Good morning everyone. Good morning. Were going to go ahead and get started here. I want to welcome you all to Young Americas Foundations headquarters in virginia. I am the director of Alumni Relations here at Young Americas Foundation, and my first entree into the foundation was as an intern at the reagan ranch. So im happy to be here today for this event featuring martin greenfield. For those of you who are new to our policemans and for programs Young Americas Foundation is the premiere Outreach Organization for the conservative movement. We introduce thousands of young people to the ideas of limited government individual freedom Strong National defense and traditional values through our conferences, internships campus lectures, Young Americans for freedom chapters, also through our center for entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise and the National Journalism center. Many of our interns are here with us today. In 1998 Young Americas Foundation stepped forward to save the western white house so that we can pass on president reagans ideas to future generations. President reagan committed himself to reaching young people through his ideas and this goal is central to our mission. For more information on our mission or our programs, you can visit www. Yaf. Org or call 1800usa1776. To introduce mr. Greenfield, i would like to introduce wynton hall. Wynton was an attendee of our 1995 atlanta regional conference, and he is one of our most successful alumni. Wynton is the owner of wynnton hall and company a celebrity ghost writing Agency Responsible for numerous New York Times best selling bookings. He has written 18 books six of which became New York Times bestsellers. His clients include top hollywood producers and actors, cabinet secretaries billionaires nba stars, Heisman Trophy be winners fashion icons and military heroes. Wynntons published work has appeared in virtually every periodical in america including the new york time, usa today, president ial studies quarterly politico and many others. He is the managing editor at breitbart news, is a frequent media guest on outlets like fox news and was a featured commentator for the bbc news president ial documentary, are the president ial hollywood. T in addition to serving as a Young Americas Foundation director wynnton has served on the Prestigious National task force on the presidency and Public Opinion and is a former visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at stanford university. Id like to introduce you to wynnton hall. [applause] thank you very much for that gracious introduction, and thank you all for being here for this very special event. I want to thank the leadership of ron robin szob who has robinson who has made this possible and all the hard work that key by pat and many ohs have put into what i think is going to be a very memorable event for all of us. As we know, with every day that passes we have less access to those Holocaust Survivors who are the keepers of so much history. And it was one of the great, humbling privileges of my career as a ghost writer and collaborator to get to help share with the world mr. Greenfields story. And i want to share a little bit about what that life means and what it was to get to be a part of this and to introduce him. You may have seen cnn and many, many many other places abc news have done specials on mr. Greenfield. And whats really interesting is that they focus on not just the horrors he endured as a holocaust survivor, as a 15yearold boy who found himself at auschwitz with all of his family members being murdered. And basically becoming an orphan. But they also focus on the hopeful, most beautiful side, and that is as most of you are aware martin greenfield, according to gq magazine and every other fashion icon magazine is americas greatest living suit maker for fine tailored, custom suits for celebrities. And just to give you kind of a little bit of a snapshot because hes too humble to say it himself basically anytime youve ever watched a movie youve seen a martin greenfield suit. And certainly when youve look at politicians. These suits that leonardodicaprio and toby mcguire wore in great gatsby, this man right here. Those are martin greenfield suits. Al pacinos suits in scent of a woman, martin greenfields suits. The suits in wall street and wolf of wall street with jonah hill wells leonardoty cap pri row, martin greenfield suits. I think you see where this is going. [laughter] basically, everything thats cool and awesome is martin greenfield touch. Also jimmy fallon, his suits are made by martin greenfield and tailored by martin greenfield, and also four u. S. President s you may have heard of, president eisenhower who actually liberated martin and became his hero, as hell, im sure, talk about. He then later got to make suits when he became president eisenhower which he considered a great, a great victory and tribute. He also made suits for president ford, president clinton and president obama. So whatever your feelings about president obama, i think we can all agree he looks very dab canner. [laughter] dapper. Nevertheless, many other great political leaders as well. Senator dole he made suits for senator dole and also secretary rumsfeld don rumsfeld and many others. But i want to beyond all his accolades and star power and mr. Hollywood and entertainment here, i want to share with you a little bit about what it was for me to get to be a part of this. And it was the most humbling thing. As was graciously stated ive done many, many books. But getting to be a part of martins story was one of the most challenging and humbling things ive ever experienced. To have to endure the emotions and the feelings that went into what he endured. Just to quickly introduce his background, he grew up in the car faith january mountains in czechoslovakia in a Little Village wonderland type of home, upper middle class family. His father was an engineer. And then history came crashing in, and his family was rounded up, they were taken and sent to auschwitz. The second day was the last time he ever saw his father and or any of his other family members. And from that point forward as a 