Felix Gluck - a Hungarian Jew who died in a forced labor company in Ukraine

Literary Review, Fall, 1993 by Ervin C. Brody

When, after the war, I settled in Vienna and worked as yardmaster at the Franz Josef Bahnhof for General Mark W. Clark, commander the U.S. Forces in Austria, I recalled my good friends, the Gluck family, and, hoping that they were alive and Richard also returned safely from the labor camp, sent a letter to them. Some time later the letter we returned with the remark in a crude handwriting on the envelope "Addressee unknown." They were probably among the unfortunates who were killed in Auschwitz. As I later found out from some mutual friends, Richard had not returned either. Everything went up in flames; the whole family was destroyed. As Pasternak was to say in "Hamlet," one of the poems in Doctor Zhivajo, "... the stir was over."

After five decades I still have Felix's little, overused prayer book with me. I have been carrying it through the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, the United States, and many other countries of the world where I have traveled with my wife after the war. It has become my close companion. The symbolism of this prayer book has been vital to me. It is a memory of the past which was annihilated; yet, in a subtle and essential way, it passed on a sense of continuity - of friendship, loyalty, and courage - concepts that never die. I have been using it whenever I say Kaddish for my parents. At such time, it seems to me, Felix again stands by my side, young, smiling, full of life, no longer apprehensive, and we are again in his parents' cozy garden and the friendly spirits of our two families embrace, exchange greetings and mingle around the cheerful light of the anniversary candle.