AL BERKOWITZ ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is October 13th, 2010. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center with Al Berkowitz. And we're in Amherst, Massachusetts and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Al, do I have your permission to record this interview?

AL BERKOWITZ: Yes.

CW:Okay. Thank you. So, I thought we could start with your family. So, what do you know about your family as far back as you can remember?

AB:Well, I only knew one grandmother, my mother's mother. And her name -- they 1:00all came from Romania. Her name was Blima, which is a short form for blume, a flower. Blima Ciornei, C-I-O-R-N-E-I, in Romanian, which was, of course, Americanized when they arrived at Staten Island to Chorney, C-H-O-R-N-E-Y. She had married and had two daughters: my mother and my mother's slightly younger sister. Her husband died and she married another man and they had a son and a daughter. And then, he was a kind of -- my mother used the word overseer, but I 2:00think he was probably a manager of an estate on which he lived. And coming home one evening with a large amount of money, a payroll to pay off all the staff, he was robbed and murdered, which left her with two of hers and two of theirs. And then, she remarried and the gentleman she married, whose name was Ciornei, brought with him two sons. So, now there's two of hers, two of his, and two of their-- (laughs) so, she brought five of the six kids over with her when she came to this country. And I wrote a piece about her called "The Progenitrix," 3:00because I always thought of her as the founder of the family. Of course, that's because I didn't know any of the others. And she brought them from Romania. I think the town was called Buzăului. And it was in the western portion of Romania, closer to the Russian border. My mother always used to say that when she went to school in the morning, she never knew whether she would be taught Romanian or Russian. I don't think she knew any Romanian -- or any Russian.

CW:But they spoke Romanian at home?

AB:Yes, but never knew each other there. And she brought her two, their two, and one of his over. The one who elected to stay, his name was Simon, (pronounced 4:00with long "I") S-I-M-O-N. I'm sure over here they would all call him (pronounced with short "I") Simon. But he was always Simon. And he had a very good job with a book publisher and eventually married the owner's daughter and inherited the book publisher. And things were great there until, of course, Hitler moved into Romania and then things were not so great. And they got out of there by the skin of their teeth. I used to hear that they came by way of India and Portugal, but I never could be sure of that.

CW:What kind of book publishing, do you know?

AB:Oh, I think it was all kinds of things, including school textbooks. So, it was a big business. And his wife's name was Bertika. Lovely lady. So, my 5:00grandmother somehow got them all -- she had had a kind of tobacco and wine shop that she used to have and run. And that was the source of her income. And is this the kind of thing you want to hear?

CW:Oh, yeah, it's perfect.

AB:And she sold everything off, the business, the house, everything. And with what money she was able to accumulate, started north for Le Havre. When they arrived there, she already had her tickets for the six of them: the grandmother and the two daughters and the son and a daughter and a son. And I understand 6:00that some of these shipping companies that brought immigrants over used to send agents around to the towns all over Europe to sell tickets on these -- steerage tickets. Bottom of the ship. And she probably had already bought the tickets. So, when she got to Le Havre, the French line, she had the tickets but probably very little money. So, she went to the shipping office, checked in with them, and there would be a sign to the steerage of the ship. I found some reports of a committee that was investigating the conditions on this ship of steerage passenger and it was very, very bad. The bottom of the ship, they would -- had 7:00set poles up and maybe six layers of bunks filling up the whole steerage portion of the ship. When they ever -- they came on deck, they always had the worst part of the ship to go to. Water was salt water. Very little food. But they made it over. When the ship arrived, first and second-class passengers were taken off the ship. The steerage passengers and their baggage was then loaded onto floating -- just floating -- I forgot the word I'm looking for -- which a tug 8:00would take over to Staten Island. And finally got over to Staten Island, and I was able to find the sheet that listed their names. I went over to the branch of the National Archives over in -- starts with a P. Over by the -- over in the mountains on the west end of the state.

CW:Pittsfield?

