HARVEY HORN ORAL HISTORY

HILLARY OSSIP:This is Hillary Ossip and today is July 15th, 2011. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Harvey Horn and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record this interview?

HARVEY HORN: Yes.

HO:Thank you. So, to begin, could you tell me briefly where your family came from and how they came to the US?

HH:Well, I'm just checking into that, actually. My grandfather and grandmother, Fanny and Aaron Nekob, probably came to this country in the late 1800s because their oldest daughter, Sadie, was born in Russia. Not sure where. The other four 1:00children that survived, one of which was my mother, were all born here. And they settled in Borough Park, which is a strong Jewish area, a little -- mixed with Italians. Today, it is Orthodox. It is Lubavitch Orthodox -- not the Satmar. So, they came here. And in those days, it was the end of the subway line, BMT subway line. Now, of course, that goes all the way out to Coney Island. And my grandmother was Orthodox and my mother was kosher. And I grew up in a kosher home. But I did the bar mitzvah thing but I didn't stay with it. And my father 2:00came from Poland, Brzeziny or Brezhin. They were Brezhiners. And a small town, just east of Łódź. In those days -- and I visited there in 2005 -- there were twelve thousand in this town, very successful. The finest tailors in Europe. Thanks to Hitler, six thousand were annihilated and the only thing that remains is a wooden door in white and blue, a commemoration of six thousand Jews that are here. And we were with a woman because someone wrote the story of the Brezhiners, both Poland and here. I got her name and she actually took us from 3:00Warsaw down to Brzeziny. And while we're looking at this door, next to it there's a hallway with a -- what was a large door. And there's a groove for the mezuzah. And I look at this thing, and Anna, the guide, says, "Wow." And she started taking pictures, 'cause she was working on Jewish history in Poland, getting her doctorate at Brandeis. So, I got a flavor for the world my father lived in. He came from thirteen -- that we know of -- it was probably sixteen. And my grandfather was a big wheel -- there were, like, three manufacturers and he was one of them. And he married Hodis, which is my grandmother, my father's side, and she was maybe seventeen or eighteen and he was maybe thirty-five. But 4:00that's the way things were done in those days. So, I grew up in Brooklyn. The family lived within four or five blocks of each other, all the cousins. And it was great. We were poor. My father worked three days. I didn't know that. But we lived in my grandmother's house, which became a three-story house from one story. And I did the usual things as a kid: played ball in the streets, watched all the sports, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, when I was seventeen, along comes Pearl Harbor. And I just started -- right after that, just started engineering school at Pratt Institute. I always wanted to fly. I read everything there was on World War I aces -- the SPADs, the Sopwith, with 5:00the pilots with the silk scarf wrapped around their neck. I built planes. We used to design and build them out of balsa wood. And so, the war was on, I said, That's something I have to do. So, unbeknownst to my folks, I enlisted in October of '42, when I was -- when I turned -- I had already turned eighteen. And I became a cadet, which I was very proud of because only twenty-five percent made it. Fifty percent were washed out physically and the other on the aptitude test or vice versa. And I started off as a pilot. I qualified for pilot, navigator, and bombardier. So, I was a pilot and I didn't get through. I don't know whether they didn't like Northerners down South. I heard all kinds of 6:00stories years later. But I ended up -- they sent me to navigation school. So, I got my gunnery wings, which is over here, and I went through Pan American Navigation School and I became a navigator. In fact, I have a certificate that I would have gotten a job with Pan Am. And I spoke to one of the pilots who flew those flying boats that we trained in. He says, "You wouldn't have lasted more than a year, because navigation was eliminated with LORAN and all the electronic stuff," which is true. And so, the most -- that period, the impact of that period, it would change my life. And I wrote a story about March twentieth, the day that changed my life. As I said, I got my navigation wings, became a flight officer, and I joined John Lincoln's crew, 11-30, which is this. And I won't 7:00make it difficult for you, but that's me, over here. And after training, we flew a new B-17 over by way of the Azores, Marrakesh, up to Italy -- Fifteenth Air Force. And that was our base: Fifteenth Air Force was charged with bombing any place from Ploiești and the Black Sea, all the way to France and up and lower Germany. And the first mission, we went to Berlin. Never done before. The longest mission ever flown. That's why we got the -- this blue thing over here -- Congressional Medal -- the bomber group did. And so, I can wear that because they did. March twentieth is a real critical day and I wrote a book about that, 8:00which is over here. Now, Goldfish and Silver Boot, those names came from the fact that if you survived ditching, crashing a plane into the water or parachuting and ending up in the water or whatever, you can join the Goldfish Club. That was started in 1942 by the president of a manufacturing company who made the rubber boats and the Mae Wests. The Mae Wests are the things you wore that you inflated so you wouldn't drown. And so, because I survived a ditching, I remember. The Silver Boot is an insignia if you walked out of Germany. Most 9:00POWs were, quote, liberated. Meant they came in into the camps and you were free. But we actually captured our guards, which was never part of the story. So, the book I wrote about is the story of thirty-six days that changed my life, the story of a Jewish boy from Brooklyn who dreamt of flying, enlisted in the Army Air Corps to fight for his country. It's about survival. It's about walking, riding in trolley carts, trains to go from Fiume, Italy to Nuremberg, Germany. It's about the war. It's about the resiliency of the human being, the ability of the body to adapt to conditions beyond one's control, the story that all POWs keep replaying over and over and over and over again. Could I have done more? Could I have done better? Did I perform as trained? Each day was a harrowing experience. And that's what it was. And that day would happen where, 10:00on our way to Vienna, get over Zagreb, which was Czechoslovakia, now it's called Croatia. And we had trouble with the engines, but also, Brownie, our tail gunner, said he was hit with flak. Stover, our radio operator, said, "flak." And you can understand all the talking went on the intercom, "Do this, do that, we're gonna bail out." I told John, "We're sixty miles from the Adriatic Sea" -- which was corroborated by the other planes, the captains of those planes, they also concurred that it was sixty miles. So, John elected to go for the ditching, to see if we could make it to the sea. And anything that moved that wasn't bolted down was jettisoned out: machine gun, ammunition, paraphernalia, and my 11:00harness. Now, you have to understand what we looked like when we're ready to -- yeah, I know you can edit this, so I know I'm going to be able to do that. I want to show you a picture of what we looked like. I can tell you. We looked like men from Mars. We had on our flying boots, which is electronic heated. They were slippers. Then we had our pants, our jacket, our Mae West. We had the oxygen mask on the nose. 'Course, we're flying at thirty thousand feet. You can 12:00only survive one minute. So, now we took off the harness with the parachute and my shoes. Dumped 'em out. The only one that kept 'em was Lorin Millard, our copilot. And we were able to -- we started to lose the first engine, the second engine. By the time we made the Alps -- Yugoslavian Alps -- we lost the third engine, so we're flying on one engine. Somehow, we made it over Yugoslavian Alps. I could almost touch the snow. We come over the city of Fiume, which is now called Rijeka, Croatia. They're shooting at us. The anti-aircraft are shooting at us. We're going down, one engine on fire, two engines out, one turning over, and they're shooting at us. And you could hear the flak going right through the plane. And we took our ditch positions. I don't know and Lorin 13:00couldn't tell me, 'cause I saw him last month. He just died recently, but I knew that was going to happen, so I flew out to see him. I said, "Lorin, to this day, I don't understand how you could do it." I had enough flying training to understand -- "how could you keep the B-17 and flatten it out?" It's like the "Miracle on the Hudson." We hit, bounced, banged up, and then it settled down. Ten of us got out. The most seen numbers from the Eighth Air Force -- 4,318 ditched, 1,538 survived, ten of us got out into the rowboats. They take us to -- 14:00the German Navy came out and they got us. They pulled the rubber boats -- we were paddling to Krk island. I didn't know what it was then. I can tell you now it was Krk island. And we get into the city of Fiume and everybody comes out. Those people were angry. You bomb their city every day, they're not gonna like you. And so, that's what happened. Then, they bring us to this courtyard, this manor, which I have a picture in the book. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. They line us up against this huge grey wall, pockmarked with shells and machine gun fire, with a German soldier facing us with a machine gun. And we have to stand there. It was an eternity. They finally moved us into the house. We all 15:00got together, looked at each other, and everyone said the same thing: They're going to kill us. But they didn't. And the next day, we were sent to Trieste. And Trieste was where we were put into an SS prison. And then, being Jewish really, really sunk in. See these dog tags? These are my dog tags. On the dog tags, there's an H for Hebrew, C for Catholic, and P for Protestant. And you got two of these. One goes with the body and one they send back. I think that's the way it works. I never threw 'em away. I never threw them away. And I don't know 16:00why. I think I was stupid, 'cause a lot of Jewish guys told me, the Jewish POWs, they threw them away. And so, because I was Jewish, they put me in solitary confinement, which had to be a couple of days. I lost track of time and the guys really didn't tell me much. They don't want to talk about it. They saw when I came back and they knew that I was being treated 'cause I was Jewish. And that's where I made the decision -- they put me in about a three-by-nine closet. No windows, no nothing, just pitch black. Cold floor. And I felt around, you know, is there a way to get out of this? And finally, I sat down, laid down on the floor, and it was the worst time of my life. I was thinking about my family. 17:00They would never know what happened to me. Everything growing up you think about. And finally, I had these things in my hand, and I said, Eff 'em. (UNCLEAR). I don't care. I don't care. I don't know how long, but eventually they took me out, brought me to this captain, SS captain who interrogated me. I didn't know then, but in the book, there -- everyone that was captured, they record -- early days, they actually gave you a number as a POW. But in the book, there is documentation, there were ten of 'em, for each one of us -- which is 18:00this thing here -- says, "Statement of capture of enemy airmen." It's got my full name, Harvey Stanley Horn. We never gave that to them. None of us gave our middle name. My father's name and address in Brooklyn. Never gave it to 'em. They knew everything about us. So, I sat there and listened, he talked to me about European Jews being different than American Jews. And so, I listened. Finally, he sent me back to the five-by-five cell that four of us shared. I have to tell you about -- talk to any POW. Black bread, ersatz coffee, cabbage soup 19:00or onion soup. Call it what you will. That's what they fed us. We got lice. We slept on the straw floor and they didn't physically hurt us. And then, they started to move us. From northern Italy, we went to Udine. We were strafed. One of the problems is that when you're walking or riding or anything like that, our guys don't know you're down there. So, you're always dodging, every day, in the trees or the bushes, all that. We went to Udine, then into Verona. We saw the first 262s then -- jets -- the German jets, flown by sixteen-year-old kids. Yeah, I'm a big twenty-one, (laughs) Brownie's eighteen, Stover's nineteen. I 20:00mean, this is what won the war: young people like us. In any event, we were treated a little better because the Luftwaffe respected American flyers. Big difference. And then, we started to journey up. Let me tell you two incidents, which I recorded. One was, we're sitting in a train, got into a train, and it's normal to put the engine in the tunnel. They want to protect the engine and they have the backup trains sticking out. And so, the fighter planes would be out strafing and bombing anything that moved. So, Lorin's there, John's there, Ed's here, and I'm over here -- my crew. And Lorin's face turns white, his jaw drops. 21:00Didn't say a word. Went, "Ah!" We dove out, and coming over the top of the tower were two P47s and you can only see the pilots. American guys. They didn't fire. Wow. The next incident, which --- I've heard stories about this -- and this was, I think, when we were past the Brenner Pass -- they put us in a train with a German major. He had the monocle, he had the scar. He was -- spit-and-polish, unbelievable stuff. And he knows we're Americans. And the guard's right next to us. And he starts telling us -- he can speak English -- "You must join with the Germans and fight the Russians!" And he was in tears. So, we looked at the 22:00guards and they kind of said, Okay. But we heard that story many times. See, the Germans butchered -- we lost two thousand -- I think that's the number -- about two thousand POWs in camp. A lot more percentage-wise was lost. And they didn't treat the Jewish right -- Jewish GIs. They separated them and then some went to Berga concentration camp. My friend, Jerry Dowd, who's gone now -- was there. I met a friend last night whose uncle -- lives in Florida -- who was at Berga, survived. Particularly in the beginning of the war, the Germans were a lot more ruthless with prisoners. Towards the end of the war, it depends. There were 23:00German guards that -- the guys went out and shot 'em when they got liberated. So, that stuff went on. But the Russians lost millions. And the Germans were absolutely scared, like little kids. "The Russians are coming." But along the way, we're on the road, we're being strafed, we're diving here, we're diving there. We get into Munich, we get bombed. Oh, (laughs) one thing I talk about, we're in Munich and there's an air raid. We go down to the sub-cellar, lay on the floor. And I look up, I saw the tallest Arab I ever saw in my life -- which is maybe two. (laughs) But he was huge and looking up at him, he looked even 24:00larger. He had the blackest eyes and he just stared down. And I didn't know whether he was staring at me because I was Jewish, because I was an American. I don't know. In any event, that, too, passed. We ended up in the Stalag XIII-D in Nuremberg. And the Germans had a procedure where they kept moving all the POWs, particularly the Air Force officers, further south, further south as the Allies kept coming down. And you have to remember, I told you about the slippers. I threw my shoes out. Well, I ended up with huge blisters. I can barely walk. And I got to the POW camp, there was a so-called doctor who cut them open and I had 25:00to sit with my feet up in the air for days. Oh, that was not good. And then, we get orders. John, see -- but, oh, by the way, they separated the officers from the enlisted men. The officers went to Nuremberg XIII-D, the enlisted men to Moosberg VII-A, which was southeast of Nuremberg. And so, they start marching us out, and I guess we were supposed to go to Moosberg, but I didn't know that. They said, Get on the road. And a couple of hours out, I collapsed. I couldn't walk anymore -- even though someone found a pair of GI boots -- I was able to walk a little. And so, I know Yiddish. My grandmother spoke to me in Yiddish -- rather, in Yiddish and I spoke to her in English. And that's how -- (UNCLEAR) 26:00don't ask me to speak Yiddish now. (laughs) I know some words. In any event, one of the guys said to the German guard -- there were twenty-three guards and nineteen of us -- "You can shoot him. He can't move." Someone -- nobody knows who -- talked to the sergeant in charge, who wields a lot of power: "Look, the war is over. The Third Army's coming down. No place to go. We will say to the troops, Americans, that you took care of us. We'll tell them to take care of you." They agreed. We all go to this farmhouse off the road. I don't know how I 27:00got there, but I got there. And we're in this -- farmer and his wife and we're in there. And then, they started to shell the area. The tankers and the halftracks, they would go down and shell crossroads, towns. They'd hit this one, pass this one, hit the next one. They moved fantastically fast. That was Patton's technique. And so, all that night -- now, before that -- yeah, wait a second, before that, the Germans started retreating. So, we all go into the barn and hide under the hay. And you could see through the slats in the barn them coming there. A couple of the Germans came in, poked around, nobody was hurt. Then, they left. I ran back into the farmhouse. John and Lorin stayed in the 28:00barn. And all that night is when we got shelled. And shelling was from, like, ten o'clock to five o'clock in the morning. Then it stopped. We got a flag, a white flag, you know -- go out there, Hey! (laughs) That's how we got out. We turned the Germans over and we got out. And then, I was able to get back -- Paris, Dieppe, Dover, into London. I had marvelous -- VE Day, May eighth, in London. People were nuts. Germans -- the English, people were nuts. And I saw Winston Churchill with the carriage, king and queen. It was something. Something special. And we were the last official convoy to leave England. And the night 29:00before, they decided to take down the blackout curtains, 'cause we kept vigilance because we didn't know if German submarines got the message. So, there was a problem there. But the captain of the ship -- he set over Sandy Hook someplace so that we can come up Hudson Bay the next morning. And, as we came up -- now, our ship, the Stockholm -- POWs, amputees, all kinds of personnel that were not in a great -- had seen a lot of combat, and as we're shouting, 30:00screaming, everybody jumping -- and as we come up the Hudson River, we see the Statue of Liberty on the left, on our port, come up. And just like that, not a word. Quiet. You can hear a pin drop. Because anyone who could get up, be carried up, anyone who in any way could get to the railing, who was on deck -- and then we saw that -- give me a moment. We saw the statue. Then we knew we were home. And thanks to Harry Truman, did the right thing, dropping the bomb, 31:00the war was over. I went back to school, back to engineering. And I had no patience. So, my life took a distinct downturn. Got married to a woman who -- I tell you honestly, it was a horrible wedding. I mean, it was a horrible marriage in any sense of the word. She was a very difficult person. You could almost pity her, 'cause there were reasons for -- but she was my crutch. So, I went back to school, finally, got a degree, had a successful career in plastics. Ended up vice president, Troy Products. I have patents. We created some fantastic 32:00products. But I had to break the marriage up, even though we had a son. And I had to make the decision: what can I do for him? I can't do it in the marriage. And then, I got lucky, after a bunch of years, and I met Minerva.

