Guest Essay: Credit Roca News
This man survived the Holocaust – and later became America’s greatest tailor.
Martin Greenfield – born Maximilian Grünfeld – was born into a Jewish family on August 9, 1928, in Pavlovo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine). When he was 15, Nazis forced him and his family from their home and onto a train to Auschwitz, where he was separated from his parents and siblings.
Grünfeld was assigned to wash Nazi uniforms, and one day, he accidentally tore a soldier’s shirt – a mistake for which he was brutally beaten. He kept the shirt, though, and a fellow prisoner taught him how to sew up the collar
He later decided to wear it under his prison uniform, which people seemed to respect him for. That decision felt so empowering, he later wrote, that he risked ripping a second one so he could have two.
“Strangely enough, two ripped Nazi shirts helped this Jew build America’s most famous and successful custom-suit company,” Grünfeld wrote in his memoir. “God has a wonderful sense of humor.”
In 1945, Allied troops liberated Grünfeld, who made his way back to Czechoslovakia. It was then that he learned he was the sole survivor of his immediate family. His mother, father, two sisters, and brother had all been killed. While Auschwitz took so much from him, however, it gave him one of his greatest gifts: Experience in tailoring clothes.
In 1947, he took that gift to the United States, where he had decided to start a new life. He changed his name to Martin Greenfield to sound more American and secured a job at a Brooklyn-based clothing factory as an entry-level floor boy, where he trained to become a professional tailor.
Greenfield showed such dedication, skill, and attention to detail that after three years, he had become the head of the factory. His first major client, in the early 1950s, was General Dwight Eisenhower, who wanted a custom suit as he was preparing to run for the presidency.
By 1977, his reputation and savings had grown so large that he purchased the clothing factory from the founders and renamed it Martin Greenfield Clothiers. Soon he was tailoring custom suits for some of the US’ biggest politicians and celebrities, from former US President Bill Clinton to Frank Sinatra. In 2009, GQ called him “America’s Greatest Living Tailor.” A year later, he got a call from the White House asking him to make suits for then-President Obama.
However, the White House asked Greenfield to do so without measuring Obama, only using the suits from Obama’s current closet. Greenfield refused, writing later in his memoir: “Martin Greenfield does not copy anybody’s suits. Everybody copies Martin Greenfield’s suits.”
Soon Hollywood wanted the expert tailor too, and he was designing 1920s-era suits for the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire” as well as costumes for movies such as “Argo,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and “The Great Gatsby.”
One of his most recognizable suits is the bright red suit and neon orange waistcoat worn by Joaquin Phoenix in 2019’s “Joker.”
After Greenfield retired, his sons Jay and Tod took over the family business but kept their father’s practice of manufacturing the suits by hand in Brooklyn. Greenfield’s sons announced on Instagram last week that their father had died at the age of 95 from natural causes. [editor: Mr Greenfield passed last month, March 20, 2024]
Despite everything the Holocaust took from him, Greenfield’s legacy lasts in his beloved Brooklyn factory.
Roca News © 2024
https://www.rocanews.com/
Editor Joe Girard, 2024
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Also:
https://www.jns.org/martin-greenfield-holocaust-survivor-and-master-tailor-dies-at-95/
The Grünfeld story was great. Wish we had immigrants like this today, instead of who knows who they are?
Enjoyed reading this true experience…