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Oral history interview with Henry E. Freedman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2014.86.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0757

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    Oral history interview with Henry E. Freedman
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Hank Freedman on June 30,
    2014 at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
    here in Washington, DC.
    Thank you very much Mr. Freedman for agreeing
    to come to us this morning, to speak with us,
    and to tell us your story.
    We very much appreciate it.
    Well, I feel that it's a real privilege.
    And I'm truly blessed that you invited me.
    And I-- I'm ready for--
    OK.
    --any questions that you have.
    Thank you.
    What I'll do is I'll start at the very beginning.
    Because we want to know a little bit about you
    and who you are, where you were born,
    all of these things, the forces and the people
    who shaped you before we even come to your experiences
    during the war.
    So I'll start with the basic questions.
    Can you tell me the date of your birth, the place of your birth,
    and what was your name at birth?
    I was born on September 21, 1921 in the city of Boston.
    I was born as Henry Edward Miller.
    And at the age of eight--
    I was the oldest of three children.
    And at the age of eight, my mother passed away.
    And she was 32 at that age.
    She was young.
    She was very young.
    Yes.
    And my dad was a World War I veteran.
    He fought in the trenches in World War I. He was gassed,
    et cetera.
    I had a sister who was four years younger.
    And my late brother was six years younger than myself.
    So you're the oldest of three children.
    I'm the oldest of three children.
    And my maternal grandparents, particularly my grandmother,
    was a very dominant type of woman,
    very loving woman, and very, very upset, extremely upset,
    at the death of her daughter.
    They came from Latvia.
    And they came from Lithuania and from Vilna and Riga in Latvia.
    That's your mother's side of the family.
    That's my mother's side of the family.
    And my-- I do recall that my grandparents on my father's side
    were Simon and Bessie Miller.
    And they came from Eastern Europe.
    I'm not exactly sure specifically where.
    But they came from Eastern Europe as well.
    And--
    Did you know them?
    I knew them.
    But they were not as much a part of my life
    as my maternal grandparents who lived closer to us at the time.
    Before we go into your life with your grandparents,
    I'd like to ask a little bit about your parents.
    So tell me what was your mother's name and your father's
    name.
    My father's name was Rubin.
    And they called him Ruby.
    So Rubin Miller.
    Rubin Miller.
    And my mother's name was Bessie.
    Bessie Freedman.
    Bessie Freedman.
    OK.
    And that was her maiden name.
    And my mother, rest her soul, was a wonderful pianist.
    As a young girl, after graduating from high school,
    she was a secretary at one of the local department
    stores in the city.
    And I remember her as a very loving lady, dark-haired.
    Her hair was straight.
    And she used to have me sit by the piano and sing.
    And that was-- that stands out in my memory.
    She was an excellent cook.
    I remember that we were very close, as far as she
    and her parents were concerned.
    My dad having experienced what he did, and this was in 1930.
    And this was depression time.
    And he had all he could do, number one,
    to stay as healthy as possible.
    And I remember he used to have to go to the Chelsea Naval
    Hospital for treatments.
    What did he complain of?
    He had been gassed.
    So what kind of symptoms came from that?
    Pulmonary--
    I see.
    --problems, inability to breathe properly,
    inability to just be able to work normally.
    Did he have a disability payment of some kind?
    Not per se.
    No.
    Not per se.
    And-- but I do know that he had to go
    for these treatments for whatever needed to be done
    to help him with his breathing.
    And I know that he became a taxi driver.
    Well, that was my next question.
    Yeah.
    How did-- did he-- was he able to work?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Thankfully, he was able to work.
    My dad was a short, stocky man, a aggressive.
    If you were to say, well, describe your father,
    he was a nice looking man.
    I wouldn't call him a handsome man.
    But he was a nice looking man.
    And he, to me, he looked like a street fighter.
    He was aggressive.
    He was tough.
    And I think, I obviously don't know much about him when he--
    before he became my dad.
    But I know that he was probably a nice, gentle man.
    And I'm sure that the war changed him.
    He--
    What makes you say that, that before the war
    he had a different kind of personality?
    Did people tell you that?
    They told me that.
    And his parents told me that.
    And I could tell.
    There were flashes of it.
    What kind?
    How did it show?
    It-- it showed up--
    if he got home and I was outside, and my mom says,
    it's time to come in and eat, and he--
    and she would send my dad out to get me.
    And I was, I guess, a typical kid.
    And I didn't want to go in at that time.
    I wasn't ready for it.
    So he would run after me.
    And he never hit me or anything like that.
    But he always tried to just tell me.
    And he called me Henry.
    Henry, you got to do this.
    And Henry, you got to do that and so on.
    And I remember that they did whatever they could
    to make my life a happy one.
    I remember that I had some aunts and uncles and all.
    And whenever possible, they sent me to the beach.
    We would go to Revere Beach or Nantasket or something
    like that.
    That's in my memory as well.
    I remember once that they brought a pony around
    so I could sit on the pony--
    Oh, wow.
    --and have my picture taken.
    And I remember wearing knickers and a little cap,
    which was, I guess, the order of the day as far as clothes
    were concerned.
    I remember when my sister came along
    and how much I looked at her in wonderment.
    You know, this is my sister.
    I wasn't old enough to grasp, you know, how close we were
    or what my duties were, as far as the big brother was
    concerned, or anything like that.
    But I remember.
    And thankfully she's alive right now.
    She just celebrated her 89th birthday.
    So where--
    Well, congratulations to that.
    --we've become very close.
    But, you know, the story, in a sense, as it says,
    it really doesn't end there.
    Because at the time of my mother's death--
    What did she die from?
    She died from a brain tumor.
    [GASP]
    And I can remember, vividly, that about that same time,
    I came down with scarlet fever.
    And scarlet fever, at that time, was very contagious.
    And I remember they took me to the Boston City Hospital
    in an ambulance.
    And my dad did not tell my mother,
    who was in the hospital at the same time with her problems,
    that I was sick.
    And when he came to the hospital to visit me,
    they had to take me out on like a little balcony.
    And I would see him down in the courtyard,
    because he couldn't come up to the room because
    of the nature of the--
    Of scarlet fever.
    --disease.
    Right.
    Was your mother in the same hospital?
    She was in the same hospital.
    And then shortly thereafter, I recovered.
    I got rid of that scarlet fever.
    And then they took me to see her.
    And my mass-- my last memory of her was she was sitting in bed.
    And she had had an operation on her head.
    And she had one of those little frilly head caps
    on to cover her head.
    And she was just sitting there just saying,
    everything is going to be all right.
    Everything is going to be all right.
    And I do recall two days later we were at home.
    We lived on Calder Street in Dorchester, I remember.
    And one of my uncles was there.
    And my grandmother was there.
    And my aunt was there.
    And the hospital called to tell us that she had passed away.
    So it was a shock.
    And it was a tremendous shock.
    And she started screaming, my grandmother.
    I mean, she carried on.
    And I guess it was typical, particularly of the women who
    came from Eastern Europe, the Old Country as we called it.
    And I can still-- and I was crying because my mother died.
    And my aunt and uncle were crying.
    And I remember my aunt coming over to me and saying,
    tell uncle Fred to stop crying.
    And I said, I don't want to.
    Because I felt that that's what you're supposed to do.
    And why should I tell him to stop?
    Because I was crying.
    I wasn't stopping.
    I wasn't about to tell him.
    Was your father in the room?
    And my-- no.
    He was out working when that happened.
    He was, as I said, he was--
    he was a cab driver.
    And so it was shortly after that, I guess within a few days.
    One other thing I remember is the funeral.
    And I remember when they took my mother to the cemetery,
    she's buried today in what is known as the Anshey Dowig
    Cemetery in Dedham or West Roxbury,
    amongst all the other Jewish cemeteries in that area.
    And I remember it was the custom.
    There was a little house there leading before you went up
    to the cemetery.
    And they moved the casket into that house.
    And they opened it.
    And it was tradition, again, to be
    able to view the person that had passed away.
    And there was, amongst all my relatives
    as well as my grandparents and the rest of the family,
    the carrying on was--
    it was almost chaos, you might say.
    Was it--
    But then--
    Excuse me that I'm interrupting.
    But was it the kind that they let their feelings through?
    Or was this-- are you saying that there was almost
    like professional mourning?
    No.
    No, it was real.
    And it was genuine.
    And it was--
    Completely uninhibited.
    OK.
    Yes, completely uninhibited.
    This was-- it was just--
    and she talked Yiddish all the time.
    Your mother.
    My grandmother.
    And my mother talked English to me.
    I mean, during those few years that I had her,
    she talked English.
    And my dad, of course, talked English.
    She was born in the United States.
    Yes.
    And so was he.
    Yes.
    So it was the grandparents who had come over.
    Right.
    Right.
    And so it was at that particular time
    that they then took my mother up to the cemetery area.
    Did you see her?
    Huh?
    When they opened the casket, were you able to see her?
    That I don't recall.
    OK.
    I really don't recall.
    I don't know whether my grandmother,
    and she would have brought me to the casket
    and said something to the effect,
    you know, this is your mama or something like that.
    I really don't recall.
    And I know that I'm a sentimentalist.
    I love my roots and all.
    And I know that-- and I have found out later in my life,
    you know, that God had a plan for me.
    And that that was part of his plan.
    And everything that's transpired was part of his plan.
    So I remember when we went up to the cemetery
    and the service was held.
    I also remember that my grandmother, rest her soul, when
    it came time to try to determine what kind of a headstone
    to put on my mother's grave, it's
    interesting the kind of imagination
    that some people feel and how personal it gets.
    And again, I've thought about this very often.
    And she came to the realization that my mother would
    be represented by a tree, a tree trunk, but a tree in growing
    had been broken off.
    And the tree trunk had been grow broken off,
    and there was just this trunk of the tree.
    But there was one branch still hanging on that tree.
    And that branch had three birds sitting on the branch.
    Oh, wow.
    And that is the way that headstone was made.
    Wow.
    It's granite.
    It's looks just like a tree trunk.
    It's got the polished front with her name, Bessie Miller,
    at the bottom.
    And the Jewish name, Bayla Ben Jacob Zelig, if I recall,
    was her name.
    And etched on the top of the panel of that headstone
    was the tree itself with that little trunk.
    And you see three birds, representing the three children.
    Yeah, yeah.
    So that stuck in my mind--
    stuck in my mind.
    And then my grandmother, again, determined
    that my dad was not going to be able, under the circumstances,
    because of his health and because of the, you
    might say, the economic situation,
    the financial situation, et cetera,
    to take care of the three children.
    But she was determined that the three children were not
    going to wind up in the street.
    And they were not going to wind up in an orphanage
    or just trying to find their own way as it were.
    And so I remember she had a nephew who was an attorney.
    And I'm giving you all of this in detail.
    Please.
    Because that's the way it is embedded in my mind.
    I'm very glad you are.
    That's exactly what we want to hear.
    And she got hold of him.
    My grandmother's maiden name was Stone, Annie Stone.
    So that would have been Americanized.
