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From Auschwitz Survivor to Master Presidential Tailor: The Inspiring Life of Martin Greenfield
How a Jewish boy who lost his family in the Holocaust rebuilt his life in America, became a world-renowned tailor, and designed suits for U.S. presidents as an enduring act of gratitude and resilience
Inset: Martin GreenfieldMartin Greenfield is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family and later immigrated to the United States.
Martin spent one year and two months in the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, where his family was murdered and he was left completely alone in the world.
“In Auschwitz you don’t have a name — only a number,” he recalls. “Already on my second day there, I was given my number and sent to a Jewish tailor, who asked me: ‘Are you a tailor?’ I answered, ‘No, but I’d be happy if you teach me the craft.’ And he did.”
When the war ended, Greenfield was liberated from Auschwitz by General Dwight Eisenhower, then the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. “I was fifteen and a half,” Martin remembers. “When I saw Eisenhower, I shook his hand, cried, and said: ‘You saved my life.’”
Greenfield arrived in the United States in September 1947 and began working as a tailor. One day, he approached his boss and said: “Listen, I was liberated by Eisenhower, and I want us to sew him a luxury suit exactly like the one I’m wearing.”
It was his personal way of expressing gratitude to his rescuer.
And so it was. The boss loved the idea — and from the moment they completed that first suit for Eisenhower (by then already President), Martin Greenfield became the preferred “house tailor” for U.S. presidents.
According to him, every president who passed through the White House wore suits he crafted, each one designed with taste, precision, and what Greenfield described as a Heaven-sent gift.
As a lighthearted anecdote, he shared that when he wanted to make a suit for then-President Barack Obama — who requested that the suit be modeled after one he had worn at his inauguration, Greenfield firmly replied: “I don’t copy any of my suits. Every suit I make is my own design — others copy them from me.”
The next day, Obama invited him to the White House so that Martin himself could take the measurements for his suit.
Watch the touching story of Martin:
