{"id":29616,"date":"2022-02-16T08:41:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T13:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=29616"},"modified":"2022-02-17T10:04:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T15:04:41","slug":"with-the-red-cavalry-cleveland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/16\/with-the-red-cavalry-cleveland\/","title":{"rendered":"WITH THE RED CAVALRY, CLEVELAND"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Most every<\/strong> <\/span>Jewish baby boomer in Cleveland grew up around Holocaust survivors, unless he lived in Shaker Heights, and even in Shaker there were probably a few DPs in the double houses.<\/p>\n

I had a classmate at Brush High who retold his parents\u2019 Nazi horrors to the local newspaper in the 1960s — pre-Holocaust<\/em> (before the word Holocaust<\/em> went big-time). Joe was a super Jew. Joe\u2019s father worked at a kosher poultry market. Joe often stayed home for obscure (to me) Jewish holidays. Some of the Jewish kids teased him when he came back. (The goys\u00a0didn’t notice.)<\/p>\n

I copied Joe\u2019s style. I wrote a letter to the Cleveland Press<\/em> protesting the U.S. Christmas stamp, which had a religious symbol (Madonna and child), 1966. I said the new stamp violated the separation of church and state. I got letters back. One reader wrote, \u201cGo to Vietnam where men are men and not homosexual like you.\u201d That got me to write more letters. I wrote about Poland expelling its last Jews in 1968. I vied with Joe for champion of Jewish teenage letter writers. All I had to do was write Jew<\/em>, and I would get half-baked, vitriolic feedback. I enjoyed that. I had been through so little. I wanted to experience World War II. Then I\u2019d go home and eat some Jell-O.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Alex Kozak<\/strong><\/span> sold record albums and sewing machines. Appliance store owners used to sell records; I got Bechet of New Orleans<\/em> and Be Bop Er<\/em>a (RCA Vintage Series) from Mr. Kozak. He was a World War II \"redRed Army veteran — a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Nazis and fought with the Russians. I borrowed his cavalry boots for my high school Canterbury Tales<\/em> presentation. Mr. Kozak was big — about one-and-a-half Isaac Babels.<\/p>\n

I knew Mr. Kozak through my parents, who often socialized with Holocaust survivors. My dad liked the men; many were into baseball and were for the most part no-nonsense. What was there to talk about — the good old days? Keep it short. My dad liked that.<\/p>\n

At a Yiddishe Cup gig in Detroit, I\u00a0ran into Mr. Kozak\u2019s daughter. She said her nephew had the cavalry boots now \u2014 the ones Mr. Kozak had worn into Prague with the Soviets in 1945.<\/p>\n

Lime Jell-O. That was the best.<\/p>\n

—
\n\u201cJoe\u201d is a pseudonym, re: my high school friend.
\n<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most every Jewish baby boomer in Cleveland grew up around Holocaust survivors, unless he lived in Shaker Heights, and even in Shaker there were probably a few DPs in the double houses. I had a classmate at Brush High who retold his parents\u2019 Nazi horrors to the local newspaper in the 1960s — pre-Holocaust (before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29616"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29633,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29616\/revisions\/29633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}