AB:Pittsfield. Somewhere between Pittsfield and Leeds was a branch of the National Archives and records service. And they had microfilm, all of these manifests, these big spreadsheets. On the left side, you had the name of the passenger and a whole series of columns. And in the -- at the head end of these columns, they wanted your name, your date of birth, your nationality, what 9:00language or languages you spoke, all of this stuff. If you had ever gotten married while you were still married. (laughs) And I can imagine the answer to that. And I noticed on theirs, there were the initials LPC, which I found out stood for "likely public charge," because she didn't have any money. She gets over and the person who was supposed to meet them, I think it was a brother-in-law who was supposed to meet them, didn't show up the day they came. So, I can imagine the terror that went with it, because coming from a country where a uniform meant that they would be harassed, and here they're surrounded 10:00by it in a country whose language they didn't speak, knew nothing about, and they are set aside. They are not brought in. So, that using the Freedom of Information Act, I asked for all of the documents that went with their hearing and the answer came back there were none, which means that the man who was supposed to get them probably arrived one day late and took them. And they went, probably -- they went to the Lower East Side, probably as -- in those days, there was a Romanian contingent and an Italian contingent and all of these in the Lower East Side. So, I'm sure they went to the Romanian contingent and got 11:00an apartment. And on the spreadsheet, my mother and her sister were designated as laborers along with the other two. Not the other -- the final two kids, 'cause they were still eight, ten years old. They would be schoolkids. But the others are all listed as laborers. My mother was a milliner. I have a picture of her at home with a hat she made, with a brim like this. And a granddaughter of mine who knows a lot about hats took a look and was -- they were trying to figure out how she made it and what she made it of. And her sister got a job making what they called mantles for gas lamps. One of the sons, the older of the 12:00two sons, got a job as a streetcar conductor. Now, how he knew what the streets were, I can not figure out. (laughs) But he evidently did. He got the job. And mom stayed home and took care of the house and the two little kids. And my mother and father met here, married. And as I told you, I have a copy of their marriage contract. Part of which I just saw says that she came with a dowry, which was worth a hundred silver pieces, I think, and that he also put in the same amount of his goods and that he would be responsible for that and that if 13:00it even took the shirt off his back, he would -- that would be done, too. And so, they were married. My father, I'm sure, had been apprenticed to a printer, probably when he was about fourteen over in Romania. And when he came over here, he opened up a print shop of his own called the Little Print and moved to New Rochelle, New York, where they lived. My brother and I were both born there, in the house that they were married in. (laughs) And it grew into the largest printing plant in the county, finally. And I grew up around the print shop, so I 14:00know about linotype machines and things of that kind. And my father's brother married my mother's sister. And they bought a house next door and they had four kids: three boys and a girl. On our side, there was just my older brother, by four years, and myself. And on weekends, the crowd from New York would come up to the country, New Rochelle, to see their mother and their sisters and brought their kids with them and the cousins always had a wonderful time together. And that was growing up. Oh, what I didn't say was that my father, being the man he was, had my mother's mother come and live with us. And she was always known, of 15:00course, as bobe [grandmother]. Now, the first time I saw somebody from West Texas called Bubba driving a pickup truck with a gun rack behind him and eating pork sandwiches, I never could somehow get them together with my bobe. (laughs) And I don't think I ever will. However -- am I going on too long?

CW:No, it's great. I'd love to hear more about her, so let's --

AB:The grandmother.

CW:Yeah.

AB:Well, she came to live with us and as far as I knew, she was always there. I'm sure when I was about three or four years old I was wondering who were all these people who lived in this house with my mother and me. And I found out who 16:00all the -- who they all were. And we all loved her mother dearly. She was a great gal and she could be tough if she had to be. And in her younger days, she'd had to be. And she lived with us until I was nine. Now, here's where the Yiddish comes in, because my mother and father both learned English, so we were a trilingual household. They spoke Romanian, Yiddish, and English. And if my brother and I wanted to converse with our grandmother, we would have to learn either Romanian or Yiddish, and Yiddish, I assure you, was a little easier than Romanian. And I remember I was away at summer camp when she died. I was nine. 17:00And one of -- the oldest boy from next door, who was coming up to the camp, was given the duty of telling me that my grandmother had died. I can still remember where we were up there when he told me, 'cause she was very dear to me and to all of us. And at that point, our household was cut down by a major player in it. And I always remember coming home on a Friday and smelling challah being made. And one other dish that I remember was called salată, which I think must 18:00have been Romanian for salad, because you took an eggplant and you put it over a flame, a gas flame. My mother even had a small gas stove put in the basement of our new house when we finally got it to make -- to cook eggplant over a flame. 'Cause when you got through with it, the entire outside shell of the --

CW:Eggplant.

AB:-- eggplant was black. You peeled all the black skin off it, and then I still have this picture: you put it on a board, like a cutting board, tilted over the sink and all the liquid and the poisons, the sour stuff, drained out of it. And 19:00then, on the next day, you chopped it up very fine and chopped an onion in it and then you served that with olive oil. (laughs) And they also did something with the Romanian name mămăligă. Now, mămăligă was a standard peasant dish, I think, in every country in the world. It's made with corn -- it's cornmeal mush. You make it with cornmeal. In every country, peasants have it and it's a standard part of the diet. And my parents always used to eat it with some stuff called brânză, which was a kind of goat cheese. My brother and I always 20:00prefer scrambled eggs on it. (laughs) And that's how we would eat it. But what you did is you took a great big pot and you cooked up this cornmeal mush. So, you had this whole pot of it until it stiffened. And you turned it over on a platter or on a board and then you cut it with a very fine piece of thread, 'cause it was still damp inside and was very tough getting through with a knife. And I always remember them cutting the mămăligă with a string and then having either their goat cheese or scrambled eggs with it. And those are the two typical, I guess, European dishes that I remember and can still taste, although 21:00I haven't seen them in, what, twenty-five, seventy -- sixty years or more. So, my brother went to Columbia in New York. We both went by train to New York every day to class, the good old New York, New Haven, and Hartford, which is the train that ran up along the coast to Boston. And I went to NYU and we both sang in the choir. We used to drive -- I'm sure we drove my mother crazy with the music, because my brother liked piano music and I liked symphonic music and my mother knew nothing about and didn't care that much about it. But it was going all the 22:00time. My father was a great opera fan. So, (laughs) that was one more thing that got added to the mix. But I still remember that the director of the New York University varsity choir and head of the music department was tapped to direct the New York Oratorio Society when they required a new conductor. And he was short on tenors and basses. And so, he recruited the entire New York University varsity choir of tenors and basses. So, we were all -- joined to the New York Oratorio Society and used to get into a white tie and tails twice a year to sing "The Messiah" and the Bach B minor Mass at Carnegie Hall, which is always great 23:00fun. I went to hear the Arcadia Players do the B minor Mass. Brought back very fond memories. I brought a score with me. They sang it all. There are only twenty-two in their choir. Our choir used to be about a hundred or a hundred and fifty. So, if they had twenty-two, every singer had to sing every note. And they did. Did a very nice job of it. Well --