HO:How did you meet?

HH:Huh?

HO:How did you meet?

HH:Well, we met at a square dance at the Ethical Culture in Riverdale. It was in the round. We were at the -- the ladies were inside; I was outside. We stopped, talk, blah-blah-blah. She did the one thing you don't do -- and you, being the young gal that you are -- always have a pen and pencil, right? She didn't bring one. I said, "Don't worry, I'm good at remembering numbers." And I am. I can't 33:00remember names and faces. Numbers, I'm really good at. And so, I called her up. This is Sunday, November thirteenth. I call her up. I'm coming back from the plant I was working with. "I'll stop in to see you on Tuesday." We get together Tuesday. I said, "I'd like to see you on the weekend." And see, I was busy Friday, she was having a dinner party on Saturday, Sunday -- I said, "Well, let's try for Sunday." Thursday, she calls me up and said -- which was true -- that a fella that she had invited to her dinner party of her friends cancelled and she asked me to come Saturday night. I said, Yeah, and that's how it started. Minerva is a fantastic person. She's like my father in so many ways. 34:00But as bad as my first marriage was, forty-four years and counting. That's the way it is now. And so, I was fortunate. And we had the same experience. Minerva was married for ten years and had a horrible marriage. Had a son. I had ten -- almost ten years of a horrible marriage and a son. And then, we were on our own for almost ten years, and then -- so, we met on November thirteenth. We decided Thanksgiving, when I was invited to a family gathering, Thanksgiving, and we got married January twenty-second. So, that's pretty good. But don't forget, we're adults. I knew exactly what I needed and wanted in a marriage and I got lucky. 35:00And if I didn't find it, I wouldn't have married. Not then. And I think she thinks the same way. A few things I wanted to show you. I have to tell you this.

HO:Sure.

HH:This is the telegram advising my mother that I was missing in action. All POWs missing in action. First, my mother is sitting with my friend Leon Shiroky's mother. They're sitting up on our block on Forty-First Street and they see a Western Union kid on a bicycle going to make a stop at a house. And my mother says, "Someone's going to get bad news." And Mrs. Shiroky says to my 36:00mother, "Esther, they're stopping at your house." So, that's how they learned it. There were things that I -- you know, it took me years, but my sister and I became very close, 'cause she got married during the war. I was off in Italy when she got married, and then they moved to Tucson, Arizona. And my brother-in-law, (UNCLEAR), God bless him, did fifty missions. Fifty missions, 1942! And because he wouldn't write his story, his granddaughter, Shira, got me to write it and that's what started this whole thing. So, that's how they found out. When they got the telegram -- and I can't figure out the sequence, 'cause of the dates. My mother was at my aunt's house, five blocks away. My 37:00grandmother, who's in her -- must be late eighties -- mid-to-late eighties -- ran with the telegram in the pouring rain to my aunt's house with the telegram. That was pretty good stuff.

HO:Could you tell me a bit about your family and what they were like, just so that I can picture them better?

HH:I got some pictures, if I can --

HO:Yeah.