15yearold boy, he had to survive a hell unlike any of us can even fathom, and he did that with grace and courage. And, quite frankly a beautiful soul in the midst of it. As he was going through that experience ill read a short passage to introduce him he also would then be transferred to one of the largest death camps, as you know. And there he would search frantically to try to find his father. He did not know his father was still not with us but would do so in vain. And so he then realizes at liberation that hes an orphan in a World Without any family and is all alone. And so he searches throughout europe for many years trying to find any member of his family he can, and he finds no one. And so he then is, through u. S. Services, connected that there are family members in america, distant relatives that he has, and he didnt know about. So he arrives in new york. You can imagine coming in on a ship at night, and it never not having a penny be, not knowing the language x. Through a rainy new york night, he sees the statue of liberty for the first time. And doesnt really understand the history of it, but knows it must be something amazing because hes looking at what he say is the the most beautiful city. And he is hard core brooklyn. This is mr. Brooklyn right here. And if you want to talk to him about why brooklyns the best place in the world he will tell you until youre blue in the face. He gets off the boat and hes greeted by a distant aunt, and they take him to their home. And so they start a journey at 19 years of age without any knowledge of any again money or any knowledge of the language, and he starts sweeping floors at a factory a fashion factory called 3gs clothing which was at the time premier mens custom suit maker in america. Thirty years later he buys the factory. And so he worked his way up from sweeping floors to becoming an amazing entrepreneur and employing today made in america all made in america 125 people at martin greenfield clothiers in brooklyn and still in the same building that he started whenever he came to america. A lot of Amazing Things happened along that journey. The first time that he was introduced to a tour of new york was quite interesting. He had come from a world where people were suffering and starving literally walking skeletons. And his aunt was driving him around the town, and he saw a huge building and a massive line out front of this building. And he said, said winton, when i saw this i became crestfallen. I couldnt believe i thought that things were better in america, and so i told my aunt i said this is the longest bread line ive ever seen. This is horrible. I thought this was a place of opportunity. And she said honey thats not a bread line. Thats yankee stadium. [laughter] theyre waiting for tickets. [laughter] so he became a full fan of baseball and american life, and you will find no bigger patriot. If you want to find someone who will tell you about the goodness and the virtue of the american spirit, he will be the first to tell you, and i look forward to hearing it. I want to read you two quick passages hes asked me to give you just a little bit of insight into. The first is the hell, and the second passage will be the heaven of his story. The first comes from his Second Chapter in measure of a man from auschwitz survivor to president s tailor, chapter two, inside auschwitz, wherein he takes us inside a place that most of us cannot even imagine. And here is a portion of that experience. Many days inside auschwitz, i was afraid i would die. And then afraid i wouldnt. We were vowppedded surrounded by death and darkness, madness and murder. And the vicious precision and regimented order of the place made the moral insanity all the more bizarre and cruel. Each morning around 4 30 we were stirred from our sleep lined up and counted in a ritual known as roll call. My heart would start jumping in my chest. A nazi soldier would whirl his baton and scan the line with his eyes while another called out the list of prisoner numbers. Any sign of illness or fatigue was cause for being pulled from the line and sent to the crematorium. Day and night the ovens burned. The smoke spewed up from the soaring brick chimney and belched the vaporous remnants of corpses into the air. At night you could see the flames spitting against the blackened sky. Still, no one in the camps talked to me about the cream tore ya, whether that was because i was just a boy or because i no longer had a father by my side to speak piercing truths to me i do not know. But i could smell that something was horribly wrong. At home and in most civilizations, a clear moral order structured our daily lives; hard work, justice fairness integrity. These virtues produced predictable fruits, but not in the concentration camps. The germans killed for any reason or none at all. It was futile to try to discern their logic, because there was none. If a nazi was angry he might kill you. If a nazi was happy he might kill you. It made no difference. The dehumanizing randomness of the murders suffocated my sense of hope. Just as hitler and his henchmen had wanted it to. What appeared random was, in fact not random at all. It was a systematic, psychological lynching, a strangling of the human hearts need to believe in the rewards of goodness, a snapping of the moral hinge on which humanity swings. Soon, and much to my shame i became anesthetized to death numb to depravity. Some primal survival switch inside me had been temporarily flicked on that allowed me to submerge the emotions generated by this evil scorching my eyes. I witnessed dozens of shootings and helped carry scores of corporations. Corpses. Sometimes a dead body would be intact and appear to be sleeping. Other times a bullet would rip through a prisoner, spilling out organs or shatter a skull exposing chunks of brain. But as the days passed no matter its condition a body soon became just a body. A sallow, bloodless ganging object that must be lugged, leed atop a heaved atop a pile or dropped in a hole. At 15 i had become an undertaker. Contrast that with the beauty and the humanity and the love for america and family that you find this his last closing