CW:So, did you learn any Jewish music or was that --

AB:Yeah. My father used to listen to WEVD in New York. And, of course, Yiddish -- my parents could speak Romanian to my grandmother but probably more than not, they spoke Yiddish. My brother and I learned enough Yiddish to speak with her so 24:00that if my parents wanted now to speak of something which they didn't want the kids to hear, it had to be in Romanian. And that was the only safe language in the house -- my brother and I learned enough Yiddish. And then, after my grandmother died, it left my tongue, as it has with, I think, a lot of people. When the grandparents are around, they spoke Yiddish and so did you. And after they went, you stopped using it -- until I came here in 1997. I was recruited by Myra Fine, who came across the street to where I live at Applewood and gave a talk about this new thing going up over here and was recruiting people who might be docents, and recruited me. So, I came to work about a week before the building was dedicated and was here for thirteen years on the -- Monday mornings 25:00on the front desk. I had a lot of fun doing it. And then, Yiddish started coming back. And I would start -- I went over the alphabet over and over and then I would start forming the words, any words I would see, in Hebrew -- not the script, the printed Hebrew -- and making words out of them. And so, that started coming back. Not spoken. I could understand, probably, a good deal of it. But I probably wouldn't have tried to speak it.

CW:Do you remember what you used to talk to your bobe about?

AB:No. It was just -- it was one of those as-needed things. She would ask me a question in Yiddish, so I would answer in Yiddish. But that was about the extent 26:00of it. And, as I recall, we never had any difficulty communicating with each other. My brother didn't either. But there's very sweet memories there of her. And now, of course, of my parents. I told you I had brought this. I brought one of me and one of my parents.

CW:That's great. Hold it up for the camera. (laughter) Wow.

AB:A little one of my parents, of course.

CW:Yeah. So, did your home -- what was Jewish about your home, if anything?

AB:Oh, well, more when my grandmother was alive. And there, every Friday, as I 27:00say, I would come home and the house smelled wonderful from baking bread for Shabbos. And my mother kept a kosher household. I don't know whether it was necessarily instilled in her or whether it was in deference to my grandmother, who would have wanted a kosher household. And so, having two sets of everyday dishes and two sets of good dishes and the same with the silver and all of this kind of thing -- perfectly natural to me. That's the way the house worked. And the towels you used to dry the dishes had either a red stripe on them for a meat dish or a blue stripe for -- dairy dish. And pots and pans, the same -- and 28:00silver, everything, same.

CW:And you had a -- did you have any religious education when you were young?

AB:Well, yes, as a kid -- this is before bar mitzvah -- a man of some years came to the house once a week and taught me Hebrew. He taught me how to read Hebrew. Started with the alphabet, and then took over with a siddur and read. I may not have known what I was reading, translation, but I could read it, so that at the age of thirteen, I was bar mitzvahed with another boy. The two of us together were bar mitzvahed on the same Saturday. And back then, there was no such thing 29:00as a bat mitzvah. Too bad, but (laughter) that's the way it was. And I was the guy who knew how to read Hebrew. So, I was the guy who read the portion from the Torah, which made my parents very happy. (laughs) And that ties in with one of my stories as a docent. You want it now?

CW:Sure.

AB:After I showed the film all those years, I would then give 'em a spiel about the Center and the books, and the books went out to institutions as well as individuals.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AB:A rabbi came in and he marched up to the desk and he said, "I'm a member." I said, "Good!" He said, "I've been looking for some Yiddish books. I can't find 30:00them anywhere." So, I sent him down to Katherine. About two hours later, he comes out with a truck and a big smile. Four boxes, loaded with books he couldn't find anywhere else. And then, at the opposite extreme, a young rabbi came in and after he had seen the film and gotten the spiel and looked at everything and walked around, just as he was leaving, he comes up to the desk and he says, "You should move that Torah over a little." I said, "Really? Why?" He said, "Well, it's not at a very interesting place right now." He said, "If you move it just a little, you'll get to Leviticus Chapter 19, which are the instructions on how you should live your life. And that's interesting." So, I wrote Aaron a note and somebody who should know subsequently told me it's been moved. And, of course, when I got home, first thing I did was go to the Bible 31:00and look up Leviticus Chapter 19. And sure enough, that's what it is and it's interesting. So, I recommend it.

CW:So, after your -- so, you went to public school, though?

AB:Oh, yeah.