HH:-- take a minute --

HO:Well, what was the neighborhood like?

HH:Our block -- Borough Park ran from about Thirty-Ninth Street to Sixtieth Street, from let's say Ninth Avenue to Eighteenth Avenue. That's about where it 38:00was. Basically, Orthodox Jews. Hard-working, blue-collar, businesspeople -- a mixture, a mixture. The houses were single-family, brick attached. Hey, when I was growing up, I would give my right arm for an attached house. And then, here we are, flying all over the world, cars and pools and all that stuff. Unbelievable. Who would have known? So, our block was half Italian and half Jewish. All got along. We were family. Up on the block was a couple of Irish families who I didn't know that well. Thirteenth Avenue was the main drag where all the stores were. Friday night, my father and mother would go for their walk from Forty-First up to Fiftieth and back again. But my sister and I -- oil and 39:00water, nuts and bolts. She protected me, but we went our own way. I was into sports and she had her girlfriends. She was older by two-and-a-half years. And she was angry at me for marrying Zelda. Real angry. And it wasn't till after I separated and had gotten a divorce, I flew out. And we sat and talked till the wee hours of the morning. And we became good friends, really good friends. And I did her a mitzvah [good deed] and married Minerva, 'cause Minerva walks on water. (laughs) Anyway, we lost her last year. But it was fun growing up. My 40:00aunts and uncles -- my father didn't drive. My uncles drove. They took us everywhere. My uncle Max and aunt Bessie -- he would never -- let's see, Sadie, the oldest one, married Max Goldberg. Just found out recently -- found the grandson -- that his sister, Bessie -- same name -- when she came here, didn't like the name Goldberg. Or rather, her name was Kikus. Didn't like that name. She liked the word "gold" and ended up Goldberg. His oldest son, my cousin Harold, became a veterinarian -- extremely successful. He had to change his name from Goldberg to Golba. So, his father, Max, says, "Well, if you're going to do 41:00that, then I'll do that." So, I didn't know his name -- he changed his name twice! But he was a sweet man. And Sadie was a tumler [trouble-maker]. Had a lot of problems. Bessie drove a car in the '30s, took us everywhere. And uncle Max, who was a contractor, made a lot of money and then lost it, you know, in the '30s. And my sister and I were like surrogate kids for them. And then, my mother, Esther, and George, the only boy, who went to work with my grandfather -- and never made it. (laughs)

HO:What was your grandfather doing?

HH:Should have gone out on his own, forget grandpa.

HO:What was your grandfather doing?

HH:He was in the textile business -- yeah, it was coats. And then, my aunt Billie -- Lillian -- Billie, a real work of art, she worked and she married my 42:00uncle Al, who became the talk of the family. He influenced this family like the patriarch of old. He was one of these guys, everybody worked for him. I started working when I was sixteen. Drive you nuts. Absolutely. Could never please the man. Never please the man. Everybody had to walk away from him. At some place in your lifetime, you had to walk away. He'd fight you for a penny. Be generous. He gave so much money to temples and this and that. Fight you for a penny. And that's the way he thought of training you. Bad, bad. I had to get away from him. It's one of the reasons that I married Zelda. That was another problem, because 43:00I went back to work for him. And I was in bad shape as far as the way I saw things, et cetera. And so, it took a long time. And I didn't realize -- I didn't realize about post-traumatic stress. 'Cause I never joined the Jewish War Veterans. I did once and I never showed up and that was the end of it. I never joined my bomber group, the 463rd Bomber Group. I never went to the VA until ten years ago. I'm seventy-seven now. It was ten years ago. Because my hearing aids, on Minerva's plan, they were lousy. So, a friend of mine says, "Go to the VA." I said, "What are you talking about? What VA?" "The Veterans Administration." So, I go down there, Doc Bearse checks my ears. He says, "You have a 44:00service-connected disability." Most people who fly sitting next to the engine is going to have problems. So, he says, "I want you to meet Bill Bentz -- Bill Strauss." And I said, "Okay." And he says, "You're entitled to a whole bunch of things." And that's how I got into the chapter, which I became commander of. And I went home to Minerva, I said, "Minerva, you won't believe this guy. He's nuts! But if he wants to do that, go ahead, be gezunt [well]." And so, that's how I became involved with the chapter and I learned a lot of things about me. And then, when I was about to retire, the post-traumatic stress really -- really started. I had -- even to this day, I still have anxiety problems. I know how to 45:00handle it. I know how to handle it. The day we went back to Rijeka, knowing I was going to revisit -- that night, I was in trouble. Minerva knows how to handle it, also. So -- but I never thought post-traumatic stress. You know, and I never talked about my experience. Nobody ever knew. Minerva didn't know until after we were married. Just wouldn't talk about it.

HO:When did you start talking about it and why?

HH:I guess I started when my great-niece asked me to write about World War II. And I started and I started -- and then, because of -- so, I did a rough -- not too proud -- the first -- but that's what she used for school. It's when I got 46:00in touch -- or this fellow Daniel Fracka who dives for B-sev--- for lost ships in the Adriatic Sea. He saw the article. I brought some stuff that I can show you after the taping. And he started diving for the plane. And then, he helped me get information -- all this stuff in the book. Here. There are debriefing letters, three of them. Three pilots in our bomber group, one of them said, on the way back from the mission, "But we never made the mission. We never got up to Vienna." The other one said, "Johnny asked for permission to bail out." You don't ask for permission. You know? You have to read this stuff. There's so much 47:00information here. And this is thanks to Daniel, who -- and then, from there, I started to hook up with people who were writers, and they explained to me how you formulate and how you paint a picture and how you -- metaphor and all that. And that's how I put the book together. And because I had -- what was I going to say -- given this book to probably six -- the acknowledgements are in the front -- to six people who I admire. There are successful authors and playwrights involved in the world of writing and English, they said, It's good! You ought to 48:00publish it! So I did, 'cause I was making up my own little thing, giving them out. So, I ended up by publishing this. So, that's what happened here. That's what happened here. And you talk about mementos of the war -- here, this is the picture. That's how we looked. That's how we looked. This is a letter from Frieda Duga. And get this: she's the girlfriend of Sergeant Hasselman in Udine, one of our stops. She's being tried as a collaborator. She writes to all of us. "I write to you, sir. I am the young woman from time to time who came to visit 49:00you in your prison with eleven" -- (laughs) nine -- "your fella in Udine at the barrack in Basaldella. Do you remember Sergeant Hasselman? So, I pray you, sir, lieutenant, help me do declare in my favor to the Allied authorities so I can be free." This is one of the guards. He talks about trying to help us against the SS when we were in Brenner Pass. He is getting recommendations so he can get a job or something. So, I got all this stuff and my mother saved it. My mother saved it and my sister saved it. So, I had a whole bunch of things on hand when I started. And, you know, in our outfit, Norman Lear was our gunner. And Colonel 50:00Frank Kurtz was our commander. His name is Frank Kurtz, one of the most decorated flyers in the Air Force. And our group was called -- the insignia was called the Swoose Group. So, what do you think he named his daughter? You ever hear of Swoosie Kurtz, the actress? You didn't?

