For chunks of time during my childhood, my dad, Victor, was missing from my life. During the German occupation, he was forced into manual labor. Toward the end of the war, he was sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Miraculously, he survived, and my parents were reunited after the war. But in September 1948, after an almost two-year wait, my mother and I finally received visas from the US government. My father did not. He was harassed by the new Communist government and prevented from leaving with us. I was 12 years old when we left Prague, and I did not see my dad again for almost three years.
While my mother and I were learning to live in the United States, my father was struggling under the newly imposed Communist rules. We had little communication with him because letters going in and out of Czechoslovakia were censored by Czech officials. I had to be careful about what I wrote. I did not mention any problems in the United States, wanting to reassure him that the decision for us to come to America had been the right one. I also refrained from asking any personal questions about life in Prague—sports and weather were our main topics.
Without being aware of it, I was searching for a father figure. I discovered one in New York City: my uncle, Leo Altheim, who was married to my father’s cousin Maryanne. Leo had escaped Nazi Vienna and spent the war in Shanghai, China, which was then under Japanese occupation. He had lived in a refugee Jewish community of more than 35,000 men, women, and children in the poorest section of Shanghai. Although he was separated from his family, including his wife, he survived and came to New York City in 1946 to be reunited with Maryanne. She had fled Vienna on one of the last flights to leave the city before the Nazi occupation. She spent the war in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens, and was hired to direct the European stamp division in Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan. Leo and Maryanne became our American sponsors and welcomed my mother and I with hugs and financial support after we arrived in 1948.
Leo and Maryanne founded the Star Stamp Company, a mail-order business in Manhattan. It was located on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, across from the marble lions guarding the New York City Public Library. About once a month, they held a “mail auction” based on a 50- to 60-page catalog that listed a large number of primarily European stamps to be sold. Each stamp was described in the catalog, which included photographs of the most valuable ones. They gave me my first paid job: I helped organize, bundle, and carry the sales catalogs to a post office on East 43rd Street. When the bids came in, I checked the postmarks for the auction deadline, opened all the envelopes, and assigned a unique number to each bidder. I then recorded the names of the bidders and worked with Leo and Maryanne in reviewing the bids. I addressed the envelopes to winning bidders. They double-checked my work, praised my accuracy, and caught any errors I made, which mostly occurred right after lunch when I’d get sleepy.
Maryanne learned about the stamp business from her dad, Howard, who had been a stamp dealer in Vienna between the two world wars. On Saturdays when Maryanne was in the Manhattan office, it was all business—there was little chatter, and we were quiet except for the occasional phone call. At around 12:30 p.m., she would call the deli downstairs to order lunch. We’d break for about 20 minutes, eat our sandwiches, and then get back to work.
Occasionally, on Saturdays, Maryanne stayed home, and I’d get to work with Leo. He was different—more relaxed—and loosened his tie as he entered the office, wearing loose-fitting trousers. He would kibitz with everyone who came into the store: customers, the mailman, the UPS guy, and the cleaning lady. His laughter was infectious. I liked being with him, and I looked forward to our time together. We would start work at 9:30 a.m., leave the store around 12:30 p.m. for lunch, and work again until about 5 p.m. I would go home with one or two $20 bills, which I would proudly present to my mother.
A few times, we had lunch at Horn & Hardart on 42nd Street and Third Avenue. This was the first food service automat in the United States. It had rows and rows of freshly prepared foods sitting on plates in windowed compartments. Leo would hand me a bunch of nickels, which I could use to purchase my lunch. When I had trouble making a choice, Leo reminded me that I could always come back and try something new next time. I felt grown up mastering the automat.
Once, when we finished lunch, I asked Leo why he and Maryanne had decided to leave Austria. To my surprise, Leo shared that complicated process. He spoke about how antisemitism, which had existed in Vienna before Hitler, had become increasingly oppressive. Maryanne, sensing great danger, wanted her entire family to leave, but both her parents and Leo’s parents did not want to go. The parents did not want to give up their homes and comfortable lives in cosmopolitan Vienna. In what must have been painful conversations, both sets of parents expressed the belief that life for Jews would be difficult but tolerable if they stayed in Austria. Yet, Maryanne’s father encouraged her to leave for America.
Leo was torn. Should he leave with his wife or stay behind to help his own parents and in-laws? Months later in a tense phone conversation, Maryanne, by then in New York, finally convinced Leo to get out. He could not get a visa to the United States, but fortunately he learned that even though Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese military, it remained an open port city. He said that he “ran around Vienna for days,” until he found a travel agency that still had a few tickets for a steamship to China. Leo started to weep as he spoke about his parents and in-laws who had refused to leave Vienna. He felt terrible about his inability to persuade them to leave.
Sometimes we’d walk along Fifth Avenue to admire the lions—Patience and Fortitude—guarding the New York Public Library. We also walked to Rockefeller Center to watch the skaters at the ice rink, and we’d gaze at a towering, fully decorated Christmas tree. Once, we walked to the old Madison Square Garden, opened in 1925, on Eighth Avenue to watch an afternoon practice of the New York Knicks basketball team. Before we went, Leo told me about the team and the players.
Keeping up a conversation with Leo in English made me feel competent. He told me how proud he was that I was learning about American culture. Leo pursued timely political topics as passionately as my father did. He combined hard work with having a good time. He liked to kid around with people and make them laugh. I liked his informality and comfort with everyone. Perhaps because he had lost his parents and other relatives who were all killed in the Holocaust, Leo tried to enjoy the life he had. Humor was his primary way of coping; over the years I copied Leo’s style, looking for humor even in bleak situations. In school, I worried whether I really understood assignments well enough, but with Leo, I never worried; he gave me instructions about stamps in a friendly tone, and I had no trouble understanding what had to be done. It was fun working with him. He always asked me what was happening in my life, and I was glad to share with him news about school, my parents, new friends, and, later, girlfriends. He was my second dad, and I loved him.
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