By the grace of the game, p.5
By the Grace of the Game, page 5
Even with a Schutz-Pass in her possession, Anyu was required to wear her yellow star on her clothes everywhere she went. Like most Jews, she was only allowed to be on the streets from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. A few Jews had working permits and could go out during the day for longer stretches, but Anyu wasn’t one of them.
Since she needed money, she left her Star of David badge behind and snuck into the city in search of work. The streets were chaos, but everything at the time was chaos. There seemed to be a Nazi on every corner, so Anyu kept her head down and her eyes to herself. She was still hiding, only this time in plain sight.
She found work in a champagne factory, a modest operation of 10 or so people. Her job was to load syrup into the champagne bottles. At lunchtime, she was given a glass of champagne as a treat. She made sure to put a lot of syrup in it. She liked it sweet.
After a few restless months, Wallenberg’s Schutz-Pass became meaningless when a pro-Nazi Hungarian government led by Ferenc Szálasi was installed to replace the moderate party of Miklós Horthy. With her insurance now gone, Anyu stayed at the Jewish house less and less, fearing the Nazis’ presence. Sometimes she hid with her sisters; sometimes she did not. It was easy to get separated for weeks at a time.
As the days wore on, food became even harder to come by. The champagne factory had been shut down since the owner was Jewish, so Anyu no longer had a job. The owner and his wife started hiding in the bombed-out building. They sometimes slept on the floor near Anyu.
With war consuming Europe, bomb blasts from advancing Allied forces were common in the evenings. One night as Anyu hid, she heard bursts of sound that were lighter and less threatening, as if born from the sky instead of driven into the ground. She noticed other hiding Jews making their way onto the street. She followed. When she emerged into the cool night air, brilliant flashes reflected off her eyes. She looked around at her fellow Jews as they gazed up, dirty, hungry, and tired. For the first time in a long time, she saw smiles. Fireworks rained down from the sky like golden chandeliers, illuminating a dark and destroyed city. Her mouth ajar, Anyu admired the display for several minutes until an unmistakable boom shook the ground. Anyu’s features tightened. The Jews ran back to their hiding places to seek cover from the bombs. Anyu learned later that it was a common Ally tactic to light up the sky with flares to get better visuals on targets before initiating a bombing raid. For a few minutes, at least, she again saw beauty.
Not long after, Anyu’s friend’s boyfriend, a Jew, stole a Nazi uniform and acquired fake papers indicating he was a young German soldier. With these items, he was able to legally rent an apartment outside the city. Anyu had been separated from her sisters for weeks and wasn’t safe anywhere. She moved in with her friend and the boyfriend, even though she thought the boyfriend was trouble. Days later, the boyfriend went to a non-Jewish friend’s house to have a drink. Lips loosened by the spirits, he confessed to the friend and his wife that he was a Jew. He gloated about his stolen uniform, his papers, and the rented apartment.
As soon as she heard the confession, the non-Jewish hostess called over her young son and handed him money so he could run to the store for bread. Inside the rolled-up money was a note for the Nazis. It contained the location of the apartment where the Jews were living. At 3:00 AM, the Nazis burst in with clubs drawn. Anyu leapt to her feet. A Nazi grabbed her from behind, holding her wrists as his counterparts beat the boyfriend senseless. The other Nazis then approached Anyu and slapped her across the face. They demanded to know who she was and where she was from. “A refugee from Transylvania,” she pleaded.
“Bullshit,” a Nazi shouted back.
Lying was no use; the boyfriend had already told them Anyu was Jewish. The Nazis forced them onto the street and into a large holding car. They stuck a gun to Anyu’s stomach and demanded she tell them where her friends were. Anyu said she didn’t know. She was telling the truth this time. It was common for Jews on the street never to tell each other where they were hiding. That way, with a gun to their stomach or a blade to their neck, they wouldn’t have information to share.
