Episode 1640
Zaidy’s War – Martin Bodek
Zaidy’s War – Martin Bodek
The podcast looks into the profound narrative of survival, resilience, and the moral complexities faced during wartime, as exemplified by the experiences of Martin Bodak's grandfather during World War II.
Through the lens of his grandson, Martin, an accomplished author, listeners are invited to explore the extraordinary choices and harrowing circumstances that shaped not only one man's fate but also the legacy he passed down.
The discussion reveals how each decision made in life-threatening conditions required an intricate balance of instinct, faith, and sheer willpower, as Martin articulates the concept of a "triad of survival" that encompasses luck, decision-making, and the basic human need for sustenance.
This episode provides an unflinching look at the moral lines that individuals must navigate, even when faced with unimaginable choices, allowing for a deeper understanding of the human spirit's capacity for endurance.
Ultimately, Martin shares the invaluable lessons gleaned from his grandfather's journey, offering reflections that resonate well beyond the context of war, speaking to the universal struggle for survival and meaning in life.
Takeaways:
- Pastor Bob Thibodeau hosts this insightful podcast, interviewing Christian influencers to amplify their impactful messages.
- Martin Bodak shares his grandfather's remarkable survival story during World War II, emphasizing resilience and the importance of choices.
- The discussion reveals the intricate decisions made by Bodak's grandfather that ultimately determined his survival against overwhelming odds.
- Bodak highlights the triad of survival, consisting of luck, decision-making, and the physical necessity of calories in dire circumstances.
- The moral dilemmas faced by Bodak's grandfather during his experiences in war illuminate the complexity of survival and ethical boundaries.
- Bodak's journey in writing 'Zaidie's War' illustrates the intertwining of personal history with broader historical events, showcasing the significance of storytelling.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Website: https://martinbodekbooks.com/
Book: “Zaidy’s War” – on Amazon
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Transcript
Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast with Pastor Bob Thibodeau.
Speaker A:Pastor Bob conducts personal interviews with Christian influencers from around the globe, helping Christian authors, recording artists, CEOs, entrepreneurs, non profit leaders, and yes, pastors and ministry leaders to get the word out about what they are doing to impact the world with the gospel.
Speaker A:Our podcast has been rated in the top 1/2% of all podcasts in the world by ListenNotes.com so you know your message will be heard.
Speaker A:Now, here is your host with today's interview, Pastor Bob Thibodeau.
Speaker B:Hello, everyone, everywhere.
Speaker B:Pastor Bob Thibodeau here.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast.
Speaker B:Today, we're so blessed you're joining us here.
Speaker B:Have you ever wondered what it truly takes to survive the unimaginable?
Speaker B:Not just to endure, but to rebuild, to thrive, to leave behind a legacy that speaks louder than words.
Speaker B:Well, today we're diving into a story of resilience and faith and survival against really impossible odds.
Speaker B:What would you do if every choice you made was the difference between life and death?
Speaker B:Every choice.
Speaker B:Well, stay with us as we explore the extraordinary journey of a man who faced war, exile, and reinvention through the eyes of his grandson, Martin Bodak.
Speaker B:Today we're joined by Martin, an accomplished author known for his creative hagadoch parodies.
Speaker B:But his latest book, Zaidie's War, is his most personal, chronicling his grandfather's harrowing survival through World War II.
Speaker B:Martin spent 19 years bringing this incredible true story to life, and today he's sharing with us why it matters now more than ever.
Speaker B:Help me.
Speaker B:Welcome to the program Martin Bodak.
Speaker B:Martin, I'm so blessed that you're joining us today.
Speaker B:I appreciate your time, brother.
Speaker C:Thank you so much.
Speaker C:And I absolutely feel blessed to be here.
Speaker C:I appreciate that glorious introduction and I'll trust you to guide me to.
Speaker C:Which one of those signposts you want me to elaborate on?
Speaker C:Because it's a wild and wild ranging story.
Speaker C:And like you said, it took me 19 years to put together because it was just.
Speaker C:The story was just so big, you know, like World War II itself.
Speaker C:You can't get your hands around it.
Speaker C:And that's why it took me so long to get that all done so I could finally, finally.
Speaker C:It's like a beach ball.
Speaker C:It was too big to hold, but I got it between two covers and, you know, I got the story told.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Well, the first question I always start with is this.
Speaker B:Other than that brief information I just shared, tell us in your own words, who is Martin Bodak?
Speaker C:Well, Martin Bodick, is a Brooklyn guy.
Speaker C:And if I'm around my own kind, I will start to regress.
Speaker C:You know, I'll become very, very Brender and Eddie.
Speaker C:People will get that reference.
Speaker C:I married a Minnesota cowgirl, so to speak.
Speaker C:And so I moved to New Jersey because she required a lawn in her life, and that's where we spend our days.
Speaker C:So about 13 years ago, I started writing books, mostly on Jewish interest topics.