CW:Okay.

AB:This is standard operating procedure. I went to the Mayflower School, which I have now -- I have found has been bought by the Iona, which is a Catholic college, which was across the street from my elementary school. And so, it's part of them now. I don't know where the kids in the local neighborhood -- and they must have built another school. And then, the junior high school and then the high school. And that's what all the kids did. I'm not sure that there was a 32:00Jewish school, a Yiddish school in the town. I'm not sure there was. But there didn't seem to be any problem with our going right to the regular local public school, starting with kindergarten. Kiddie garden.

CW:(laughs) And who were your friends growing up?

AB:They were -- friends were Jewish because my parents were Reform Jews. And there was a Reform temple, still there, and -- that we went to. And it sounds funny to me now, but they had a Sunday school, which seemed a little odd to me 33:00for a temple school. But there was, and so you learned Jewish history and you could learn Hebrew. You didn't learn Yiddish. You learned Hebrew. My brother subsequently taught in a school for kids and taught Jewish history. And I think he also might have taught some Hebrew. But I went through the whole school there and was confirmed with a class of kids who I was going to school with every day anyway on the other -- on five other days a week. And so that -- all the other 34:00activities that went on at Temple Israel School, I was involved with and that's who my friends were, were people I knew from there.

CW:Did you like school?

AB:Well, now, about sixty-five or seventy years (laughs) later, I don't remember. I was always good in school. I used to do my homework, I used to do the reading, and I was interested. And that followed me right through up to one course I flunked as a freshman in college, the one and only ever. And that was 35:00quite a shock, I'll tell you. Well, that was the -- I had to take freshman math. Freshman math was advanced algebra and solid geometry. And I had taken geometry and algebra in high school. And then, I was finished with math in high school and had about two more years to go. And then, I get thrown into advanced algebra and solid geometry with a professor with a very bad stammer whose major field was the higher mathematics of physics. And he was called on to teach this class of unruly freshmen advanced algebra. So, you can see it wasn't a happy time (laughs) for any of us. Well, yeah, I did all right in school, yeah.

CW:Yeah. And then, you went into library school, right?

AB:Ah, well that's -- what happened was -- you want that? Yes? When I graduated from college, was 1942. That was before your time, yes. I looked in "The New York Times" -- I was registered for the draft, World War II. And I looked in the "Times" help wanted section and all they had for guys like me were male stenographers. They were paying 'em forty bucks a week, and I wanted one of those jobs. So, I went -- my next-door cousin, the one girl, came over for a visit and I told her what the problem was. And she was going to Barnard at the 37:00time, the Columbia school. And she told me that during World War I, a professor by the name of Miller had invented a system of shorthand, Miller shorthand. Which used Pitman theory but a different meaning, different sound, and that there was still a school in New York that was a quick one. They could teach you shorthand a lot faster with that system, because that's the way it was originally designed. And so, I went down there and signed up. And I think I set the school record because I was in a hurry. So, in about twenty-one working days, I had about 120 words a minute in shorthand and seventy typing, 38:00error-free. And I was then just about ready. I was going to stay there one more week, for practice, and then go out and get a job, when a guy in a uniform shows up from the United States Maritime Service looking for men who can take shorthand and typing. So, I figured, now they're looking for me. So, I signed up and I spent the next four years in the United States Maritime Service. What was your question?

CW:No, that was it. I was actually --

AB:How did I --

CW:-- wanted to get to that part.

AB:How did I get --

CW:So --

AB:Okay, so about the last -- close to a year, my commanding officer in New York was being sent to Washington to take over from the head of the medals and awards 39:00division of the Maritime Service in Washington. The guy who ran it then had had a heart attack, so they sent him down just to cover until the guy came out. And while there, I saw -- there was a little poster for a play, a classic play being done by a group in Washington. And I'd always been interested in theater and so I found out who put it up. Well, the guy who put it up was a yeoman who was working for me. And he said, "It's this group. It's a group here that's doing it. It's a lot of fun. If you're interested, why don't you call up the director 40:00and go talk to him?" So, I did and got involved with that and met a young lady who was taking piano and organ lessons from a teacher. And I had my instruction in music theory and in counterpoint, and composition had been left out. I had been taught to play the piano. So, I went to see her to take the course. And she took me on and I didn't have a piano at the time, which was just great because I had to follow the rules. I couldn't sit down at a piano and, "Let's see, does it sound good this way or this way?" I had to follow the rules. So, one of her 41:00assignments was to write a setting for a chorus and organ. And I was to pick a text, so I picked a psalm, one of the psalms, pretty strong one, and wrote the setting for it. Now, she had been the alternate organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Washington. That was Eisenhower's church. And they were looking for a hymn, and she showed him mine, and he said he'd like to do it. Thrill. So, some friends of mine and I all attended the Sunday service and I got to hear what I sounded like, finally, sung by who it was intended for. That was 42:00one of my two great thrills in music. The other one was when the head of that little theater group left there and got on the faculty at George Washington University in the speech and drama department. And he was doing -- he was going to produce "Dark of the Moon," play. Heard of it? Yes. Did a spectacular production of it. Asked me if I would help him out with the music. I said, "Sure!" So, what they did was when they sent you the script, they sent you a line, the melody line, for the things that were being sung in a certain scene, in a country mountain church in West Virginia. And I set them for four parts and 43:00I trained the actors to be singers. And one of the authors came to see the show. And the next thing I know, we get a letter from a lawyer in London saying that he has seen this and he thinks that the music that was used in this production would be just perfect for the one they're going to do now in London. Now, thrill? Yes. Well, it didn't work out because another -- a student had written some violin stuff for the witches and she had, I was told -- may have made a big point of the fact that she owned the copyright on this. Scared 'em, so that I got a letter that said they had talked it over and decided just to use the stuff 44:00in the public domain. I would have settled for a program credit. (laughter) But that was the second thrill. It lasted a long time, till the final letter and the music came back. Well, I got off the track. How did I get into all this?

