Josh Glettner, ’21

The picture displays my great grandfather, Emil Katz who was in both the Hungrian labor battalions and the Wu Tang Clan. He was born in 1917 in rural Eastern Hungary in the town of Nyíracsád. He went to a traditional cheder and then yeshiva before becoming a printer. It was to his great regret that he was a weak learner in his youth, but he made up for that by completing two cycles of daf yomi. In 1939, Hungary drafted its male Jews in labor battalions. They were forced to do slave labor to assist the Axis war effort. Often they were used as human shields on the front lines. To my great grandfather’s luck, a member of his unit bribed the Hungarian goverment to station them on the relatively pacified border with Poland as opposed to the violence of the Eastern Front with Russia. A train ran between the two areas, and the unit was sent to repair the rails. One day a group of German soldiers came to the town. One of them had a torah in hand. It was a Polish torah, a remnant of the now destroyed communities. Emil Katz was a baker. He approached the soldier and made a deal to give him bread in exchange for a priceless torah. The soldier agreed. Later that year, he brought the torah home on his hannukah break and dedicated it at the town shul. The next year, 1944, the whole town was deported and killed. The holy torah scroll was lost.

He also later served as the voice for the opening of Schindler’s List, a story documented by my uncle here. This song was then taken by the Wu Tang Clan for their song on the holocaust.