    Probably in Europe it was Stein.
    It could have been something else.
    That's exactly right.
    But her brother, she's also--
    she and my grandfather are buried at this same Anshey Dowig
    Cemetery.
    Can you-- can you spell that for me?
    Yes.
    A-N-S-H-E-Y D-O-W-I-G.
    D-O-W-I-D-- G, OK.
    And it represents, if I recall, some [YIDDISH],,
    some community that they came from, from the Old Country.
    Either from Latvia or Lithuania.
    Uh-huh.
    No.
    That is your grandparents.
    Right.
    Right.
    So the cemetery does.
    The cemetery-- and it was developed.
    It's a small cemetery.
    I mean, it's moderate size, not a typically big cemetery
    or anything like that.
    But all of the people who came over,
    her relatives and so on and so forth.
    Does it still exist today?
    Does it still exist today?
    Yes.
    Oh sure, oh sure.
    In fact, you can go online.
    In this particular case, it's very rare, as I understand it.
    But you can type in Anshey Dowig Cemetery
    and you'll see pictures of the headstones.
    And my mother's headstone is there
    and my grandparents Freedman, Jacob and Annie.
    And my late brother is also buried there, my brother George.
    I haven't been to the cemetery since he passed away.
    And it's been-- next month will be eight years
    that my brother passed away.
    But all of my relatives are back there.
    I'm named for a great grandmother.
    Her name was Chaney Esther.
    And her Yiddish name was Honi Issa.
    Honi Issa.
    So that's my name, Honi Issa Ben Jacob Zelig, and out
    of that came Henry Edward.
    And so that--
    I'm just curious.
    I mean, this is such a side note.
    But because I grew up in that area
    where the cemetery is in West Roxbury and that whole area,
    what streets are near there, just as an orientation point?
    I don't-- I know it's off of the main street.
    Center Street?
    And also if you're standing in the cemetery,
    I think you can see Route 1.
    OK.
    The road to Providence, if I recall.
    Yep, it is.
    From the-- because the cemetery is on sort of high ground.
    And but it's-- in fact, probably within the last several weeks,
    I went online to look again.
    Because I have told myself, you got to go back to Boston.
    And you got to visit the cemetery.
    And you got to--
    and I'll get emotional.
    And you'll excuse me if I do.
    But you got to go to your mother's grave
    and bring her up to date as to what's
    been going on with your family, with my family,
    and just tell her about the lovely wife
    I was married to for 51 years and the two sons of mine
    and the four granddaughters and the two great granddaughters
    that I have.
    And I am, I feel honestly and I've told you this before,
    a truly blessed individual.
    But I treasure my roots so much.
    But getting back to this thing with my grandparents,
    my grandmother then got hold of my--
    Uncle.
    --the uncle.
    And she said, in essence, I want to adopt the children.
    And we don't want Ruby, my dad, to have anything
    to do with the children.
    Well, that sounds a little bit--
    Very-- thank you.
    Yeah, it sounds like--
    it was one of my questions is, how well did they get along,
    your in-law--
    your-- his in-laws, that is your grandparents and your dad?
    I have to say very honestly that my grandmother felt
    that my dad was partially responsible for my mother's
    death.
    OK.
    Now I know absolutely what my mother died of.
    There is no way that I can rationalize that he would have
    had anything to do with that.
    I mean, it's, to me, one and one still makes two
    as far as I'm concerned.
    And at the same time, I can't put myself
    in my grandmother's position at that time.
    Because you have to also understand what
    was going on in her mind.
    Here she is, she was about 55 at the time, had already raised
    a family of four, of whom my mother was the oldest.
    And there were three sons.
    And to have lost her daughter of 32 was unforeseen.
    It was the biggest shock in the world.
    But I know that the nature of those people
    that came from the old country, they were full of passion.
    They were full of love.
    And they despised anything that got in between them
    and their own families and their own love
    and their own philosophy of life,
    if you want to put it that way.
    So here's a case where she was out to blame somebody.
    Would she try to blame God for it?
    I don't know.
    But my father was handy.
    Yeah.
    So she just determined in that particular moment,
    and she had the last say.
    I had-- I remember, again, because I
    was old enough, if I do say so, to know and to remember
    what went on.
    My sister, my brother, no way.
    And they just never did remember.
    Because later in life, I tried to reconcile them to my dad.
    Your siblings.
    My siblings is exactly right.
    Because one of my aunts did not like my dad.
    I had two aunts who liked my dad.
    I had two uncles who liked my dad.
    This is from your mother's side.
    This was on my mother's side.
    I had an uncle Fred, and I had an uncle Harry,
    and I had an uncle Sam.
    Uncle Sam and uncle Harry liked my dad.
    And they were very nice people.
    Uncle Fred and his wife Rose did not have children.
    Uncle Sam and his wife Ruth had a daughter.
    And uncle Harry and his wife Ethel had three children.
    And so during the course of events,
    my grandmother decided that uncle Harry and aunt
    Rose would adopt Frances, my sister,
    and that my grandmother and my grandfather
    would adopt my brother and myself.
    And so they started all the legal proceedings.
    And your father had nothing to say about it.
    My father, unfortunately, number one
    because of his health and number two his grandparents I remember
    were very passive people.
    His parents or your grandparents.
    I mean, his parents--
    His parents were passive people.
    --were passive people.
    My memory of them is just that.
    They were passive people.
    I never saw them that much.
    I mean, they were very nice people
    I remember and loving people and so on.
    But they weren't, shall we say, into the family,
    into the activities like my grandparents, my mother's
    parents, were.
    And my grandfather, rest his soul, he was a custom tailor.
    He had a shop out in Roslyn Dale.
    Your maternal grandfather.
    Right.
    And-- Jacob, right.
    And he used to cater to all the priests.
    No kidding.
    There was a Catholic church near there.
    And he made their clothes.
    He made their cassocks.
    Huh?
    He made their cassocks.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    No kidding.
    Yes, he would sit, because there were
    times when I would go with him and just spend
    the whole day watching him.
    And I remember, my memory of that
    is such that he would sit all day long and sew.
    And occasionally he would use his steam iron.
    Or to clean things, in those days,
    they used a little container of carbon tetrachloride.
    And it had-- at one end, it had a spout.
    And at the other end, you could blow into it.
    So he would hold it up, take the garment, and blow.
    And as he blew into it, he would take a brush and brush it.
    And that's why in those days, more often than not,
    the clothing had quite an odor to it.
    And that's what it was.
    It was--
    Was this dry cleaning?
    That was the dry cleaning process.
    Oh my gosh.
    And that's the way he did it.
    That's the way he did it.
    And so that's the way his days were spent.
    He smoked.
    Now, I want to interrupt here and go back.
    Did you-- when your grandparents adopted you,
    did you see your father after that?
    Yes.
    OK.
    So he was allowed to see you.
    It wasn't that--
    No, unofficial-- officially, he was not allowed.
    But unofficially, I saw him.
    And the way it all came about was that, shortly after that,
    we were, you know, there was my grandparents and me
    and my younger brother.
    And every Friday night and Saturday morning, my grandfather
    and I would walk to shul, the synagogue.
    And we did that for about five years.
    And then five years after that, my grandfather passed away.
    He developed heart disease of some kind and at the age of 60.
    And you were 13.
    And I was, at the time, I was 15 years old.
    OK.
    And I was about 8 and 1/2 when my mother had passed away
    and when the adoption took place.
    And I might add that when that adoption took place,
    it was a legal adoption type of thing in that they
    went to the city and they changed the birth certificates.
    And that's why you're Freedman.
    So that's why I'm Freedman.
    And my brother became George Freedman
    instead of George Miller.
    I became Henry Freedman instead of Henry Miller.
    And my sister became Frances Freedman
    instead of Frances Miller.
    And--
    In some ways, you lost both parents then.
    With your mother's death, you lost not only your mother
    but your father.
    Exactly.
    Exactly.
    And so it was after, well, during my high school
    years that I would get on a streetcar in Dorchester
    and I would come to about the corner of Mass and Columbus
    Avenue and there was a drugstore there.
    And I would sell newspapers on that corner.
    I remember walking through the traffic, holding the paper up.
    Which paper?
    And I think the Boston American or something like that, if I--
    Did you sell the Herald or the Globe?
    It was-- no, it-- no, it wasn't the Herald.
    It wasn't the Herald, no.
    All right.
    But I remember screaming out the headlines and so on.
    And I remember, too, when something special happened,
    they would print extra editions and all that sort of stuff.
    But it was while I was doing that late one
    afternoon or early evening, and there
    was a cab stand right there on the corner,
    and my dad drove up in his cab because there was a space.
    He got out of the cab.
    And he walked towards me and came over to me.
    And he said, do you know who I am?
    I said, you're my father.
    You're my dad.
    He said, that's right, Henry.
    How are you?
    How have you been?
    Poor man.
    And I said fine.
    And I made the mistake of going home that night
    and telling my grandmother.
    I said, guess who I run--
    saw tonight?
    And she was beside herself.
    And she immediately called her nephew, the lawyer.
    And Joseph Stone, that was his name.
    In fact, he's buried in Anshey Dowig as well.
    And she said, we got to stop this.
    We got to stop this.
    And she started to admonish me, again.
    But my dad, bless his heart, he just, you know, he missed us.
    But he was powerless.
    And, you know, it was like me trying
    to swat a 747 out of the air with a fly swatter or something
    like that, an impossible thing.
    He didn't stand a chance.
    And my grand-- my sister, Frances,
    was raised by my aunt and uncle.
    And particularly my aunt, whom I indicated
    didn't like my dad at all, so she
    started to brainwash my sister about the fact
    that our dad had abandoned us.
    Well, that was not true.
    I've tried to tell my sister that down through the years.
    But many years ago, I gave up on that thing.
    Although eventually, eventually, it took a long time,
    I was able to bring my dad and my sister and brother together
    for a meeting, you might say, to have
    them acknowledge their father and to actually
    know who their father was.
    Because they were so young, they didn't remember anything.
    And so every so often, he would, later on in life,
    he would send me a letter.
    And when I wound up in the Atlanta area,
    I would get letters from him.
    And he had the most beautiful handwriting in the world.
    Eventually, I think two or three years later, he remarried.
    And I met his second wife, Eva, very nice lady.
    And it was interesting.
    I remember at the time, my mother,
    when she stood beside my dad, was bigger than my dad.
    Taller.
    Taller and a little more heavyset than my dad.
    As I said, my dad was maybe an inch shorter
    than I am right now but a stocky guy.
    Like I said, he looked like a little prizefighter,
    rugged kid, rugged guy.
    And so he would remain in contact.
    And I would remain in contact with him.
    And then I had the occasion to go to Boston,
    I forget what the occasion was.
    But I found out where he was.
    And another thing I found out was
    that they had had a son, Murray Miller, who
    was living in Long Island.
    And he was a college professor--
    No kidding.
    --or something like that, yes.
    And his wife, Gloria, and Murray and Gloria
    are still alive today.
    They live in Florida.
    And I want to say maybe Boynton Beach.