CW:Well, what time period was that? Was that while you were in the Maritime Service or after?

AB:Yes.

CW:Okay.

AB:The last year of the Maritime Service in Washington, evenings would be spent -- I didn't know anybody here. Evenings would be spent with a theater group and I was doing all the music for it, which was great fun. Built up a big record collection for them. And then, when the director left to go to the faculty at George Washington and asked me to help, of course I would. But by then, I had 45:00been -- I had had four years, just short of four years with Maritime and the war was just about over. And so, I looked around for a job. And I walked down the street and was lucky enough to go into just the -- employment agency that was looking for a bookkeeper and I had studied accounting in college. And the people who wanted him was the National Symphony Orchestra. So, I went up and got hired and I spent three years with them. Got to know the two managers very well and the office manager. And then, when the conductor left and the office manager who had also been his secretary left, I thought, Well, I've been doing all the stuff 46:00with her. I would be a logical one to be the new office manager, no? Yes. And then, I was told that they were bringing somebody in to be the office manager and I should show her what she has to do. And I didn't get bothered by this except every time I thought of it. And so, one of the managers I had known -- there were two of them. One had gone into the Navy from that job and then, back then, when you came out of the service, your job had to be waiting for you. But they didn't need two managers. And at that point, he decided to open up a concert bureau, putting on Heifetz and Horowitz and Rubinstein and all of these guys and orchestras. And he had just started that for the next season. And so, I 47:00went to see him. I already resigned, effective Labor Day, from the symphony. And I said, "You're going to need some help. You're going to be putting on about forty concerts next year." And he was working out of an office with a secretary. And what he needed was a press man and some inside help and I was the guy who knew how to do it. So, I went to work for him and became the assistant manager of that bureau and stayed there for ten years. Well, at the end of that time, I was noticing something funny in this eye and I saw my ophthalmologist and he told me I had two extra blind spots in this eye. And since I wanted to be very careful with my sight, he thought that -- he said, "I hate to say this to somebody your age" -- by then, I must have been in the late thirties -- "who is 48:00fixed in a job, but I think it's the pressure." And it was a pressure job. "I think the pressure of this job is what may be causing this." So, I figured, Well, I better get out of this. I don't want to go blind. So, my wife -- my first wife; I've had two. My first wife was a librarian and I'd always been interested in it. And as I said in that sheet I gave you, the only university in Washington that had a department of library science was Catholic University. So, I went to CU to get a master's in library science. And when I finished and got 49:00my degree, a job was waiting for me in the DC public library system as a reference librarian. So, I went to work for DC Public, stayed there for five years. And then, a man I knew from school was head of the reference division at the National Library of Medicine. And he was looking for somebody to take over one of his section-- and asked me if I would do it. Well, my wife and I argued about it over a weekend. "I'm set where I am. Do I want to jump into this?" And we decided that I did. So, I went out and got interviewed and got the job. Now, it's quite a difference from DC Public, 'cause here I was head of a section, had 50:00about thirty, forty people in it, and we handled one of the largest programs of the library, which was the interlibrary loan system for the National Library of Medicine. We were getting a quarter of a million requests a year for an article out of a medical journal. Now, they called it interlibrary loan because you filled out an American Library Association interlibrary loan form and you sent it in. And when we sent you a copy of the article, for heaven's sake, don't send it back, right? (laughs) Maybe ten percent of our requests were for a book. By the time, in medicine, that it got into a book, it wasn't that new. So, the journal was the big thing and the journal article is what they wanted. So, we 51:00had movable cameras going into the stacks, all this kind of thing, and a huge machine that would turn a row of microfilm into a roll of paper copy and with a mark on it so you could put it to an electric copier and it would cut it into pages. So, it was quite an operation. And so, I was head of this section for a few years. And then, the head of the division of which I was one of three sections left. And I got the job as the chief of the division. And that's how I wound up in the National Library of Medicine and spent the last years of my library -- my last eighteen years at the Library of Medicine and retired from there. And my first wife had died of cancer and I remarried. My second wife also 52:00died of cancer. She had a brain tumor. The first wife and I were married nineteen years. The second one, thirty-three. But you don't get over it that easily. So, then Myra -- we came down here to visit friends and he said, "There's a place going up over in Amherst. You're looking for a retirement place? Want to go see it?" We said, "Sure!" So, we came here and they hadn't finished the building yet. The stairway was an open stairway. Wasn't closed in with walls and there wasn't a door on the apartment I'm in. And my wife walked in and looked out the windows across the way at the Eric Carle Museum, which 53:00wasn't there at the time, and looked at the cathedral ceiling and said, "This is the one I want." And that's the one we got and I'm still living there. That's how I got here.

