Boynton Beach man escaped Nazi Germany — with help from a future U.S. president

Yahoo

23-04-2025

Two months. That was the time between life and death for Jack Abramowitz.
Abramowitz, a resident of Boynton Beach, was given the gift of an American visa two months before Germany attacked Russia in 1941 and leaving the country became impossible. He was just a child then. Born four months before World War II officially began in 1939, he spent his infancy and toddlerhood in Hitler-led Germany.
Abramowitz says three Godly acts allowed him to survive and be here to tell his story, which he has been doing since his arrival in Florida 25 years ago. As part of the executive board of the Alpert Jewish Family Service in West Palm Beach, Abramowitz visits Palm Beach County schools to share his experience escaping Nazi Germany, a story that he titled, 'Why I believe in God.'
'God intervened to save my family when 6 million of us were murdered and destroyed throughout Europe,' Abramowitz says.
It was three acts of God, but also the heroism of three people in his life: his father, who made the difficult decision to leave for America; his mother, who refused to deny her Judaism; and a newly promoted U.S. Army colonel who would later become president of the United States.
Abramowitz's father, Ben, who moved to Germany from Poland at 13 years old for an apprenticeship, found success in the hat-making industry and eventually opened a business. When Adolf Hitler came into power and enacted The Nuremburg Race Laws in 1935, his business was confiscated. As the situation continued to worsen for Jews, Ben Abramowitz turned to his younger brother, who was already living in the United States.
As a young, single man, his brother could only sponsor one member of the family in Germany, which also included Abramowitz's 9-year-old sister. Realizing this could be the only chance to save his family, Ben Abramowitz decided to leave Germany, alone, and head to the United States on Nov. 10, 1938.
As he prepared for his journey overseas in the morning, Kristallnacht, or the 'Night of Broken Glass,' began on Nov. 9. Nazis attacked Jews and their property, and Ben Abramowitz was arrested and thrown into Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, Abramowitz says.
Remembering the visa waiting in their home, Abramowitz's mother, Rose, who was pregnant with him at the time, headed to the prison accompanied by a neighbor whose husband was also taken. The women walked through the doors and handed a commander the visa.
'He could have just as easily just ripped up the visa and said, 'The hell with this. He's not going anywhere,'' Abramowitz says. 'But very fortunately, he read the visa, looked at it, and thought for a moment.'
Then he pulled out a gun.
As Abramowitz tells it, the commander walked over to his pregnant mother and simply said, 'Tell me, Mrs. Abramowitz, that you are not a Jew.' After some thought, his mother replied, 'Mr. Commander, but I am a Jew.' He proceeded to hit her across the head with the gun, knocking her to the ground before turning to the neighbor and asking the same question.
When the neighbor responded 'I am not a Jew,' the commander shot her in the head, killing her on the spot.
'Had my mother given the wrong answer, we would not be talking today,' Abramowitz says.
His father left for the United States the following day. He found work at a hat-making company in the Garment District in Manhattan, which had a contract with West Point making hats for cadets and military officers. Meanwhile, his family was left in Germany, hiding in their apartment and dependent on food brought over by Christian neighbors, he says.
'The thought was that we would keep a very low profile and wouldn't leave the apartment that we lived in,' Abramowitz says. 'The Nazis at that time weren't going after women and children. They wanted the men for the workforce.'
And that thought became their reality for three years, during which Abramowitz's mother gave birth to him. His father continued to try to get his family visas, but as the war raged on, it became more and more difficult.
It would be the third and final act of God — and heroism — when a U.S. Army colonel walked into the Manhattan hat shop and asked Ben Abramowitz directly to make him a new hat to commemorate his military promotion.
Upon hearing his accent and learning he was from Germany, the man asked about his family, learning they were still stuck in the country.
'He says to my father, 'Gee, I'm very sorry, but here's what I want you to do. I want you to make a hat for me.' And he hands my father an embroidered handkerchief that his mother had made for him and he said, 'Mr. Abramowitz, when you make the hat for me, I would like you to take these embroidered initials and work it into the hat,'' said Abramowitz.
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Those initials were DDE. His father was making a hat for the future 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In 1941, Eisenhower returned to the factory to retrieve his hat. Upon entering, he noticed Ben Abramowitz crying in a corner. He proceeded to show Eisenhower a letter from the State Department, which was a final denial for visas for his family. Eisenhower, according to Abramowitz, grabbed the letter and walked out of the factory.
Three weeks later, Abramowitz was on a ship headed for the United States along with his mother and sister.
'What General Eisenhower at the time did, he made some phone calls, whatever it was, it was an act of God that put us all into this particular situation,' says Abramowitz. 'The war was now raging in Germany, but we got visas and we arrived in the United States on April 15, 1941.'
Just over two months later, on June 22, 1941, Germany attacked Russia and the world closed up.
Abramowitz and his family lived in The Bronx, New York, for the remainder of his childhood, moving to Brooklyn when he was 18 years old. He graduated from The City College of New York and got his master's from Adelphi University in Garden City.
He went on to have a successful career as an aerospace engineer. He and his wife, Phyllis, who passed in 2022, have three sons and nine grandchildren. He dedicates his retirement to sharing this story, spreading Holocaust awareness, and helping provide food and housing for South Florida survivors through his work with the Alpert Jewish Family Service of Palm Beach County.
After President Eisenhower died in 1969, Ben Abramowitz would always say the Kaddish, the mourner's prayer, for him during Yom Kippur services. His son continues that tradition today.
'I feel absolutely lucky that [I was saved],' Abramowitz says. 'It was a stroke of God's good luck.'