HO:No.

HH:Oh! Swoosie Kurtz, she's kind of a blonde. Very good actress. And that's her father, so --

HO:Small world.

HH:Yeah, and this is Daniel, see? He found -- last month, he sent two people, a 51:00director and producer to do what we're doing here. Because they found another B-24. Tuscaloosa is the name of the B-24. They're doing a documentary and they want to do a follow-up with me in anticipation of finding the B-17. When we went back to Rijeka, by the way, there's still a Jewish synagogue there.

HO:Did you get to see any of that when -- during the war, were you aware of everything else that was going on? Or were you just in your situation?

HH:No, not at all. Not at all. Good-looking guy.

HO:(laughs)

HH:This is me in Rijeka. We do a ceremony at the waterfront. Not at all. I 52:00didn't enlist because they were murdering Jews. I'll tell you honestly. I knew that my father was raising money for this, that, and the other thing. I saw the letters that he wrote to his sister in Jerusalem. I did it because we were at war. And I didn't have any bad anti-Semitic incidents. I knew about. I was aware of it, but I was never in that pos-- I was a cadet. If I was washed out -- and I'm a damn good athlete. I still play tennis. I do a lot of good things. Fairly decent musician. So, I think I can fly that -- my first ten hours in flying 53:00Piper Cubs, I was great! So, wasn't because I was a Yankee. I get this from other guys who knew about people being washed out for no reason. I don't know. Doesn't matter. My life changed. Became a gunner, a navigator, and went, did my service. So, I didn't have any, "I'm going to kill Germans." We sat on the carts singing "Lili Marlene" with our guards. Talk to some POWs, they'll tell you that they got friendly with the guards. There were some nasty guards who didn't survive after some of the guys were liberated. Not at all. But that's kind of 54:00what was happening.

HO:Do you mind me asking, before the war --

HH:Huh?

HO:-- what was it like being Jewish in Brooklyn and having -- did you have a very Jewish upbringing? Or what was --

HH:Yeah.

HO:-- the household like?

HH:Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Friday night, we had Shabbos. I hated the smell of eggplant. My mother would put it in the center of the four burners. 'Cause we didn't light any gas, you know? It permeated the pla-- I couldn't eat eggplant for years. My father would come home. When it was raining, I'd walk -- take the umbrella and I'd walk two, three blocks to New Utrecht station, walk back with him. I wish he would have talked more about his upbringing. He says -- same 55:00thing with Minerva's father. Came from Ukraine, Poland. Same background. Wanted to get away from the fire and brimstone Judaism that they pounded into the young people. And well-read, knowledgeable, didn't want any part of it. So, my mother, who kept a kosher home -- my father said, "Okay, yeah, do it. We'll do it." But he didn't have any strong feelings at all. Same thing as my father-in-law. It's exactly the same thing.

HO:And why do you think that is? Why do you think that is?

HH:Well, if you beat somebody in order for them to learn something, what have you accomplished? You accomplish -- someone who says yes or no on cue, they 56:00don't learn. You have to have an atmosphere that this is an enjoyable experience. This is meaningful. There's purpose. I'm a Jew. That's what I told that bastard. That's who I am. I ain't gonna change. I was born a Jew, I'll die a Jew. And it's the way you teach people. I've seen people use a stern -- Jerry Avik's grandfather, zeyde [grandfather] over here, a strong hand, pow, pow! The kids ran away from him. It's not the way you do it.

HO:Were your grandparents different than that?

HH:Yeah.

HO:What were they like?

HH:Well, my grandfather Aaron was a very quiet guy. I have cousins from his side -- 'cause don't forget, we were on my grandmother's side. My father has only one brother, who we see once a year. He's a work of art -- was a work of art. But so, my life was with my mother's side, all the time. I found out from my cousin, Al Sturman, whose mother was sister to my uncle, and he's talking about -- they live in Tucson -- oh, and we go out there a lot -- so, he says, "Your uncle Baldy" -- this -- "uncle Bald--" Who the hell is uncle Baldy? It's my grandfather, 'cause he was bald. So, he would go visit. My grandmother and 58:00grandfather didn't get along. I mean, they didn't get along. I didn't know a lot of the details. My cousin, Dorothy, knows a little more. But so -- but it was a Jewish house. There was Friday night candles. Yeah, I went the three days -- yeah. We had -- Passovers were fun. Shviga, my grandmother -- little woman (laughs) -- and my father and my uncles. Yeah. We had four or five men -- five men picking on her. And they insisted we say every word before and after the meal. But "Ma nishtana [Hebrew: What sets apart]" (UNCLEAR) -- it was fun. We'd laugh. It was fun. And my mother was the cook of the family. I used to go down to -- in Borough Park, wasn't too far from Prospect Park. Outside of Prospect 59:00Park was Park Circle, which, years later, when a guy who was a historian about baseball said that Park Circle was financed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. I never knew that. But so, we'd walk about a mile and my uncle Max would always give me the opp-- they had a lot of miscarriages. No kids. They could have adopted. They could have adopted. I won't adopt. So, after the first inning, I had my choice: which team. We bet a penny and a nickel on the game, a penny on the inning. And then, we'd go back. And my mother, at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, she'd have dinner for the family and my uncle Max would check the pea soup. The spoon 60:00could not go more than about that much; it had to be that thick. And so, my mother did the cooking. And it was fun. It was fun. We went to the different parks for picnicking. We also spent -- with the kukh-aleyns [bungalows, lit. "cook-alone"] up in the Catskills -- Frank's farm -- Tannenbaum's, where I worked -- milked cows, did the hay, rode the horses. It was good livin'. It was good livin'. We didn't see any anti-Semitism on our block. I don't remember anything, really, that sticks. In school -- yeah, not much that I can recall. Maybe it's because I didn't get myself in those positions. But I would react to 61:00anyone saying something.

HO:Did you have any specific incidents of that?

