A Review of "The Horse Adjutant"

“Son, if you survive, tell the story of everything that happened to us. The world must know. .. you will live longer than any of us.” These are the last words that Leon Schagrin’s father ever said to him. It was to be that last that Schagrin would ever hear from his family before they were separated. At age 12 Leon was alone. The rest of the family died in Belzac, the only camp with a single purpose- to kill everyone who arrived. Leon survived thanks to a miraculous series of twists and turns that would allow him to live to see liberation. Leon Shagrin’s story is told in The Horse Adjutant, co-authored by Stephen Shooster, (2011, Shooster Publishing, www. thehorseadjutant.com) A highly personal narrative, Leon tells us of pre-war Poland- the story of his childhood- in the small town of Grybow in which Jews, Christians, Gypsies, and Russians lived side by side. They went to the same schools, they played together, and they went to market day together. Leon was a rambunctious child who would rather wander the hills and forests than go to school. Leon’s narrative of his childhood recalls a peaceful place, a great place with all kinds of secrets to be discovered. By the time that he was old enough to become a Bar Mitzvah that world would be replaced by a hellish limbo filled with unexplained atrocities. As a boy Leon was always ready to find an excuse to get out of helping his father, a self-taught veterinarian who had a special gift for treating horses. Ironically, it would be the little that he did learn about horses that would save him more than once. Being a coach driver for the SS Leon would be able to get a little food. Caring for an officer’s prize steed would keep him from the gas chamber. But his ability to handle horses also forced him to witness the extermination of his neighbors. After the Nazis killed people on the street just to make a point of their cruelty Leon would be ordered to bring a wagon and take the bodies away. Leon’s narrative records his day to day struggle to live and his desperate hope to escape Auschwitz. He hoped to be assigned to a work camp rather than a death camp. His daily fight to ward of starvation, beatings, and selection punctuate the story of how he lived to tell his story. While I think many of us who study the Holocaust try to deal with the “big picture,” a story like The Horse Adjutant reminds us that it is easy to miss the tree as one tries to understand the forest. None of us can ever comprehend the death of six million. As we try to comprehend that number we lose sight of the loss of six million individual lives- the number is just too great and defies our ability to understand. A highly personal narrative, The Horse Adjutant reminds us that sometimes our greatest understanding is found in the details of a single life. Perhaps the individual stories let us begin the task of recovering the individual faces of a world that was destroyed. The Horse Adjutant is a must read. It will not teach you about the great battles of the war. It will not explain how human beings could kill without remorse. It will not tell you why Leon’s world was destroyed. It will tell you how one single boy managed to survive to tell us how beautiful his world once was.

Darwin Knocking

Living in South Florida I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Some of the most interesting are those who have attained a long and eventful life. Through the years I have been lucky to meet several people over one hundred years old. I wish I could share every story that they have told me but suffice it to say that it is always a treat to hear about a life that has spanned the most amazing century in the history of mankind. It is a little humbling to sit with someone who lived through World War 1, the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, and along the way witnessed little changes like electricity, flight, and everything else right up to the age of the internet. It is also humbling to realize that all the pride that we have in our “modern” lifestyle will, in another generation, seem as old fashioned as being proud of a princess telephone. It puts the idea of progress in perspective- these last hundred years have produced things undreamed of a century ago and the next hundred will surpass them. When I think of progress, however, I often think of the human side of the story. Are people better than they were a century ago? Yes, we are healthier, we live longer, we are able to protect ourselves better in the face of nature. But are we better? Are we smarter? To my surprise I found a recent study of evolution done by the National Academy of Science. One result shocked me. This study focused on human evolution in recent times (not hundreds of millions but of mere thousands of years) and reports that over the past five thousand years the human brain has grown smaller. How could that be? After all, isn’t modern man the peak of evolution? How could it be that our most vital organ, the one that makes us “human,” has actually grown smaller over the course of human history? I think we would all agree that we are “smarter” than our ancestors. We may not have to know how to hunt an animal or grow crops but there are plenty of things that we need to master to get along in our world. With all that, how could it be that the human brain is growing smaller by the process of natural selection? I can’t explain it but I can make an observation. For all our wisdom we should not be too proud- we may represent the evolution of millions of years but we are still evolving, we are still locked in the same struggles that our more “primitive” ancestors faced. We still need to eat, to sleep, to find security in numbers. We still need to love and be loved. We still need to find meaning of some kind in each day and satisfaction in that meaning at the end of the day. The “amazing shrinking brain” should remind us that we are still very much like our ancestors. Take away our computers, our cell phones, our TVs, and all the other things that fill our lives and you will find that we are only one step ahead of our ancestors (and a small step at that.) I hope that if science is right and our brains are getting smaller than someone will discover that our hearts are getting bigger. This post appeared in the South Florida Jewish Journal and the Atlanta Jewish Times

Interview With Arnold Eisen of JTS

This Segment will air nationally on Jewish Life TV, June 12th, at 8:00pm. In South Florida see Comcast channel 239, nationally on DirectTV on channel 366. For more station information go to JLTV.tv

Sitting Down With Mr. Food

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Art Ginsburg, better known to millions of TV viewers as “Mr. Food.” I interviewed Art for the To Life, L’Chaim Show seen nationally on Jewish Life TV Tuesday nights at 8pm on DirectTV channel 366. When I say it was a pleasure I truly mean it! Off camera Art really is Mr. Food- that same happy, smiling personality you see on TV is the same guy you would meet at the grocery store. While many of us have watched him cook up simple but great meals on the air, I wanted to get to know a little of his personal history. Art was born in an observant Jewish home in Troy, New York. His father came from Europe in 1912 and his mother was first generation American. Art’s father was originally a cattle dealer and then a kosher butcher. Art’s face lit up as he told stories about making the rounds to local farmers to buy cattle but always being sure that he and his father would be home before Shabbos. Jewish food and Jewish holidays were always important in their home. Learning from his father Art became a kosher butcher in Troy and later he and his wife opened a kosher catering business. As much as Art enjoyed food he always had another passion- acting and singing. It was his lead role in “Fiddler” that Art credits for his TV career. The owner of a local store saw him starring as Tevya and asked him to do a local commercial for the store. Art showed up as Teyva for the commercial and it became a hit. After that more commercials followed and his first chance to do a cooking spot. That local success became the basis for what has been a forty year career as “Mr. Food.” Today Art is viewed across the country. Art has written over 50 cookbooks and still works at his test kitchen here in Ft. Lauderdale where he records his episodes. Always looking to reinvent himself and keep up with changes, Ginsburg now has a website, MrFood.com. that has one million daily followers. (Check it out for the best free recipes and tips.) Spending some time with Art I learned that he is very proud to be Jewish and has always maintained close ties to the Jewish community. We even spent a little time talking about how his recipes can easily be adapted for a kosher kitchen. Mr. Food is still a man with a mission- to teach people that great cooking can be easy and done with simple ingredients. He noted that this idea of “great, simple meals” is more important than ever because of the busy pace of life today. Interviewing Art was a real joy because he is a truly joyful person. He gave me a piece of advice: If you are lucky enough to love what you do, you never have to go to work. Art Ginsburg is a lucky man because he loves what he does. He is a joy to be with because he still remembers to be grateful to be able to do it! If you would like to see the entire interview go to youtube.com/tolifelchaim.