    I think I've got their address back home.
    And I occasionally stay in touch with him.
    And if I do say so, I've always taken the initiative.
    You know, I'll send them an email or keep in touch,
    how are you doing?
    Or I'll bring them in touch a little bit
    as to my own status, where I am.
    Or hey, I just celebrated my 90th birthday and all that kind
    of stuff.
    So in some ways, you really are being
    the big brother for everybody.
    I've tried.
    Yeah.
    Really, I've tried.
    Because I understood the situation, I really did.
    And I have no animosity at all.
    I love my grandmother and my grandfather
    for the sacrifice that they made and the love that they showed
    and how self--
    unselfish they were.
    It was unfortunate that that, you might say,
    battle of personalities existed between my dad
    and my grandmother.
    And as I said, in fact, the same aunt and uncle that I mentioned
    who liked my dad, they didn't approve of the adoption at all.
    They didn't want the children to go through the name change.
    You know, this is-- was Bessie's name.
    That's right.
    Why are you changing Bessie's name?
    I remember, not-- vaguely, not in detail,
    but why are you changing Bessie's name and so on?
    I mean, it was a pretty involved kind
    of thing and all the conversation back and forth.
    And my uncle Sam, at the time, was
    living in Jamaica Long Island.
    My uncle Harry had his own drugstore
    down in New Bedford, Mass.
    And Fred was up in the Boston area someplace.
    Yeah but Fred was the one who didn't like your father.
    Huh?
    Fred was the one who didn't like your father.
    Right, Fred and Rose.
    Rose was the instigator.
    Fred was a little more passive guy.
    But Rose was the instigator.
    And--
    You told me earlier, I want to sideway a little bit.
    You told me that you grew up in a Jewish community.
    Can you tell me about that, about Dorchester
    and the Jewish community in Dorchester?
    Well, my only recollection there is we lived on various streets.
    I remember we lived in Mattapan.
    I think, oh, I don't remember the street.
    We lived on Havelock Street.
    And we lived on Floyd Street.
    And we lived on Lucerne Street.
    And we lived on Calder Street.
    We lived on Calder Street when my mother passed away.
    And I think we moved to Floyd Street.
    But basically it was a very nice community
    of tenement type houses.
    The triple deckers?
    Yes.
    It was the triple decker houses.
    Right.
    OK.
    Right.
    And there was Blue Hill Avenue that
    ran through Dorchester that led to Milton and the Blue Hills,
    et cetera.
    And I remember the stores on both sides of the street.
    I remember the bowling alley.
    I remember the Morton Theater, if I recall.
    I remember the G and G Deli where
    we used to hang out and get, you know, a corned beef sandwiches
    or whatever.
    And I remember, especially, the stores where
    my grandmother bought things.
    I remember the butcher shop.
    And I remember the chicken shop.
    And I remember the dairy shop, where
    you could go in and take a fish or even pickles out of a barrel
    and where you could go in to the butcher shop.
    And my grandmother telling the butcher,
    I want so much [YIDDISH] and all that sort.
    Did they all speak Yiddish?
    Huh?
    Did everybody speak Yiddish with one another?
    Just about, just about.
    I learned it.
    But I never took it upon myself to try to speak it.
    I always told my grandmother, ma, talk English.
    Talk English.
    So you called her ma.
    I called her ma.
    I called my grandfather pa, always called him.
    It never changed, even after the adoption.
    It never changed.
    My younger brother George, he spoke some Yiddish.
    In fact, when I went into the service,
    my grandmother sent me a letter in Yiddish
    that I was able to read.
    Really?
    Yeah.
    And there was another buddy in the same outfit who I
    recall got a letter in Yiddish.
    But he couldn't read it.
    So he asked me to read it.
    So I remember reading it.
    That was down in Camp Blanding, Florida with the 79th Division
    back then.
    So--
    But--
    So you grew up pretty much in a Jewish neighborhood,
    a Jewish community.
    Very much, very much.
    Did you have any Gentile friends?
    Not that I recall.
    Everybody on the street, excuse me, was Jewish.
    I remember we had our gang of friends.
    And I don't remember, well, I don't
    know if you remember a group, a singing group,
    called the Ames Brothers.
    Yeah.
    Well, the Ames Brothers lived on that street.
    Well, there was a singer called Ed Ames, I believe.
    That's it, Ed and Gene and Victor, Vic.
    There was Ed, Gene, Vic, and somebody else.
    And I ran into them, believe it or not,
    many years later at a theater in Atlanta
    when they were having vaudeville shows.
    Oh, wow.
    And I ran into them.
    And this is another little bit of trivia, I guess.
    And when I went backstage, I told
    the usher I'd like to go backstage,
    because I know these guys.
    I was working in a department store there.
    And I went backstage.
    And they looked at me.
    And one of them, I forget who, he said, I remember you.
    He said, you're the guy that always beat me on July 4th
    at the races.
    Because every July 4th in Franklin Field in Dorchester,
    we had all kinds of community events.
    And one of them was--
    it was highlighted with running races.
    And I could always run.
    If nothing else, I could run.
    And so he remembered.
    I hadn't particularly remembered.
    But nonetheless, it was a nice little reunion
    that we had at that time.
    But the--
    So--
    I remember-- excuse me.
    Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
    No, I remember going into the chicken shop.
    And they had-- they always had the chickens laid out on a big,
    big where there was a window.
    And my grandmother would go round to the chickens.
    And she's tapping all the chickens.
    And I said, ma, what are you doing?
    She, I'm looking for eggs.
    How do you find eggs?
    Well, you got to tap, you know, and, you know.
    Did she ever find any?
    Always.
    Oh my gosh.
    Always, she was an expert.
    I mean, if you rated her on a basis of 1 to 10,
    she was a 10 every time, every time.
    And that was another thing, oh, we would go to the bake shop.
    And we'd keep going.
    I say, ma, the bread and the rolls are over here or something
    like that.
    No, no, no, we're going in the back.
    Why are we going in the back?
    Because that's where they got yesterday's bread.
    So we went in the back.
    OK, ma, whatever you say.
    And so she picks out a bread.
    Well, the bread in the back was maybe
    a fourth of the price of the bread out at the front,
    you know.
    And I would feel it.
    I'd say, m, it's hard.
    That's all right.
    You'll eat it.
    Otherwise, you won't eat nothing.
    That's the way, I mean literally,
    that's the way it was.
    And we'd get it home.
    And she'd cut off the, what she called the [YIDDISH],,
    the end of the bread.
    And see, I remember so many things.
    And because they're truly dear to me.
    They really are.
    But I'd say, ma, I can't chew it.
    Put it in your mouth, it'll soften.
    And it's good for your teeth.
    Now chew.
    Otherwise--
    No bread.
    --that's it.
    [YIDDISH],, she called me by my Yiddish name, [YIDDISH]..
    OK, ma, whatever you say.
    And I used to stand in the kitchen,
    literally, and watch this lady make things from scratch,
    and kosher the meat, and kosher the chickens,
    and take the skin off the chickens
    and put it in the skillet, and rend all the--
    The fat.
    --skin, all-- that's right, down to fat.
    And I used to love to eat the skin once she got through
    with it.
    And then she would take that and pour it into a jar,
    and that was what she used for cooking and all.
    And I remember, too, when on Friday night,
    she would prepare the meal for the weekend starting
    Saturday night.
    And usually it was flanken or whatever you called it.
    And you put it in a pot with the potatoes or carrots or whatever.
    And she'd put it in the stove at low heat.
    Cholent, she called it.
    And you didn't touch it until Saturday night
    and Shabbat was over.
    And then you would sit down and eat and, I mean, delicious food.
    She made her own challahs.
    I can still see her making the dough
    and rolling it out in the flour and all that sort of stuff
    and then braiding it and making her own challah,
    and making the most delicious French toast I ever ate in life.
    From that day old bread.
    Right, yeah.
    And so [YIDDISH],, that's a fried egg,
    you know, that kind of thing.
    Were they religious?
    I mean, you mentioned observing Shabbat.
    Was your family a religious family?
    Very, very, we-- as sick as my grandfather became,
    there was no way he was going to take a ride or ride to shul,
    to the synagogue.
    And I mean, my grandmother would bench lift,
    you know, light the candles every Friday night.
    We observed every holiday.
    They made me fast on Yom Kippur.
    And we were at the shul.
    And I was, if I was fasting, the other thing that
    was involved here, too, was that I said kaddish for my mother
    for 11 months.
    And every morning, I would go to shul and put on tefillin
    and participate in a service and say kaddish.
    And then for Mincha and Maariv, I would go to say kaddish.
    And I did that for 11 months because I found out
    that's what you're supposed to do.
    And the oldest child in the Jewish family,
    when a loved one passes like that, that's what you do.
    So I did it.
    And they saw to it that I did it.
    And I was the kind of kid that, number one, I was young.
    But at the same time, I knew that to get along
    and to live my life she gave me the direction that I needed,
    as well as her own wisdom.
    You knew that at the time.
    Huh?
    You felt that at the time.
    Oh yes.
    Oh yeah.
    I know that if she--
    if she said, you come in at 7 o'clock.
    Or when she came to the front porch and we were outside,
    I was playing with the friends or, [YIDDISH],, time to come in.
    And in the house I went.
    I didn't do anything that would cast any aspersions on them,
    that would be a bad reflection.
    And she used to tell me when I was working.
    In fact, it was she that talked me into the fact
    that since my uncle Harry had a very successful drug store, when
    the time came and I was getting ready to graduate high school--
    What school did you go to, by the way?
    I went to Dorchester High School for Boys in Dorchester
    and graduated in 1938.
    I still have my diploma.
    Yeah.
    And still-- in fact, I still have--
    I went to Frank V Thompson junior high school.
    And I still have my diploma for it.
    That was 1935.
    And it's still rolled up in my drawer.
    I wouldn't get rid of them for nothing.
    Were most of the kids in--
    these were public schools I take it.
    Yes.
    Oh, yes.
    And were most of the kids from the same community?
    Or was it really diverse?
    No, it was-- it was diverse.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    It was at both schools.
    We had people from all creeds, all colors at the particularly
    the high school.
    And not being coed, it was a different environment.
    And at that time, the city of Boston, one way or another,
    for whatever reasons, they decided they would not
    have a coed high school.
    And there were coed high schools but not
    in that particular community.
    So they had a Dorchester High School for Girls
    up near Cardinal Square.
    And they had the Dorchester High School for Boys.
    And I remember trying for the football team.
    And the coach, you know, said, what do you want?
    You know, what do you--
    what do you think you're going to do?
    I said.
    I want to play football.
    And I probably was an inch or two shorter than I am now
    and maybe 40 pounds lighter and all that sort of stuff.
    And he called over one of the fullbacks.
    And he said, if whatever Irving or whoever came
    running at you full speed and you had to stop him, what would
    you do?
    So I intelligently said, I'd get out of the way.
    [LAUGHTER]
    That's a good answer.
    Yeah.
    So he said, I'll tell you what.
