The Tower of Faces at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC is a spectacle, a three-story display of photographs from the Yaffa Eliach Shtetl Collection, taken between 1890 and 1941 in Eishishok, a small town in what is now Lithuania.
I had struck up a conversation with a forty-something high school history teacher from Tampa. He was accompanying his father, a now wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor, both visiting for the first time. We stood there chatting as his father navigated the room, inspecting each picture within his limited line of sight. As we casually followed, gradually working our way down the ramp, we hadn’t noticed his father, now stationary, was seemingly fixated on a single picture.
He looked back as best he could, as if just to confirm his son’s presence, then slowly and wobbly pointed forward. A young, smiling boy surrounded by what looked to be his family. The black and white photo, date no longer legible, hung slightly obstructed by the railing, nearly hidden in a collage of history.
A single tear streaming down his face, he said, “I think that’s me...”
I was frequently down in the Baltimore/Washington area to interview World War II veterans for a screenplay I was working on. The Holocaust Museum had become a sanctuary of sorts, offering a semblance of perspective at a time when I so desperately sought it.
Jack was not yet eighteen when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps on November 4, 1942. He entered active duty on April 11, 1943 as an Air Cadet, and trained as an aerial gunner and serial navigator, before being commissioned 2nd Lieutenant AC-AUS on May 20, 1944.
He was shot down over Southern Austria and nearly died when his parachute failed to deploy. He threw an SS officer from the back of a moving train en route to an interrogation center called Dulag Luft. Shortly after being transferred to a prison camp near Barth, Germany, he determined that Jewish POWs were being systematically identified, by the H imprinted on their dog tags, and executed. He, along with Colonel Hugh Zemke, the highest ranking American officer at Stalag Luft I, convinced thousands of prisoners to remove their tags and remain standing at the end of appel (roll call), just weeks before being liberated, saving the lives of approximately two hundred Jewish servicemen.
Then, decades, and a full life lived later, at his son’s home in Severna Park, Maryland, Jack looked across the table and said, “I’m not a hero, I was just doing my job. Who’s going to care about my story?”
Jack’s story had to be told. Not because he was family and I was inherently biased, but because of the humility of his entire generation. A generation appropriately labeled Forgotten, that kept their stories buried deep, because to them, they were simply doing what they were supposed to do. It was a race against time to ensure the heroics of our greatest generation lived on, long after the last of these great men were gone.
The same year I first read the transcript from Jack’s 1992 interview with the VA, as a junior in high school, our baseball team was 20-0 and ranked seventh in the country. We were playing a night game in Nogales, at an old independent league stadium, with the US/Mexico border just a few hundred yards beyond the scoreboard in left field.
Up by a run in the bottom of the sixth inning, with runners on second and third, a weak ground ball came bouncing toward me. I charged and scooped it up cleanly, then double clutched and sent the ball sailing over first base and into the stands. Both runs scored. Three quick outs later and we had our first loss.
We met down the right field line, normally for a few inspiring words from a former big leaguer and current hard ass, before coach would reiterate that we were not to get complacent. We nervously took a knee, unsure what to expect this time...
“Take off your uniforms, you don’t deserve to wear ‘em.”
It was during the silent, near 2-hour bus ride back to Tucson, between thoughts of quitting, and questioning my ability to play shortstop or hit a curveball, that I had a revelation. At times, baseball felt like an obligation, like someone was forcing me to play. To the point where I once used it as an ultimatum, when my dad left me with the minivan on a Friday night, and I was expecting the Accord. But it wasn’t something I had to do... it was something I got to do.
There were so many aspects of my life where I was unknowingly confusing privileges for rights. Even actual rights, like school, I started to approach as opportunities. Suddenly, I got to learn and my grades improved. I embraced the things I once dreaded. I promised my future self that, no matter what, if work started to feel like work, I’d find something else to do...
It’s frustrating to hear kids say, “I have to go to school,” because I can only wonder what would be of a society where learning was a privilege and we supported the motivated, rather than coddled the entitled stragglers. Before World War II, the term special referred to the gifted. Today... pretty much the opposite. I genuinely feel bad when I hear a friend or colleague or stranger say, “I have to go to work,” wanting to remind them that life goes by way too fast when you wish it away, looking forward to the weekend.
It’s easy to forget that we get to do what we want because people before us did what they had to. While we don’t all start with the same opportunities, we all have opportunity. And, we all have choices. I just hope people are aware, and choose things they get to do, rather than those they have to do. Maybe it’s just a mindset, but it has sure changed my life.
Thanks, Jack.