Grinberg worked in communications during The Defence of Moscow. He earned the Medal For Combat Merits on the front line at The Battle of Kursk. These were special circumstances as Grinberg spent most of the war as an aviation serviceman:

“I serviced U-2 aircraft. Sometimes I was sent on missions, especially in the wintertime. The thing is the airplanes ran on skis. And when it landed water was under the skis because of the friction. Should the airplane stop, the ski got frozen up and the airplane was like a useless box. I went on missions. My task was to jump out of the airplane at landing and to put wooden sticks under the skis.”

Grinberg was in Latvia at the end of the war:

“That was when the war ended officially. In fact the war was going on. Our regiment went on fighting against the Kurzeme Army Group. There were “isergi”, beating the Jews… those who came back… the “isergi” killed them on the roads. I was still in the army. We were sent to fight against those bandits. There was a strict order, 2 persons from our regiment were shot, the order was not to touch Latvians, as they were… that was a former Soviet republic. Allegedly they were not guilty, you know how it was. What they did? There were isolated farmsteads there. They were farmers. When they saw a military man passing by what did they do? They had guns by their sides. They shot the military, put away the gun and went on working.”

Grinberg worked in an electric power plant for 43 years before moving to Canada.