Speaker C:For some reason, I fell into a niche of writing, as you said, Haggadahs.
Speaker C:That is the text that adjoins the pass.
Speaker C:Very stodgy and scholarly for millennia.
Speaker C:And we finally, we, that is me and a big cadre of creative writers started trying to eject a little life into it.
Speaker C:So I spent a lot of my time doing that.
Speaker C:My recent one is the dad jokes Haggadah.
Speaker C:Basically, it's just a bunch of dad jokes adjoining the text.
Speaker C:Makes things a little fun.
Speaker C:But I don't want to be a one trick pony.
Speaker C:There was a story of my grandfather that needed to be told.
Speaker C:I took a break from all this silliness and comedy, even though that's very valuable in today's world.
Speaker C:Took a little break to carve out the time to tell the story and dedicated myself to it.
Speaker C:Once.
Speaker C:The fact that I had been a comedy writer finally got me so familiar with the industry that I knew how to navigate and get the job done.
Speaker C:So once I had established relationships with several publishers for several previous works, I found one to match up with me, to partner with me on bringing out the story to the world.
Speaker C:And so that's where I find myself.
Speaker C:This is the book in question.
Speaker C:Zaidy's War.
Speaker C:Very long subtitle.
Speaker B:Mine right here too.
Speaker C:Excellent.
Speaker C:The reader will note the final word and the subtitle says endurance.
Speaker C:And the only reason that is there and not resilience is because the publisher was a little tired of having nearly every subtitle of her entire stable feature the word resilience in it.
Speaker C:So we went with the next best thesaurus word, which was endurance.
Speaker C:And indeed, it is absolutely a story of endurance.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Well, before we get started, I love dad jokes.
Speaker B:So my kids, they're just gonna roll their eyes.
Speaker B:I know, but I love dad jokes.
Speaker B:So you wrote the dad jokes.
Speaker B:Hagadot.
Speaker B:So give us.
Speaker B:Just give us at least one or two.
Speaker B:Just off the bat to start the interview with.
Speaker C:Give me a moment.
Speaker C:Can I go off screen for just one second?
Speaker C:Sure, I will do that.
Speaker C:You can cut this out in the.
Speaker B:Future if you want.
Speaker B:We just keep it there.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:One second you'll see a blank space, and then it'll be inhabited again.
Speaker B:Hey, man.
Speaker B:Hey, man.
Speaker B:I'll just fill it in because I love dad jokes.
Speaker B:My kids are just, oh, dad.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:My grandkids.
Speaker B:My grandkids love it.
Speaker B:My grandkids, they're.
Speaker B:They're, you know, all over it.
Speaker B:Tell us another one, Pawpaw.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker C:But that's.
Speaker B:He's back now.
Speaker B:So I just share with the audience that my kids, you know, they're like, oh, dad.
Speaker B:But my grandkids, they love them.
Speaker B:Tell us another one, Pawpaw.
Speaker C:So in the.
Speaker C:In the brief seven seconds that I was gone, I reminded myself of one of my favorite, and I think this will jive with you.
Speaker C:You may enjoy this one.
Speaker C:How do rabbis like their orange juice?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker C:With pulpit.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker C:There you go.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Well, your grandfather's life, it was a series of incredible trials.
Speaker B:I mean, serving in four different armies, escaping death multiple times, enduring unimaginable hardships.
Speaker B:What do you think was the defining trait that enabled him to survive when so many others didn't?
Speaker C:So I do a lot of book talks, as you can imagine.
Speaker C:And the number one question that comes up the very first during these Q and A's is, what do you attribute your grandfather's survival to?
Speaker C:Most people will jump right away and assume it was faith, because you hear a lot of that.
Speaker C:I had faith in God.
Speaker C:He would carry me through.
Speaker C:He carried me on his wings and so forth and so on.
Speaker C:But what's fascinating about our discussion is that he never told me that that was a reason for his survival.
Speaker C:He kind of took a break from complete religiosity to survive and then pick up where he left off once his survival was assured, which is not a popular or familiar track that you hear about.
Speaker C:And sometimes people make up a little bit of fiction, and they inject religion into it when it really wasn't there.
Speaker C:So to highlight what I'm saying as the absolute truth, so I asked my grandfather at one time, and we interviewed him, my mother and I, when he was 83 years old.
Speaker C:And he told us the story over several successive Thursday nights, which is when we got together to listen to him and have him speak.
Speaker C:And I stopped him at one point and I said, zaidi.
Speaker C:And zaidi is the Yiddish word for grandfather.
Speaker C:I said, zaydi.
Speaker C:At any point, did you perform any of the rituals that belong to us in our religion?
Speaker C:Did you have a seder?
Speaker C:Did you find some unleavened bread?
Speaker C:Did you light the lamp?
Speaker C:Some Chanukah?
Speaker C:Did you do anything?
Speaker C:And I remember he looked at me crossly and he said.
Speaker C:He said, religion.