CW:Oh. (laughs) So, I'm wondering if being Jewish helped you or made you feel like there were certain things that you couldn't do at certain points in your life?

AB:Shouldn't do, couldn't do, yeah.

CW:Yeah.

AB:Yes. I have rarely, if ever, been the object of real rough anti-Semitism. Most of my friends growing up were Jewish. They were the kids I knew in school and those were the kids at the temple school. And I always made it my business 54:00to find out everything I could about my religion, to read history, and to do all these things. So, if somebody asked me questions, I was able to answer them with some degree of assurety [sic] that I knew what I was talking about. And I never made a big thing of my Jewishness unless or until I got rubbed for it and then, suddenly, I became completely Jewish. So, that was a reaction. Don't hit me for 55:00my religion. I don't expect to be complimented for it, either. But was neutral ground and that's the way I've always lived, all of these years. And it's worked, because any time that I felt any kind of push against me for that reason, I always reacted and still would.

CW:Can you give an example of a time --

AB:Well, I remember there were kids in elementary or junior high school -- an Irish kid in particular, who was always ready to pick a fight about something. But I don't remember my reaction. But I know that ever since I have been aware 56:00of this as a problem, possible problem for me, it's always been the same reaction: don't push at me, 'cause you're going to feel pushback. And it's going to be based on the fact that I am who I am. And I never made a big thing of it, but if it came at me, I was prepared for it.

CW:Has your sense of Jewishness changed throughout your life?

AB:I wouldn't be surprised. As a kid, of course, you don't have the same healthy 57:00approach to it as you might have as an adult or as an old man. (laughter) Your approach -- you go to Sunday school and your friends are Jewish and it's no big deal, it's -- that's the way it is, right? But then, you start -- as you grow up and you get out into the mixed world, then you start to feel it. You can feel it because it's different from other people. And it is different. But you express a certain pride in it. You don't make a big thing of it. But if it ever comes up to that, you know who you are. You are what and who you are. And everybody, I 58:00think, takes a little pride in who they are and that's where it starts to show, right?

CW:So, I guess one thing that I wanted to ask you about -- a couple of big historic events that happened during your life. I mean, being a young person --

AB:Okay.

CW:-- what was World War II like, I mean, being in the Maritime Service or -- yeah.

AB:All right. There -- probably not one person in a hundred or a thousand for whom the United States Maritime Service has any significance. They don't know what it is or if it was. The United States Maritime Service was the training organization of the War Shipping Administration, which was a government 59:00organization during World War II. It may still be alive. I don't even know. But War Shipping controlled merchant shipping. They're the ones who sent the ships to Murmansk and to England, to France, to wherever, loaded with explosives or food or whatever was called for. But they were merchant ships and there were merchant seamen on them. Now, a merchant seaman is not part of a uniform service. He has a jacket and a pair of pants and a pair of shoes and when his ship hits port, he gets on -- he puts those on and gets off and walks around, take a look at the city. And is the object of all kinds of stabs: "He's a draft 60:00dodger, why isn't he in a uniform?" Where they were -- more merchant seamen were killed in some of the battles over in the South Pacific than the other services put together. Their ships were sunk and they went down with 'em. So that the United States government finally decided that they would recruit Marine officers. On a merchant ship, you've got a deck department and an engine room department. And you have a department that feeds 'em, the cooks and bakers. On deck, you have a captain. He's head of the whole thing and his word is law. 61:00Under him, you have a chief mate, a first mate, second and third. In the engine room, you have a chief engineer who knows everything about that boiler and what it does and you -- under him, you have a first, second, and third assistant -- engineers, so that they cover a watch, four hours. There are enough of them so that they are in charge of a four-hour watch, around the clock. Somebody is always there who knows what he's doing. Then, under them, you have non-licensed personnel. You have able-bodied seamen, ordinary seamen, carpenters. You have what -- they are called wipers, W-I-P-E-R-S, who clean up the place, who keep the engine clean. So, the Maritime Service was the training organization for the 62:00War Shipping Administration. They had training schools for officers and for non-licensed personnel. They had a huge training organization out in Brooklyn, New York for ordinary seamen and for wipers. So, kids who are going into the Army, if they wanted to go into the Merchant Marine instead could sign up there and go to school and were taught what they had to do onboard this Merchant Marine ship. And then, after a certain amount of time in a certain rating, could then go to the Coast Guard, take an examination for a third assistant engineer 63:00or a third mate and get a license and now he's an officer on the ship. So, War Shipping Administration, U.S. Maritime Service training organization. I had a uniform 'cause I was in the training organization. I was a government person and I started out -- had a wonderful commander. The first one, real one I had was in what was called officer procurement. And our job was to get these guys off the ship, bring 'em in. We had upgrading schools where a guy with a third mate's license could come to school for two, three months and then go across the street to the Coast Guard and take the exam for second mate and come back after he's had a certain amount of time onboard ship as second mate, take the course, go 64:00across for chief mate, and after that take a -- for a master's license. So, it was a training organization. And my guy, when he got transferred to Washington, said if I -- by then, he had gotten me up to being from an apprentice seaman to a chief yeoman. I was a chief petty officer. So, I finally got out of the little white hat (laughs) and the thing around your neck with a square knot in it and got into a jacket, pair of trousers, a coat, and a peak cap and a -- one of these -- three of these and then a thing underneath it. So, I was a chief yeoman. And he said, "If I need a chief down in Washington, where I'm going, will you come?" Now, normally, all he had to do was have somebody write up a set 65:00of officer orders and hand them to me and I would go. That isn't the kind of a guy he was. He said, "If I need one down there, will you come?" And I said, "Sure. Nothing holding me here." And six weeks later, I get a set of orders, "Come down and report to" -- (laughs) and that's what got me to Washington, which got me to the theater group, which got me to finish -- to go to work after Maritime Service in the music stuff, which got me to the National Library of Medicine, my last eighteen years as a librarian.

