my father worked in a mattress factory for relatives.  After six months, they made their way to New York’s lower East Side.  My father told me that when he told his relatives of his decision to go to New York, they said to him, “But you will get lost in New York.”  To which my father replied:  “If I didn’t get lost in the woods for two and a half years, I won’t get lost in New York.”

In New York, my father graduated from making mattresses to making table pads, then went on to a series of jobs in the food business.  He bought a luncheonette in Brooklyn, and learned Spanish from a pocket guide, while he was still struggling to master English.  One day, a construction project across the street from the luncheonette, caught his attention.  Every day, he went outside to watch the construction.  Then, as legend has it, he went out and bought a set of architectural plans for a house for $50, and began his career as a builder.  Afterwards, he built homes in New Jersey for 40 years, until we had to retire him at the age of 75.

Back to sweeping the sidewalk:  My father once told me that being a Jew in Poland during the years of World War II was “like being nothing.”  “A dog’s life had more value,” he said.    But my father withstood the brutality of that nefarious regime with his mind and body, and dignity intact.  And he survived in America as he survived in the woods, meeting every challenge that faced him, doing whatever it took to survive. 

Like many children of Holocaust survivors, I have often asked myself the question:  Would I have survived?  Two and a half years outdoors in the cold, without food or shelter.  Would I have had the physical strength, the wits or the guile?  Probably not.  No, definitely not.  That’s why, with each flick of the broom, I say, “I’m like you, pops.  I’m sweeping, too.”