    He said the track season is going to start in November
    or whatever it was.
    He said, I want you to come out for the track team.
    He says you think you can run.
    I said I know I can run.
    He said, all right.
    And when the time came, he had me go down
    to the end of the field.
    He said, when I drop my arm, he said,
    I want you to run towards me as fast as you can.
    And that's what I did.
    And when I got to him, he looked at his watch.
    He said, I want you on the track team.
    How cool.
    So I ran.
    Sounds like a very clever coach.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    He very discerning.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And so I ran on the track team in high school,
    in my senior year.
    And the ironic part of that is, add a little side note,
    I never practiced.
    Because I left school in the afternoon.
    And I'd get on the street car to go sell newspapers.
    And I couldn't practice.
    And I often wondered to myself, as fast
    as I was, how much faster I could have been,
    how much better I could have been?
    Did you miss that you couldn't practice?
    Huh?
    Did you miss it that you couldn't practice?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And I will say, I was an excellent student.
    But I didn't do my studying.
    So I listened very carefully in the classrooms, I remember that.
    And I was always a very, very good student,
    always good at listening.
    And I would also say that it kind of carried forward
    when I got into the army.
    I want to take it-- come at this point
    and segue, this is a good point to do it, into another area.
    When you say you were good at listening,
    I want to go back to 1933, November 1933.
    I think it's November.
    There are lots of monumental events happening in Germany.
    And Hitler gets elected, democratically.
    Did that news come to Boston and come to the Jewish community?
    Did what was going on in Europe have any relevance in your life?
    Did your teachers talk about it?
    Did your grandmother and grandfather talk about it?
    Did anybody pay attention to those things going on
    over there?
    I think at the time, my recollection
    is I don't remember.
    I don't have a vivid recollection of it.
    But now that you mention it, I do
    recall that when we got together with our relatives, we
    often-- we had relatives in Malden.
    And we had relatives in Everett and Chelsea.
    And my grandmother used to make foods and various things.
    And we would get on a streetcar and go out to Chelsea or Malden
    to visit, carrying the foods.
    And we'd have a whole get together
    with all the aunts and the cousins and the uncles
    and so on.
    And at that time, they took the time
    to talk about what was going on.
    And they were, in a way, being very thankful that they
    had left their own communities, whether it was in Latvia
    or Vilna or Riga or whatever.
    And they had heartfelt feelings for the people in Germany
    and for the Jews all over and speculated
    on what's going to happen.
    To my knowledge, I'm not aware that any of them
    had any close relatives.
    That was my next question.
    Yeah.
    I'm not aware that they had any close relatives
    and that they were concerned about.
    But they were concerned about the Jewish people.
    And they were concerned.
    Because they had experienced persecution.
    And that was the reason they left Eastern Europe
    and, you know, that Russian area for that very same reason.
    But-- and they predicted it was going to get worse.
    That I recall.
    And I-- and my recollection is based on what I overheard.
    You know, I was sort of messing around with my cousins--
    Right.
    --there.
    But if I do say so, my ears were always open.
    You were listening.
    I was listening.
    I was listening.
    And you know, I--
    and I guess that's the way I learned.
    In any endeavor, I simply listen.
    Were there any Jewish newspapers--
    Yes.
    --in the community?
    The Forverts, The Forward they called it.
    I called it The Forverts.
    OK.
    And I used to read it.
    The one that was published in Brooklyn, in New York.
    Yes.
    So that would come up--
    that would be the newspaper.
    That's the one we had in Boston.
    Because at that time, it was-- you could get buy it.
    And everybody read it.
    Everybody read it.
    And your grandmother read it.
    And your family read it.
    Did you read it?
    I read it.
    So if there was something about what
    was going on in Europe that, you know, what Hitler was doing
    and how it affected the Jews, if there were articles about that,
    you would have read it?
    I would have read it.
    But I probably would not have paid that much attention to it.
    I see.
    I think that even my grandmother and grandfather,
    as involved as they were, and they were so close.
    They were so close.
    And the cemetery is one thing that reflects the closeness.
    Another thing that reflected the closeness
    was that, when they came over, they formed a, what they called,
    a Hebrew Ladies Free Loan Association, where
    people who could would give money to create a fund.
    So that the other people in the same community in Dorchester
    who couldn't pay their rent or couldn't buy food,
    they could go to the people who were running this Hebrew Ladies
    Free Loan Association and ask for help.
    And they were given help with no deadline as to when
    they might be able to pay it back
    or interest or anything like that.
    I remember that.
    And I remember my grandmother was very active in that, if not
    one of the founders of it.
    And I know my grandfather was part
    of another organization that I don't recall,
    maybe some sort of a fraternal organization.
    I don't know.
    But--
    Did you have refugees from Germany coming over?
    Huh?
    Did you have refugees from Germany coming over
    to the community in the '30s?
    Not that I recall, not that I recall.
    I mean, we were--
    we were, I mean, oh gosh, I don't know.
    I want to say that at the time there could have been 75
    or 100,000 people, Jews in that--
    in that whole Dorchester community.
    So it was a large community.
    I mean, it ran all the way from Roxbury all the way to Mattapan.
    That's large.
    I mean, they had Jewish people in Mattapan.
    They had Jewish people in Roxbury.
    In fact, my grandparents were living in Roxbury, right off
    of Grove Hall I remember, when my mother passed away.
    And that's when they moved.
    And we moved out of Calder Street and moved into, I think,
    Floyd Street was the next street that we moved into.
    And I remember one of my uncles, I think my uncle Harry,
    helped my grandmother with the rent.
    And we were on welfare for awhile.
    Wow.
    And that's why I went out to work.
    And even when I went into the service, I found out I was--
    I didn't have to.
    You didn't have to go to the--
    I was drafted.
    But I didn't have to be drafted because I was
    the wage earner in the family.
    There was just my grandmother and me and my brother.
    And he was 16.
    And he was still going to school.
    He was 15.
    And he was still going to school.
    And my grandmother by that time, she was close to 60.
    No, I'm sorry.
    She must have been older--
    She was 36.
    If she was 55 when your mother was dead--
    when your mother died, that would
    have made her 65 or something.
    She was-- she was about, yeah, she was in her early 60s.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, yeah.
    And she had-- well, later on through an accident
    at the house, she lost an eye.
    She went down to the--
    we were on Lucerne Street, that's right.
    And she went down to the basement
    to chop wood to get the furnace going.
    And I heard her screaming.
    And I ran downstairs.
    And one of the splinters from the wood she was chopping
    had gone into her eye.
    And she lived the rest of her life without that one eye.
    And she lived to be 87 years old.
    Wow.
    And when you consider my grandfather lived,
    he was 60 when he passed away.
    But--
    OK.
    Let's focus a little bit in the late 1930s.
    Are you interested at that time, being a young teenager,
    are you interested in world events?
    Do they capture you at all?
    Did-- if there would have been stuff about Germany
    in The Forverts, was there anything in the regular--
    if you sold the paper, you know, whatever
    Boston newspaper you were selling, did you also read it?
    Yeah.
    And was there news of an international kind in the paper?
    The news was there.
    And I could see that this country did not want
    to be involved, that I knew.
    We as a community and we as a family
    and talking about, again, the aunts and uncles and cousins
    and all, because that's generally
    when the discussion took place.
    I know that my grandmother and grandfather, I mean,
    my grandmother and myself never talked about political matters.
    We just talked about family, you know, or Frances, my sister
    or, you know, what was going on, or when
    are we going to see Uncle Harry again,
    and all that sort of thing, and how are you
    doing at school and so forth.
    And we never did too much in the way of recreation.
    So at the same time, I was aware of what was going on.
    I was still going to school.
    And I was selling my newspapers and concentrating on it
    and, as I said, very much aware that this country wanted
    to isolate itself.
    We would give help if needed.
    I mean, Britain needed some help.
    We would try to give them help.
    We would try to send supplies.
    We were aware of the fact that US ships were
    being blown up in the Atlantic.
    And that was a calamity.
    It was a big calamity.
    And I remember up until the time that Pearl Harbor happened,
    we were sort of a, I don't know, maybe a passive kind of feeling.
    That is you personally or the United States
    in general you're talking about.
    I think the United States in general.
    And then what about your own family,
    when you got together with your aunts and your uncles?
    We just talked about hoping and praying
    that the Jewish people would be all right,
    and that they would get out all right,
    and that they would escape this maniac.
    And I forget, they called them a lot of things in Yiddish.
    I don't remember.
    But that's what I do recall.
    And oftentimes, the picture--
    the paper showed his picture.
    And there were a lot of signs that occasionally you
    saw with Hitler's picture on it and all that sort of stuff
    to remind people what a hateful person he was, and how crazy
    he was, and how much of a threat he was to our people,
    to the Jewish people.
    So you would see that through The Forverts,
    or you would see that through what other--
    how did you become aware of it, I guess?
    Through all the papers.
    Through all the papers.
    Mostly through the Boston papers,
    not as much in The Forverts.
    Because The Forverts didn't have as many pictures
    as the other papers did, whether it be the Globe or the American,
    or the Advertiser.
    I think there was the Boston Advertiser which
    was a smaller newspaper.
    And-- or no, The Daily Record, I think
    it was called The Daily Record if I remember.
    And that's similar to the Daily News, I think, in New York,
    you know.
    It's not as big a paper.
    A tabloid.
    A tabloid type, right.
    And but The Forverts was always copy.
    Everything was copy.
    And--
    So photographs and illustrations and such,
    that you got from what I could call the mainstream American
    press.
    That's right.
    Or over the radio.
    What kind of radio broadcasts do you recall?
    Just regular radio.
    OK.
    Most-- some of them were battery operated I remember.
    But it was mostly radio.
    Because I remember distinctly hearing Roosevelt,
    you know, when he gave his talk in announcing
    that this country was at war with Japan and so on.
    And that was the other thing.
    When Pearl Harbor happened, I remember
    we were living on Browning Avenue right near--
    not far from the high school.
    And there were a bunch of us that were
    friends and so on and so forth.
    We used to hang around Stella's pharmacy
    on Norfolk Street and all.
    And when that happened, we had a number of guys who immediately
    said, I'm going to volunteer.
    You know, this is not good.
    We got to get after those Japs and that kind of stuff.
    And when I would go home and sit down--
    You were 20 years old by that point.
    And-- yeah.
    Yeah, I was-- that was in 1941.
    And 1940, I was 19 at that point.
    And I remember telling my grandmother,
    you know, Irving's going to volunteer.
    Or I forget some of the kids' name.
    Bobby Greenglass was going to volunteer and so on.
    And she admonished me.
    Don't you think about it.
    Don't you think about it.
    Your place is right here.
    You've got to stay here.
    You've got to, you know, go to school.
    And you got to learn.
    And you can't leave, you know.
    And she reminded me, too, you know, we need--
    we need money in order to live.
    Were you still selling newspapers by that point?
    Huh?
    Were you still selling newspapers by that point?
    No.
    No.
    How were you--
    By that time, I was working in a drugstore.
    I was working in Brookline, Mass.
