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In Memory of Harry Drucker

 

​I had the great privilege of speaking with Harry Drucker, a Pittsburgh tailor and Holocaust survivor, back in the summer of 2021. I was very saddened to hear that he passed away on May 27, 2024 at the age of 100. I'm sharing the interview, published in the July 2021 issue of Print, in his honor. Zekher tzadik livrakha--May the memory of the righteous be a blessing.

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Harry Drucker, a Polish-born tailor, left his steady job at Kaufmann’s Department store in the early 1960s to open his own business, H. Drucker Tailors, at 2025 Murray Ave.

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It was far from the riskiest thing he had ever done in his life.

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Born in 1923, Drucker will soon turn 98. 

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Drucker grew up with his father and mother, three sisters, and a brother — “I was number three.” He can still recall going to school as a young boy, his childhood home in Poland, and the grounds around it. “We did a little farm. I was helpful. We used to grow all kinds of things.”

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While still a teen, Drucker began apprentice work with a local tailor named Fishbaum. “The times were not good for most of the people,” he recalls. He lived with the tailor and his family during his training. 

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About a year later, Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939 — one day after Drucker’s 16th birthday. He quickly returned to the family home. 

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“Seven days later, the Germans soldiers were at our place,” Drucker said. “We were the only Jewish family in that place. So, we didn’t have much to do with it. But then it got worse. A couple of years later, they came around one day, the police, and they took us to a different town, far from our place. They gave us a half-hour to take something with us.”

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Drucker and his brother were forced to do roadwork for the Nazis. 

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“I and my brother, we used to work on the highway. And my father and my mother and my sisters were just moving around, with nothing to do. 

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“Then one morning, when I was going to work, they said no more to work. They pushed everybody to the market square. Me and my brother were separated into a separate row. The older people, they put them on a truck. 

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They took them to the near woods, right where they had graves.”

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Overcome with emotion, Drucker could say no more. 

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Some time later, when Drucker and his brother were working on a highway, a truck full of Gestapo came by. They were looking for tailors who could sew and make alterations for officer uniforms. Drucker was taken away, though Drucker wanted to remain where he was.

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“You could not say I want to stay with my brother or something like that. Because you know what they would do? ‘You want to stay with your brother? Go over with your brother. You will stay together forever.’ I just went where they took me.”

 

Drucker ended up at a Polish slave labor camp with about 50 other tailors and seamstresses. 

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He was 18 years old. 

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Over the next three-and-a-half years, their numbers decreased to a dozen — 10 men and two women. Because the Nazis needed them to work, the tailors received slightly better treatment than other prisoners. 

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“They did more for us than some other people. We were hungry, but not starving,” he said.

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But that did not preclude brutal treatment by the guards, who were ethnic Germans from Russia and Ukraine. 

 

“The first time I was beaten, I started to shake,” Drucker said. His hands have shaken ever since, although he has learned to control it to some degree. Drucker remembers the guard as being very big, at least a foot taller than himself. 

 

Before Drucker and the other tailors could be liberated by the Soviets, a German major moved them to Czechoslovakia. At the time, Drucker didn’t know the reason. But he and the others were suspicious.

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The new location was not as secure and one night the dozen tailors escaped into a nearby forest.

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The next day they joined up with the Czechoslovakian partisans, an underground group who were fighting the Nazis. The tailors acquired weaponry, and set out to ambush the Nazis. 

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After one fairly large-scale ambush — Drucker remembers it as involving nearly 100 Nazis by a river — he and his comrades retreated to a hilltop. They soon realized the hill was surrounded by the enemy. They stayed there for 10 days, with almost no food. 

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And then, as if by a miracle, a local farmer who was using the hilltop to hide his sheep from the Germans, found them and offered to smuggle them behind Soviet lines. 

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“I can’t do it now, because it’s light,” Drucker remembers the man as saying. “But I will come back in the evening and take you over.”

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Somehow, the dozen tailors managed to safely cross the front line to the Russian side. 

