Peter Farago – An American Immigrant's Story

Peter Farago (above) was born in 1922 in Oradea, a medium-sized Romanian city with a significant Jewish community.

As a young boy, an American-born barber cut his hair. He introduced Peter Farago to English, one of seven languages my father eventually mastered.

More importantly, he filled my father’s head with stories about the beauty, freedom and opportunity in a far away land called The United States.

"Streets paved with gold" propaganda? Not necessarily.

If the barber convinced my father that the U.S. tolerated Jews, that would have been enough to create a profound desire to emigrate. To escape financial deprivation. And worse.

The Beginning of the End

When my father was seven, The Great Depression of 1929 arrived. The economic downturn plunged his family into poverty. At the same time, the dark clouds of antisemitism gathered over Eastern Europe.

My father was forced to wear the Star of David on his sleeve – and beaten for the privilege. His education, his brothers’ careers, his father’s business, his mother’s ability to feed or clothe her family disappeared.

As my father entered his teens, Romania banned Jewish newspapers and publications. They disbanded Jewish sports organizations and clubs. They excluded Jews from higher education, restaurants, clubs – any and all aspects of civic life.

In the summer of 1942, three years after the onset of World War II, Romania ordered all male Jews in Oradea of military age to report for forced labor.

My father and his two older brothers said goodbye to their parents and left the city, slave labor for the Nazi war machine.

On March 19th, 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. On May 3rd, 1944, authorities interned Oradea’s 27k remaining Jews in two ghettos. They were denied food, water and sanitation. Their jailers tortured wealthier Jews to reveal “hidden riches.” Then killed them.

The Extermination of Oradea's Jews

On May 23, 1944, almost exactly a year before World War 2 ended, Romania crowded Oradea’s entire Jewish population into trains and transported them to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

All of Oradea’s Jews perished, save a small percentage of the young men sent to labor camps before the extermination campaign. Everyone my father left behind – including his parents – were starved, beaten, shot or gassed to death.

The barber's fate ? Unknown. But his stories survived in my father's imagination.

Despite being worked, beaten, starved and denied shelter from murderous cold, or perhaps because of it, my father endured the Holocaust with one life goal: to become an American.

Off to America

After the war, Peter Farago had no reason to return to Oradea. He made his way to post-war Germany and applied his language skills to Jewish relief efforts.

In his spare time, he joined a cadre of American soldiers relieving former Nazis of their cars, coins, stamps and other valuables. Funding his partying lifestyle.

Before you judge my father's post-war income or habits, know this: he also risked his freedom to smuggle Jews into what became Israel.

In one example, he secretly shepherded an entire trainload of Dutch Jewish orphans into kibbutzim.

My father met my mother in Germany, where she worked for the Red Cross. He interrupted their affair to marry an American woman – for a Green Card and eventual citizenship.

When he left Europe for the States, my mother made her way to Canada. Their plan: reunite in The Land of the Free.

And so they did, in Providence, Rhode Island, where my father received a scholarship for The Rhode Island School of Design's textile engineering department.

Home at Last?

There was no doubt in Peter Farago’s mind that the United States was the best country in the world, bar none. “In no other country in the world could I have made this life for my family,” he’d tell me.

My father didn’t see America through rose-colored glasses. He wrestled with anti-semitism in education, business and the general culture. He was also a student of our nation’s checkered past, and lived through the violent social upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s.

Through it all, Peter Farago supported and defended his adopted homeland - despite its [obvious-to-him] faults.

My father repaid America by the sweat of his brow, building a successful business from the ground up. NEPTCO gave other immigrants their shot at a better life, for them and their children.

Recently, I’ve been wondering what Peter Farago would have made of the millions of illegal immigrants pouring over our porous southern border.

He wouldn’t have questioned their motivation, nor withheld respect for their resolve. I reckon he would've welcomed them – via a screening process screening and the usual indoctrination. And, just maybe, without that caveat.

Israel

I'm glad my father didn't live to see the October 7 massacre in Israel, or the resulting war against Hamas, Hezbollah and, now, Iran.

Even though Peter Farago loved his adopted country, he had no illusions about the potential rise of deadly antisemitism within its borders. Like millions of Jews throughout the world, he saw Israel as the only safe place for Jews.

The fact that Israel's justifiable fight for survival is going well – and I make no apologies for saying so – would've given him little comfort. The Biden Administration's foot dragging on material support and craven calls for appeasement under the guise of a ceasefire would've appalled him.

But again, it wouldn't have surprised him. Peter Farago taught me never to let apparent or professed kindness and concern blind me to the evil that hides in the hearts of men.

If I ever forget it, I remember the sardonic advice he gave my middle school during a talk about the Holocaust. “Keep your friends close,” he said with a wry smile. “And your enemies far, far away.”

In some ways, Peter Farago’s boyhood barber was the closest friend my father ever had. Or maybe the best.

The barber's name, his background, how he came to live in Oradea… all lost in the mists of time. But one thing is for sure: I owe that man a debt of gratitude I can never repay. God rest his soul.