JACK APFELBAUM ORAL HISTORY

SANDY RUBIN:I am Sandy Rubin, and today is December 2nd, 2011. I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, with Jack Apfelbaum, and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Jack, do I have permission to begin?

JACK APFELBAUM: Absolutely.

SR:Okay. Thank you. First of all, can you tell me what you know about your family background?

JA:Well, of course, it's split in two parts: father's, mother's side. It's easy to talk about my mother's side because I knew her parents, my grandparents, and 1:00I did not know my father's parents at all. Never met them. They were dead by the time I was born. My mother's parents lived in a small town in Harburg, Germany, near Hamburg, Germany. And as far as I know, they lived there essentially all their lives, all their married lives, and were born in villages near there. They were very sort of German-attuned, very Germanic, (laughs) in many ways. They were Jewish, as my mother was, as my father was, as I am. But they didn't practice a thing. Nothing that I can remember. So, it was from that side that my mother came. My mother went to a school, a high school, in Hamburg, Germany, which was for Jewish girls. The Carolinen School, I think it was. And my mother, 2:00she always laughed when we had sort of ceremonies, like Hanukkah or Rosh Hashanah, something. She would set the table, she would sit to my father's right, and she would laugh, mostly (laughs) at the ceremony as it progressed, you know. My father was dead serious about these things. And I guess I was somewhere in between all this. My father's side came from, I imagine but not sure, Polish Jewish origin. My father's father and his wife and their sort of nine children moved across Germany quite a bit, and also spent some time in England. He was a -- owner of various women's stores that sold things like 3:00window dressings and women's clothing and so on. So, I don't know what you call that in the US. There's no real equivalent to that. But anyway. I just have the one photograph of him in front of the store with his employees, another one of him in front of the store with his wife, and then a couple of family photographs. They had three sons, and my father was the oldest of all the children -- and five daughters. And fortunately, the whole family got out of Germany, out of Europe, in sufficient time to be safe. Now, that involved some more things. My father's father was fairly -- I wouldn't say Orthodox, but what's the next best word to that?

RS:Traditional?

JA:Conservative, traditional, something like that. And my father likewise was 4:00not Orthodox but Conservative. And in the way the Jewish community was organized in Hamburg, there were, I think, four synagogues there, of which one was in a Sephardic synagogue, which unfortunately I never attended. Although to this day, I wish I had. And then, there was a very Orthodox, the Conservative, and the Reform. And I'll get to why I tell you all this in a few minutes. And we belonged to the Conservative, which meant that the services were in Hebrew primarily, and I guess the sermon was in German. And the synagogue itself was built on classical synagogue lines: the women upstairs in the balcony and chatting away during the services and all that, and the men downstairs, looking at their prayer books and being very observant, as far as I could tell. And I as 5:00a boy would go there with my father -- when he went, which was certainly not all the time. But he followed the ceremony pretty closely, and I think he knew what was going on. And I tried to follow in the translation on the right side of the page in German to see what was going on. And wasn't overall very interested. I think it was a lot of hoax, as far as I was concerned. My father's family, as I say -- they moved quite a bit. And my father, I think, sort of inherited the feeling of moving about in his work. He had a women's clothing -- not a concession -- he was a middleman between factories, producing coats and dresses and so on, and the stores. So, he would travel quite a bit in Germany and was 6:00exposed to what was going on in Germany as a result of that. And he had his own sort of large showroom in Hamburg, which I visited occasionally. And because of his travels, I think he was aware of what was going on in Germany, perhaps more so than my mother, and certainly more so than my grandparents, who were very shielded from everything that was going on -- and I think wished to be shielded, didn't want to be involved in what was happening in Germany during the period 1933 to when we left in the beginning of 1938. So, we came here in 1938 -- January of nineteen thirty-- February of 1938, excuse me. My father, before World War I, actually lived in England for a while. He spoke very good English, and he worked in England. What he did, I don't know. I have no idea. One of his 7:00sisters was born in England, so there was that connection somehow. And I think he was quite fond of her -- as he was of all his sisters, actually. And he was sort of held out as the lead man in the family, the majordomo. And they all -- the sisters looked up to him. His next older brother -- next younger brother I guess, actually -- somehow disappeared in England. We don't know what happened to him. And the youngest brother was just into his early twenties at the end of World War I, at which time he said to himself, I don't want to serve in the German army like my brother did -- my father. And he moved off to the States in the early 1920s to escape German draft, basically. And he came here, and he was successful for a while, very unsuccessful during the crash, and he crashed with the crash and reestablished himself. My father and my mother both kept their 8:00thinking about Germany and what was going on very much to themselves. And so, I knew, you know, that as Jews we were far from welcome. That was pretty obvious when you walked or cycled through the city, and -- you're probably familiar with this, the German Nazis, they had these gigantic bulletin boards everywhere with caricatures of Jews and very ugly looking things. As a boy, I looked at those things, and I observed the message pretty clearly: Jews were really ugly, ugly, ugly people. And it's disturbing -- disturbing to this day, in a certain sense. But it was there. So, I was conscious that way of the rift in feelings. The other thing is, during my first four years of schooling I went to a public 9:00school. And at that time in the area where we lived, there's a big examination to see whether you go on to higher-level education or to sort of a trade school. And you take an examination; based on the examination you either go left or right, you know. And without difficulty, I passed the exam. And then, there was the question, Well, okay, my name at that point -- I have to get back to that, in fact -- at that point was Hans. And will Hans go either to the classical German gymnasium or to the Oberrealschule [German: secondary school], which happened to be a Jewish Oberrealschule called the Talmud Torah Oberrealschule in Hamburg. A very good school, very good school. And that's where my parents -- or my father, I don't know. Anyway, that's where I went from the age of ten until 10:00we left to come here. And that in itself was a great benefit to me because if you go to a gymnasium, you typically start with Latin. So, you start Latin two years, then Greek -- or maybe it was the other way around, in fact: Greek, Latin. Eventually, by the time you're fifteen or sixteen, you start English. And then, finally you get to French. Whereas in the Oberrealschule, it was turned around. It was a more practically-oriented school. So, my start in English language at the age of ten was English. So, by the time I left Germany at the age of thirteen, I already had two-and-a-half years or so of English-language instruction, and I could say, "Open the door," "Close the window," "Hello, how are you?" Those kinds of things. Interestingly, the teacher I had, who he -- personally I loved a great deal, by the name of Jule Jacobson, he made it a 11:00point of going to the port, Hamburg being a big port with lots of British boats coming in, lots of sea captains, English sea captains, English sailors being there. He talked with them extensively. So, he sort of imbibed in that accent and transmitted to me, to all of us, my fellow students and myself. My father likewise, having lived in England, when he put me through the paces Saturday afternoon to see as to how much I'd learned and what I'd learned, he somehow imbued this English accent on me so that to this day when people meet me: "Where are you from?" And I say, "Well, guess. Tell me where you think." And typically they say, Well, I think you came from England. "No, no, not England." Well, then it must have been Scotland, or something. So, we go through this whole mix of English-speaking countries, which is not true, of course. So, this strange accent that I have is basically formed at the age ten, eleven, twelve, in a 12:00German high school, Talmud Torah Oberrealschule. And it strikes me as strange that with all the years I've been here, 1938 to now, my accent is still there in the same form. I've never been able to shed it. When I was going to -- you can correct me if you want me to go on a different track.

SR:No, no. No, so far you're okay.

JA:Okay. When I went to college -- I went to City College -- and I'd loved mathematics in high school. I thought, Well, maybe I'll become a mathematics teacher. "Oh no, not in New York State. They want good English speakers." So, I didn't qualify (laughs) because I had too much of an accent at the time.

SR:That's interesting.