CW:Yeah.

AB:Quite a run, yeah?

CW:Yeah. How did you -- I don't know, among people that you were talking to, what did you think about the war or --

AB:The war? I still remember where I was and what I was doing when Pearl Harbor was -- which is not unusual, but --

CW:Yeah, can you tell me?

AB:Sure. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was listening to the New York Philharmonic on the radio and Arthur Rubinstein was the piano soloist for the day. And they interrupted the program to say that Pearl Harbor had just been attacked by Japanese planes, that so many ships had been sunk and they had attacked Hickam Field and planes had been destroyed on the ground. "And we will provide you with more information as we get it." And that's what I was doing on that Sunday afternoon, December 7th, with Rubinstein as piano soloist and the New York Philharmonic -- listening to the radio. And that's when it all started. 67:00And then, the draft and you signed up for it and waited to be called. I always thought there was a -- some kind of poetic justice that -- my brother was in the Air Force and he was stationed in Europe. And I always thought it was some kind of great poetic justice that the Romanians had something called the Ploiești oil fields. And they were getting oil out of the ground and they were bombed by the Nazis. And my brother in the Air Force, in Italy at the time, was one who 68:00helped get the planes off the ground that went over and bombed all hell out of Nazi Europe. And I always thought that that's given 'em back for Ploiești. (laughs) Yeah. Well, this is presumably an interview involving Yiddish and it hasn't really touched it, has it?

CW:Well, it's about more than Yiddish. It's about your stories, so -- (laughs)

AB:Yeah.

CW:-- we're doing pretty well. But is there anything you want to talk about, in particular?

AB:No, except that -- just to say that after thirteen years, why am I no longer 69:00on Monday morning at the desk, right? Well, what happened was after my wife died -- you know what happens to a man after his wife dies. Things start piling up and what you should be doing, you aren't doing at home. And then, suddenly, one day, you look around you and you're covered in paper and you've got to get it cleaned up. And so, after my thirteen years here, I decided that -- oh, I was also doing another -- volunteering. I was volunteering at the Jones Library in Amherst as a tutor in English as a second language. I did that because I thought 70:00that my parents probably got help when they got over here and I was giving back. I think the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society probably had a hand in it, 'cause I think my father used to, very importantly, support them. And so, I thought that, They had help and maybe I can help somebody else. As it was, for fifteen years, I was teaching a Tibetan man English. When I got him, he was completely illiterate. He couldn't read or write any language, including Tibetan. He was working two jobs, so he worked seven days a week and he was operating a huge 71:00mechanical dishwashing machine in Whole Foods. They have a delicatessen over there. And for the two days off a week there, he worked at Judie's Restaurant on a great big commercial dishwashing machine. So, he couldn't read or write any language. But when I finished with him, fifteen years later, and felt that I had to stop that, too, he could read English. And my big thrill there was when he called me up one morning, early, to tell me he had gone to the library and they had a sign up, which he had read, which said the library is closed for staff training and he wanted to tell me not to come that morning. And that was another 72:00thrill because before I got him, he couldn't do that.

CW:Yeah.

AB:And that's the other -- so, I took both of my volunteer jobs, the one here and the one at Jones Library, and I just said, I have to stop. This was knocking off the first three mornings every week and it's been going on for years and the stuff is piling up and I have to get to it. I find that I'm lazy, because ever since I stopped doing it, I haven't made as much progress as I had hoped. But I'm now reaching the point where I'm getting over the laziness and the stuff is going out.

CW:Yeah. Have you found any great stuff going -- have you found any treasures going through your things?

AB:I wish I could say I did. I haven't yet.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:Why did you decide to come work at the Yiddish Book Center?

