My brother Joseph was born January 3, 1917, in Clifton, New Jersey. He is the oldest of the 4 children. On June 3, 1918 my sister Cecilia was born. In 1922 when my brother was 5 years old and my sister was 4 years old, my mother took the two of them and moved back to Hungary, where my parents were born. My other sister Ethel was born there soon after they arrived, on July 28, 1922. They lived there for years and when my brother turned 13 in January of 1930, he traveled back to the U.S. by himself, where my father picked him up at the port.

Having to now re-educate himself in English again, he also had to go to work at different jobs. In the summer of 1936 he graduated from 8th grade grammar school after going to night school. This is the same year that I was born on January 2nd. My brother was 19 years older then me. Six months later during the summer, my sister Cecilia returned to the states, and then in the summer of 1938, my sister Ethel arrived in the U.S. My two sisters absolutely adored our brother, and from the stories that I have heard it almost sounds like he was a parent to them as well.

He became an expert machinist in a War Department Electronic defense plant and was the supervisor of a large production team. He had a fiancée Rose, and was going to get married after the war. However, his time came up and he was drafted into the Army on January 27, 1944 from New York City where we were all living. His first few weeks in the Army were at Camp Upton, New York which is located in Yaphank, New York out on Long Island. Today it is the Brookhaven National Laboratory. After about three weeks he was sent down to Camp Wheeler in Georgia, on the outskirts of Macon. In Early August, after finishing 17 weeks of basic training he came home for about a three week leave and was then stationed at Ft. Meade, Maryland, on the southwest side of Baltimore. After only one week, he went to Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts, and on August 31, 1944 he sailed from Boston aboard the S.S. Mariposa, luxury liner converted into a troop ship. He landed in Liverpool on September 6, 1944, and immediately took a train to Southampton, where he boarded another troopship, crossed the channel, and landed on Omaha Beach, France, September 8, 1944.

From Omaha Beach he continued to travel across France on a daily bases in trucks and at one point in the famous "40X8" boxcars (40 people or 8 cows). On September 20, 1944 he arrived at his new unit, Co. "A", 317th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division, in a small village called Villa-au-Val, just east of the Moselle River. Only 5 days later on September 24th he was wounded in the foot near a small village called Morey, just a few miles away from where he started. He was evacuated to London where he was operated on, and spent the next four months in three different hospitals. On January 26, 1945 he was released and sent back to his company, and on February 26, 1945 he was KIA in a small village called Biersdorf in Germany. He is buried in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg.

In 1954 I went to the cemetery for the first time when I was in the Army stationed in Hanau, Germany. The next time was in 2000 with my daughter and then in 2001 with my son. In 2001 my son and I retraced my brother's movements as best as we could based on his company's morning reports, both in France and Germany. In 2004 I had additional information and I planted a 10 foot tree on the hill top where he was KIA, in Germany. In 2005 I will place a plaque mounted in a stone at the base of the tree.

After about a year and a half I managed to get all of my brother's awards approved after I "built" a record for him. In December 2001 General Robert Ostenberg presented the awards to my two sisters and me at a formal military ceremony. Additionally, I was successful in getting him promoted posthumously from "Private" to "Private First Class". The ABMC changed out his headstone with a new one showing his new rank of "PFC".

Unfortunately, I have only one memory of him. I was 8 years old, and during the summer of 1944 when he came home on leave before shipping out overseas, he came to see me at a summer camp that I was at. I remember jumping up on him and hugging him, but I don't remember any of our conversation. Later on, my sisters said he told me that I was now the man of the house and that I should take care of everyone until he gets back. That was the last time I saw him.

Joseph was the brother of Cecilia, Ethel, and Victor.

Submitted with love by