    I worked in two drugstores out there.
    That's a hike from Dorchester.
    It was.
    I used to take the streetcar.
    I used to take the streetcar.
    And I also remember, when I turned 16,
    my uncle Fred took me to get my driver's license.
    We didn't have a car.
    But it was shortly thereafter that I started working
    in one of the drugstores.
    And we used to make deliveries.
    And I was looking forward to the--
    to getting my license.
    But at the same time, when I got my license
    and shortly thereafter, I was able to use
    the boss's the guy that owned the drugstore,
    use his car to make deliveries.
    And so that's another little thing I recall.
    But I do know that, maybe within days or when I turned 16,
    I got my license.
    But at the time, I was working in a drugstore.
    And because I had studied pharmacy.
    I graduated high school when I was 16.
    That's pretty early.
    That was early.
    And the following fall, I turned 17.
    And that's when I went to learn how to be a druggist.
    I went to I think it was the Franklin Institute.
    I went for a year starting pharmacy,
    learning how to make pills with my fingers and tablets
    and all that sort of stuff.
    Like I mean, this was real drugstore stuff,
    you know, not like today where everything's made for you.
    Right.
    But nonetheless, then I decided--
    I actually did a little investigating
    and found out that when you finish school after four years
    and you got your degree--
    You're talking about high school.
    I'm talking about college.
    College, OK.
    College.
    I'd finished school in '38, and I was 16.
    And then I turned 17 and started--
    and studied pharmacy.
    Got it.
    Because my grandmother felt, because my uncle
    Harry had a successful drugstore,
    that I should be a druggist.
    And OK, if that's what you want me to do, all right.
    I even went to New Bedford for two weeks
    and stayed with him for two weeks
    while he showed me how he ran his drugstore
    and where everything was.
    And I did learn a lot from him, because I
    asked him a lot of questions.
    And to a great degree, he taught me how to think for myself
    and how to become not a problem solver
    but how to anticipate problems.
    So I wouldn't become known as a problem solver, which
    was all right in itself.
    Of course.
    But the guy that can anticipate a problem is--
    --a problem is even better.
    --more valuable.
    Yeah.
    You know and all.
    So but after I found out that they only
    paid a registered pharmacist $40 a week or thereabouts,
    I told my grandmother, I said, ma,
    I can make more money driving a truck.
    And I had my license, of course.
    And I had all the confidence in the world in my driving.
    And I felt I could handle anything, you know,
    that's got four wheels.
    And she, you know, again, she tried to say, no, no, no, no,
    no.
    And I say, ma, I'll go out tomorrow,
    and I'll get a job paying $50 a week.
    And you say we need the money.
    Now you want me to try to continue to go to school
    and maybe make $40 a week four years from now or what.
    And what did she say to that?
    I put the onus on her a little bit.
    I won the argument.
    And I quit.
    And I went to driving a truck.
    In some ways following your dad's footsteps.
    And I'll say this, in all honesty,
    I drove a truck I guess for something like two years.
    I was driving a truck when I was drafted.
    And when I went into the service, if I do say so,
    I was as hard as a rock.
    Because I used to haul very heavy items.
    And in those days, we didn't have
    hydraulic gates on the truck.
    We had skids.
    They called them skids, which was
    nothing more than a ladder with curved rungs to it.
    Because what we carried most of the time
    were big 55 gallon drums--
    Oh my gosh.
    --of linseed oil and denatured alcohol,
    as well as other kinds of painter's supplies.
    I work-- the company I worked for was called [?
    Demott & Levy ?] Company down near Scollay Square.
    They manufactured their own shellac and had big paint
    and painter's supply business, et cetera, sold cases of glass
    for windows and things like that.
    And so I learned how to handle that stuff.
    I built myself up physically.
    And so when I went into the service,
    I was in top notch condition physically.
    And I was ready for anything that they would throw at me.
    Well, I want to get to that part.
    But I still want to circle back a little bit.
    Sure.
    The war actually starts on September 1, 1939
    when Germany invades Poland.
    Do you remember that?
    Was that something that was an event
    felt in Boston, you know, either broadcast through the radio
    or in the newspapers?
    No.
    Did it make an impression?
    Not to my recollection.
    OK.
    I remember, I mean, it was an event.
    It was like reading that the Los Angeles Dodgers beat
    some other team, 3 to 2.
    But not the Boston Red Sox.
    But not the Boston Red Sox.
    No, the Boston Red Sox would have
    been a little more important.
    Yeah, they would have been a little more important.
    And people would have talked about it more.
    OK.
    But this was something that happened thousands of miles
    away.
    And it was something that--
    it wasn't that it necessarily happened overnight.
    All the news had been leading up to all of these events.
    And as I said, I remember that--
    well, I remember--
    I'm trying to remember.
    Maybe it was 1932.
    President Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt,
    actually drove through on a motorcade through Boston
    and even the Dorchester area when, you know,
    we had the depression.
    So your mom was still alive.
    Oh no, she was already gone.
    No, she died in '30.
    Right.
    Right.
    She was gone.
    And he came along, you know, to pull the country
    out of its doldrums and so on and so forth
    and served for the ensuing what 15 years or whatever it was.
    And so--
    Was he popular in the Jewish community?
    Oh yes, very, very.
    I'm sure that he got 100% of the votes.
    Yeah, extremely popular because he was--
    he was the answer to everybody's prayers.
    And things were not that good, you know.
    People were just about thriving.
    The thing that kept them going was the fact
    that they were thriving in a way under their own conditions.
    There was no persecution.
    They were free.
    They could raise their families any way they wanted to.
    I remember seeing and listening and being not maybe directly
    involved in some of the biggest arguments you ever
    saw in your life, where people were actually
    arguing about the political situation
    or arguing about some sort of a business transaction
    or whatever.
    Tell me more details about these things.
    Well, they were, for instance, business, one of my relatives
    was a traveling salesman.
    And he was in the clothing business.
    And he was telling everybody, you
    know, the customers that he ran into
    and how trustworthy they are and how all they had to do
    was shake hands and come to an agreement.
    And they didn't even have to sign a contract.
    And, you know, this is how many I want.
    And you ship it.
    But make sure you ship it within that certain period of time.
    And then one of the other relatives
    would say, oh, can't be possible.
    I never ran into anybody so nice.
    I've never ran into anybody like that.
    I always ran into problems.
    And they started stating the problems they ran into.
    And then there was a lot of anti-Semitism.
    Tell me about that a little bit.
    Now, as far as the anti-Semitism is concerned, in South Boston,
    it was full of Catholics and non-Jews.
    They knew that Friday night was shul night, was synagogue night.
    And in Franklin Field, there was a wall.
    There was sort of a brick wall that ran a certain length
    right on Blue Hill Avenue near Talbot street
    in the Dorchester area.
    And after shul, the boys and the girls
    would go over and socialize and sit and talk and do
    girl-watching and all that sort of stuff.
    Well, these Southies, as they were called, from South Boston,
    they would come up in their cars.
    And they would park their cars in defiance of the fact
    that they weren't supposed to.
    And they would taunt us and call us all kinds of names, kikes
    and lousy Jews and so on and some
    you don't even want to mention.
    And we were told by our parents, generally, don't get involved.
    You know, they're trying to egg you on.
    And once you get involved, then you're
    going to be doing what they want to do.
    Now, we don't want you to be controlled by them any way--
    anymore than we would want us to be controlled
    by the community over there.
    And they have a Yiddish expression
    that I can't even remember on how they referred to it.
    And so there was a point in time after several visits
    when we all kind of started looking at each other.
    And we made up our minds.
    We're not going to take this stuff, not in any way.
    So we gave the girls notice.
    When they come up the next time, you girls get behind the wall,
    get out of the way.
    We're going to settle this thing once and for all.
    Did you?
    And we did.
    What happened?
    We had the biggest fight you ever saw in your life.
    When they started taunting us, we got off the wall.
    And we approached them, get out of here, such and such, a car.
    You want something?
    Come and get it.
    In other words, put your money where your mouth is.
    And did they?
    And they got out of the car.
    And some of them had little clubs with them.
    How many cars are we talking about?
    Huh?
    How many cars are we talking about?
    Oh, 8 or 10.
    And were these kids the same age?
    Were these--
    Approximately.
    Approximately the same age, so teenagers.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, I would say oh from young teenagers, maybe 13 on up.
    And boys.
    And-- yeah.
    No girls amongst them.
    No.
    No, they didn't have any girls with them.
    And it was always in that particular area.
    Because further down started the residential section
    and the retail shops--
    Right.
    --all the way down Blue Hill Avenue.
    But it was always in that section.
    And that section led up to where Talbot Street is
    and Franklin Field.
    That was Franklin Field led up to Codman Square.
    And if you kept going, eventually you
    got to South Boston or East Boston.
    Or if you kept going the other way,
    you went to Grove Hall, and Roxbury, and that area,
    Seaver Street, and down in that section.
    So what happened?
    Well, eventually, the police started coming around.
    And we had-- and interestingly enough, there
    were a number of Jewish cops on the police force.
    So they certainly sympathized with us.
    And they saw to it that we did not get into trouble.
    They knew who had instigated everything, who had literally
    started it and so on.
    So they got hold of those guys.
    And initially, they just warned them.
    Don't come back.
    You're not welcome.
    But if you do, you're going to run into problems.
    You're going to run into trouble.
    Did this happen more than once?
    Yes.
    These types of fights.
    It happened about four or five times.
    Because others came.
    After the original bunch got admonished
    and told not to come back, you still
    had a number of people who wouldn't accept it.
    I mean their hate was so embedded.
    And I remember another incident.
    When I lived on Lucerne Street, my neighbor
    was in the produce business.
    And he had a truck.
    And early in the morning, he would go to the market
    and fill the truck with all kinds of fresh vegetables
    of all kinds.
    And it so happened he would drive down
    into an area that was anti-Semitic.
    And it started with the little kids, four
    and five-year-old kids.
    Get out of here, you damn Jew.
    And you know, we don't want you around here.
    His name was Holtzwanger.
    That's the name of the neighbor.
    And he had it on the truck.
    and I remember it had a little swinging scale where he
    could weigh things and so on.
    And I know all this because I used to ride with him
    and I used to help him out.
    And I was appalled that I saw all this.
    But I knew, I learned later in life that there's an expression,
    a fish stinks from the head.
    And that's what was happening.
    These kids were being taught as kids who the Jews were.
    And they really didn't know.
    But they were told.
    So--
    What--
    Eventually, the man changed his name to Holman.
    Did you feel this in school?
    No.
    Occasionally, but it wasn't as obvious.
    It wasn't as obvious.
    There were, on occasion, some fights amongst the students.
    OK.
    But not from the teachers.
    Huh?
    From the teachers did you feel anything?
    No, no, no.
    No.
    No, because we had a lot of Black teachers.
    And we had a lot of Black students.
    And I guess you might say that's where I learned
    to get along with people.
    But it goes back to my grandmother,
    who told me, you know, you love one another.
    All people are alike.