Speaker C:I was trying to survive.
Speaker C:What are you talking about?
Speaker C:So that took me aback, right?
Speaker C:Because if you look at the picture and if you look at me, you will see religious Jewish people, right?
Speaker C:This is my grandfather's visage.
Speaker C:And you would not presume, looking at this picture, that this man literally stopped everything he was doing so that he could focus on survival, so that he can get right back to his religion where he left off.
Speaker C:Part of his calculus must have been that if I distract myself with the trappings of my own religion, I'm not going to make it.
Speaker C:And therefore it'll be hard for me to get back into it once I do survive, because I'm going to survive.
Speaker C:So how did he know that he was going to survive?
Speaker C:Because he was that driven.
Speaker C:So people ask me this question.
Speaker C:So first they ask this basic question.
Speaker C:Do you think that it was the faith that got him through it?
Speaker C:The answer is not quite.
Speaker C:I think it was a feature.
Speaker C:I call it the triad of survival.
Speaker C:So my grandfather was lucky.
Speaker C:And you cannot dismiss luck as a major factor.
Speaker C:Now, some may interpret luck as the miracles happening in the background.
Speaker C:And that's perfectly valid and perfectly fine because that's where you might find it, and that is the cosmic piece of it.
Speaker C:Because inside of luck may very well be intervention of a higher kind.
Speaker C:Granted.
Speaker C:But the physical part of survival lies also in decision making.
Speaker C:And like you said, every single decision has to be made.
Speaker C:So first of all, you have to make decisions, right?
Speaker C:There's nobody that could survive passively.
Speaker C: s years of war between: Speaker C:That's not going to work.
Speaker C:You have to decide something then.
Speaker C:Once you decide, you have to make sure what you just decided is the right decision.
Speaker C:Do I sign up for this duty that they just posted or announced?
Speaker C:Do I stand in that line over there or that line over there?
Speaker C:Do I volunteer for something that was just presented or not?
Speaker C:What do I do?
Speaker C:Do I.
Speaker C:Do I try to go and hide in that barracks or that barracks or that hole in the ground?
Speaker C:Do I eat this food or do I avoid that food?
Speaker C:You got to make the right decisions.
Speaker C:So again, there's luck here happening, and it influences decision making a lot.
Speaker C:And again, that may be the cosmic piece as well.
Speaker C:And people may find faith in God in there, perhaps.
Speaker C:But the last piece, that is purely physical and earthbound is calories.
Speaker C:So if you read any Holocaust memoir, there will always be a complaint of what hunger feels like, right?
Speaker C:When every other human drive has been completely dismissed as irrelevant human, physical connection or any other kind of stuff that glues you to this universe, the need for food is the last thing that remains.
Speaker C:And you will find in every book.
Speaker C:It hurt like hell to be needing food in my stomach, and it dominated me.
Speaker C:It's like, you know, certain pain.
Speaker C:It's called habituation.
Speaker C:When you're feeling too much pain, your body will develop a way to numb it away, right?
Speaker C:That's why we don't feel our socks on our calves.
Speaker C:Because the body's like, okay, I know the socks are there.
Speaker C:I can't feel it anymore, right?
Speaker C:It's truth.
Speaker C:You don't feel your clothes on your skin because your body couldn't tolerate feeling those emotions all the time and those sensations.
Speaker C:But hunger never goes away if you're hungry, right?
Speaker C:We get hungry in the morning, we wake up, we break fast, right?
Speaker C:That's what we're doing.
Speaker C:And we feel it and we know it.
Speaker C:And by the time, if lunch comes around, you've had too many meetings, you suddenly realize you're absolutely starving.
Speaker C:And we eat like crazy as humans, every three hours.
Speaker C:You gotta fit something in our bellies, and it's undeniable.
Speaker C:So this is a very long winded way of saying that my grandfather, throughout his entire experience, managed somehow to find himself extra calories where others couldn't.
Speaker C:And the reason that he knew this, and by the way, this is how I start all my book talks, with foreshadowing.
Speaker C:I'm very transparent and obvious to my audience.
Speaker C:I say, my grandfather, when he was a child, he did three things.
Speaker C:He foraged in the woods.
Speaker C:He learned ancient texts with his father, and he loved hanging out with his mother in the kitchen.
Speaker C:So two of those three things are food and one is spiritual nourishment.
Speaker C:So spiritual nourishment is a part of it.
Speaker C:But the physical stuff of finding yourself calories, the stuff that our bodies use to hold our souls inside of them, must be fed.
Speaker C:The Hebrew expression is, there's no bread, there's no Bible.
Speaker C:You cannot get to spirituality without a physical body to hold it.
Speaker C:It won't work.
Speaker C:So every step of the way, no matter where my grandfather was, whether he was serving the Romanian army, Hungarian army, German army as a slave, and the Soviet army as a slave and then a conscript, he's always managed to find himself some food.
Speaker C:His specialty was mushrooms.