passage of measure of a man. Wherein he recounts the things he endured and the triumphs he enjoyed, and theres no more joyful man than martin greenfield, who youre about to meet. This is how he closes. Only one explanation for my improbable life makes any sense. God allowed america to make me possible. I might have died a dozen times over, burned in the offense at auschwitz or slain at some other camp as my family and six million others were. I might have fallen with the frozen on the death march. I might have been caught sneaking rations to the dying been beaten to death or been blown up when the bombs rained down. I might have never found my relatives and known the joys that only family brings. I might have wandered through life with an empty heart never finding and marrying my dream girl. Thats arlene. [laughter] i might never have experienced gods gift of children, wonderful sons whose hearts and talents help build and grow my onlyinamerica dream. But for some gracefilled reason, against all logic and probability, god let americans he led americans to fight for me to save me, to claim me as their own and to nurture me with opportunities and help build a home where i could love and raise my family in my beloved brooklyn. Im left with nothing but gratitude and joy for my life. Some things, it turns out are beyond measure. Martin greenfield. [applause] thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Now i dont know where to start or where to finish. [laughter] because here i came to speak to you all as probably the best place for me to come. Because of the way i feel about america. About the past you heard. The past i lived through because i was accidentally born a jew and i was accidentally born to the best family in the world. They build me up. At 10 years old and we were occupied, i was a man. I was a man because i had a grandfather who was religious who taught me about god and i had a father who was brilliant and my family, the way they brought me up, because they knew something is going to happen to us. I remember my father talking to his father to my grandfather abraham. My grandfather said to my father, were safe here were safe here because, you know hitler [inaudible] and hes three steps from us. Well never be safe because the [inaudible] shouldnt keel shouldnt deal with hitler and trust hitler. So i grew up hearing that. Hearing that meant a lot to me, you know why . Because use your own heads, all of you. Like i did. Its not follow somebody, somebody there. We are all born alike, knowing nothing. What depends we are born with at least a family. Our job is simple. The parents have to bring you up. The teachers have to teach you. Well, guess what you guys have to do . You have to think for yourself. Not follow anybody, just learn. And never stop learning the rest of your life. Im 86 years old. I was the youngest survivor. I am still learning from young people if somebody has an idea. I never stop listening to somebody or somebody else. This is the way i was brought up to do. To listen and to learn. And the concentration camp, i dont want to talk about because i took my son to europe, he wanted to see where i was born. But i would never step a foot back to auschwitz. For one reason, because it was unbelievable for a five and a halfyearold kid to smell to learn and to be so close to everything there to be beaten up, to be questioned. You heard i dont want to say those things, that i survived, my march my death march. Because i always pelt felt that somebody strange send me away in a mirage. I never knew the guy but maybe god send him. I always believed for some reason that i never lost touch with god even when i didnt want find anybody i didnt find anybody alive. We are all going to die when were born. It doesnt matter what religion or whatever you are, whatever youre born, thats what youre going to die. But then i make it short about coming to america. Coming to america and my uncle discovered me, my friend who really without him the book wouldnt be written like this. Im a very good maker of suits, but hes a hell of a writer. [laughter] ill tell you something. Together we were a great combination. Because the book whoever reads i get calls from china because of cnn. I get calls from all over the world. I will go to a high school i spoke to two weeks ago in connecticut. I got 58 letters from the kids that listened to me. One of the fathers wrote me a letter that his daughter was kissing my hand because she send me to get a suit from you because of what you were going through. And i spoke to them like i speak to you. But my feeling about this organization is i felt like this when i first came to america with a green card. When the guy said to me i get off the boat through an interpreter, five times youre an american, and i told him phi times im a czech. And he finally convinced me. So i thought i died and was in heaven, because i heard in america they were talking to my family. From there they must have communicated. Because you remember my grandfather was a very famous person from a famous be family with a religious family. Because his nephew is the first jewish admiral [inaudible] in america. And i met him too because he had a picture there of him a soldier. I remember what it was. I left it there because they didnt let us take any pictures anyway the germans. But i met the admiral. So his and i met his father with the long beard in america. And so i am an american. And i [inaudible] because i like to play cards and i lost a lot, but i i had the best hand three kings and two aces but somebody had three fives and the fourth five and now im broke. [laughter] so i borrowed 10. It took me a while to convince him that ill pay him back, and i did pay him back. I found him in new york. And thats how i came to this country. When i came to this country the first week as god is my witness i worked, they showed me a job i should be a floor boy. And i did whatever they asked me. So mr. Rosenberg was my boss. I said, can i talk with you . Because he spoke my language. I didnt speak english. But he spoke be, he came from the same area. I said i need 35 but i cant work here. He said, why . Because nothing