Bowmanville cattle dealer bought lunch for Albert Einstein (more than once)

BOWMANVILLE — Well-known cattle dealer Joe Schwarz, who saved his parents from Nazi Germany and, after immigrating to Canada, bought lunch for Albert Einstein more than once, died last month in Bowmanville. He was 85.

Schwarz was one of two brothers who ran Schwarz Brothers Livestock and was responsible for shipping more than 500,000 Holsteins to the United States from 1947 until the BSE crisis that began in 2003.

"My Father was an amazing man. He was talking cattle to the very end," said his son Alan. "He was one of the leading exporters of Canadian Dairy Cattle to the United States. His word was his bond and his handshake was his contract. He provided cattle when times were tough and there was little bank support."

Suffering from kidney complications, Schwarz was on a dialysis machine 12 hours each week for 19 years. Yet he continued to follow the sales of livestock up until June this year, when he last visited Hoards Station sale barn.

Schwarz was 15 years old when his parents, cattle dealers in Nazi Germany, sent him to England. It was 1938 and his parents feared that Jews were on a Nazi hit list. Schwarz walked into a London restaurant where he ran into two Jewish teenage boys crying. They told Schwarz that they were told that if their families had been farmers then Canada would let them in. Schwarz saw an opportunity, got hold of a farming uncle in Holland and together they made applications at Canada House in London for their families. That same year Schwarz, his parents and five brothers and one sister settled in Canada. With help from the Canadian Jewish Congress, they bought a Bowmanville farm of 100 acres. The uncle returned to Holland and disappeared. Through DNA testing of bones three years ago, Schwarz learned that his uncle had died in a concentration camp in Stuttgart, Germany. Schwarz would always think of the incident at the London restaurant as divine intervention. "He said that coming to Canada was their greatest blessing," said son Alan, adding his father said he never experienced anti-semitism in Canada.

Schwarz often visited one of his buyers in Princeton, New Jersey, where at the same time he met another visitor to the farm, Albert Einstein, and ended up buying both men lunch. Schwarz learned much later that when Einstein was asked about Schwarz by his buyer friend, Einstein said, "He’s a smart guy."

When asked what he thought of such a flattering comment from one of the world’s greatest scientific minds, Schwarz was to have said: "Big deal. The guy wears frumpy clothes, his hair is a mess and he never has any money."

The Schwarz brothers did "phenomenally well" in the cattle business until the BSE crisis, Alan said. The year before, Holstein sales to the United States were so successful, they sold the quota for their 120 cows. Schwarz, who had lived through the one-year border closing in 1952 due to foot and mouth disease, was convinced the border would re-open to the United States in 2004, arguing that the science didn’t support closed borders. Like many farmers, he didn’t expect that political pressure from groups like Montana-based R-Calf would keep the border closed.

In life you have three things, Schwarz believed: name, family and reputation. "Don’t screw up any of them," he said.

"He had that cattle dealer toughness but he was gentle and kind," said Alan. "He could talk world politics and butter fat. He was my best friend."