Among the great migration of Jews from Romania in the late 1800s were my great-grandparents and their four children. Philip, my grandfather, was the youngest of the children (1894-1964) and wrote this memoir of his early years in Romania and settling on the Lower East Side of New York. Although his formal education ended in eighth grade duke to the need to contribute to the survival of the family, he worked and studied independently and eventually gained admission to dental school. Finding himself on the Western Front during World War I, he was one of the one million Americans taking part in the final Allied offensive of the War, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. It was to be the deadliest battle in American history, with 26,000 deaths and 120,000 total casualties. This is his story from 1900 until the end of World War I and his return home in 1919.
--Priscilla A. Konecky, editor