    And I remember she also said, you know, I
    would come home and complain.
    You know, he's--
    I'm working 72 hours.
    He's only paying me $12.
    This was in the drugstore.
    And she would say, you're lucky to even have a job, you know.
    But she put her finger in my face.
    You make sure that for every dollar
    he gives you that you're giving him $1 or more back in work.
    I don't ever want to hear that you're being lazy.
    So that little philosophy, if you will, or admonishment
    or whatever has followed me all my life.
    And so anytime I started something,
    I made the determination that I was
    going to be the best there was, whether I was a new soldier
    or later on when I started my career.
    Well, those are the--
    those are the building blocks.
    Those are the foundations.
    And that's what I've tried to pass along
    to my boys and my grandchildren and so on, not in a way
    that I'm giving a speech or sermonizing
    or anything like that.
    But letting them know that it's all right to fail.
    It's all right to compromise.
    It's all right to back off.
    There's no shame in that.
    But do your job, believe in what you're doing.
    But don't try to sell yourself or anything
    without being able to document what you're doing.
    Have the facts in front of you.
    Don't lie, tell the truth, and everything else
    will fall into place.
    And so that's what I try to do.
    If I have the occasion even today
    and talk to school students about my military experience,
    one of the things I try to do is bring out
    just the American flag, what the American flag means
    to this country, what it should mean to them.
    What should it mean to them?
    Well, it should mean that that flag
    has flown over thousands and thousands of people representing
    this country, who fought for this country, who
    gave their lives for this country
    because this country was important to them.
    And it was important to them because it represented to them
    an opportunity to live a good life and to live a happy life
    and to live an inspired life.
    And only they could change that.
    But this country would always be there.
    And that flag would always be there for them.
    And so when that flag goes by, you stand up and salute it
    and show respect.
    And I have had students that come to me afterwards
    and Mr Freedman, you put everything in a,
    you know, a new light for me.
    You've given me a new perspective
    on what it's all about.
    And I also mention the fact that they
    are so fortunate to be in that school
    with those teachers who are trying to teach them and give
    them the help that they would need to step on up.
    So take advantage of it, take advantage of it,
    absorb as much as you can, get as much education as you can.
    Powerful lessons and important lessons for kids, for all of us.
    Well, that's right.
    The fundamentals never change.
    I remember during the course of my career,
    I was working in one department.
    And I had told management that I wanted
    to get into merchandising.
    And a few weeks later, they called to tell me
    they were going to move me to another department.
    And I told them, oh, I never sold anything like that.
    And they-- he looks at a piece of paper.
    And he said, well, according to this,
    you're a pretty good salesman.
    You're doing pretty well.
    Why can't you do well over here?
    The only thing that's different is the product.
    The fundamentals are still the same.
    You anticipate that you're going to meet up
    with any different kind of customer,
    that you're going to talk a different language or whatever.
    And when you start putting it in that kind of perspective,
    then you've got to ask yourself, hey,
    am I smart enough to understand what he's
    saying, where he's coming from?
    Because this is a challenge.
    Well, I want to tie these two thoughts together.
    I mean, you spoke very eloquently right
    now of what that flag means, of what the American flag means.
    And just before, we were talking about anti-Semitism.
    About?
    Anti-Semitism and the experiences
    you had growing up in Dorchester.
    Did you-- did you feel that the anti-Semitism came
    from the society?
    Did you feel that it came from certain pockets?
    I mean, in one way, is it the same society
    that is anti-Semitic that is also making up the society that
    supports the flag?
    I'm asking, was American society at that time basically
    anti-Semitic?
    Or was it something that was contained?
    It was basically anti-Semitic.
    It was.
    It was a result of ignorance.
    It was a result of information, if you will,
    being passed from one generation to the other,
    strictly because of ignorance.
    So you would say it would be--
    you mentioned Southie, which was a very Catholic area.
    But Boston is also known for Boston Brahmin.
    So would you say it's in the general Christian communities
    within Boston, be they Protestant or be they Catholic.
    Did it permeate all of them?
    It permeated.
    It permeated all of them.
    It wasn't a specific denomination.
    No.
    No.
    It was just a certain group.
    It would be, I don't know how to explain it.
    It would be if you had--
    well, if you had a city or a country that was divided
    into quarters and one of the quarters was grew up feeling
    or teaching their own people that the other 3/4 are not to be
    trusted, they are not compatible with us.
    They don't believe as we do.
    They don't do things as we do.
    You can't talk to them.
    You can't rationalize.
    You can't compromise.
    You can't do anything.
    They are hard-hearted people.
    And so that particular quarter, and that's
    what I think I ran into or was in existence at the time.
    And fortunately, it couldn't spread.
    Now if that quarter comes to another quarter
    and begins to sell them on the idea,
    and that quarter is so gullible and dumb and ignorant
    that they believe all of this, then, at some point in time,
    you're in trouble.
    The whole area is in trouble.
    You're not building any foundation for the future.
    What you're building is a way to tear things apart
    and to create complete destruction over people
    or a land, as the case might be.
    Well see, this is again, there's a basic, how shall I say,
    I don't want to say it's a contradiction
    but a conflict in images.
    Because on the one hand, you talk about the experience
    and the gratitude that your relatives had
    and the Jewish community had that they were free.
    They were safe.
    They were able to thrive through their own efforts,
    that they were able to live in peace and be with their children
    and raise them and so on.
    And at the same time, you're saying
    there was anti-Semitism permeated
    throughout American society.
    So what makes this different from Eastern Europe or Western
    Europe or anyplace else?
    Why would-- why would there still be--
    how can you hold on to both of these experiences
    and, let's say, convictions or allegiances?
    I don't know how else to put it.
    You know what I'm trying to say?
    Well, I think I understand what you're saying.
    I think that hopefully, or the way I see it I guess,
    is that the so-called anti-Semitism is not
    as widespread as some of the areas you're talking about.
    Well, I'm talking then.
    I'm talking not now.
    I'm talking in the 1930s when you were growing up.
    You were describing your family and the community
    and what they felt and what their experience was.
    And there was-- there was this good side, where there was peace
    and there was no persecution.
    And you were able to--
    Right.
    Right.
    And at the same time, there was this anti-Semitism,
    which I asked you did that go through the fabric of society?
    And you said yes.
    So how do you--
    how do you integrate both of these experiences?
    That, on the one, you live without persecution.
    And on the other-- in the other, there is this anti-Semitism.
    And we're in the United States.
    So what makes somebody still want to be an American?
    And how-- do you--
    am I being any clearer in my question?
    Yes, I think so.
    I think that, as I understand it,
    the country itself and the basis on which it was originally
    formed, that's never been lost.
    The reason for the being--
    for the country being is still there.
    It's been proven that it's the best way to live for everybody.
    Now we have to make up our minds which way we want to go.
    We have to make an--
    and to me, it starts with the family.
    It has to start with the foundation.
    And if I start a family, and I have
    believed in what I've been taught,
    whether it be from a religious standpoint
    or any other standpoint, social, political, or otherwise--
    Could be class, economic.
    Right.
    Right.
    Then, I've got to have enough [YIDDISH],, enough sense
    to be able to pinpoint the important things that
    have affected my life and pass that along to my children
    and make sure that they understand
    and those that are close to me as well and even
    those friends or relatives, if we ever get to the point
    where we're starting to discuss it
    or somebody starts to question whether this is
    the right or wrong way to go.
    And there's no future.
    There is a future in going the right way
    and going the way that I discern to be
    the right way and the proper way,
    like all the attributes that my grandmother had and that she has
    and the admonishments, if you will,
    that she has passed along to me that I, in turn, can pass along
    to others.
    And then, hopefully, my legacy will be that particular message
    to my extended family.
    But if I want to go the other way
    and I want to, whether it be for selfish reasons or material
    reasons--
    Or belief, sometimes people--
    Or even belief.
    Oh, right.
    And then that's going to lead to destruction.
    And I see it.
    And I see it.
    And it just is a matter of--
    I can't understand, even in those days.
    I know that those people are so wrong.
    They were taught wrong.
    Where it all started from, I don't know.
    But it started.
    And as we live our lives, God has given each one of us
    the opportunity, he's given us the will to make decisions.
    He's given us a certain talent that we
    can use, along with the will.
    So that we can move or live the kind of life
    that he wants for us.
    And I say that without necessarily being over--
    religious.
    I'm not trying to stand on a pulpit, you know,
    and tell people what they need to do or what they shouldn't do
    or anything like that.
    But they do need to have enough sense
    to be able to put everything in perspective.
    I just am saying, how does a Jewish kid who experiences
    anti-Semitism running through the fabric of society still
    see to himself and justify to himself that he's a patriot
    and that he loves this country?
    That what?
    That he's a patriot and that he loves this country.
    You're talking about the anti-Semitism.
    Well, he thinks he is.
    He thinks he is.
    He--
    He thinks he's a patriot.
    He thinks he's a patriot.
    That's right.
    Because he may wave the flag on July 4th.
    He is probably not the person who will salute the flag when
    it goes by him.
    You're talking about the anti-Semite.
    Right.
    I was-- my question was different.
    My question is, if you're a Jewish kid in the 1930s
    and you're experiencing anti-Semitism,
    how is it that you--
    and you say it's through the fabric of society.
    How is it that you still see yourself as a patriot
    and love the country?
    How-- how does that happen within the same person?
    Because that anti-Semitism does not represent,
    and the people who believe in it does not represent the direction
    that I want to go in.
    They're not the people who make up this country.
    They're a minority.
    What they have to say is not important.
    What the leaders of this country have to say is important.
    What the government, the people that govern us, is important.
    What we need to do is to make sure
    that the people who represent us understand us and are virtually
    us.
    They may have a different name.
    But they are us.
    Their objective is to see that we're governed properly,
    that everything is organized, that all the things
    and services and health and welfare that need to be provided
    is provided properly to those who are deserving.
    And that they, in a sense, as I said, who represent who we are,
    then we have a very compatible situation
    where we love being governed by these people.
    We love taking orders from these people.
    Because we would have given the same order.
    We would have done the same thing.
    So what I-- if I can interpret, what you're saying
    is that, despite whatever experiences you had
    that were anti-Semitic in nature, none of that
    shook your faith in the structure of the country.
    Right.
    Nothing.
    OK.
    Nothing, because my own upbringing has built into me
    a certain faith that should be unshakable.
    In other words--
    That this--
    OK.
    In other words, this is still your country.
    Right.
    Despite that, it's still your country.
    Right.
    One of the reasons I emphasize this because in Eastern Europe
    there were always Democratic people.
    But there were always forces that were more powerful
    than Democratic forces.
    And at some point, Jews said, this is no longer my country.
    And that's why they left.
    And I was trying to see, people aren't that different,
    no matter where they are.
    You know, they have the same impulses inside of them.
    And I was trying to get a sense of,
    at what point does somebody say, OK, I don't belong here anymore.
    And at what point does someone say, it doesn't matter.
    It's still mine.
    Well, you can't let a certain number of people
    control your life or drive you out.