The police station they were brought to consisted of two connected rooms, one for women and one for men. Once a day, Anyu and the rest of the prisoners were given a bowl of soup and a slice of bread. The bread was stiff and dry. The soup was made of caraway seeds. Anyu named it “jailhouse soup.” She was so desperate for food that she still insists it was the best soup she’s ever had.
She spent a week in jail before being transferred to the Budapest Ghetto. The ghetto had been established a month prior to cage the remaining Jews in Budapest. During Anyu’s week-long imprisonment, two boys each day were taken from the jail by the Hungarian soldiers. “To work for the Germans,” they said.
Anyu became friends with two Jewish boys in jail, Robby and Geza, who were taken away without warning and never brought back. After the War, Anyu reconnected with Geza, who’d also survived the Holocaust. He shared with her what the Nazis had done that night.
He told her the Nazis had carried him and Robby straight to the Danube River, where only the constant motion of the water prevented it from freezing. The Nazis tied the boys’ wrists together and shot Robby in the head. They shoved them both into the river and let Geza sink with his dead friend’s corpse.
Geza was able to wrestle himself free of his friend’s body and swim to the other side of the riverbank. When he emerged, his teeth were chattering so violently that he put his hands in his mouth so no one would hear. The Nazis were still on the other side of the river, smoking cigarettes. He crawled to the nearest house, shaking, and knocked on the door. The inhabitants were gentiles. They hurried him in and gave him food and dry clothes. But they didn’t let him stay. “Who can blame them?” Anyu says.
After the War, Geza moved back to his hometown in Romania, where he became a security agent for the communist government. His job was to hunt for Nazis. Anyu would learn his story long after surviving the Budapest Ghetto. Luckily, unbeknownst to Anyu, Raoul Wallenberg was still in Budapest at the time of her internment in the ghetto. His presence in the city, however, was offset by one of history’s most notorious Nazis, Adolf Eichmann, who was also in Budapest. As a mastermind of the Holocaust, Eichmann was committed to the extermination of Budapest’s Jews, including Anyu.
5. seeds & the Farm
I was young to fall in love, but I knew true beauty when I saw it. Palm trees. Flowing fountains. Spanish architecture. An interdenominational church stood tall in the center of the quad as tourists from around the world posed for pictures under its swooping columns, with bright blues, purples, and golds popping off the tile mural on the church’s external façade, depicting timeless scenes from the Old Testament. Laughter zipped through the redwood trees. The grass was freshly trimmed. The air smelled like cedar.
I could get used to Stanford.
My family had made the trip to the Bay Area to visit Anyu. One morning, after fighting a losing battle with faschilt, ciorba, meggyleves, piros krumpli, and almas pite the night before, we drove the 30 minutes to campus so my sister, who’d just started looking at colleges, could take a tour. As we walked the sunny libraries and stately lecture halls, she was impressed. It was me — the 12-year-old tagalong wearing dirty sneakers and baggy shorts, chatting up the smiling students and asking where the basketball players lived — that was obsessed.
No one in New Jersey ever talked about Stanford. How was that possible? One of the best schools in the world and a top-five basketball team? I could get behind that. Sunshine at all times and no humidity, like, ever? Go on. A half-hour drive from Anyu’s apartment, where Hungarian food fell from the sky like raindrops from heaven? Sold.
I was only in seventh grade, still months away from having my Torah portion pounded into my head by my Bar Mitzvah tutor, but despite my early age, Stanford became my dream school. I decided this was where I’d play college basketball. It was true that slow Jewish kids rarely received basketball scholarships from elite programs, but I tried not to get bogged down in the details.
From that day forward, when people asked where I wanted to go to college, I told them Stanford, the best school in the world, right around the corner from my grandmother, the best person in the world. When I talked about my desire to play for the Cardinal, I’d often hear: “Good for you!” or “Wouldn’t that be nice?” I’d never smile. My grandma went through hell so I could have opportunities like this. So did my dad, for that matter. I was dead serious about it.
