SET ON SURVIVAL
Iwas 6 years old when I killed the first guy.” Irv Szames, who owned the now-closed Bexley Kosher Market, suffered a stroke in 2005 but still remembers how he and his family were forced to flee their home in Poland when the Nazis invaded and began systemically killing Jews.
Hiding in the dense forest, the family foraged for food, stealing eggs, cabbage and potatoes from farms, taking scraps from pig troughs and eating roasted rats when there was nothing else.
One day, Szames and his mother were hiding in a house when a Nazi soldier discovered them.
“My mom begged with him and pleaded. She offered him jewelry and gold. He said, ‘If I kill you, I get a medal and a bottle of vodka each month. What are the odds of letting you go?’”
Szames had just one thought: “If I don’t kill him, he will kill me.”
When the soldier lowered his gun, Szames grabbed a pitchfork. “I held it real tight and I stabbed him in the chest. He was bleeding like a hog.”
The boy had been forced to become a man quickly after the Germans forced his father into duty as a soldier, fighting in the rear guard against the Russians. He was killed in 1940 when Szames was 5.
Later on, Szames said, he and his uncle were recruited to join Polish partisans who undertook guerrilla missions against the Nazis, blowing up trains, bridges and creating chaos for the occupiers.
Szames later immigrated to the United States and was soon drafted into the military. In an odd twist of events, he was stationed in Germany, guarding the border against the Russians who had once been an ally against the Nazis.