Speaker C:He knew which 80% were poisonous and which 20% which mankind eats is safe, fair.
Speaker C:He always had these calories.
Speaker C:He was always able to put in the required amount of work that his overlords wanted from him.
Speaker C:When he was in a Soviet camp, he would receive a certain reward for cutting down a certain amount of trees.
Speaker C:And if he did not make quota, he would get 200 grams of bread.
Speaker C:And if he made quota, he got 400 grams of bread.
Speaker C:He always had 400 grams of bread.
Speaker C:And this was the secret.
Speaker C:So this is the story of his survival.
Speaker C:So for yourself and your viewers, if you're looking for the spiritual aspect that is hidden in the luck piece and the decision making piece, which might be guided from above, you know, we have our input and other input comes from elsewhere, but there's no question that the earthbound body needs the calories to carry on and survive.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Well, you know, during his time in war, you know, your grandfather obviously had to make some unthinkable choices just to stay alive.
Speaker B:Were there any moral or spiritual lines that he refused to cross?
Speaker B:And how did he reconcile those decisions later in his life?
Speaker C:So there were two decisions on which his existence, and therefore mine, sits on the knife edge.
Speaker C:Literally sits on the knife edge.
Speaker C:If it would have chosen wrongly, I wouldn't be here talking to you.
Speaker C:You'd be talking to another, another fine author talking about his grandfather, perhaps.
Speaker C:So two decisions.
Speaker C:So one decision that he made is not something you often hear about, and that is the subject of cannibalism.
Speaker C:And that is a rough one to bring up out in the open.
Speaker C:When I do book talks in public spaces, I always ask the organizers beforehand, is this on the table?
Speaker C:Is it not?
Speaker C:Very frequently the answer is no, especially if it's high school kids.
Speaker C:They cannot spin these thoughts in their head.
Speaker C:It doesn't work.
Speaker C:It doesn't work.
Speaker C:We're generally disgusted by other cultures who have slightly different fare available on their restaurant menus, let alone something that belongs to your fellow human.
Speaker C:So my grandfather found himself in a Soviet prison camp, pulled into their ranks to serve the soldiers and cut wood.
Speaker C:And he would cut the wood and send them down river, and this stuff would go downriver to feed and be sold and to feed the ongoing allies cause against the Axis.
Speaker C:That was basically the role.
Speaker C:And he found himself.
Speaker C:So he would head out into the woods every single day, clear out a patch of the forest, and come back to the barracks where he was stationed.
Speaker C:At one point, the German army had successfully cut off the supply lines to Moscow, which was Their intent during Operation Barbarossa.
Speaker C:We can expand on that if you'd like.
Speaker C:The largest land invasion in human history to date.
Speaker C:And they were successful in cutting off the supply lines.
Speaker C:And when you cut off the supply lines, they cut off the food supply as well.
Speaker C:So this camp, it was called Klinor in a Russian town called Kierovsky Oblast.
Speaker C:For you readers who are interested in a little bit of geography, geography is.
Speaker C:War is God's way of teaching us geography.
Speaker C:A comedian once said, yeah, amen.
Speaker C:George Rodriguez, I think it was, he should receive proper credit.
Speaker C:War is God's way of teaching us geography.
Speaker C:So there he was, and supply lines were cut off, and it was so devastating that the food ran out.
Speaker C:And a curious quirk of an after effect of sorts is that as people died due to their privations, the Soviets in the army didn't kill anyone with intent.
Speaker C:They just passed away due to the harshness of these conditions.
Speaker C:It was near the Arctic Circle.
Speaker C:My grandfather described 21 hours of day, 21 hours of night for three and a half years.
Speaker C:Brutal, brutal stuff.
Speaker C:And cold like crazy.
Speaker C:It snows apparently 200, 200 days a year.
Speaker C:Really difficult conditions.
Speaker C:And what happened was as people died, they could not be buried.
Speaker C:You could not get them into the permafrost, remained as they were, and available, so to speak.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:So there was this temptation, and it was visually available as well.
Speaker C:So there's no food, but look what we have.
Speaker C:And my grandfather, on a principled stance, would absolutely not succumb to this whim.
Speaker C:Absolutely not.
Speaker C:And the story that my grandfather told me when I was six years old, six years old, mind you, and way too young to withstand such a.
Speaker C:Such a tale, he told me.
Speaker C:And this is, by the way, the.
Speaker C:The impetus for me to become a writer in the first place.
Speaker C:I remember thinking, I have to tell the story.
Speaker C:And this is the story, very simple.
Speaker C:They were trapped out in the woods one night.
Speaker C:They could not make it back to camp in time.
Speaker C:And so the men formed a sleeping circle supporting each other.
Speaker C:And my grandfather describes that he had his head on the backside of a corpulent fellow.
Speaker C:He used a word that's a little bit ruder than that.
Speaker C:And he said that a person bewildered with hunger, crawled over to my grandfather, produced a knife, and began to cut into this gentleman because he was crazed for food.
