Holocaust survivor tailors an American success story

NEW YORK — Like many men, Martin Greenfield ordered a new suit when his life was about to change: He placed his order just after he was liberated from a concentration camp.

In 1945, he left Buchenwald and arrived at a German warehouse, where Allied soldiers let Greenfield pilfer four cuts of English wool. The freed captive carried the fabric to a Prague tailor, who made a suit for Greenfield from two of the cuts, with the other two as payment.

Two years later, an uncle helped Greenfield cross the Atlantic, and a fellow Czech immigrant guided him to a job as a floor boy in a Brooklyn garment factory. Within a few years, Greenfield became a tailor, assigned to the factory’s famous clients — actors, athletes, politicians. By the 1970s, he had amassed enough skill and capital to buy the factory. And today, at 84, Greenfield can count among the tens of thousands of men he has dressed, three presidents, a vice president, Cabinet secretaries and countless senators and representatives.

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What a great story!