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“I’m probably one of the last ones of the twelve,” Drucker mused. “Because I was one of the youngest ones.”

After the close of the war, Drucker returned home, only to find another family in the house. 

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Apart from a cousin, Drucker was the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. One of his sister’s friends had recovered family photos that she gave to him. Armed with whiskey for bribes, Drucker hopscotched across Europe, moving from Poland into what later became East Germany. And then from Berlin, he finally reached the American sector. 

Drucker soon set up a tailor shop. 

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“Once I was in West Germany I was okay. I was making money. Enough food and everything.” One of his customers, he recalls, was Gen. Matthew Ridgeway, who served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 1952 to 1953.

 

An interesting coincidence: Gen. Ridgeway died in Fox Chapel in 1993.

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Once Drucker got his papers to immigrate, he headed for Pittsburgh, because he had an uncle in town, Nathan Drucker, who had agreed to sponsor him. Drucker set sail on a troop carrier that landed in Boston, and then he took the train to Pittsburgh’s Penn Station, where his uncle picked him up in an automobile. 

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It was a challenge at first. “You come here, you are a stranger.”

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Drucker soon adapted to his new country. He stayed with his Uncle Nathan, Aunt Sonia, and their five children for several years, while he got on his feet. 

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Drucker eventually got a job at Kaufmann’s downtown store. “I was a fitter there for five, six years,” he said. He also took English classes at Allderdice High School. 

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And then he met his wife, the former Esther Leiner, who was working as a bookkeeper. They were married for 65½ years until her death last fall from Covid-19.

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But it was a romance that almost didn’t happen. A friend tried to set them up on a blind date, giving Esther’s phone number to Drucker. But Drucker didn’t call. 

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Then a year later, somebody else told him, “‘I have a nice girl for you.’ And she gave me her phone number.” It was the same phone number. “I called her then.” 

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At the time, Esther was living with her brother and sister-in-law, and was a little nervous about this blind date. She asked her sister-in-law to check out Drucker in advance. If he “looked good,” she’d go out with him. If he didn’t, the sister-in-law was to report that Esther was sick. 

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Fortunately, Drucker showed up in an impressive red-and-black Plymouth and a perfectly tailored suit.

“I was dressed better than anybody else because I worked at Kaufmann’s,” Drucker explained. 

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As soon as she saw him, Esther’s sister-in-law called her to come right down.

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The couple were married a few months later, in October 1955, and became the parents of three children. 

 

And then, finally, Drucker was able to open his own store again. 

 

“I did fine because I had really nice customers,” Drucker said. “From Kaufmann’s, from all over.” 

 

One of his customers was Fred Rogers whose mother knitted his sweaters, but Drucker added the zippers.

 

“He was one of my steady customers. He was just as nice a person as on television.”

 

Drucker also had a stable clientele of professional athletes, including former Steeler Rocky Bleier and Art Rooney, Jr. Customers from the Pirates included third-baseman Richie Hebner and shortstop Gene Alley. 

 

There were also a lot of judges, and even a few mobsters. 

 

The shop eventually employed one other tailor and three women as seamstresses, who worked on ladies dresses. Drucker’s wife made the appointments and kept the books. Apart from a few ads in the old Squirrel Hill News, advertising was mostly by word of mouth. 

 

“We worked very hard, including my wife,” Drucker said.  “We opened at eight and closed at seven. Practically seven days a week.” He took work home every night, and though the store wasn’t open on Sunday, Drucker would go in to catch up. In addition to all that, Esther took care of the house and the children, who grew up in the shop, doing their homework and even puzzles at the front counter. 

 

Eventually there would be four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

 

But the work caught up with him when Drucker suffered a heart attack. It was time to retire. The business was closed in 1987. 

 

Though Drucker has had a good life in America, the past still lives within him. 

 

“You know what? You never forget. During the day when you are busy, you forget. At night, when you cannot sleep, it comes back.”

 

And the store? It is still a tailor shop, now called Pitt Tailoring and Alterations.

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