Speaker C:And my grandfather says that he remembers the gentleman being cut into saying, brother, can't you see that I'm still alive?
Speaker C:Please go somewhere else.
Speaker C:And so that is the stage that sets the tone for what's about to happen to my grandfather.
Speaker C:So he makes his way back to camp, and everyone is starved and the supply lines are cut.
Speaker C:But a miracle happened.
Speaker C:And here's where my grandfather saw an intervention of sorts.
Speaker C:Because when my grandfather showed up to this camp after surviving Operation Barbarossa, wandering through the Soviet countryside and making his way to this location, he finds his best friend standing behind the counter in the kitchen.
Speaker C:And the first question he asks is, what in the world are you doing here?
Speaker C:So he describes to him how he got there.
Speaker C:And it happens to be that the way he got there is the same exact way my grandfather got there, just a month ahead of schedule.
Speaker C:So very briefly, this is how my grandfather got there.
Speaker C:He was signed up for the Romanian army, served up his commission.
Speaker C:Then, when the Hungarians annexed the northwestern part of Romania, he suddenly became a Hungarian citizen, drafted into the army once more.
Speaker C:While serving the Hungarian army, the Germans came, selected the strongest of the bunch.
Speaker C:And as we discussed, my grandfather was one of the strongest.
Speaker C:Because of the calories that he ate.
Speaker C:He was dragged off to the front lines of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of Russia.
Speaker C:My grandfather's job was to dig foxholes and take bullets from the Soviets.
Speaker C:He escaped this, was captured by the Russians and brought to this camp near the Arctic Circle.
Speaker C:And his friend, his name was Yeruchim, followed the same exact track to find himself in this camp.
Speaker C:And when Yeruchi arrived in this camp, the announcement came that the head chef had passed away.
Speaker C:Is there anyone available with culinary skills that would like to take over the job in the kitchen?
Speaker C:And so Yerrakim said, I think this is an excellent idea.
Speaker C:So there's a decision on his part.
Speaker C:Instead of saying, no, I can't do this.
Speaker C:No, I can do this, and get myself some calories.
Speaker C:And then he was able to feed my grandfather also.
Speaker C:Besides the fact that my grandfather earned extra rations, he fed him some extra rations as well.
Speaker C:And when the food ran out, he tried to get my grandfather to partake of this forbidden fear, as it were.
Speaker C:And my grandfather refused on principle.
Speaker C:He wasn't practicing very much his daily religion, but this he had to take a stand on.
Speaker C:He wasn't going across this line.
Speaker C:He on principle, in general, he was ready to give his life for it.
Speaker C:And his friend threatened him.
Speaker C:He threatened to remove his food from him.
Speaker C:And my grandfather would not give in.
Speaker C:So after two days of not giving in, my grandfather's pal snuck over to the Soviet soldier side, found a few calories that would be.
Speaker C:That would be somewhat tolerable.
Speaker C:And acceptable, snuck them over to my grandfather, and a day later the supply lines would recast and he was able to continue eating.
Speaker C:So this.
Speaker C:It's very precarious.
Speaker C:It's very scary.
Speaker C:Grandfather was absolutely ready to give up his life for it.
Speaker C:And his religion would not have required him to.
Speaker C:You can partake of certain things, and there are some exceptions to this, but you could eat unkosher stuff to save your own existence.
Speaker C:And so that's one.
Speaker C:The other time that he made a decision was another point of devastation.
Speaker C:So after the war concluded, the military, the Soviet military, and my grandfather had been pulled into the military because they were running out of personnel and guns as well.
Speaker C:The Russians were running out of everything as they are currently.
Speaker C:And so they said to the slave corps, as it were, we are headed to Berlin to defeat the Nazis, and we need one last push to break their backs.
Speaker C:We have to join up with the British and the Americans coming in from the west, and we are coming in from the east, and we have to.
Speaker C:The final breaking of the back of the enemy is upon us.
Speaker C:Sign up for training, graduate, head out for your mission.
Speaker C:And if you survive, you earn your freedom.
Speaker C:So my grandfather said, this sounds like an excellent idea.
Speaker C:And by the way, this kind of thing is featured throughout the book where my grandfather's given a choice.
Speaker C:Here's a choice, right?
Speaker C:Choose.
Speaker C:So my grandfather chooses life.
Speaker C:The Bible enjoins us to choose life.
Speaker C:In Hebrew, it's choose life so that you and your children may live.
Speaker C:It's a powerful injunction.
Speaker C:It appears multiple times in the Old Testament.
Speaker B:Yeah, amen.
Speaker C:Amen to that.
Speaker C:So he headed out to the battle of Berlin.
Speaker C:And when he got there, he was ready to kill.
Speaker C:He had graduated as a sniper and he was ready to roll.
Speaker C:But instead the announcement came from the commander who said, germany has surrendered.
Speaker C:And so my grandfather never fired a shot.
