‘A Tremendous Obligation’

By Jessica Hornik

Monday, May 29, 2023

 

My father, Alfred Hornik, arrived in the United States in 1938 as a 15-year-old Jewish refugee from post-Anschluss Austria, together with his mother, father, and sister, Gertrude. (This June, he’d have turned 100; he died in 1978.) Relatives who had immigrated to the U.S. years before were able to get them in and then helped the family get settled in New York City. When the U.S. entered World War II, my father joined the Army. My grandfather saved his letters home from Europe. For Memorial Day, here are excerpts from two of the letters. The first, addressed to his sister only, is from a combat zone; the second, to the family, is from after the war had ended.

 

Sept. 18, 1944

Somewhere in France

 

Dear Gerty,

[The letter begins with news about his sister’s fiancé, also a soldier who’d come to the U.S. as a refugee, and other young men from their circle in New York. He then goes on:]

 

You don’t have to worry about my writing letters. . . . You’ll always know my “condition” as far as I can help it. I don’t want the “old ones” to worry about me, though, for the simple reason that Mama is sick and that Papa probably wouldn’t take it like he should and possibly make everything worse. So far there’s nothing to report, though. Of course we have seen some action already and at times had to indulge in dodging shells for a while. We are busy most of the time and our guns are blasting the hell out of the Nazis, which, after all, is what we came over here for.

 

Here is something funny: The first day we hit the combat zone two German planes came over. One caught me in the middle of a big field, but he was too worried about dodging all the ack-ack as to even notice me. The other one took off in a split-second too. We thought at that time that these were every-day affairs, but since then not one plane has shown its nose, which only proves what “air-superiority” means.

 

I am in perfect shape, and as big and ugly as ever. We get plenty of rest, too; you can see that from the length of my letters. And when I say you don’t have to worry about me, it’s not just a mere phrase but I mean it. Today I got hold of an old copy of “Newsweek” (July) but nevertheless it was like “manna from heaven.” But now we have a radio in our vicinity, which is a great help, too. . . .

 

I don’t think it’ll last very much longer now. And we have so much to look forward to, Gerty — just imagine! But while I’m writing, it’s slowly getting dark. I am sitting on a GI water can, next to a cozy little fire in the middle of the woods. I think a lot about all of you, but not the kind of thinking that makes you “blue.”

 

Write much and “keep your chin up”!

 

Love,

Alfred

 

Sunday, Dec. 2, ’45

 

Dear folks — still waiting . . .

 

Two more days and off we go to the P.O.E. [point of embarkation]. All kind of rumors going around about the manner of traveling, the time it will take, the point of landing, etc. etc. but those are nothing but rumors produced in the hot brains of over-excited GI’s — because nobody knows.

 

I’m spending practically all day in the library — expect to finish “My Native Land” [by Louis Adamic, published in 1943] this afternoon. It’s an exceptionally good book. . . . I don’t know yet whether I’ll send you a telegram before I come home; maybe I’ll just surprise you. Have to think about it yet!

 

I wonder what kind of a creature you are expecting to come back. Think the creature has changed? Not fundamentally, as far as I know. Just let me tell you one thing — to sort of explain a lot of things in just a few sentences: Lots of times during this war I have been very doubtful about my chances of surviving. Sometimes it was a “great occasion” to find oneself alive the following day. Talking about the future required the use of that word “if”; whenever we talked about things of the future that “if” was the crucial word of the sentence. Then the war was over and I slowly realized that I had come through, not even hurt — alive as ever. And I became conscious of a tremendous obligation. The fact of being alive cannot be taken for granted, to be celebrated and then to be forgotten about. Nothing of the sort. So many millions have died in this war that every one who has come out alive owes them something — and not only “something” but everything. . . . I vowed to myself to fight against evil more completely and more wholeheartedly than I ever did before. . . . That’s the only way to pay back part of that vast debt, to live up to and try to fulfill that tremendous obligation.

 

Do you know what I mean? I guess you do because it’s very simple. Well, so much for now, lots of love and kisses,

 

Yours,

Alfred