Luxury Crafted Horology

A Journey Through Time

In 1920, a 12-year-old boy named Walter Graubart stood at the Polish-Czechoslovakian border with stolen vodka and an impossible dream. War had ravaged his homeland. Poverty defined every horizon. But Walter understood something that would guide him for the next fifty years: when everything can be taken from you, time is your only true possession.

He bribed the guards. He crossed the border. And he never stopped moving forward.

Four Countries. One Truth.

Poland, 1908-1920

Born in Sunok, Walter learned early that the world doesn't wait. By age 12, he recognized that staying meant surrendering his future. So he and his cousin David stole bottles from their grandmother's tavern and bought their way into Czechoslovakia. They found work teaching elementary school—children themselves, teaching children.

A year later, they met again at a cousin's house, sharing a bed in a home too small for privacy. They stayed awake all night, trading stories of survival, of loneliness, of becoming men before their time. At 13, Walter looked around and saw the same bleak future he'd left behind in Poland.

So he moved again.

Belgium, 1921-1940

Through Czechoslovakia. Across Germany. Into Belgium. Walter landed in Eyesden, a Dutch border town in coal mining country. Miners always had money, even in post-war Europe.

He started with buttons. Door to door, selling what people needed. Then shirts and pants on consignment, traveling by bicycle from home to home. He saved. He planned. He opened his own men's clothing store.

At 25, successful and established, Walter returned to Poland. There he met Betty Lerner, whose family ran a bed and breakfast in the ski country. They married. They returned to Belgium. On April 1, 1936, they welcomed Jenny into the world.

For three years and five months, they built a life. A home. A clothing store. A furniture store. A future.

Then Hitler invaded Poland.

Walter looked at his pregnant wife, his young daughter, and he knew: they had to run again.

France and Spain, 1939-1940

They piled into the family Ford. One suitcase each—it had to look like vacation, not escape. They left everything behind. The stores. The furniture. The life they'd built.

Everything except Betty's Sabbath candlesticks, a silver challah basket, and the bread coverings she'd embroidered for her trousseau. When you can only save what you can carry, you discover what truly matters.

They fled into France. Headed south. Waited for Betty to deliver their second daughter, Renee. They hired a guide to take them into Spain. He never showed. So Walter bribed a farmer to hide his family and another in a hay wagon, smuggling them from Nazi-occupied France into free Spain.

In Barcelona's harbor, Walter bribed a ship captain bound for Havana. The bribe was large enough to keep his family in the ship's infirmary instead of below decks with the other refugees.

They thought they'd stay in Cuba for six weeks.

Havana, 1940-1946

Six years. Not six weeks. The cousin who was supposed to naturalize them had snuck into America herself. Without proper papers, the Graubarts were stuck in Havana until 1946.

But Walter didn't wait. He never waited.

He fell in with European Jewish émigrés, diamond cutters who'd also fled Hitler. Cuba's dictator, Batista, welcomed them—their work generated enormous revenue. The men brought Walter into the diamond cutting factory, where he learned a new trade. Where he developed an eye for quality, for precision, for what endures.

Betty fell in love with Cuban dance music. You could hear it playing in their kitchen all day long. Walter sent his daughters to the only school in Havana that taught English. His dream hadn't changed: America.

In 1946, their papers finally arrived. A 90-minute Pan Am flight on a DC-3, from Havana to Miami.

New York, 1946-1968

The train to New York. An apartment. Another new beginning.

Instead of cutting diamonds, Walter became an importer. He traveled to Belgium and Israel to buy stones, then sold them to jewelry stores across the Midwest and Eastern states. He built relationships. He built trust. "W. Graubart" became a name that meant quality and fair dealing.

Walter understood something most merchants never learn: in a life where everything can disappear overnight—your home, your business, your country—reputation is the only currency that travels with you.

He ran his company until his death in 1968. Sixty years after his birth in Sunok, Poland. Forty-eight years after bribing his way across the border with stolen vodka.

The Legacy

Walter Graubart spent his life in motion. Four countries. Five languages. Countless border crossings. He sold buttons and clothing and diamonds. He built businesses, lost them, built again.

But through it all, Walter understood one unshakeable truth:

Time is our most valuable possession.

Not the things we accumulate. Not the places we call home—those can vanish. Not even the work we do, which can be taken away in an instant.

Time. The moments we spend. The choices we make. The relationships we build. The character we forge.

Walter appreciated the finer things—clothing, jewelry, travel. Not because they represented wealth, but because they represented what endures. Quality that outlasts circumstances. Craft that survives upheaval. Beauty that travels.

When Betty grabbed her candlesticks as they fled Belgium, she understood what Walter had learned at twelve: possession matters less than meaning. What we carry defines us.

W. Graubart Watches

The W. Graubart brand of watches continues Walter's heritage of beauty, excellence, and an awareness that time is truly our most valuable possession.

These are watches for people who've learned what Walter knew: that life doesn't follow a straight line. That circumstances change. That the only things worth carrying are the things that endure.

Every W. Graubart watch is built with the precision Walter demanded when selecting diamonds. The quality that made his name trusted across America. The understanding that true luxury isn't about excess—it's about what lasts.

We don't make watches for people who want to display wealth.

We make watches for people who've earned their time. Who've built something. Who've started over. Who understand, as Walter did, that the journey matters more than the destination—but both deserve to be marked with something beautiful.

W. Graubart Watches.
Built for the journey. Made to endure.
Because time is our most valuable possession.

Walter Graubart, 1908-1968. From Sunok to New York, via Czechoslovakia, Belgium, France, Spain, and Havana. A boy who bribed his way to freedom with stolen vodka. A man who built his name on quality and trust. A legacy that lives on your wrist.