By Brian Zanzonico
"Dates are important," he said in the living room of his West Hempstead home, clasping his hands and leaning forward. The movement pulls the cuffs of his shirt back to reveal thin wrists and forearms devoid of Nazi ink. He never stayed in a camp long enough to receive the crude branding meant to keep track of prisoners.
On October 26, 1949, Weingarten, wife Phyllis and their 5-month-old daughter, Bernice, flew from Germany to New York. Little Bernice qualified them for the flight, helping them avoid two weeks on a steam ship. They were met at the airport by Weingarten's Aunt Sally and his sister, Rachel, the two of three Weingarten girls who had survived the Holocaust. Weingarten's uncle, Simon, his father's brother, had supplied the family with an affidavit to come to America. But six months before they arrived, he died of a heart attack.
They lived on East 168th Street in the Bronx, a fifth-floor walkup with three bedrooms and a dumbwaiter for the super to collect trash from each apartment. Sally, hoping to assimilate the new family, assigned Weingarten's wife and daughter American names, Phyllis and Bernice. Their given names were Felicia and Breindel. Weingarten retained his universally accepted name.
The flat was in a predominantly Jewish part of the Bronx. Just up the block was a nursing home, the Daughters of Jacob, that housed a synagogue, and the family joined the congregation.
"In the apartment just below us lived a cantor who would practice in the weeks before the High Holidays," said Bernice, who attended P.S. 53 across the street. "My mother would open the door to the dumbwaiter, which was in the kitchen, to hear him better. It was wonderful."
Weingarten received a solid recommendation from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and was certain he'd have a job. But at an interview, he was told he was overqualified and turned away. He soon got a job making metal frames for ladies' pocketbooks. But the former bookkeeper was accustomed to working with figures, not his hands, and blisters rose and broke on his fingers and palms nearly every day. As soon as he had the chance, he left, going to work in a hosiery plant, pairing up stockings for packaging.
In 1960, after years of saving, Weingarten purchased a building in Woodside, Queens, which included a dry-cleaning business on the ground floor. On the second floor was an apartment perfect for a couple with an 11-year-old daughter. "It was the easiest, and cheapest, way to go into business at the time," Weingarten said.
He also had Phyllis, an amateur seamstress, to handle the tailoring. She always created the cutest outfits for Bernice - and her dolls - and Bernice still has the doll's dress her mother made to match one of hers 50 years ago.
Roman and Phyllis worked side by side 11 hours a day. But the demands of the business never seemed to cease. "Long hours were spent in the store, and the solvents took their toll on Daddy's hands, as the skin on his fingers would split as if cut by a knife," Bernice said. "During the spring, when customers brought their winter garments for box storage, Daddy would go back down to the store after supper and continue the cleaning to get things out of the way so that when the store was open he could handle the regular in and out orders."
Every night after the store closed, save for Fridays, Phyllis would bring clothes up from downstairs and continue sewing.
Despite all the time spent at the cleaners, Weingarten made time to get involved in an association of Krakow survivors of the Holocaust. Founded by 13 men in 1965, the New Cracow Friendship Society Inc. drew 700 people to its first meeting. Weingarten said the Society initially served as a surrogate family for survivors, as 20 years had passed since the liberation and many of the refugees had adopted American customs. The Society was a gateway to the past, a way to reconnect with a world lost - a place and time and people with whom to discuss what life was like back home. At an early meeting, Weingarten met a man named Dr. Albert Tilles, who, he learned, lived two doors away from him in Krakow. They became friends, and Tilles became the Weingartens' family physician.
A board of directors was created, and Weingarten was elected in 1967. The direction of the Society changed. It established two goals: support the state of Israel and help Krakow survivors in need in the United States. A welfare committee was formed, and soon found that most Krakow residents living in the United States didn't need financial assistance. Attention quickly turned to Krakow's existing Jewish community. The Society got in touch with the leader of a local synagogue for a list of people in need of support. To this day, like clockwork, the Society sends one check to the PKO Bank Polski and it returns individual checks. The Society then forwards those checks to the Krakow Jewish community leader for distribution. To date, Society members have donated some $100,000 to Krakow Jews.