HH:Offhand, no. But I learned a few things. I used to work with a guy named Jack Tulaga. Jack was a rough and tough guy. We were both process engineers for Wright Aeronautical. And Wright Aeronautical had solved the big problem -- they were gonna shut down a plant because they sold the idea about this particular product part that, if they manufacture it a certain way, it'll be stronger. They couldn't -- they didn't know how to manufacture it, so nothing worked. I convince the eleventh committee to take over, and I work night and day, we solve a problem. That's one of my patents. We solve a problem; they're back in business. But Jack would talk about kikes and wops and spics and this and that 62:00-- no spics in those days. But that's the way he talked. It was eff this and da-da, and I turned to him -- he sits behind me -- and I said, "Jack" -- normally, I was ready to take him on (laughs) -- "Jack, do you realize how you sound?" He's all, "Wait a sec, wait a sec." I told him -- and I said, "Look, tone it down. Think about it." And he tried. He talked that way -- he was brought up that way. It was Archie Bunker. I don't think he did anything that was bad, but he didn't think that it offends anybody. So, pretty much, I didn't get into any fistfights as a kid about religion. Just didn't happen.

HO:Could you tell me about your bar mitzvah? You mentioned you had one.

HH:Well, in those days -- and, by the way, in our travels, you go to Poland -- you see my synagogue, my shul on Forty-Second Street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth, there it is. The great synagogue in Poland, in Warsaw, same look. Even in Rijeka or Fiume, wherever you go and you see the Ashkenazi type, that's it. Even down -- we've become very -- well, we donate to the Eldridge Synagogue on the Lower East Side. The reason I did that is, I saw this article, and I remember my grandfather going down to the East Side, where he still is part of the synagogue -- the temple over there -- the shul over there. So, I said, 64:00"Minerva, we've got to" -- and they restored it. If you get a chance, it's a beautiful job. Beautiful job. Just lovely. So, that was there. And it was a home. It was not an elaborate affair. First of all, my parents didn't have any money. So, we went to shul. I did my stuff at the bimah. They hit me with the candy, we all went home and I ate, that was it. And for High Holy Days, we went in. The rabbi was "Eyn [One] dolla, tsvey [two] dolla," getting a couple of bucks to raise money. (laughs) And then, we would run in and out, run in and out, run in and out to get the ball score. You have to remember, in those days, the World Series was on just at -- in the High Holy Days, not like today. So, 65:00we'd run in and out and my uncles would say, "Get the score, get the score!" And my mother -- my father was a Polack. My uncle Al was a Hungarian or Hunk. Then you had a Galitzianer -- what was the other one? Anyway, when they talked, they would refer to them as being a -- (laughs) just sounds like a Galitzianer. (laughs) But there was never any problems between the family. Never. I can't remember -- maybe I just wasn't aware. But you have to remember, I was a young -- when I went into the service, I was a young eighteen-year-old. Young. And so, 66:00I may not have been aware of a lot of things about problems. My father -- if you ever read "The Last Angry Man," Dr. Abelman was my father. He was against all the ganevs [thieves] and the crooks. He was a true, true socialist. But it was with caring -- and if he wasn't so goddamn honest, he would have been a business agent years earlier. But he would fight (slams fist) every tooth and nail with the bosses. And my uncle Al, who's -- you know, he was one of these guys who'd make a million, lost a million. It was like oil and water. But there was never any problem. It's just that their basic philosophy was different. I will disagree with my father on unions today. I will disagree with my uncle on other 67:00things about how you treat people in management. But then, he was a character. He was truly one of these people that you talk about. And they talk -- we all talk about him to this day, talk about my aunt to this day. A work of art. A work of art. But, in any event, I had a good upbringing. And Minerva wants me to write the book. So, I'm going to start to do this. And if you look at what came out of Aaron and Fanny, their children and their children's children and now their children's children, you have -- it's a Jewish world. Doctors, dentists, 68:00accountants, attorneys. You've got some of the giants. I mean, wow! I was talking to my cousin -- oldest son, who's the top pediatrician down in Silver Spring area. And they gave me a rundown on all the grandkids. And I says, "Wow, Ira!" Or not Ira, but Alan. "Wow!" And his brother -- Harold's brother -- he's got five boys, four -- they all were Orthodox. And Jerry's like me. And whatever Annie said, "Fine." He said, "You do that, I'll do this." They raised five kids. Orthodox, four of them. The fifth one became Hasidic. Became Hasidic. They were upset -- because he became Hasidic. And Debbie, the gal that he married, came 69:00from the same background. After about four years or so, she asked for a divorce -- knowing she's going to lose the kids, because the rabbi makes that decision. And she said, "I cannot live this life. I'm nothing. I cannot live this life."

HO:For your grandchildren, do you hope that they carry on some kind of Jewish culture --

HH:Well (sighs) --

HO:-- or (laughter) not necessarily that one, but in some sense --

HH:-- my grandchildren are --

HO:-- the Jewish culture?

HH:-- not Jewish. My son is gone now, unfortunately. First wife was not Jewish and she brought the kids up Christian. And they're not Christian. They happen to be in that -- they happen to be baptized. But they're not Jew-- I mean, they're 70:00not Jewish, but they're not anything. They just happen to be baptized and there's no affiliation with church or anything else like that. That's just -- that's the way it is. And, of course -- jeez, we know so many (laughs) today -- the intermarriage, it's wild.

HO:Do you still talk to them about you being Jewish or your childhood and being raised in a Jewish home?

HH:They know about it and they know about the services that I go to. But that has no impact on them at all. It's just -- no. So, that's another sad area, and because of the problem that we had with my ex-wife. She made life extremely 71:00difficult and so my son, Mark, paid a penalty. And he was just starting to turn the corner when he remarried a very nice, bright Jewish girl, Jewish lady. And his career was starting to take shape. He was a very bright kid. And he was involved in medicine. He could have gone to be a doctor, I'm sure. He had the brains. And he was involved with the EMS and a whole bunch of other things and started working for the state attorney's office. He formed a team of four people, state and federal, to go after medical fraud, pharmaceutical fraud. They nailed so many people. And he didn't take care of himself. He over-ate, 72:00over-smoked. And he went down with Eliot Spitzer, who was then attorney general. And in Baltimore, they had a reception and they gave him an award. I guarantee he over-ate and over-drank. And when he came back, he wasn't feeling so hot and his wife said, "Why don't you go to the hospital?" "Ah, nah, nah, nah." Well, too late when he decided to go. So, that's a sad chapter -- that -- you know, a lot of us who lose children when they're young -- we have several friends who lost their daughters through cancer at a very early age. Hey, that's all they 73:00wrote. That's all they wrote. So, nothing you can do about it. Nothing you can do about it.

HO:Well, it's good you have your grandchildren still.

HH:Well, yeah, we --

HO:Yeah.