JA:So, I became an engineer instead, which was what my father wanted me to become. Anyway. I want to go back for a minute. So, I was -- I had a very good 13:00friend in Germany from early on, from elementary school on. His name was Andor Eckstein. And he was the son of immigrants from Hungary to Germany. And my father knew his father, and we became very, very close friends and spent enormous amount of time together, typically ice skating in the wintertime, five days a week, four hours a day; in the summertime, swimming, canoeing, swimming, canoeing, and so on. He had a great time. And I liked him a lot. I liked his parents. And when Andor became bar mitzvah about -- almost the same time I did, which was at the end of 1937, he invited many people, including this teacher I mentioned, Jule Jacobson, who went to this very trad-- not Conservative -- very --

SR:Orthodox.

JA:Orthodox, thank you. Orthodox synagogue. Whereas my friend went to the very Reform kind of temple where, holy smoke, they had an organ in the place, and the men and women were sitting on the same level, I think maybe together even, possibly. And it was -- for German Orthodox standards, it was a terrible place. So, my very favorite teacher refused to go to this -- my best friend's bar mitzvah because of that. And to this day, I still feel sort of, Why did he do that? Why didn't he come? (laughs) It's a childish thing. You can sort of see why he didn't; you can sort of see why he -- things shaped as they did. But at that time I thought, Oh, that's really horrible. Okay. So, my father felt all along, as far as I can tell -- never talked about it much, but as far as I can 15:00tell, felt he had to get out of Germany as soon as he could. My grandparents in 1936, '37, were old. My grandfather was in his middle eighties or slightly above that. My grandmother was in her middle seventies or slightly above that. And my mother felt, and I think correctly, that they couldn't be moved, and they couldn't be left behind. So, we were sort of stuck in a sense. Couldn't leave and couldn't stay. Well, I don't know who finally made the decision, but my father in 1936 came to the US, visited his brother, as far as I can tell made -- got all the papers ready for us to come to the States. And we left Germany in what you might call rather ordinary circumstances. We didn't, you know, rush out suddenly. We packed everything up, had the movers come in, brought furniture to 16:00Brooklyn, where we started to live. Not much money. I think my father bought an expensive camera, like a Leica, to be sure he had some money when he came here by selling it. But aside from that, apparently, he wasn't able to get much money out. And we came in -- we left Germany in January, right after my own bar mitzvah, and arrived in Boston, February 22nd, 1938. I mention that because February 22nd is George Washington's birthday when it was being celebrated still, and Boston was all ablaze with flames and wonderful snow. It was a very, very cold, snowy day. And I loved Boston from the moment I saw it. And then, the next day, we moved on, on the same ship we'd come on, to the dockside in Brooklyn where my three girl cousins were awaiting us. And for years afterwards, they would remark on the fact that I was wearing short pants. (laughter) The boy 17:00with the short pants. So, I was welcomed -- we were all welcomed -- by my uncle, his wife, their three daughters, who were my age and younger than my sister, who was three years older than I am. And we -- my family, we all came together. It was my sister, myself, my parents. And before long, we had an apartment in Brooklyn. And my father tried to belong to the Jewish congregation nearby. And he found it difficult. He found it very difficult because the services seemed so strange and unfamiliar to him even though it was the same services in Germany. But the melodies were different; the people, of course, he didn't know at all; and everything about it turned him off somehow. And as a result, we never were involved with any form of religious organization when I was a boy or, for that 18:00matter, since then. So, I left my sort of belongings to a congregation of any form at the age of thirteen. Before that, I'd been studying for a bar mitzvah, of course, in a very nice setting. I forgot where exactly. And I liked going to the Reform temple with my friend. I liked it much better than going with my father to his synagogue. But that's the way it was. So, that's sort of the background. My father's family was mostly settled in Leipzig, Germany, which is southern Germany. And fortunately, all of them were able to come out of the country. How much my father helped them -- not much, I don't think he could, but 19:00they all got out. And one -- two cousins went to Israel with their families; one to France; the rest came here. Oh, one went to South Africa. So, we were distributed, like many Jewish families that came from that era, across the world, so to speak. And eventually, most of them moved to the States, so we have this core of people right here. And for my wife's family and for my family, we have nice family trees that sort of bring us back to wherever we came from. But there's really very little in there that we can make use of today or we have tried to make use of today. I have a first cousin living in Israel who not only constructed a very good family tree, but he has this family organization where every week I get a new notice on the internet saying, Hey, so-and-so has a 20:00birthday tomorrow. Write him or her a note or send them a present. So, we are in that sense in touch. And we've been to see -- we've been in Israel to -- and visited and seen a good part of the family there. So, that gives you some ideas.

