Pupa was 4 years old when his sister and parents were killed after their village of Maniewicz, Poland, was invaded by the Germans in 1942. He escaped into the Polish forests with his uncle where they hid for two years until the end of the war. After coming to the United States as a 13-year-old orphan in 1951, he found a new family in Edward and Bernice Rosenthal who began fostering the teen three years later. Until two years ago, he’s kept his past as a Holocaust survivor a secret.
Some things I still have difficulty talking about it. I have a smattering of memories of it.
The Germans were coming right through. They were moving fast. There was not much to do.
We escaped into the woods.
There were some other people with us. You took care of yourself. You scrounged for food, you begged, borrowed and whatever.
Sometimes you made a tunnel and dug holes in the ground, and that’s where you slept. You tried to survive at any which way you could.
My uncle is the one who took care of me during the war. He would do anything for me.
He believed in education. He said, “Get an education and you’ll be OK.”
There was one foster home I was placed in when I was 16 with Edward and Bernice Rosenthal.
They were very patient. They gave me a lot of freedom, and they were very giving.
They didn’t push. That’s the problem with most people. We think we try to do good, so we tell you what to do. They took a different approach.
I think a lot of people forget where they come from.
Every Sunday, I used to take my kids in my car and I would drive them through areas like Fleet Avenue or East 55th Street and Woodland Avenue, and I would say, “People live here.”
My wife was volunteering at an inner-city school where the kids would come in and that was their meal for the day.
Now, that’s very difficult to explain to somebody who’s never known hunger.
People are tough, rough and miserable, and good, and all at the same time they can be very cruel.
