Born:
Pułtusk, Poland
July 5, 1935
Harry Melnick was born in the summer of 1935 in the Polish town of Pułtusk where his parents, both illiterate, raised Harry along with his four sisters.
In 1938, when Melnick was three years old, his father immigrated to Houston. After about a year, Harry, his mother and four sisters acquired the necessary paperwork to follow him to the U.S. However, their plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. Unable to travel west, Melnick and his family escaped the Nazis by feeling eastward toward the Soviet Union. Melnick’s brother-in-law, the husband of his oldest sister, helped the family find a horse and wagon and took care of young Harry.
On their journey, Melnick remembered hearing explosions from the inn where the family had stopped for the night. The windows of the building shattered and Melnick was covered in broken glass. Harry’s mother ran with him into the woods where they dodged Nazi gunfire. His brother-in-law lay over Melnick on the ground behind a tree to protect him from gunfire. Fortunately, both survived.
Harry’s family continued the journey to the Ural Mountains in the interior of Russia. His mother worked as a bricklayer while also helping the family grow potatoes and other crops on their small plot of land. At one his point his brother-in-law, by this point more a father figure, was arrested for butchering and selling meat and nearly died after eight months in a prison in Siberia.
After six years in the cold, harsh climate, Harry and his family returned to Poland at the end of World War II. The Melnicks then made their way to Germany where they stayed in a displaced person camp in Munich. Harry sold cigarettes to help support the family.
Finally, in 1947 Melnick and his family were able to join his father in Houston. For the past several years, Harry’s father had been selling fruit from a wagon, waking at 3 am every day and working until night. Melnick started the sixth grade and the next year celebrated his bar mitzvah. As he grew older, he also began helping his father with bookkeeping.
Melnick married when he was 21 years old and a junior at the University of Houston. He then began a successful career as a pharmacist, eventually opening his own business in Houston. Harry and his wife raised their three children while his wife went to school for social work and became a counselor. Their two oldest daughters followed Melnick into the pharmaceutical profession while their youngest pursued a career in theater.
Parents:
Joseph, survived
Dena, survived
Siblings:
Nancy Melnick Dziengel, survived
Betty Melnick Wolf, survived
Pauline Melnick Fisher, survived
Jenny Melnick Ormsby, survived