Re-Born in the USA
by Paul Schaefer

When Joe Jozefowicz and his family arrived in 1948 at St. Joseph's Christian Brothers school and novitiate in Barrytown, now the home of the Unification Theological Center, Joe said, "We thought we had gone to heaven. As we entered the church grounds all the brothers were knealing in prayer in front of religious statues." Arrival meant the end of a perilous journey that began in a village in distant Poland where Joe's family was launched on a pilgrimage so haphazard that they could be described as bits of flotsam thrown into an angry sea. Only the keen eyes of his father and mother had been capable of steering them through the maelstrom of World War II.

Until recently all I really knew about Joe was that when he arrived in 1948 in my wife Gale's fifth grade class at Red Hook Central School he was able to speak only a few words of English. Sixty years later Joe is the oracle of the Red Hook High School class of 1956 as well as Treasurer of the Red Hook Alumni Association. No one goes to the hospital or moves to a new address or has more grandchildren without Joe passing it on to the rest of the class via phone or e-mail. He hears from classmates as far away as the state of Washington and as close as those who still live in the same homes they were born in. He cheerleads for attendance at reunions, and when there is a death in the class family, he informs everyone about funeral schedules.

How did he get here from there? I asked Joe to tell me his story while we had lunch at a local restaurant.

Joe Jozefowicz is a big man with a round face and enormous horn-rimmed glasses who played tackle on the Red Hook High School undefeated football squad in '55 and '56. His smile tells me that life has treated him well—or perhaps he's someone who only demands good friends, a glass of wine and health for himself and his family. Joe was born in the tiny Polish village of Falborz in 1938, just before World War II began. Life in rural Poland in the thirties was much as it had been for centuries. A large landowner owned the entire village and all the surrounding farm land. Joe's father, a mechanic, served as the local baronial family's chauffeur and kept the estate's farming equipment operating. This practical knowledge, and the contacts his father made traveling around the countryside with the baron, gave him assets that became critical on their subsequent trek across Europe.

When the Germans invaded Poland and occupied Falborz in 1939, the landowner fled with his family. The German commander lived in the manor house and ran the village and farm. Naturally the local residents were angry about the occupation, and Joe's father was an outspoken man. Or there may have been someone who didn't like Joe's father and wanted to curry favor with the Nazis. For whatever reason, the commander ordered that the Jozefowiczes be taken forcibly from their home to become slave-laborers in Germany. Luckily they were warned the day before by the local Jewish doctor, whom they never saw or heard of again. The warning gave them a chance to pack what little they could before they were hauled away on horse-drawn wagons the next morning. So that night in May of 1944, after four years of Nazi occupation, they gathered things they thought they might be able to sell on the way to keep them alive: bits of jewelry, a fur coat, and also a few practical things like his mother's favorite kitchen knife—a knife that eventually traveled all the way to New York and is still in the family.

Joe's parents and the three brothers were taken to Lodz, one of Poland's larger cities, which the Germans used as an assembly point to move Polish forced labor into Germany. The German army was closely pressed by the Russians who were rolling into Poland from the east.

Joe's story triggered my own memories of World War II. Living safely in the Midwest, I eagerly scanned the front page of the Chicago Tribune each day to see on a map the thick, black lines and arrows showing the advance of the Russian troops from the east and the Americans, British and French from the west, squeezing the Germans back into their heartland. As a boy, it seemed that the Allies were like the Green Bay Packers advancing down the gridiron, making first down after first down.

It was a much more lethal game for Joe's father. Because the usually well-organized Germans were in disarray from the Russian advance, they lingered in Lodz and Joe's father had time to make the acquaintance of a Polish woman who was a clerk for the Germans and knew in advance the destination of each group of laborers as they were being sent off. As they talked, he found that they had acquaintances in common from his travels with the baron. Joe's father wanted to avoid the large German factories that were being bombed daily by the Allies. His new friend said she would nod to him when a group was being selected for a safer location.

When the nod came he rushed in to volunteer, and they were off —traveling by train and truck and forced marches in between. At night they heard the Allied bombers and saw flashes in the distance from air raids. The woman's tiny nod eventually sent them to the quiet German farming village of Altfeld in Bavaria, far from the burning cities. Joe's oldest brother Leon was assigned to live with a German farmer whose son had been killed in the war. His father was sent to work for Hans Beer the local blacksmith, and the rest of the family moved in to live with the blacksmith's family.

Joe emphasized to me how well his family was treated by the Beers. Joe's father's mechanical training made him indispensable to the local farmers because he could repair their machinery and simple things like leaky buckets that couldn't be replaced because of the war. Herr Beer became his father's advocate and he warned him about local ardent Nazis that he should avoid.

Meanwhile, even young Joe could tell that the Germans were losing when he saw how young the German teenagers were who were marched off to the front in army uniforms. His family seemed safe until Leon was forcibly removed from the farm family and sent to dig trenches for German soldiers in Belgium.

On May 7, 1945 the war was over. In the U.S. we celebrated by ringing church bells and blowing car horns and kissing our wives and sweethearts. The Jozefowicz family was assembled with thousands of other refugees in displaced persons camps; Joe's family was sent to an old military base in Aschaffenburg. Joe's father's immediately began an intensive search for his son Leon, but he had no luck until one day Leon suddenly appeared at the camp. He had found his family by hiking to Altfeld and asking Hans Beer where to find his parents.

Luckily they were in West Germany under British, French and American control and not in the Russian sector, so they could choose whether or not to go back to Poland. Some Polish families returned. Joe said that like any young boy he wanted to ride in the enormous tractor trailers that were being used to transport them back, but Joe's father came out with an emphatic "No." He guessed what life under the Soviets would be like. After three years in the camp, it became possible for them to come to the U.S. when President Harry Truman signed a law allowing displaced persons to come here if they had sponsors. Through the National Catholic Welfare Association, the family found the Christian Brothers in Barrytown. They sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany on a troop carrier and crossed the Atlantic to New York City in October of 1948 when Joe was ten years old. From New York City, they were put on the train for Barrytown and given a bill for the ten dollar train fare that his father was required to pay back.

Days at St. Joseph's started at 3am, when Joe's father would stoke the boiler. His mother found employment at a sewing factory in Tivoli. His brother Leon worked in the Brothers' kitchen and Stan worked in their dairy barn. After the Christmas break, Joe was sent to Linden Avenue School in Red Hook. Joe remembers an incident from his first day as if it was yesterday. After eating the lunch that his mother had packed with no dessert, a teacher named Chris Holt bought a cupcake from the cafeteria and handed it to Joe. For a young boy who couldn't even understand what was being said by those around him, it was an unforgettable gesture.

I asked him if he was teased by the other students because he was different. "No," he exclaimed adamantly. "Never. They did the opposite. They taught me how to become an American."

"How?" I asked.

"They told me all the things that I should do and not do. How to get in the lunch line. What kind of clothes to wear. How to behave at a party." Joe went on to say how caring the teachers were. "Mr. Holt was not a rigid man. He allowed me to progress at my own pace. I remember him putting me in a play about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn rafting down the Mississippi and my only line was to shout 'land ho' even though I didn't have any idea what it meant. I liked going to school. I just enjoyed being there."

After Joe graduated from Red Hook High he went to Albany State University and then transferred to American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he earned his teaching degree. His first job was in Vermont but he soon left for Massachusetts where he taught business law, shorthand and typing for three years at the Chicopee Comprehensive High School and became a Red Sox fan. Returning home to Dutchess County was a priority, however, and in the 1966-67 school year he found a position at Arlington High School outside Poughkeepsie. Through an Arlington teacher he met his wife, Nancy Gray Leach. But even though the pay was lower and his new job had added responsibilities, he transferred to Red Hook Central in the fall of '67 as soon as there was an opening. In Red Hook he taught five subjects: business math, business management, typing, shorthand and bookkeeping—an unusually heavy load.

Joe still loves teaching. They call him Mr. J in the halls of Red Hook High because the students like most English speakers, find it impossible to pronounce cs followed by zs and Joe Jozefowicz doesn't mind because he encourages informality from his students. Peter Lawson, who was the principal of Red Hook High School during much of Joe's tenure, told me that Joe puts his heart into everything he does, from pledging allegiance to the flag each morning to cheering for the athletic teams at night. No teenage student has more school spirit than Joe does at age 70. I asked Joe about today's students: "These kids are good kids despite what you hear. I enjoy them." Joe still substitute teaches as often as three days a week.

Joe has been back to Poland with his brother Stan. When I e-mailed him recently to ask him what it was like he answered with this: "As we stood there after having our picture taken on the steps of the apartment where we lived my brother Stan said to me, 'Joe, have you thought about what our lives would be like had we stayed here and had we not been deported to Germany?' We both knew the answer to that question. It is something I have thought about often since that day in Falborz in August, 1995, and I realize how fortunate I am to be an American." I don't think Joe will mind if I add: and to teach and live in Red Hook.