In addition, the Society has donated seven ambulances to Israel and provided scholarships to high school students in Tel Aviv, where education is costly.
This year, Bernice helped create a journal to mark the Society's 40th anniversary. Congratulatory letters from President Bush, Holocaust survivor and celebrated author Elie Wiesel and official Winston Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert comprise the opening pages of the journal, followed by tributes to family members from the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Bernice was in charge of organizing the children and grandchildren to contribute to the journal.
Weingarten, who has been the president of the Society off and on since 1984, still runs the day-to-day operations and edits the monthly newsletter. Founder Larry Zellner said Weingarten is so vital to the Society that the board of directors has rewritten its bylaws so he could continue to serve as president. "My feeling is that if it wasn't for him, our organization would be on its way to extinction," Zellner said.
Going to the Island
The cleaning business never made the Weingartens wealthy, but it provided for their daughter and allowed for numerous trips to Israel. In 1972, Bernice married, and later she had two children, now both successful twenty-somethings. By the time the 1980s rolled around, Weingarten was looking to retire. He received a call from his old friend Tilles - who knew about Weingarten's desire to sell the building in Woodside - about a house for sale in West Hempstead.
"My incentive to buy the house was the guy [Tilles, who lived] next door," Weingarten said.
The Weingarten home is just steps from the West Hempstead Jewish Center, where the couple became active members of the congregation. But retirement bliss didn't last long. On Feb. 2, 1984, Phyllis, a smoker, suffered a heart attack at home. Weingarten immediately called Tilles next door and they rushed her to Franklin General Hospital. "He told me to brace for the worst," Weingarten said.
After it seemed that Phyllis was on her way to recovering, she suffered another coronary on Feb. 12. The funeral took place just 12 hours later.
"This was completely unexpected," said Weingarten. "To that point she never had health problems."
A short time later, Weingarten was introduced by a mutual friend to a woman who lived in Brazil and was visiting her parents in New York. They agreed to meet at a restaurant in Queens, and Weingarten was instantly taken by the woman, who, like him, had lost a spouse.
"I liked everything about her," he said about Helena. "She was a pretty girl. Nice, down to earth. "
The two started seeing each other, and after a while they fell in love. Within months, Weingarten asked for Bernice's blessing to marry Helena. His daughter agreed, with one condition: It had to be after the first Jahzeit, the anniversary of a death on the Jewish calendar. On March 17, 1985, Weingarten and Helena exchanged vows.
"My mother had told me many years before that my father was not the type of man who could live alone, which is why, when he asked my permission to marry Helena, I immediately told him to find happiness," Bernice said.
Today, Roman and Helena are active members of the West Hempstead Jewish Center. Weingarten, along with congregation president Larry Rosenberg, organizes the Holocaust commemoration every year. Rabbi Art Vernon said that Weingarten never misses Saturday shabbos and often leads the preliminary service. Blessed with a strong singing voice, he even fills in if the cantor is sick or on vacation. "He's a very endearing human being," Vernon said. "He's refined, elegant and a leader."
And it doesn't look like he's slowing down. Weingarten's two brothers and sister, all in their 80s, are alive and well. One brother lives in Israel, the other in Brooklyn, and his sister lives in Queens. He has made many pilgrimages to Israel over the years - the last six years ago - and he is planning another for the fall.
"I'm going to be 91," he said. "I want to see my brother and his family. Who knows? This could be my last time."
One place he vowed never to return is Poland. Home to 60,000 Jews before the Nazi invasion, Weingarten said that fewer than 200 Jews call Krakow home today. The Krakow of his youth is nothing more than a yellowed snapshot in the family album. His memories of the family chocolate factory, Passover dinner with his grandparents and Mickiewicz by candlelight is the way he wishes to remember the way it was a lifetime ago.
"I don't know if [staying away] is the right thing or not," he said. "I have nothing to go back to. If there were graves for my parents, I'd go back. But they were killed in Belzec. There is no grave. There is nothing to attract me back to Poland."
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