Holocaust survivor, educator, retailer
Avi Brown gazes at the showroom in the furniture store that he and his wife, author Corinne Brown, opened in Littleton in 1976. The store is closing soon after nearly 50 years in business.
“It’s enough,” says Brown, 89. “I worked all my life, and it’s enough.”
Brown’s story has many chapters, each a shimmering thread in a memorable tapestry. He is eager to detail his beginnings, in his hometown of Debrecen, Hungary, in 1945.
“Let me tell you the story about the Holocaust,” he says.
“I was about eight years old when one morning I woke up to see fences at the beginning and at the end of our street.”
“The Nazis started tracking the Jews wherever they could find them, and this was called the Jewish ghetto.
“One morning, while it was still dark outside, a German army truck showed up. We were loaded in it like cattle, and taken to the railroad yards at the outskirts of the city.”
Brown’s family was transported to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp outside of Prague, and then to a labor camp outside Vienna, Austria. They were later liberated by Russians, and sent to a displaced persons camp in Italy.
“When the Russians liberated us, I still had my yellow star attached to my clothes, which identified us as Jews,” says Brown. “A Russian soldier saw this and ripped it off and stepped on it. It was actually a good gesture on his part.
“After he left, I picked it up and put it back on my chest, because I was so brainwashed. The Germans took all power away from the Jews.”
One year after the liberation from the Nazis, Brown, his parents and brother boarded a ship bound for Israel. They settled in Jerusalem. Avi had never been to school before and that atmosphere of learning shaped his new life.
“They put me in first grade,” says Brown, who was fluent in Hungarian and German at the time. “The kids were actually teaching me Hebrew.”
In his late teens, Brown joined the Israeli Air Force as an aerial photographer. When his service concluded, the family moved to Toronto, Canada, where Avi studied at York University.
At this point, it was clear that education would be a central part of Brown’s life. After receiving a master’s degree in economics from New Paltz College, Brown became a teacher at a Hebrew day school in Poughkeepsie, NY.
“I’m a hard, ambitious worker,” says Brown.
Soon, Brown became the school’s headmaster. A chance encounter on a camping trip to western Canada and the US in 1970 eventually steered him to Denver.
“We were camping at the Cherokee Reservoir,” says Brown. “There was a JCC nearby that let us use their hot showers.”
A conversation ensued with a man working at the JCC, who learned of Brown’s work in Jewish education. He told Brown that the federation in Denver was looking for someone to create a board of education.
“I’m not interested,” Brown said at the time.
The man kept prodding Brown, so Avi relented and agreed to meet with Nat Rosenberg, the longtime executive vice president of what was then called the Allied Jewish Federation,
“I’m very happy where I am in New York,” Brown told one of the federation committees during what became three days of interviews.
“But they offered me the job, and I came.”
In 1972, Brown became director of the Central Agency for Jewish Education (CAJE) and helped open Herzl (now DJDS) Day School. He also established a Hebrew high school program in Denver.
Avi met Corinne Mosko while she was art director at the JCC. (“He actually bought a membership in a jewelry making class just to make me happy,” she says.) They were married in Denver in February, 1975, and they have a son, Ilan.
Shortly after that, Brown was recruited to become a director of Jewish education in the east coast, but Avi and Corinne didn’t take to the new environment. They returned to Denver after only a few months.
When resettling in Denver, a friend of Corinne’s family mentioned that someone who owned a furniture store wanted to take a vacation, and asked if Avi would watch over the store for a few days.
The “few days” became a few weeks. Brown, armed with his degree in economics, became enamored with the costs and margins involved in the dynamics of a furniture operation.
“How much I knew about furniture was nothing,” Brown laughs, “but the desire to be successful is part of my life.”
Brown pivoted from a career in education to the furniture business, which included shopping trips to Scandinavia and other locations that offered the furniture Brown liked. Avi and Corinne opened up a spot in Aurora, then in Cherry Creek, before landing at County Line Rd. at Colorado Blvd.
The early days in the business were demanding.
“One of Corinne’s cousins was in the used car business,” Brown says. “He lent me one of his old station wagons.
“We would dismantle the furniture we sold and put it in the back of the station wagon. I’d come to the customer, unload the furniture and put it together in the customer’s home.
“That’s how it went back then. Seven days a week. That was hard work, and we started with nothing.”
Brown is a quick learner, and tells a humorous tale from his early days in the furniture business:
“I didn’t know yet the names of all of the furniture,” says Brown. “A woman calls me up and she asks, ‘Do you have any armoires?’ I said, ‘Of course we do’. Of course, I had no idea what an armoire is.
“So, when she came, I was watching her like a hawk, where would she stop and look, and I quickly understood that an armoire is a man’s chest with a door and drawers.
“That’s how I learned what an armoire was.”
Fast forward to the present. Brown pauses for a moment and takes another gaze at his store, still filled with futuristic furnishings and contemporary furniture that are now part of a liquidation sale.
Most of the furnishings have some sort of upscale, European flair. The lighting fixtures above have a cosmic look, with designs stemming from Brown’s folding of a paper airplane. The atmosphere is airy, with large windows throughout.
“Everything that is beautiful makes me feel happy,” says Brown. “I have always loved the contemporary look, and the modernist feel we have here.”
However, the economist cannot ignore financial trends and increased costs to import furniture from other countries.
“When someone orders something, it can be four to six months later when a container comes from overseas. Suddenly we got notices that we owe duty taxes to the government. That evaporated all chances of making money.”
It is important to note that Brown does not wish to rock the boat. He does not refer to “duty” taxes as the current flashpoint vernacular of “tariffs,” and does not express anything that resembles dissent over government policy.
Nevertheless, in the midst of a liquidation, ZOLi Contemporary Living is rather quiet. “For two years I’ve been paying from my savings to keep the business afloat,” says Brown. “We cannot bleed any longer. This is the time to get out while we still have something.”
For the man who has lived a rich life — many lives — there is still more to do.
“I’m going to do gardening,” Brown says, “and I’ll be a handyman for everything I can fix,” says the Holocaust survivor, Jewish educator, salesman and economist.
“I like to be busy, and involved.”
© IJN 2025