    At the same time, if you are outnumbered,
    if you are outgunned, then you have to develop a new strategy.
    Well, I think you have just highlighted the dilemma
    that German Jews found themselves in.
    Is that many people felt exactly that way
    and why they didn't leave early enough was because they said,
    I'm not going to let someone else
    bully me into changing something that has existed
    in my family for generations.
    We've been in Germany for hundreds of years.
    Hitler will come and go.
    Right.
    And they stayed.
    That's right.
    No, no.
    And it's, you know, stubbornness is a nice trait, I guess,
    in some respects.
    But it's a matter of just being realistic.
    It's a matter of being honest with yourself.
    It's a matter of thinking of others as well.
    And if you're a couple, let's say,
    and you're thinking of raising a family, under what conditions
    would you want to raise your family?
    You want to raise your family in a way
    where you're going to be hiding from people,
    you're going to be denying yourself things.
    You can say I'm free.
    I can come and go as I please.
    But where are you going?
    You're not going anywhere.
    You're living in your own home.
    You can't go out.
    You can't do anything.
    You can't enjoy anything.
    You can't show your family the kind of love that they--
    complete love that they need to be shown.
    You can't build a legacy for yourself.
    And I admire the people who did come from Eastern Europe.
    And they stuck together.
    They didn't go in 29 different directions.
    Oh sure, when they came here, maybe some
    wound up in California or Texas or whatever.
    But they all came in the same direction.
    They all came in the same direction.
    And wherever they landed, they stuck together.
    They regained their identity.
    And they regained their faith.
    And along the way, while this was going on, hopefully,
    and I'm sure I'm right, they thanked God for the opportunity,
    for being by their side.
    And this is the kind of thoughts that they want to pass along
    to their children.
    I always, you know, the kinder, the kinder,
    got to take care of the kinder.
    Yeah.
    Look after the kinder.
    So--
    Before we break for lunch, I think it's now about 10,
    12:10 or something.
    Am I right?
    I'm going to ask one last question.
    And it may be a big one.
    You mentioned when we spoke over the phone that you have accepted
    or you have converted to a Christian faith.
    Yes.
    Is that correct?
    Yes.
    OK.
    You mentioned also earlier that the fish stinks from its head.
    Yes.
    There-- I, myself, I will--
    my role is not to talk about me.
    But in order to ask this question, I will say,
    I'm a Christian.
    That is, I'm not a Jewish person.
    However, many people would say that the thing that people
    were taught to be anti-Semitic came
    from the heart of Christianity.
    That there is that interpretation,
    that Christian teachings through the century
    emphasized the role of Jews in the persecution of whom
    Christians believe is our Savior.
    How do you reconcile that?
    Is there-- is that--
    is there any merit to this kind of logic?
    None.
    None.
    There couldn't be anything further from the truth.
    Then tell me, explain to me.
    Well, the way I understand it and I learned
    that God was always by my side.
    Growing up, I learned how to read a prayer book.
    I learned how to read a Jewish book.
    I learned how to read the Torah.
    And I had my bar mitzvah, my confirmation.
    And I also learned that God has so many attributes.
    But I also learned that God freed the Israelites
    from bondage.
    And I know that over time God himself
    said, in essence, that my love is not only for the Jews.
    It's for the Gentiles.
    That I love the Jews as much as I love the Gentiles.
    So are the Jews still a chosen people?
    Are the Jews a chosen people?
    Are they what?
    A chosen people.
    Yes.
    They are a chosen people.
    But that's because God chose them originally.
    And they're still a chosen people but not in the sense
    that he's looking after only the Jews now and not anybody else.
    He chose them originally.
    He had a land to give.
    He wanted people to move into that land, which they eventually
    did.
    Along the way, the people showed God
    how sinful they are, that they were not perfect like he is.
    And as a result, somebody had to come along.
    As I understand it, somebody had to come along
    to get the message to the people,
    not to just the Jewish people but all people,
    as to how your life needs to be lived.
    That you should, above all, have one God in your life.
    That you should worship and love only that one God.
    And in return, God will give you a wonderful, wonderful life
    and an eternal life.
    And so he brought Jesus into the world.
    And this was part of his plan.
    Because it was evident that people like Adam and Eve
    couldn't communicate with God.
    They did.
    But they really couldn't communicate with God.
    And Jesus came along in God's image to handle God's will
    and to be a God.
    My question earlier was about how anti-Semitism,
    where was the seed and how did it grow and how did it develop,
    and that there were some people--
    there are people who believe that it
    was part and parcel of the teachings of Christianity
    for centuries.
    Well, I would have to say that I'm not that knowledgeable.
    All I can relate it to is maybe from what
    I've heard, from any discussions that I've had,
    and I guess, you might say, general information.
    Somewhere along the line, years ago,
    people began to feel that for whatever reason
    the Jewish people were smarter.
    They held positions of priesthood and esteem.
    They were the wealthiest, et cetera.
    They had all the privileges.
    And that, for whatever reason, they
    had this because they didn't earn it.
    Through some devious way, they got it all.
    And there's ways, even today, where the Jewish people are,
    and other people are, being told, you know, don't do this,
    or don't do that, or don't act like a kike,
    or whatever it might be.
    And so it-- and I heard it.
    I heard it often.
    And you hear the old expression that, oh yeah, if you're Jewish,
    you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or something like that.
    Something stereotypical.
    Yeah.
    And I remember I had a darling uncle who was a plumber.
    And you know, you can say, what is a nice Jewish boy
    like you doing being a plumber?
    You know, automatically, he's supposed to be a doctor.
    But maybe it was the nature of the Jewish people, who
    said, in essence, we're going to maximize our lifestyle, how best
    to do that.
    Again, it gets back to how much sacrifice do you want to make?
    How hard are you willing to work?
    How much faith do you have in yourself,
    all of those different things?
    I would like to think of the fact
    that, I hate to put it this way, that I'm a self-made man.
    I came down to Atlanta looking for a job.
    I had a job to go back to.
    I did not have the advice--
    the advantage of having somebody in the family
    or otherwise who could act as my mentor
    and give me advice and say, Hank,
    do this or do that or go here or go there and so on and so forth.
    I have a niece whose daughter is just finishing up
    her fellowship as a doctor.
    She's 29 years old.
    Now, how many 20-year-old or 21-year-old girls are willing
    to spend the next eight years of their life in medical school
    or in some other profession to reach the top of that particular
    endeavor?
    So it's just a matter of the goals
    that you set for yourself, how honest you are with yourself,
    what you want to do with yourself.
    And are you going to sit around and look for a handout?
    Are you going to sit around and feel sorry for yourself?
    Things, I mean, God is with you.
    But God isn't going to give you a ride to the job interview
    or anything like that.
    You got to get up and go yourself.
    If nothing else, he gave you the will.
    He gave you the intelligence to even think about it.
    Thank you.
    I think we'll break right now.
    OK.
    And we'll-- OK.
    OK.
    We are continuing the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Hank Freedman.
    And before we broke, we talked about a lot of, I'd say,
    philosophical things.
    I want to turn back now to chronology.
    And we talked a little bit about what
    the mood was when there was the attack on Pearl
    Harbor in December '41.
    And your grandmother was saying, no, you don't volunteer.
    You need to stay home and help support us.
    How did things progress for you?
    What happened in your life after the United
    States entered the war?
    Well, I guess to keep it as understandable as possible,
    my first thought was that I wanted to go.
    My buddies were going.
    My friends in the neighborhood were going.
    Not all of them, because, to some extent,
    their families wouldn't let their sons go or even daughters
    at that time.
    But at the same time, I had that sense of responsibility.
    And based on what my grandmother had told me,
    your job is important.
    The income is necessary for us, et cetera.
    So I concentrated on doing my job to the best of my ability.
    And I do remember that we often, what
    friends were left after that time,
    we discussed the other guys.
    We talked about them and tried to speculate, who's going where,
    and where did this guy go, or where did he wind up.
    And I remember, in particular, one or two of them
    wound up in the Air Force.
    And we found out about that.
    We knew about that before they went overseas.
    And the next thing we knew, probably several months later--
    So that would be already in 1942.
    That was 1942.
    That's correct.
    We found out that one of our buddies had been killed.
    He wound up in the Air Force.
    He wound up on a B-17.
    And the B-17 had gotten shot down.
    So what we tried to do is be as sympathetic as possible.
    I mentioned it to my grandmother, who was very, very
    sorry to hear about it.
    But that was it, as far as she was concerned.
    And I think that some of those people, like my grandmother,
    were very realistic.
    You know, you go to war.
    And if you're going to go into battle,
    sooner or later you're going to get shot.
    You know, whatever happens, you're going to get shot.
    So it was one of those things.
    It's the final result of going into war.
    So they're-- I guess what they're saying is,
    you don't go to war in the first place.
    Nobody should need to go to war.
    So that's a little bit of philosophizing,
    if you want to call it that.
    But nonetheless, we were--
    we were beside ourselves.
    We were so sorry.
    And here we were, I mean, this guy
    hadn't been gone maybe six months or more.
    And it became to me more important that--
    and I had a almost a guilty feeling, as I recall.
    Because here, he-- they had gone.
    And one guy had already lost his life.
    Yeah.
    A young fellow.
    And--
    Do you remember his name?
    No, I really don't.
    I remember we had, oh gosh, there was Blackie, I remember.
    And then there was Joel.
    And there was Bob and Sumner and one other.
    I don't remember his name and all.
    And in the meantime, they had the draft going on.
    I want to stop at this point just to ask you a question.
    By this point, did you have more additional information
    as to what was happening to the Jews in Europe, by 1941, 1942?
    Not really.
    Not really.
    There was news.
    But there was so much distraction as far
    as our own involvement was concerned.
    Got it.
    And to me, whatever, you know, news that I wanted to look at
    or was exposed to, even sports, sports
    became somewhat unimportant.
    At the same time, I guess, in recollection,
    some of the sports figures were in the service,
    had wound up in the service as well.
    And we were kind of proud, particularly
    if they were a member of the Red Sox
    or one of the hometown teams, that kind of thing.
    And it kind of got to me a little bit.
    And that's why I became so anxious.
    I wanted to be part of it.
    I really wanted to be part of it.
    And I kept checking to see, checking with the social--
    the Selective Service Board to see
    if my number had come up yet.
    And--
    What was your number?
    I don't remember what my number was.
    You don't remember if it was high or low.
    It was relatively low.
    It was relatively low.
    And I remember, it was in October, that they--
    that I got it.
    And I had to report.
    In fact, it could have been the end of September,
    come to think of it.
    Maybe I had just passed my 21st birthday, if I recall.
    Because I did remember going in October of 1942
    and reporting to Fort Devens.
    Where's that?
    And that's towards the western part of--
    middle or western part of the state.
    Massachusetts.
    Yeah, Fort Devens, Massachusetts.
    And I reported.
    And I reported with the Sumner, one of the boys
    that we buddied around with.
    And I remember he was a sort of a portly fella.
    And I was slender, weighed about 135 pounds I
    guess at the time, 145 pounds.