It was at a summer basketball tournament in Los Angeles where I had my first chance to impress Stanford. I’d moved from New Jersey to Milwaukee shortly after my dad was fired by the Knicks. He was now the general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks, the organization with whom he’d started his NBA career. The Bucks had scooped him up as their GM upon his departure from New York. Not only had he built an NBA Finals team, but he’d taken the high road as a media firestorm raged. People had noticed. He was no longer simply an immigrant New Yorker who’d made good in the big city. He was now a top NBA executive with plenty of options outside of the five boroughs.
During my first few weeks living in Milwaukee, as a sophomore in high school without any friends, I spent my nights alone in my room researching card tricks on the Internet and practicing them on my bed. I’d inject some excitement into the evening by working on my shuffling in between tricks. I’d sporadically use the bathroom and make a funny face at myself in the mirror when I walked in, just to have some social interaction with another person my age. I guess moving to Milwaukee can have that type of effect on a kid.
Most of the time, I was thinking about basketball. It wasn’t because I loved the game, which I did, but it was because I knew the game could help me prove myself. It was unhealthy how often I thought about becoming a standout basketball player like my dad. It was unhealthy how hard I began to push myself to make it happen.
It wasn’t long before I started to enjoy Milwaukee, realizing that the people were far nicer than in New Jersey and that my high school community was far more diverse. I attended one of Wisconsin’s top public high schools and started on my varsity basketball team as a sophomore. I was the only white guy in the starting lineup and certainly the only Jewish guy. I’d hit a growth spurt that summer, so my game was now respectable. At 6’2” and 165 pounds, I was a tall tangle of arms and legs. Still skinny and pale but occasionally useful on the court, my primary asset was my shooting ability.
The first colleges to recruit me were small schools in the Midwest. Places like Drake and Illinois State. I got no attention whatsoever from top programs, including Stanford. Whenever I felt discouraged about being lightly recruited, my dad told me to keep working. It was the typical immigrant mentality. “If you work hard,” he’d say, “good things will happen.”
Athletes at Stanford had to be admitted academically to get a scholarship, so my summer coach repeatedly contacted the Stanford staff to tell them about my strong grades. I wasn’t at their level as a player — the Cardinal had been to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament two years prior and had just won back-to-back conference championships — but I could get in, he’d say, so I was worth a look.
I’d swooned at the Stanford staff from afar at a few of our summer tournaments, always wearing Cardinal red sweater vests with immaculate white polo shirts underneath. They’d never stopped to watch one of my games, but in Los Angeles, for whatever reason, they were willing to take a look. What they saw was a snapshot of post-Bar-Mitzvah adolescence: a 16-year-old Jewish kid with gangly limbs, size-14 feet, smatterings of acne, no muscles, and two very bald underarms. As a player, I could score the basketball fairly well but not nearly as well as my dad. I knew college coaches would compare me to him, unfavorably. He’d been a high school All-American and one of the top recruits in the country. I was nothing in the world of basketball, just a stressed-out kid chasing a ghost.
Before the game in L.A., my coach let me know Stanford had agreed to come watch me play. Holy crap, I thought. Don’t overthink it. Just be yourself. Just relax. By halftime, I had 0 points.
I hadn’t spotted Stanford in the crowd, but I was sure I’d ruined my chances with them. Free from pressure, I scored five baskets in a row to start the third quarter. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I ended my third-quarter scoring spree with my first ever in-game dunk. I carefully set up my jump and barely got the ball over the rim, so while the dunk was unremarkable in every way, it was a dunk, nonetheless. “You see Stanford?” my coach said after the game.
“I saw one of the coaches during the third quarter,” I said.
“That’s when he showed up,” my coach said. “He missed the first half.”
I paused. Stanford came right before I started my scoring run. Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. When I got home to Milwaukee, the recruiting letters from the Cardinal had already started hitting the mailbox. My dad told me he had a good feeling about Stanford. “Why not?” he’d say. “Just keep working.”