Speaker C:Just like Jimmy Carter, he made an about face, headed back to the Soviet camp, and upon arrival, they were true to their word.
Speaker C:You have earned your freedom.
Speaker C:Thank you very much for your service.
Speaker C:Now, there was no Marshall Plan in the Soviet Union.
Speaker C:No one is getting on a truck and being sent home.
Speaker C:That's not what they were offering.
Speaker C:You go.
Speaker C:You go and take care of yourself.
Speaker B:So with 100, he had to walk 2,600 kilometers, correct?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:So he had it out.
Speaker B:How long did that take him?
Speaker C:Months.
Speaker C:Months.
Speaker C:Even as the crow flies, that would take any human being months to make it there.
Speaker C:You know, people are.
Speaker C:I'm a.
Speaker C:I'm a runner and I'm a Fan of, of these hiking trail records.
Speaker C:So I don't know if it came to your attention.
Speaker C:A female runner just broke the Apple h trail record.
Speaker C:60 miles a day for 14 days.
Speaker C:But we're talking about humans here.
Speaker C:Regular humans, garden variety.
Speaker C:Just, just, just survive the war with.
Speaker C:With massive, massive calorie deficits.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And so they were just, okay, pack up your stuff and go.
Speaker C:So my grandfather rounded up 150 of his friends there and made a beeline south back to their country.
Speaker C: And as you said, it was: Speaker C: that when I originally wrote: Speaker C:So that sounds more impressive.
Speaker C:Yes, I can.
Speaker C:So actually it's on the back cover as a fact of his war survival story.
Speaker C: miles later, or perhaps: Speaker C:One last night of rest before heading down back into their old neighborhood.
Speaker C:140 of his friends had either died of their privations, this was not an easy journey, or found themselves back in their country of origin.
Speaker C:Peeled off to the right or to the left, you know, take care.
Speaker C:And at the last night, there were 10 left on the ridge because there.
Speaker B:Were no supply lines coming in and feeding them along the way, and nobody.
Speaker C:So my grandfather was head scoutmaster, so to speak.
Speaker C:And he managed to forage and find all different stuff that subsisted his mates.
Speaker B:Russia was like, we give you your freedom.
Speaker B:We didn't say nothing about giving you rations.
Speaker C:Yeah, they weren't providing with anything.
Speaker C:Everyone was on their own.
Speaker C:Unconditional release by.
Speaker C:Thank you very much.
Speaker C:So on this ridge, they were starving.
Speaker C:They had just hiked a very long way, and they were very excited to make their way home the next day.
Speaker C:And they gathered together a bunch of mushrooms that they found in the woods.
Speaker C:And my grandfather raised a hand and his objections, but they wouldn't listen.
Speaker C:They were as hungry in this instance, as the gentleman I described before.
Speaker C:And he said, this is a bad idea, folks.
Speaker C:But they made their mushroom stew.
Speaker C:And my grandfather avoided this stew that they made, decided to go to sleep.
Speaker C:And in the morning, he was the only one who woke up.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker C:So part of my grandfather's story, obviously, is coming back down into his neighborhood the next day where, you know, plenty devastation reigned.
Speaker C:But he was the last survivor.
Speaker C:And he had to tell family members, if he could find them, that their loved ones were up on the mountain ridge.
Speaker C:And that's where we were.
Speaker C:And we come from this camp.
Speaker C:It's 2,600 km north.
Speaker C:I can't even imagine telling this story.
Speaker C:But that's where he was.
Speaker C:So my existence hinges, as does my grandmother's, by the way, who survived Auschwitz with also such precarious decisions informing my own existence.
Speaker C:So there's another long winded way of answering your question about two key major decisions in my grandfather's life that brought him to life in general and to the rest of his life.
Speaker B:Well, your grandfather's story isn't just about survival.
Speaker B:I mean, it's also about resilience.
Speaker B:I'll use that word even though the publisher didn't want to.
Speaker B:Faith.
Speaker B:And like, as you're describing, it's almost like a superhuman determination.
Speaker B:What lessons from his journey?
Speaker B:As you were putting all this together and studying it out, what lessons from his journey have you personally adopted in your own life?
Speaker C:So never quit, never give up.
Speaker C:These things are obvious.
Speaker C:I'm a very, very driven person.
Speaker C:But the lesson, the big one that I take out is the same exact lesson.
Speaker C:If you've ever seen the Shawshank Redemption, I'm sure you have.
Speaker C:So at the end, all the way at the end, Red says, get busy living or get busy dying.
Speaker C:That is absolutely the complete essence of my grandfather's existence and exactly what he informed me and all of his grandkids and his children.
Speaker C:He said with clarity, when you don't work, you die.
Speaker C:He never wanted to retire.
Speaker C:Never.
Speaker C:It wasn't his choice.
Speaker C:He was a chef for 40 years.
Speaker C:There's that.
Speaker C:There's that foreshadowing again.
