About The Journal

Current Issue

Past Issues/Index

Author Instructions

Subscriptions/
Donations

News and Press

Privacy Policy

Contact Us

Editorial Board

Help

Back

Book Excerpt: Brooklyn Beginnings - A Geriatrician's Odyssey

Michael Gordon
Dermanities September 28, 2011; 7(1)

Book Excerpt: Brooklyn Beginnings - A Geriatrician's Odyssey

Dr. Michael Gordon is a Geriatrician, ethicist and writer. He is a frequent contributor to the professional and lay press including Dermanities. His latest book is a memoir: Brooklyn Beginnings - A Geriatrician's Odyssey. Below is an excerpt from his book. More information about Dr. Gordon and his book can be obtained from his website: http://www.drmichaelgordon.com/
I arrived in Hamburg, having already spent a few nights sleeping on the backseat of the Renault—a bit of a squeeze even for someone who was just 5’ 8”—so I could keep money for gas and food. I had become quite Spartan in my habits. As usual, my creative language skills and my childhood recollections of Yiddish (honed during my travels through Austria to sound more like German) gave me the courage to approach some of the people I saw while walking around Hamburg’s central train station. I could usually find the train station no matter where I traveled since, invariably, it is located at the centre of European cities. To get directions to the central train station, one of the first German phrases I learned was, Wo ist de Bahnhof? By following the links and rechts in the directions I would receive, I would eventually get to where I was going. Along this route, I picked up other directional communicative jewels, such as erste and zweite for “first” and “second” and strasse for “street,” so, if I asked often enough, I was usually able to reach my destination.

After resting a while in the early morning sun on the lawn in front of the huge, architecturally ornate and massive train station, I managed to approach a youngish adult who looked reliable and explain to him that I was a student who was running out of money and needed to find a way to make some rather quickly. He directed me to the flower, fruit, and vegetable market behind the station. I entered this huge hall teeming with vendors and merchants and boxes and crates of flowers and produce. After a few minutes and various turndowns, I was told by a flower vendor to bring in boxes of cut flowers recently arrived from the south and put them in vats containing water. Without even asking about pay, I did this for over an hour, managing in the process to become thoroughly wet. The job completed, the vendor paid me an amount in deutschmarks that would buy me about five liters of gas which, in the Renault, would take me a fair distance. As I walked around looking for another job, a man who looked to be in his late thirties or early forties grabbed me by the arm and asked me in German if I wanted to work, to which I gave a resounding “Ya!” He directed me in German (which I now semi-understood) to a pickup truck and told me we were going to load something into his truck (I could not understand initially what zwiebel were, but when we arrived at the destination no more than a fifteen-minute drive away, I realized from the odor coming from the railway cargo car that they were onions!)
The man who took me for work asked me my name, which I knew how to pronounce with a German inflection. He pointed to himself and indicated his name to be Adolf. A momentary shudder ran down my spine; here I was at a cargo train in Germany with cars like those that carried Holocaust era Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz, and I was working with man whose name was Adolf. My recently acquired star was hidden under my shirt, and I made sure it stayed there. He looked at me, then grabbed a woven bag into which he threw onions, placed it on a scale, and, when he had added enough more onions to make five kilograms, pulled at a wire, tied the bag, and threw it into his truck. Speaking slowly and deliberately so I would understand, he indicated to me that I should do the same. The smell of the onions filled the air and my lungs. I started to work, got into the rhythm, and heard from him after about ten minutes, “Zehr gut!” with a wink as he picked up another sack. We continued throughout the morning with a break about halfway through. He pulled out some bread and cheese and a thermos of coffee, poured some for me and beckoned me to eat, cutting the loaf and the cheese with a large utility knife that he had in an old metal lunch box.

“Fon vo comst du?” he asked, to which I could respond easily—“Hamerica.”

“Ah, zehr gut; ein student?”

“Yah, ich vilst studeren Medizin,” I replied, formulating the answers from the Yiddish and German that were now getting all mixed up in my mind. We finished eating and starting loading more onions. We finished at about noon, having found a rhythm in which we both did our parts, with the result that the railway car’s load had been quickly bagged into five-kilogram sacks and stacked neatly in his truck.

“Fertig,” he said as we closed the railway car with a loud clank that jarred my nerves and caused a flashback to reverberate through my mind of film footage I had seen of Jews being removed roughly from railway cars, the sliding doors slamming shut on their hopes of freedom. The image passed as we jumped into the truck and drove back to the vegetable market which, by now, was full of merchants buying goods for their stores and restaurants. He backed the truck into a dock and we unloaded the sacks. Adolf took out a wad of money, peeled off a considerable number of bills, and gave them to me. Even without actually counting them, I could see that it was a generous and welcome amount. He slapped me on the back and held out his hand, “Sehr gut—auf Wiedersehen,” to which I replied, “vielen dank, vielen dank,” as I shook his hand firmly in sincere thanks.