Two Jews - One Story

The picture below is unique.

Not only because it is in color - it's from the set of "Some Like It Hot" which was filmed in black and white - and not only because it includes two Jews (okay, Marilyn was a convert and not through the Orthodox tradition) and not only because of Ms. Monroe's profile but because of a story concerning the guy on the left, Mr. Bernard Schwartz.


You see, in my family oral tradition, my Aunt Selma, my late mother's youngest sister, who now lives in New Jersey, when a young teenager in The Bronx was given a ride in the basket of the bicycle of the person who delivered the local groceries around the neighborhood.

That person was Bronx-born Bernie, to become Tony Curtis.

Grass Skirts All The Rage

I guess military service in the South Pacific during World War II was not always grease and guns.

Here's my father in local haberdashery fashion as well as haute coutre during what he called R & R, Rest and Recreation, or at least that's what he claimed:

he's the second from right above and below, also second from right:


What can a say?

Real men!

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Info I managed to receive from historical sites of associations:

The 100th Bomb Squadron was part of the 42nd Bomb Group of the 13th Air Force. The 69th and 70th Squadrons of the 42nd were originally part of the 38th, but after reaching Australia were detached from the 38th and sent to the Fiji Islands and placed under control of the navy until the 42nd which had been in Alaska was sent to the South Pacific as part of the 13th Air Force. They flew B-25s and later the 13th and 5th Air Force was under the command of (FEAF) Far Eastern Air Force. The 42nd was known as the Crusaders.

Six Decades Ago In The Bronx

I'm guessing I am not yet two years old in the above picture, so that's me and Nanny in 1948 or very early 1949. Nice curls I had.

We're standing on the sidewalk next to my mother's father's tailor shop. My mother's father, David Nadel, came from Brody, then Austro-Hungary, later Poland, now Ukraine but forever galut, exile. He had been married to Sadie/Sarah Shteckler/Sztikler. They had three girls (my mother and my aunts, Pearl o"h and Selma (bis a hundret und tzvuntzig) and then my maternal grandmother died of cancer. My grandfather went back to Brody and married the youngest Shteckler child, Regina/Rivka, who was some eight years older than my mother. That was in 1932, as far as I can recall. Two other siblings were in the States, a brother Max and a sister Netta/Nettie, and three left behind to die in the Holocaust with their families, Lorka, Lippa and David. His father-in-law declined to take advantage of the situation and emigrate to America, preferring the presumed better religious atmosphere of Poland than the economic freedom of America).

I was born in 1947, the first grandchild. We lived on Faile Street, north of Bruckner Blvd., in The Bronx until 1954 when my parents and sister moved to Queens.

Regina was always known to us as Nanny.

Historical Roots

My mother's family come from Brody which is in Galicia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire until World War I.

I found a map and managed to zero in, more or less, on the area near Brody. It is located to the left-of-center and slightly lower in the frame:

The above came from this map:-