Speaker C:That's what he did with his life for 40 years in various schools around Brooklyn and camps in the Catskills.
Speaker C:He refused to retire.
Speaker C:He loved working.
Speaker C:I remember him even as an 80 year old, slinging around pots and pans with his massive, massive forearms.
Speaker C:He was.
Speaker C:He was built like a house.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker C:Yeah, and he was.
Speaker C:He was forced into retirement due to ageism.
Speaker C:He didn't.
Speaker C:He wasn't going to fight it in court, but that was absolutely the fact of what happened.
Speaker C:He could absolutely do the work like, you know, with.
Speaker C:With perfection.
Speaker C:But it was time for the schools to move on to younger folks for whatever bias reason.
Speaker C:But he would not give that up willingly.
Speaker C:Ever, ever, ever.
Speaker B:You spent 19 years working on this book, piecing together history and legacy.
Speaker B:Was there ever a moment when you considered just walking it away from it all?
Speaker B:And if so, what ultimately pushed you to see it through?
Speaker C:Oh, absolutely not.
Speaker C:Complete opposite, as a matter of fact.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:My whole.
Speaker C:From.
Speaker C: wed him we interviewed him in: Speaker C:So first of all, I wasn't a writer then.
Speaker C:I had not published my first book.
Speaker C:So that was a problem, right, because.
Speaker C:Because nobody's going to accept a memoir like this from a.
Speaker C:From a neophyte who's this guy who just walked in off the.
Speaker C:Off the.
Speaker C:Off the street and showed up at my shop trying to sell me a book that wouldn't have worked.
Speaker C:So I just waited for the moment to be right.
Speaker C:We recorded him on vhs.
Speaker C:You'll know what that is.
Speaker C:Not too many others would know.
Speaker C:Recorded on vhs.
Speaker C:And just waited for the moment.
Speaker C:Meantime, I got busy with the rest of my life.
Speaker C:Put out a book, put out another book, Publisher found me, put out another book.
Speaker C:And after a while, like I described way in the beginning of our talk here, I finally got to understand the reins and the controls of the industry.
Speaker C:And as soon as I knew I knew how to navigate this stuff, I was like, this is the moment.
Speaker C:Let's get that vhs.
Speaker C:Let's blow the dust off of this thing and let's record everything.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker C: So this is about: Speaker C:The moment was right.
Speaker C:And the first job was to convert the Yiddish conversation into English.
Speaker C:And that process alone took two years, I bet.
Speaker C:Two years.
Speaker C:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker C:And my grandfather misspoke many times.
Speaker C:He.
Speaker C:It's called eggcorns and malapropisms in English.
Speaker C:When you jumble up phrases like Tony Soprano used to do this, like, he always used to say, like the whole 10 yards.
Speaker C:That's called a malapropism.
Speaker C:So my grandfather spoke in these ways where he'd jumble up metaphors that we generally speak and like, what.
Speaker C:What are you talking about?
Speaker C:And I had to figure out what he was saying.
Speaker C:So it took me a while to unscramble a lot of his idioms, which.
Speaker C:Which were.
Speaker C:Which were, you know, a mishmash of a whole bunch of languages that he spoke.
Speaker C:He spoke like six, seven languages.
Speaker C:And so.
Speaker C:And it was hard to translate a lot of it because he threw in a Dutch phrase, a Polish phrase, a Russian phrase, and it was difficult to untangle all this stuff.
Speaker C:But I did.
Speaker C:It was a two year process.
Speaker C:And once that process got done, I published another book and another book and became even more familiar.
Speaker C:So it was like an arrow just pointing me in this very strong direction.
Speaker C:And we got it done.
Speaker C:And then the research began.
Speaker C:And then came the realization of what he had actually been through.
Speaker C:I had not learned about Operation Barbarossa, for example, nor the Battle of Berlin.
Speaker C:Because depending on who you are and what your school system is, you are taught a very narrow band of the events inside and around World War II.
Speaker C:You are taught what is relevant to you as a religion, as a creed, as a race, whatever you are.
Speaker C:And so in most Jewish, certainly in Orthodox schools, they don't teach you about World War II.
Speaker C:They teach you about the Holocaust and that.
Speaker C:And that is a small.
Speaker C:Which is weird to say when.
Speaker C:When 6 million Jews died, but it is nevertheless a very small slice, actually, of Germany's ambitions.
Speaker C:They were going for world domination.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So I started doing this research, and then as I'm slowly unpacking the details of my grandfather's story, I'm slowly coming to the realizations of where he was.
Speaker C:So when he gave me the dates of where he was serving on the front lines for the Germans in these foxholes, watching his friends die, taking Soviet bullets, I lined everything up, and I'm looking, I'm like, he's in Operation Barbarossa.
Speaker C:That's where he is.
Speaker C:That's why the Germans are fighting the Russians.
Speaker C:Oh, my God.
Speaker C:This is insane.
