World War II ended in 1945 – ten years before I came into being. By the time I started learning about the war and its carnage, it was two decades since it had happened. To me, it all seemed like it was far in the past and was something from a bygone era.
I knew that my Uncle Frank had fought in the South Pacific as a Marine. In fact, we even had a Japanese flag that he had captured and brought back home. Nevertheless, World War II from my perspective was from another age. It was the stuff of black and white newsreels and old scratchy radio broadcasts. It was something to read about in books. I learned about Hitler and his atrocities. I saw the pictures from the attack on Pearl Harbor. The photos of concentration camps and of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb burned deeply into my mind. Yet, it felt like something as far away as the Doughboys in World War 1 or even the North versus the South in the Civil War.
I was much more concerned about the Cold War that I was living through than the actual war that had preceded my birth. The fear of nuclear apocalypse was palpable, especially within children who didn’t even understand it. At elementary school, we practiced our Civil Defense drills, sitting on the floor in the hallways, away from the windows of the classrooms. (As if that would have saved us.) I had a recurring dream in which the entire world blew up and every person and thing was destroyed. My older brother Frank (named for the aforementioned Uncle Frank) had his own repeated dream in which he stood and watched waves of Russian bombers fly overhead. The Cold War was real to me. The Second World War was long-gone history.
By the mid-seventies, though, international political tensions and actual conflicts were diminishing. The U.S. was out of Vietnam. The Cold War was thawing. Nixon had visited China and Russia. A period of cooperation, called détente, arrived, and the world breathed a bit easier. I know that I wasn’t worried about such matters. I had bigger concerns – college classes, college tuition and trying to find a girlfriend.
I spent most of the summers of 1975 and 1976 working fulltime and more for Dave’s Deli, filling in wherever I was needed. That included delivering orders to customers. Dave’s did not have a huge delivery business, but on a busy day, there might be fifteen to twenty orders to be delivered. Most included the Jewish deli staples – corn beef, smoked fish, salads, bagels, rye bread and the like, although some customers ordered regular grocery items, too. The prices for such items were marked up far higher than one would pay at the Pathmark or Acme, but some of our customers apparently were willing to pay for the convenience.
I loved doing the deliveries, driving all around Northeast Philly in the Dave’s Deli four-speed stick shift Ford Econoline van. The AM radio was always turned on to WFIL 56, and I soaked in the top forty tunes – Elton John, Wings, Stevie Wonder, on and on. That was before beepers or cell phones. So, once I drove away from Dave’s parking lot, I was my own boss until I returned. It felt like freedom and here was the best part – I made tips, too. I have written before about the miserly hourly rate I was paid. So, raking in a few extra dollars every day was a real bonus.
One day, I had a small delivery to make to a woman whose name was not familiar. It was something like Goldblatt or Geldner. She wasn’t among those who regularly ordered for delivery. I parked on the street in front of the address given. It was a typical Northeast Philly semi-detached house. They had been built in long rows, with each structure holding two houses. There were narrow breaks between the two-house pods, which offered an opportunity for a limited amount of gardening or greenery.
As I hopped up her steps with the bag in hand, I saw that she was already standing in the front doorway wearing a simple short-sleeved house dress. She looked vaguely familiar. I guess I had seen her in the store previously.
“I have your order,” I called out.
“How much is it?” she asked in a heavy accent, and I read the amount from the attached receipt.
As she fumbled with her purse to find the correct bills, she inquired, “Are you Jewish?”
That’s not the first time that I had heard that one. “No, I’m Italian”
She gave a slightly disappointed expression and said, “Well, that’s okay.”
Then she stretched out her hand holding a few bills. As I looked down to grab the money, I saw it on her arm – a tattoo of numbers. It took a split second to register. This was the branding placed on human beings in the Nazi concentration camps. She had survived the Holocaust and the horror of a concentration camp. It stunned me.
“You can keep the change,” she said and turned to go back into her house with the bag.
I stammered a thank you and returned to the van.
At that moment, World War II became real for me. It was no longer a horrible page from history books or old documentaries. Rather, it was something that was still alive, even in the relative shelter of Northeast Philly. How did she live with the memories that must have been deep within her? How did my uncle live with his own memories of close-in combat? There were millions of such people at that time all over the world who had lived through that cataclysm. And I truly was oblivious to it until that day.