My next chance was the following summer, when I was invited to the premiere showcase in the nation for high school basketball players. It was called ABCD Camp and it was held in New Jersey, a short drive from where I grew up. Out of hundreds of thousands of high school basketball players in America, only a few hundred got an invitation to this camp. If I could stand out against elite competition — LeBron James was the camp’s best player — Stanford would want me. I set a goal of being named an All-Star at the weeklong event.
Having finished my junior year in high school by then, I’d grown to 6’5” and finally had some whiskers under my arms. I’d averaged more than 17 points per game on a good high school team. I’d lost 80 percent of my acne and gained 20 percent more muscle. I even had a jaw now. When we went to temple on the High Holidays, I wore a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl used by men, not boys. It stretched comfortably over my thickening shoulders. We attended a seder on Passover, where I no longer asked the Four Questions, a ritual reserved for the youngest person at the table. If given the opportunity, I’d speak openly about my family’s experience during the Holocaust. I was still more boy than man, but the proportions were shifting.
By that point, I was one of Stanford’s top recruits. I was somehow in striking distance of my seventh-grade promise. I’d even heard a few college coaches say that I played a little like my dad, which I took as a sign that I was on the right track. Anyu’s voice shook when we talked about the possibility of Stanford. She’d go on and on and on about all the meats and soups and pastries she’d make me — as if I didn’t want Stanford bad enough already.
Every college coach and major sports media outlet in America attended ABCD Camp. Plenty of NBA personnel were there, too, so my dad blended in with his peers as he watched me play. When the games started at camp, I created a nice buzz for myself. I wasn’t dominant by any means — LeBron handled those duties, and quite proficiently, I might add — but I was solid and effective. After a few days, several tri-state area newspapers ran stories about me. It was partly due to my play and partly due to my name. It would always be that way. Feature articles about me were written in the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and The Bergen Record, the same papers I’d cut NBA box scores out of as a kid. In one of the articles, I was quoted as referring to my style of play as “cerebral.”
What a turd.
Part of me was aware that the attention I was getting wasn’t completely my own, but still, I loved it. I couldn’t help but wonder if those who’d been so cruel to my dad when he was with the Knicks were reading about my success in New York papers. I thought they might remember the young kid whose life they’d helped upend. They probably did, and they probably didn’t give it a second thought. It was me carrying around that negativity, not anyone else. I was the one feeling the pressure and anxiety. I was the one drinking poison and expecting an enemy to suffer its effects.
By the final morning of camp, Stanford was still evaluating me, but I had two games left to impress them. Before the penultimate game started, they announced the All-Star teams — the All-Star game was to be played that night to end camp — and I wasn’t on the list. I poured over the names of the All-Stars. That guy made it? I’d say to myself as my eyes scanned downward. That guy made it? That guy made it? My temples throbbed. I felt like I’d been screwed.
In this case, the anger I was feeling wasn’t poison. It was fuel. In the morning game, I scored 20 points, my highest total of camp. In the afternoon game — my last chance to sway Stanford my way and possibly get added to the All-Star team — I had 28 points. It was the first time all week that I’d been the best player on the court. I walked off the floor with a soaked jersey and a satisfied smile. I had a few future NBA players on my team, but I’d been the one with the hot hand. The Cardinal and everyone else now knew I deserved to be an All-Star. Other players at camp started saying I’d be added to the team before the game. At first, I shrugged it off. After a while, I started to believe it.
As I sat in the stands in jeans and a T-shirt that night, my hopes of participating in the All-Star game had sadly disappeared. That was when a voice bellowed over the PA system in the gym: “Dan Grunfeld, please report to the scorer’s table.”
Whoa! I thought. Is this really happening?
Heads turned to look at me. My stomach tingled. “I told you they’d add you,” my teammate from camp said, patting me on the back as I got up and made my way down the bleachers.
My heart was already pounding. The scorer’s table was on the other side of the gym, but I didn’t mind my lengthy strut over there. I was going to enjoy this walk. I’d earned this. How could Stanford resist me now? What number would my All-Star jersey be? Would I play with LeBron or against him?
