It was 1937 and these two dapper gentlemen on opposite sides of the globe were young men with their lives just starting out.
Being a father was far from either man’s mind.
Both Jews, their lives would take extraordinarily different turns.
Despite the virulent antisemitism and political troubles swirling close to home, one was an ambitious young man living in Poland. The other was a freshman from Astoria, Queens at the University of Virginia one of only a handful of Jews in his class.
In a few short years, one man would lose everything he had in the Holocaust. The other would serve his country by joining the war effort.
At war’s end, one married his sweetheart from his village and with their little baby boy lived in their first home together in a Displaced Persons camp eventually coming to America. The other returned to college a veteran, attending law school and would live out the post-war American dream.
How would they ever know their lives would one day be joined together.
The handsome young man in the fedora on the left is my father-in-law “Lazer” Louis Katz taken in Poland before the world would cease to exist as he knew it.
The other is a picture of my father Marvin( on the right with hat in hand ) at college in the sleepy town of Charlottesville, the idea of going overseas to war, is unthinkable.
Remembering both fathers, and the men they were.