    And I remember that we went through our various checks
    on vital signs and clothing measurements
    and orientation of various kinds.
    They had all kinds of screens up where you
    were ordered to sit and watch.
    And it was a matter of all the do's and don'ts that were
    required while you were in the army and a member of Uncle
    Sam's forces and things of that nature.
    And I remember, again, as I made reference
    to it before, my grandmother's teachings were in my mind.
    You do the best you can, give it all you can,
    and so on and so forth.
    And this was at Fort Devens.
    I had no idea where I was going, except that I
    was going through all of this.
    So I paid attention.
    And I listened and all.
    And then it came time for us to receive our clothing
    or uniforms.
    And I think I was a perfect 38 or something at that time.
    All I remember was that whatever clothes
    I needed, whatever size I needed, they had it.
    They had it.
    So within days, literally, I was fully equipped.
    How long did your basic training last?
    Well, I went from there, after I left Fort Devens, I went down,
    I was shipped by train down to Camp Blanding, Florida.
    And Camp Blanding is I would call it
    North Central Florida, near the town of Starke, Florida.
    I remember this was sort of horse country
    in that part of the state.
    And I joined the 79th Infantry Division, K Company,
    which was a rifle company.
    And Lieutenant Charles Bowling was the commanding officer
    at that time.
    And I remember him sitting me down.
    He welcomed me to the company.
    And it was a rifle company.
    And a rifle company, I remember, consisted of three rifle
    platoons and a weapons platoon.
    And the weapons platoon consisted
    of machine guns and mortars.
    And he sat me down.
    And he said, I'm going over all of your paperwork he said.
    And I find that you are eligible to go to OCS.
    Well, I didn't know why I was eligible to go to OCS.
    What is it?
    And it was my IQ.
    And--
    What is OCS?
    Officer's Candidate School.
    And I asked him, you know, I just got here.
    I'm a recruit.
    I'm only days from having been inducted into the service.
    And that's what he told me.
    He said, but I also have a suggestion.
    He said, it won't be too long we'll
    be going on maneuvers he said.
    And we'll be maneuvering up in Tennessee he said.
    And I would suggest that you go through maneuvers and training
    with us.
    And then when maneuvers is over, and then you
    go back to OCS down in Fort Benning, Georgia.
    He said, you'll have all that training behind you.
    And you'll be able to get through all the officer
    training in a much better shape and so on.
    And again, whatever you say, you know, is fine.
    Yes, sir and so on.
    And so you followed his advice.
    So I followed his advice.
    And I started training.
    And they put me in a weapons platoon.
    And they started training me as a machine gunner, what
    they called a light 30 caliber machine
    gun that sits on a tripod and so on and so forth.
    And I trained in Camp Blanding, Florida,
    went on what they call the force marches and hikes and all
    that sort of stuff.
    And again, as I alluded to earlier,
    I was in wonderful condition.
    And I found out that we had a lot of guys in the company,
    like many others, who didn't want any part of it.
    And so they decided that they were
    going to try to find some way where they can get--
    they could get discharged.
    So there were people who didn't--
    in general, you've described an atmosphere of people
    really wanting to sign up.
    Yes.
    But there were-- what you're saying
    is that, within the draft, it was also
    quite visible that there were some who wanted out.
    Yes.
    Yes, definitely.
    And these people were good physical specimens.
    I mean, it wasn't that they toddled around or bent over
    or they weren't too mobile or anything like that.
    I mean these guys were young fellows.
    They were my age.
    Some were even younger, 19, 20.
    And some had enlisted.
    And they wound up in that outfit.
    It didn't make any difference whether you were enlisted
    or you were inducted as to where you might wind up,
    except that they did look at what you might have been doing
    at the time that you went into the service,
    whether you were a student or whether you were working
    and, if you were working, what kind of work you were doing.
    So that they could possibly judge the best way
    to use your talents.
    And that's where it got to be a big joke in the army.
    You could have been talented in one area.
    And they sent you to a completely opposite kind
    of job or military specialty, as they called it.
    And it became very evident during our hikes,
    during our training sessions where
    we would get out on the road and start
    walking with our packs and weapons and so on and so forth.
    And these guys would start to drop off and sit by the road
    and light up a cigarette and say-- you know,
    and I would look at them in horror, literally.
    What in the world are you doing?
    You know, here we are.
    We're on a hike and all. we're part of training.
    We're trying-- the government's trying to make soldiers out
    of us, you know.
    And at one point in time, I recall
    very vividly asking myself, you know, what are you doing?
    You're a nice young Jewish boy.
    And somebody's is trying to tell you--
    show you how to kill people.
    Wow.
    That wasn't my nature.
    I was never pugnacious, not really, except for the moments
    we had with the anti-Semites and things like that.
    So, you know, how long can these guys put up with all of this?
    Well, it turned out that they were very obvious.
    The superiors knew they were very obvious.
    And their punishment was that they would put them on KP.
    They would become-- they would be put on duty in the kitchen
    and other things, or maybe walk the area with a rifle at night
    and be on guard and that kind of stuff, and see if they can--
    The fun jobs, in other words.
    Yeah.
    Yeah and see if they could just let the guys work it
    out themselves and all.
    In the meantime, our training went on and on.
    And then around March of '43, we went up to Tennessee
    and started maneuvering up there.
    And maneuvers are basically a way
    of fighting a war but in a friendly way, where
    you're maneuvering against another division.
    And each division is given a problem.
    Basically, that's what it is.
    It's like a test.
    You got to take this hill.
    Now, you figure out how you're going to take this hill.
    And then the other division is told that the enemy is
    going to try to take this hill.
    Now, you got to figure out how to keep the enemy from taking
    that hill.
    So that's what the maneuvers was all about.
    And you go through all kinds of things,
    whether you're a rifleman, whether you're a machine gunner,
    and where you're going to set up and be in action and so on.
    In the meantime, we weren't mechanized infantry.
    We walked everywhere we went, carrying our equipment and all.
    And we did that for a long, long time, probably 60, 90 days,
    something like that.
    And I even remember, I think we maneuvered--
    I was with the 79th Division and 313th Infantry, K Company.
    And we went maneuvered against I think it was the 81st Division,
    at that time.
    And right near the end of maneuvers, they gave some of us
    these forms.
    And it turned out they were tests, physics and math
    and all kinds of subjects.
    And we never were sure why we were given these tests.
    Not everybody was taking it.
    But I know I was one of a number of people that took it.
    And to make a long story short, about a week or two after we
    took the tests, I was in the area, the bivouac area,
    where we had tents set up, which we
    did after each week's problems.
    And the company clerk rode up in his Jeep.
    And he came over to me.
    And he said, get your stuff together and come on with me.
    And I said, I got a weekend pass to Nashville.
    We had walked half the state of Tennessee, I guess.
    And after each maneuver period, which
    lasted about five days or whatever,
    you got an opportunity to get a pass.
    And you'd go to Nashville for a day or overnight or something
    like that.
    And you look forward to it.
    Because those five days that you spent out in the field
    was tough.
    It was tough.
    And so he repeated himself, get your stuff together and come on
    with me.
    And I said, get out of the way, get out of my hair.
    I got this pass.
    You know, it didn't come easy.
    And he said, remember that test you took?
    I said yes.
    He said, well, evidently, you did OK.
    He said, the government is getting you away
    from all of this.
    Wouldn't you like to get away from all of this?
    And I looked around at the bivouac area.
    And I looked around at my own equipment and everything.
    And I'm picturing myself getting me away from all of this.
    What are you talking about?
    And I said, what are you talking about?
    He said the government's sending you to school.
    Wow, that's a change.
    And I said, can you give me any more detail?
    No, you just got to come with me.
    And we're going to-- they're going to ship you out.
    So I put all my stuff together in a duffel bag,
    excuse me, went with him, and stayed
    at Camp Forrest Tennessee.
    I remember that, overnight.
    And the next morning they put me on a train.
    And where did I wind up?
    Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
    Oh my gosh.
    University of Alabama, ASTP.
    What does that mean?
    Army Specialized Training Program.
    And what it was, it was a program
    that was designed for us to go to school for 18 months
    and become engineers.
    Because the army thought that they were short--
    they were going to be short of engineers.
    And they devised this highly supervised, concentrated college
    course.
    And it was supervised study.
    Every where you went, you were under supervision,
    whether you went to the library or class or whatever.
    And they were bringing men in from colleges, college students,
    and the Air Force.
    Some had already been in the Air Force.
    I'd already been with an Infantry Division.
    But most of them were college students.
    And we lived on the campus and went to school five days a week,
    very concentrated, very tough mentally.
    We did calisthenics and things like that
    to loosen up in the morning.
    It was a military atmosphere.
    You know, you marched wherever you went and that kind of thing.
    Well, after about six months, they transferred me.
    And I went to Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama,
    studying the same thing.
    And I think it was just a matter of trying to balance out
    the number of students and maybe they brought in more professors.
    I'm not exactly sure why they transferred us around.
    But they did.
    In some cases, they tried to transfer the men close to home.
    Well, I found out later that one of the colleges, University
    of Connecticut to be exact, was one
    of those that was participating in the program nationally.
    But I never wound up on the list to go to Connecticut.
    I wound up at Alabama.
    And it was while I was at Alabama
    that two interesting things, you might say,
    happened, the least of which was that they had a German prison
    camp in Opelika, Alabama, right outside of Auburn, Alabama.
    And you could see these houses and the German prisoners.
    And these were German prisoners from North Africa
    that were taken during the North African campaign.
    And some of them were sitting around.
    They're all in nice, clean uniforms of some kind
    to identify them and so on.
    When you say houses, were they barracks or were they--
    Like barracks.
    Like barracks.
    Yeah, more like barracks.
    But it was very neat grounds and sort of single story.
    Almost something, they looked almost like a log cabin,
    except without the logs, with siding,
    regular siding rather than the logs, that kind of thing.
    And the other thing was that we heard there was
    a very active USO in Atlanta.
    Atlanta was, oh, about two hours away, something like that.
    So we used to hitchhike.
    You'd get on the side of the road.
    In 5 minutes, somebody would pick you up.
    And most of the time they were going up to Atlanta.
    So I started out on the weekends.
    I would go to Atlanta and just attend the USO.
    I wasn't much of a dancer or anything like that.
    But it was just the idea of being
    able to get away from the school and all the study
    and all the reading and the regimentation and so forth.
    And I met a man who was in the manufacturing business.
    He manufactured ladies intimate garments.
    And we got to be very friendly.
    And at some point in time, he said, whenever this is over,
    hopefully you survive.
    He said, you come back and see me.
    And I'll help you decide what to do with your life.
    Wow.
    And, you know, I said to myself, well, that's really nice.
    His name was Garson, Frank Garson.
    He's dead today but a very, very nice guy.
    And so at the end of about a year,
    that AST program was shut down.
    So you hadn't finished it yet.
    No, no, we'd done about a year of the 18 months.
    And the government shut it down.
    Because they were starting to really need replacements
    in the European theater.
    And also, now this was about, I want