Jacob Czerniak's birthday is December 7th. He will be the big 1-0-3.
That's a lot of candles.
I wrote about him a few times in the spring. His memory is pristine as he recounts memories from the World War II era. Too pristine, probably. If one ever needs a reminder in a dark time about how life could be worse, look no further than the numbers cut into Jacob's left forearm. They were carved in during his time in Auschwitz.
He is a survivor. This morning he mentioned his wife to me for the first time. I'd always been afraid to ask about her. But I knew he'd been married.
"She was my best friend...my best friend," he said.
She could never quite recover, however, from the death of her father.
In 1943, he was out finding food for his family in occupied Poland. He was shot down by Nazi murderers.
Jacob and her married and moved to Minnesota together after the war. He lived out there for a while in northern Minnesota. But his wife passed on at 72 years of age.
Jacob was a tailor. In snowbound Minnesota, he was in charge of alterations for men's clothing, primarily. Sometimes he altered a woman's coat, or whatnot.
Upon moving to New York City, he worked in a factory on Seventh Avenue called FellWo (not sure about that spelling). One owner's name was Fellman, the other was Wolf.
There he explained how he supervised clothes making. He wasn't on the assembly line. It seems he was in more of an advisory role.
"You are a very good friend," he tells me. "Thank you for being my friend."
Other times he likes to tell others, such as his former home aide Maria, "He is a gentleman." I don't know if that is really true, but thank you, sir.
I tell Jacob "thank you," as well. "You are my friend, too."
I tell him how my girlfriend is still asleep downstairs. "She has a lot of problems sleeping so she sometimes is up very late and then has to sleep in," I say.
"Tell your lady friend I'm sorry she has trouble sleeping," Jacob says. He asks about my lady friend all the time.
Today I finally wrote down his phone number. I had too because Jacob's hearing has not held up quite as strongly as his memory has. A relatively small price to pay, it seems.
He tears in half an envelope from an insurance company. I try to ask if that's okay, making sure he won't need that paper. But he charges on.
His area code is 718--usual for the Bronx. I jot down the number.
Moments later, I say, "I'm going to write down my number, too, in case you ever need anything. You can call me." My area code is 917--a newer area code for the region created during the explosion of new cellphone numbers. I jot down the number and pass it to him.
He takes a moment to reach for the light--a single uncovered light bulb on his worn kitchen table. He picks up the fragment of paper, examining.
"This is not good," he says. He seems disappointed.
"9-1-7...My number is 7-1-8..."
"Oh, that is my number," I remind him.
He replies, "Ohhh. I thought that was my number you had written down."
A moment later he looks at me and smiles in his big endearing way. He looks like a boy. Just like the boy who ran so fast in the 1920's. During those teenage years of physical fitness classes in school in Poland.
A boy inside the body of a nearly 103 year old man. A survivor. A friend.
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