SR:Very interesting. Thank you.

JA:Oh, I should mention one more thing on this. You asked me my name. And I was born -- (laughs) I was named Hans Jacob Apfelbaum, the Jacob being the name of my grandfather, which was traditional, to be named after a dead male member of the family if you were a male. So, Jacob was my middle name, Hans was my German name. When I came here, I was Hans Jacob. And when I went to school, I didn't like this at all. So, Hans and Jacob together made Jack. So, my name now is H. -- Hans -- Jack Apfelbaum. You got the Jack part. You didn't get the Hans part.

SR:Oh, the Hans part. Thank you. Would you describe your educational background? I understand you became an engineer. How did that come about, and --

JA:Okay. My father being in the textile business had apparently been to Switzerland, and loved and talked about the Swiss engineers and the Swiss textile machinery, how wonderful it was, and if you only became a textile engineer your life would be straightforward, simple, and all that. And I listened to him, and I suppose because when they gave me toys -- "they" being my parents -- when they gave me toys, they were often mechanical construction things. And I loved playing with them, and I was very good at it. As kids are, you know, nothing exceptional. And in high school, which was here -- yeah. In high school here -- and in Germany, but here especially -- I was extremely good 22:00in mathematics. So, eventually, as I was telling you before, I thought mathematics was really my field; I would become a math teacher. I disqualified because of the accent. So, when I was through with high school I applied to two schools, both in New York, both free: Cooper Union on the one hand and City College of New York on the other hand. I took the exam, the entry exam, for Cooper Union, and I failed out because my English wasn't sufficiently good. And I ended up with tears (laughs) flowing down and very sad that I didn't get in there. But for City College, I made that easily. So, I went to City College. And I started when I was sixteen-and-a-half after graduation from high school in the evening engineering division of City College uptown. So, I spent two years studying engineering -- well, it's really pre-engineering at first. And then, 23:00be-- I was eighteen. The war was on. The time is 1943. And I felt, Okay, I'm working, I'm going to school, but I think I should be in the army at this point. So, I enlisted in 1943 in the US Army. And in May of 1943, I was in. So, my college studies were interrupted at that point with two years of night school. And that served me one purpose, and that is I was assigned to the field artillery. And the field artillery actually involves field guns. You shoot at the Germans, or shoot them down, basically. And I was with the regular field artillery outfit in Italy. And I was actually what they call servicing the guns, 24:00that is, standing to the guns and loading them with these gigantic two-hundred-pound shells. These were huge guns, eight-inch howitzers. And after a few weeks I was -- maybe a few days, even -- I was asked if I wouldn't work in the fire direction center. Because having been an engineering student, I knew how to use a slide rule. And this required slide rule work. Not very complicated, but slide rule work. So, I was pulled from being alongside a gun with a gun crew to a very comfortable fire direction center where we sat, got the reports in where the German tanks were and German positions, and essentially charted out how our guns would fire, how high would -- and so on, all the specifics of gun direction. So, the engineering work I'd done before, the schooling I'd had before, sort of shifted my position in the army as a result. Not very drastically, but it was fine. So, I spent two-and-a-half years in the 25:00US Army, the Fifth Army. And then, we were as a unit pulled back from -- well, we were first in Italy, then France, then in Germany, then in Antwerp at the port. And we were supposed to be going home for a short time and then to Japan. But by that time, as you know, bombs had been dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the war was over. So, we were discharged at the end of 1945. And I went back to school, City College. Although at that point, the GI Bill was in existence, and I could have gone many place-- any place, basically. And for reasons that when I look at them they're not very satisfactory, but I went back to City College. And I went back to living with my mother for a while and reestablishing 26:00my life. And at that point, because I was getting GI Bill money, I was able to go to day school and worked in the evening to help support my mother since she was working and finished in three years. So, I graduated actually in 1949, about two years before I would have graduated if I'd gone through at night school all the way. Because that was a very slow, long process, you know. So --