AB:Well, I went down to hear Myra Fine give her talk about what was being built across the way here. I was fascinated with the idea. I mean, it had the combination of libraries and some people still think this is a library. A combination of book collection and Yiddish as a language. And between the two of them, after Myra's talk, I gave her my name and told her I'd be interested in coming over and volunteering as a docent. And I still remember the dedication a 74:00week later, a week after I started. I still remember Aaron and Gail sitting in the front row under the tent with their two daughters. And I've had a wonderful time here. I've enjoyed it and I've made it my business to be as interesting as I could to people who just walk in the door and tell 'em things that are of interest. I can't -- now, sixty, seventy years later, I can't read Yiddish. I never could read Yiddish. I used to read Hebrew and couldn't translate it. So, 75:00my connection had to do with the speaking of Yiddish at home, whether to my parents or my grandmother. And all the years that I was in public school, right up through high school -- that I went to religious school. Now, for some people, that might not have even been considered religious school. But it was. We were taught the fundamentals and we were taught how to read Hebrew and we were taught history. So, between the feeling you have at home and what you get there --

CW:Yeah.

AB:-- you get it.

CW:Well, I wanted to ask a question from earlier about the -- if you had any family in Romania, that one uncle, if he -- if you were still in touch with him?

AB:He and his wife are both gone. Remember, I'm just short of eighty. So, an uncle of mine would have to be something. He was -- when the Nazis moved in to Romania, he got out, whether it was by way of India or Portugal, I'm not sure. Or both. And he was a rather wealthy man. And they were able to get over here. I don't think he was ever particularly happy over here. And he was up in years in that time. So was his wife. And he was the one who didn't come, so I didn't know 77:00him the way I knew the others, because there was uncle Al and aunt Jenny and -- oh, that was interesting, too, because aunt Jenny, as a kid, was listed on this manifest sheet for the steerage passengers. And her name was Sabina. Now, if that's a Jewish name or a Yiddish name, I don't know. But she was listed as Sabina and -- but I never knew her as anything else but Jenny. And she had two kids, who were cousins. And so, on the weekends, when they came up to the 78:00country, all the cousins got together and there were lots of cousins. Six, eight, nine, maybe ten cousins, all in the same house or outside, (laughs) yeah. Yeah. So, at our house, there was always a challah on Friday. And back when my grandmother was alive, and even after she went, I could smell it when I came in on a Friday, and you always knew it was Shabbos. And Yiddish was spoken in the house along with English and some Romanian. The holidays were observed. So, you 79:00knew who you were.

CW:What about in your adult life? Did you have Jewish traditions?

AB:Not really. I think I expanded my whole outlook on religion when I came to work here because it was all around me. And I guess it couldn't have been too far away or too far below the surface. But when I came over here on a Monday morning, I was surrounded and that was a good thing. And I felt it. And with a 80:00name like mine, you have no -- there's no question about who I am. If your name is Berkowitz, you're known as Berky. Every Berkowitz is Berky, just like every Smith is Smitty. And that's the way I am known over across the street at Applewood. And that's the way I was known at camp. I had another -- what do they call it? A pet name.

CW:Nickname, yeah. Nickname.

AB:Nickname. I had another one of those, which I will not tell you, (laughs) that I picked up starting at the age of four. And I am still known by that name to everybody in the family. Some of them don't even know my first name, only 81:00this nickname. (laughter) And you're laughing as if you want to know what it is.

CW:I do! But I don't want to pressure you. (laughs)

AB:You don't have to pressure me. I had my tonsils and adenoids out when I was four. I evidently had a very pretty nurse who used to call me Baby Albert. And when I got home, my brother, who could be a nag if he wanted to be, and four cousins next door all wanted to know what the pretty nurse called me in the hospital. And so, I didn't say a word, which was not unusual for me, until finally I got so furious at all of them that I yelled out, "Bibi Albert!" Not 82:00Baby Albert. Bibi Albert. And they all thought this was the funniest thing they had ever heard and I became Bibi. And I remain Bibi, right up to my eighty-ninth year, to the family. And that's what they call me and it sounds perfectly normal to me. And when somebody calls me Albert, I almost find it hard to respond. The only place I was known as Albert, of course, was in public school where a teacher would call me Albert. When I got to college, you were mister or miss. So, now you know. (laughter) And so does everybody else. (laughter)

CW:Well, I wanted to finish by asking you if you have any advice for future generations.

AB:(laughs) You're putting me in a class that I don't belong in. (laughs) Advice? Any particular subject?

CW:Well, let's say about Jewishness.

AB:Okay. If you don't already feel this way, start thinking about what I've been talking about: your personal Jewishness, that -- you don't push it in people's faces. There's no reason to. But if somebody tries to make less of you than you 84:00are because of your Jewishness, back up, respond. That's when you are being pushed. And when you're being pushed, push back. Now, I don't want somebody who happens to see this -- go out and punch somebody in the nose, (laughs) even if brought to it. Use your judgment, too. But yours is a prideful origin and a prideful history and so you can be proud of that, inwardly proud of that. You 85:00don't have to push other people around or make a big tsimes out of it. But you will defend it if you are pushed. I don't know if that's different from what anyone else would say.

CW:Everyone has a different answer. (laughs) Well, thank you. Is there anything else you want to add?

AB:No, I think I have talked you blue in the face.

CW:(laughs) It's been a delight. Thank you. (laughter)

[END OF INTERVIEW]