Quick Take
- Narration: Stefan Rudnicki brings a deep gravity to Greenfield’s prose that suits the Holocaust sections beautifully, though the lighter second half asks for a range he does not always find.
- Themes: Survival as an act of will, craft as identity and resistance, the American immigrant experience remade through labor
- Mood: Profoundly moving in the first half, warmly anecdotal in the second, slightly uneven in the transition between the two
- Verdict: Measure of a Man is a memoir that earns its title across two very different lives, and Stefan Rudnicki’s narration gives the darker passages the weight they deserve.
I listened to Measure of a Man on a quiet November afternoon, and by the end of the Auschwitz chapters I had to stop and sit with what I had heard. Martin Greenfield’s account of being taken from his Czechoslovakian home at fifteen, of meeting Dr. Joseph Mengele at the Auschwitz selection, of watching his family be divided and disappear, is written with the spare precision of someone who has had decades to find the right words for something that perhaps cannot fully be captured in words at all. The audiobook opens in a place of such moral weight that the remainder of the book, a more conventional American success story, cannot quite carry the same gravity. That structural imbalance is the memoir’s one real weakness, and it is worth knowing about going in.
What Greenfield eventually builds after surviving Auschwitz and immigrating to the United States is genuinely remarkable. From sweeping floors at a New York clothing factory to founding what has been called America’s premier handmade suit company, dressing presidents from Eisenhower through Obama and celebrities from Paul Newman to Leonardo DiCaprio, he constructed an identity and a life out of a skill he first learned in a concentration camp. The specific moment where that skill acquisition happens, the impulsive theft of an SS soldier’s shirt, the discovery that wearing it changed how he was treated, the determination to learn to sew, is the memoir’s central narrative hinge and one of its most quietly astonishing passages.
The Shirt and What It Meant to Understand
Greenfield’s insight about clothing and power, the idea that clothes carry authority that can be stolen along with the garment, did not arrive as a theoretical proposition. It arrived as a survival tool in a place where survival required any advantage available. What makes Measure of a Man unusual among Holocaust memoirs is the way Greenfield traces a direct through-line from that insight to his entire career. He did not leave the camps and become a tailor by coincidence; he became a tailor because the camps taught him what clothing does to the people who wear it and the people who see it.
That argument gives the memoir an unusual structural coherence for a life that spans from the death camps to the White House fitting room. One reviewer described the two sections of the book as feeling disjointed, and I understand that response; the tonal shift from Auschwitz to Seventh Avenue is jarring even when it is earned. But Greenfield’s implicit argument is that they are not separate stories. The man who dressed Eisenhower is not a different man from the boy who stole an SS shirt. He is the same man, carrying the same understanding forward, and the memoir is most powerful when read with that continuity in mind rather than as two halves reluctantly bound together.
From Auschwitz to the Oval Office: The Second Life
The second half of the memoir, covering Greenfield’s career as a tailor to the powerful and famous, is a considerably lighter read. His anecdotes about the presidents he dressed are charming, his descriptions of the craft itself, the patience of bespoke construction, the relationship between a tailor and his client, are written with a professional’s love of detail. Reviewers who praise the memoir most enthusiastically often focus specifically on this warmth: the rye humor, the stories told without bragging, the sense of a man who has found genuine pleasure in his work after surviving something that should have made pleasure impossible.
One reviewer who met Greenfield at a trunk show at Brooks Brothers described being mesmerized by his stories and by his refusal to perform tragedy. He shared what he thought needed to be told without asking for anything in return. That quality is present throughout the memoir: a directness and an absence of self-pity that makes his account of both catastrophe and triumph feel earned rather than constructed for effect. When he writes about forgiveness, it does not feel like a rhetorical choice. It feels like the conclusion he arrived at after a long time of working with his hands and thinking about what the work was for.
Stefan Rudnicki and the Challenge of Two Registers
Stefan Rudnicki has one of the most recognized voices in audiobook narration: deep, unhurried, with a gravitas that can make ordinary prose feel weighty. For the Auschwitz chapters, that gravitas is exactly right. The weight in his voice matches the material without overwhelming it; he reads Greenfield’s careful prose about fear and loss with a restraint that honors the specificity of what is being described. He does not editorialize and he does not soften, which is the correct choice.
The second half of the memoir, lighter in tone and anecdotal in structure, asks for something Rudnicki does not easily provide: warmth without solemnity. He is not a cold narrator, but his natural register is formal and measured, and the tailoring-world anecdotes about presidential fittings and Hollywood eccentricities benefit from a lighter touch than he consistently finds. This is a minor complaint about a strong overall performance, but listeners who come to the audiobook primarily for the career narrative may find his delivery slightly mismatched to the material’s mood in those chapters. The overall six-hour runtime is appropriate for the full and remarkable amount of life Greenfield covers, and Rudnicki’s consistency is itself a kind of tribute to the material’s demands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Measure of a Man primarily a Holocaust memoir or a career memoir?
It is both, in roughly equal proportion. The first half covers Greenfield’s experience at Auschwitz and liberation; the second covers his career as a tailor to presidents and celebrities. The two halves are tonally distinct but thematically connected through his understanding of clothing and power.
How graphic is the Holocaust section in terms of violence and loss?
It is honest and specific without being gratuitously graphic. Greenfield writes about Mengele, the separation from his family, and the death camp conditions with clarity and restraint. It is appropriate for adult readers but should not be approached lightly.
Does Stefan Rudnicki’s narration suit a memoir that includes both tragedy and warmth?
His gravitas serves the Holocaust sections particularly well. The lighter, anecdotal second half about his tailoring career is a slightly less natural fit for his formal delivery, but the overall performance is strong and does justice to Greenfield’s prose throughout.
Which presidents and public figures does Greenfield describe dressing?
He dressed Presidents Eisenhower, Clinton, and Obama, among others, and his celebrity clients include Paul Newman, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jimmy Fallon. These encounters are described with specific anecdote and genuine warmth.