HH:-- we see them. They're adults. Like many grandchildren -- you know, "Hello," "Goodbye" -- you know, that type of thing. Which is -- hey, I look back on me -- you know, how much time I spent with grandma; my grandma lived in the same house. So, we'd say hi, -- you know, we'd sit down -- I don't know how that woman knew as much as she did. She never walked out of the house, except maybe with the telegram. But she never walked out of the house. Very smart lady. Kosher home, right? My uncle Al would take us down to Bamboo's -- Chinatown. 74:00Walk downstairs and I'd hold onto my father, my uncle's hand. Always telling me about the tongs, scared the hell out of me. And we'd have all this great food. And then, we'd rush in and say, Hey, gram, guess what, guess what? "Kinder [Child], did you have a good time?" "Yeah!" "Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, don't tell me." She didn't want to know. And a lot of things that -- like that. "I don't want to know. I understand; I don't want to know." But she is someone you can sit down and talk to. She -- pretty smart cookie. Pretty smart cookie, yeah.

HO:Can you tell me about hearing Yiddish when you were growing up?

HH:What?

HO:Hearing Yiddish around in the home or --

HH:Of course. When they wanted to talk, they spoke Yiddish.

HO:What did you think of it? What did it sound like to you?

HH:It sounded fine. You know. I remember going down to Second Avenue 75:00occasionally to a Yiddish show. So, those days, I knew a lot more Yiddish. But unfortunately, I didn't speak it. I didn't really speak it, 'cause you grew up learning English. You learned English. Which is a shame. Today, I hear this thing and I enjoy it. Occasionally we talk about maybe we ought to start going to some classes, 'cause it's a beautiful language, it really is. And all those little ladies down in Florida, when they're gone, (laughs) there ain't no more.

HO:And do you see a future for Yiddish or do you have a hope for it?

HH:I'm hoping, with what you're doing here, with what some of the schools are doing, what our temple has been doing, teaching Yiddish. I don't know what's 76:00happening in Israel. They speak Hebrew and the Europeans speak Yiddish. I have no clue. I have a cousin there. I'm sure she speaks both. I know she speaks Hebrew, 'cause she's born and bred. Tell you an interesting story. Got time?

HO:Yeah, we have twenty minutes.

HH:Okay. My brother-in-law has an aunt called Pauline. My sister has an aunt called Pauline. So, how did that happen? Mo was a bombardier, flying out of Benghazi, Libya, 1942. He gets leave. He's going to visit the family, 'cause his 77:00aunt Pauline has married uncle Fishl. So, Pauline became his second wife. And uncle Fishl has a brother, Lemel, in Jerusalem. So, Mo goes to visit Lemel. Had a good time, meets the family. When he comes back from overseas, he lives in the Bronx. Shleps to Brooklyn to tell my father that he saw his brother. And my sister meets -- well, they get married. So, there's a common aunt. And yeah, Pauline was a nice lady. Nice lady. Let me see something here. Let me see if I 78:00can identify a few things, okay? This is my son when he remarried.

HO:If you hold it right in front of you --

HH:Okay. My son, when he remarried, to Fran. This is the people who started this whole thing, Aaron and Fanny.

HO:Where are they standing?

HH:Good question. It probably had to be in Brooklyn. You know something? He's much taller -- I don't know what she's standing on, but she's only about over here and he was a lot taller. A lot taller. Here's my sister and brother-in-law. 79:00Whoops! Are you getting that? Okay. All right. I'm sorry --

HO:When you were --

HH:-- you don't think I'd look this way all the time. (laughter) This is me as a blond little curly-haired kid. My cousin Jerry, on the left, my sister, and my cousin Dorothy over here.

HO:One thing -- you had said you went and traveled around everywhere when you were little with your aunt and uncle. Where did you go? What was an adventure?

HH:They took us to Coney Island, they took us up to the mountains. They had a big Studebaker with wheels on the side. And, in fact, believe it or not, I daydreamed -- when I was probably nine or ten -- I had to be in 1930 -- yeah, yeah, '30, I was about eight or nine, I dreamed that -- this was a big car. Why 80:00don't they have small cars to drive around in the city? I never wrote it down. I would have had the first compact car! That's how my mind works.

HO:What was your favorite place to go with them?

HH:What's that?

HO:What was your favorite place to go with them? Or what would you do when you got to the places?

HH:Well, we went to the park, we played ball, we'd picnic out. You know, and the food, kidding around, swimming -- all that stuff. Went to Jones Beach. Well, one year, we actually lived in Coney Island -- my cousin Dorothy -- actually, one year, she lived with us. 'Cause my uncle George moved around a lot and she wanted to finish her year in high school. So, this is essentially my immediate 81:00connection, which is Minerva's three sisters and their husbands -- unfortunately, the one in blue, she lost her husband, Harry. So, this is the people that we're intimate with, here. This one is my sister's family, which is four: two sons and two daughters. And the two sons -- whoops! Oh, Jerry's not married. Oh, yes he is. That's Ricky. Okay, so the two wives of the boys -- the two girls are not married. So, this is my sister's kids, okay? And these are my 82:00grandkids with Minerva. Yeah. (looking through pictures) And this is my grandmother bentshing [praying]. That's one of our favorite pictures.

HO:Is she very religious, then?

HH:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

HO:Do you remember anything in particular about her talking about Judaism?

HH:No, she never spoke about it. She -- we lived on Forty-First Street. The oldest synagogue in those days was on Forty-First and Twelfth Avenue, about a quarter of a block -- so she could walk over there. The High Holy Days, in particular. And she'd sit upstairs, of course, and I'd go up to see her. And 83:00she'd sit there and pray and be in absolute tears. Always in tears. I guess she was remembering her mother and father and her siblings. She had one sister who lived here, tante [aunt] Malke. Tante Malke was a work of art. In her eighties, she went back to get her high school degree. She would come over and bribe my sister and me to do different things. She's a character. Real character.

HO:What kinds of things?

HH:Yeah, huh?

HO:What did she bribe you to do?

HH:I don't know. We had to write something for her. Oh, God, you're asking me to remember! All kinds of little, small things, which -- inconsequential, but -- we had to write something for her, we had to read something for her. It was all 84:00those kind of things. She's a character. Real character. But she had nice kids. I remember them. I have to tell you another funny story. Tante Malke's daughter, Shirley -- they called her Chinky. Don't know why, but she had -- her eyes were about this -- pretty girl, pretty person. She married a Jewish guy from Dalhart, Texas, sixty miles north of Amarillo. And they had a son, Robert Allen. When Robert Allen was about six and I was a little bigger, he comes to New York to visit. And my father and my uncle Max were on the floor, playing with him. This kid's got a cowboy hat. He's got the chaps on, two guns, boots. And he's talking 85:00with the Texas drawl. And I don't know what happened, but someone said something, he says, "Boy, they sure do talk funny!" (laughs) Many years later, I say -- we go out to Tucson a lot, we drive out quite a bit. I said, "Why don't we look up Robert Allen in Dalhart, north of Amarillo? We'll go by the I-40; we'll go that way." And nobody knows -- has heard from him on that side of the family. We know some people who were in Bakersfield or on the West Coast but they don't know about Robert Allen. So, we come into Dalhart in the evening. Dalhart is a cow town. You smell cows five miles away. We come in there -- not a big town. We go to the motel, we get the telephone book, about this thick, and 86:00can't find any Lehrers, any Lehrers. And so, we had to leave the next morning. Try to find where -- everything's closed down. Went out to dinner at the local luncheonette. So, there was no one to ask. I would go to the chamber -- whatever it was -- the chamber or the city hall -- and get some information. But we never did find anything out about Robert Allen. But -- "You sure do talk funny." (laughter) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

HO:And so, we have about ten minutes left --

HH:Yeah.

