"It may not be the way you thought it would be, but never forget to thank Hashem for that day”
In the 1970s I worked as a waiter at the famed Lebowitz Pine View Hotel in Fallsburg, New York. Nat and Evelyn Lebowitz owned the hotel, and it was certainly an experience to work there.
Nat was very careful about davening with a minyan. Since the regular hotel minyan began too late for him, he mandated that all of us waiters had to get up at five-thirty to make the waiters’ minyan.
After we waiters had cleaned up from dinner and set the dining room for breakfast, I would sit outside and listen to stories about the alte heim from the guests seated on the front lawn. Almost all of the guests were survivors, and most were in their sixties or seventies. Some had numbers, and some didn’t, but all had memories.
I recall one humid evening when I sat next to Faivel Schwartz. When I met him, Faivel was 62 years old. Faivel had been born in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1913, and reached Auschwitz on July 3, 1944. Miraculously, he survived the war, and in 1946, at the age of 33, he came to the United States. Faivel and I spent many hours together. As we sat together on this humid summer night, Faivel mentioned that he had arrived at Auschwitz on this night, July 3rd, 32 years earlier.
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