Speaker C:So as these facts slowly unfolded, and I was talking to my wife and giving her all this information, she goes, you know, your grandfather's like the Forrest Gump of World War II.
Speaker C:He's everywhere.
Speaker B:And I was like, you know what?
Speaker C:That's absolutely right and absolutely accurate.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker C:As a matter of fact, I have a few ads and, you know, out there in the world, Amazon and bookbub and other sites.
Speaker C:So one of them is Meet the Forrest Gump of World War II.
Speaker B:That's why I seen that.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:With a link to the book.
Speaker C:Absolutely.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker C:That's exactly.
Speaker C:He was everywhere, man.
Speaker C:Absolutely everywhere.
Speaker B:Your grandfather could see the finished work today, this book, Zadie's War.
Speaker B:What do you think his reaction would be?
Speaker B:I mean, would it be proud?
Speaker B:Or would he have a few edives, his own edits of his own that he'd want to.
Speaker B:Want you to put in?
Speaker C:Well, he was a quiet man, and he did not give out compliments very freely, but he let you know subtly in one way or another, if he approved of what you were doing, mostly by talking highly of you behind your back, which is a very interesting trait.
Speaker C:So, like, for example, as I mentioned, I'm a runner.
Speaker C:I've run a few marathons.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And face to face, he would tell me, what are you running for?
Speaker C:What are you going after this stuff?
Speaker C:Go do something else.
Speaker C:What are you spending your time but behind my back, to my mom and my cousins, he'd be like, did you hear when he ran?
Speaker C:He did the big race in New York and he ran is very nice.
Speaker C:And that would get back to me.
Speaker C:So, you know, it's a really nice trait.
Speaker C:We always hear about people talking behind each other's backs and how harmful that is to us as humans.
Speaker C:My grandfather did the opposite.
Speaker C:He would talk nicely and then trust that that information would trickle down to the person who would be receiving that.
Speaker C:So that was his way.
Speaker C:So I think that.
Speaker C:That he would receive the book in the same way.
Speaker C:He'd probably look at it and go, oh, very good, very good.
Speaker C:And then he tells somebody that the book is like, unbelievable, and it's like the most amazing thing I've ever done.
Speaker C:So that would be his way.
Speaker B:Martin has been so interested.
Speaker B:How can someone obtain a copy of Zadie's War?
Speaker B:I take it it's on Amazon.
Speaker C:Correct.
Speaker C:It's absolutely on Amazon and everywhere else.
Speaker C:If people want to go to my website and buy it, there.
Speaker C:I am martinbodickbooks.com and it would be an absolute pleasure for people to drop by, drop me a note, see what I'm up to.
Speaker B:Well, if someone has a question or would like more information or maybe like to invite you to do an interview like this, how can they do that?
Speaker B:How can someone get in touch with you?
Speaker C:Same way, same route.
Speaker C:Martin Bodick Books.
Speaker C:I've built it up to be super utilitarian.
Speaker C:And if you, if you don't want to go there and you want to find another route to me, just Google my name.
Speaker C:You'll find me.
Speaker C:I'm not hiding in this universe.
Speaker C:I'm trying to put myself out there, obviously, as best as I can, as far as I can.
Speaker C:And you've been a big help in doing that today.
Speaker C:But start with martinbodickbooks.com thank you.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:And then find your.
Speaker B:All your other books, the dad jokes and all that stuff.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah.
Speaker C:Have yourself a good time.
Speaker B:I'll put links to this down the show notes below.
Speaker B:Folks, Martin Bodak has given us really an unforgettable glimpse into the, his, into, into history through Zedie's War.
Speaker B:A story of survival and resilience and legacy.
Speaker B:If you were inspired by this conversation, don't let the story end here.
Speaker B:Grab a copy of his book and experience it for yourself.
Speaker B:You'll find the links down in the show notes below.
Speaker B:Be sure to check them out and connect with Martin to learn more about his work and some upcoming projects.
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker B:Martin, I want to thank you again for coming on the program today and sharing all about your book, Zadie's War and sharing about your grandfather.
Speaker B:I'm a history buff, so I appreciate it.
Speaker B:I appreciate your time so much, brother.
Speaker B:I want to thank you for that.
Speaker B:Come back on anytime, brother.
Speaker C:I appreciate it very much.
Speaker C:Thank you so much for having me and for your interest.
Speaker C:It's been an absolute delight.
Speaker B:Amen, folks.
Speaker B:That's all time we have for today.
Speaker B:Remarkable deck myself.
Speaker B:Pastor Bob reminded you to be blessed in all that you do.
Speaker A:Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Kingdom Crossroads podcast.
Speaker A:Please subscribe to our podcast so you can be notified when another episode is published.
Speaker A: interviews and: Speaker A:Please visit our website@www.podcastersforchrist.com.
Speaker A:that web address again is www.podcastersforchrist.Com.
Speaker A:for more information.
Speaker A:Until next time, be blessed in all that you do.