HO:-- just to ask you a few more questions about --

HH:Oh, yeah.

HO:-- Yiddish. So, could you tell me -- let's see, I have a few questions 87:00written down for you about Yiddish. Have you noticed any changes in your lifetime in terms of attitudes towards Yiddish from when you were a child to now?

HH:Well, I certainly am in favor -- I didn't think, when I was growing up, about Yiddish being spoken or not spoken. You know, that's what it is, then that's what it is. Now, I enjoy hearing Yiddish spoken. I enjoy the fact that there are words that have become -- are in the dictionary -- the Jewish presence. I enjoy 88:00that. And sometimes, we -- I get the inclination that, Yeah, maybe we should be learning Yiddish -- about it. I'm certainly in favor of it being taught as a language, that's for sure, that's for sure. And I'd like to see that happen more often, because I think it's an interesting language. Because like in all languages, there are phrases you can't explain. (laughs) You know what it is. It's like what the Supreme Court justice said -- you know, "I know pornography when I see it; don't ask me to explain it." It's the same thing -- is that there is something about how you say something that gives you a picture that you can't describe, you can't -- you have difficulty describing it. It's just -- it's a 89:00nice thing. It's a nice thing.

HO:Do you have any favorite words or phrases that are like that?

HH:Oh, boy. I'm sure I can think of 'em, I'm sure if I worked at it. But then, there's a lot of stuff I can't remember about it if you ask me about it. Let's see. Yenem velt [From the beyond]. I'm trying to think of some of the things that my mother would say about banging your head on the wall, about -- how would you say that -- kopping -- I don't know. I know about knocking on the kettle, but that's what people did to find that it was hot, yeah.

HO:What would they do?

HH:They'd knock on the kettle. How did they say that? I need help. Yeah. Bist [You are], knocking -- one was fa-- but --

HO:Do you know why they did that? Or it was just --

HH:How --

HO:-- where it came from?

HH:No, they did it to find out it was hot.

HO:Just to see --

HH:There's a reason for it.

HO:Just what they did?

HH:Yeah, there was a reason for it! You don't want to put your hand on a hot kettle. You touched it. I mean, there's a lot of things like that, which, when I find them, I cut them out and try to remember them. But don't ask me to remember them. I have enough trouble (laughs) remembering what I was going to say not too long ago.

HO:Can you remember anything where your mother, grandmother, or grandparents would be excited or frustrated and they'd make some kind of gesture or some kind of phrase like, Oh! and get excited? Would that -- did they speak Yiddish then, or any Jewish gestures?

HH:Oh, I can't tell you, but there were a lot of them. I guarantee you, a lot of them. 'Cause my father always spoke -- I was telling Aaron Lansky, he probably 91:00stored the first batch of books in the basement of the apartment house I lived in. Because Sidney Berg, who suggested he put it there, was the son -- he was a Brezhiner, like me -- a little older. But his father, Jack Berg, and my father were the best friends. And they came here from Brezhin, from Poland. And -- so what was I saying?

HO:You were talking about how they were --

HH:Well, they always spoke Yiddish.

HO:Yeah.

HH:I would go down to the Brezhiner meetings and geshray [shouting] going on -- my father's, "Nah, it's nothing. It's the way they talk." Turned me off. 'Cause 92:00he wanted me to become part of the Brezhiner. The children of the Brezhiner didn't join, so they were dying out and they moved -- from Forty-Eighth Street, they ended up on Hudson Street, New York, in a building where all these fraternal organizations would be housed. And the only reason it was revived is because the Holocaust victims coming here, like wildfire. My cousin, Charlie -- my father brought Charlie, which is my cousin, and his wife, Luba, and little Maxie, who I put on my lap and drove home. And Luba and Charlie would scream at each other in Yiddish. "Sha [Shut up]!" I never wanted to go there. I loved them 93:00dearly. Most generous people you ever wanted to know. And they'd do anything for me and Minerva, 'cause my father brought them here, got them an apartment, my mother got them pots and pans, they furnished everything. So, you know. Esther and Louie, oh, wow. That's the way it was. That's the way it was. Yeah, there are things that I would like to have my folks seeing today, like Minerva, in particular. Other things that -- but you can't go back, you can't go back. You can only do what you can do, best you can, every day in every way. So, it's been 94:00an interesting voyage. And I guess one of the things that I've been enjoying is all this stuff about writing about the war stories and meeting the people who have had similar experiences. And it's amazing when they say something and it rings a bell, pushes a button. And I thought I was -- I was the only one who thought that way. That's the one thing about our chapter, and one thing about POWs. There's a connection that only people who have lived through a similar experience could understand. You can't -- I can't explain. I don't have the 95:00tools. I don't have the tools to explain. But I understand it. It's like the Jewish phrase, "I know what it means. Don't ask me to explain," (laughs) particularly to someone who is not Jewish, so -- and if you're Jewish, you understand. It's one of those thing-- and the thing about when you meet people and they're Jewish, there's a connection. There's a connection. It's all over the world. And we've traveled a lot of places, Minerva and I. We were in Australia. Not Sydney -- Melbourne. We rented an apartment so we could use it as our base to travel around. We go downstairs and there's a little courtyard and there's a group of people at the fence -- there's a fence there. The woman 96:00starts talking to Minerva, turns out she's Jewish. I think she's married to a non-Jew. But she knew Minerva immediately and she's talking about what she's doing, et cetera, et cetera. It was like a connection. You ask Minerva that, she'll tell you the story about that. But it's one of those things. And I suspect that it's the same with Italians meeting Italians. 'Cause I meet with a group every Tuesday at the VA. We're POWs, DAV, Purple Heart guys who've seen action. And there's a camaraderie. And then, some Italian guys talk to each other -- and they understand, 'cause they'll use an Italian phrase. You know, they just -- blurts out. Or an Irish phrase. In one case, this guy, Francis Grady, he used an Irish phrase, which they all understand, 'cause some of them 97:00marry Greeks, some of them marry Irish, some of them marry Italians, some married -- what was the other one? I can't think of it now. But anyway, it was that kind of thing.

[END OF INTERVIEW]