The memory of Mr. Friedman brings tears to my eyes. Although only five-foot two inches, I will always remember him as a giant. In 1939, he owned the grocery store on Chancellor Avenue in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey. I was eight and I came in every week with my mother or my older brother Eddie to buy groceries for our family of five. My younger brother Mickey (now a retired lawyer and writer) was an infant. Mr. Friedman always smiled and asked me how my father was doing. “Just fine,” I told him. I was not always telling the truth. My father had been a delivery driver for Consolidated Laundry until 1938, when he took a risk and went into something he knew little about, the construction business. America was still in the Depression and paying rent and food was difficult for every family we knew. We lived in a four-room flat in a four-family house on Hobson Street. The family shared one bathroom. The thought of overcrowding never entered our minds. After school, I was a playground kid, going from football to basketball to baseball.
Everything changed in 1939. My father became sick with an illness that kept him in bed for nine months with the room in darkness. I remember the doctor telling us the name of the disease, but I blocked it out of my mind. My grandparents, together with about 250 Jewish families from the same Russian village, around 1900, escaped anti-Semitism and came to America. They moved to the same area, organized, and bought a cemetery and helped each other in times of need. Since welfare was a stigma for Jews, banding together meant survival. For the nine months that my father was sick and unable to work, the 250 families took over financial responsibility for what they could afford- our rent. I listened as my mother explained to Mr. Friedman. “I don’t know when we can pay you back,” she said, “but when my husband gets better and goes back to work, we will pay you back every cent. If only you will carry our groceries until then? Mr. Friedman said “Agreed, Mrs. Diamond. I trust you. Please send in the boys for whatever you need. Give my best to your husband and when he goes back to work he can pay me back what is owed.” Nine months later, my father went back to work and within six months, Mr. Friedman, as well as the Russian family organization, were paid in full. I pray that there is a special place in heaven for Mr. Friedman and the 250 families from Russia.