SR:Yeah.

JA:Hooray, I'm out! And so, that's my basic engineering education. So, what was called the BE, bachelor of engineering education -- or BE, I guess, bachelor of engineering -- at City College. And then, later on I did some advanced degree work at the University of Connecticut, did some work at Harvard University for an educational degree. And when I left school -- no, before I left City College, in the summer of my last year -- I had a job with the government, in Washington. 27:00And as a result of that, when I graduated, there were zero jobs available. It was one of those times when engineers couldn't find work readily. And having had this summer job with the government, I got a notice saying, If you want to come back, the door's open. Come on in. And so, after looking around after graduation in New York City, finding absolutely nothing -- flat. Nothing. I went back to work for the government in Washington, DC, at the Naval Gun Factory. Well, it was okay, but I didn't like it much. And so, I had a chance after about a year-and-a-half to work for the Point Four Program, the one that you are familiar with perhaps. Basically, it was dedicated to helping Europe get back on its feet. It was also called the Marshall Plan. And I loved that work and lasted 28:00for about half a year, when politics intervened, and no more money was available for the program. So, my wife and I -- I had married by that time -- my wife and I decided the West Coast was attractive, and let's go. So. Ask your next question if you want.

SR:That's very nice. And how did you meet your wife?

JA:Oh. It's a lovely story. It involves my mother because she kept saying when I had vacation time, said, "Why don't you try joining the American youth hostels and go hostelling?" "Hostelling? What's that?" Well, it involved bicycle riding, which I liked. And so, I joined the hostels, and I bicycled many places in New England. And this one particular Easter vacation, I decided to go to the Pennsylvania Dutch area. And I went with a woman friend, (UNCLEAR), we both bicycled. And we arrived in Bowmansville, Pennsylvania, one evening at a youth 29:00hostel. And my wife -- then unknown quantity to me -- and two other women friends of hers were hiking on the trail that led through the same town, same youth hostel. And that night, as young people will, we danced. And we danced. And we danced, a lot, she and I. And I loved that. And I thought she was a nice young woman. And she had two nice other companions. And that was the end of it. (laughs) And much to my wife's chagrin, I didn't call her when we got back to New York. She was going -- I guess she was at the High School of Music & Art at that point. Or was she at Chicago U? I can't remember right at the moment. Anyway. She had been going to High School of Music & Art, and she went to Chicago U, and we met at this youth hostel. And quite some time later, I got in 30:00touch with her. Then, that summer after the Easter vacation, that summer I happened to be in my last English class, and across the aisle from me was sitting this one friend of my wife's who had hiked with us, who had been at the same youth hostel. And we talked to each other and said, Oh, this summer, this -- when the vacation comes, let's have a joint canoe outing. And we went to this wonderful lake in Connecticut called Candlewood Lake, near Danbury, Connecticut. And there were a crew of maybe twelve, fifteen of us, boys, girls, young men and young women. And that's when my wife and I really met, you know. And we struck it off. Ever since then, we've been together.

SR:Lovely.

JA:So, it started Bowmansville, Pennsylvania, among the Amish, and we still have friends there.

SR:Lovely.

JA:That's a nice long story.

SR:Yeah. Did you want (whispers) to share?

JA:Yeah. (laughs)

SR:And you had children. You had --

JA:We have three daughters, all grown now, of course. And the first one, Claudia, was born in nine-- we married in 1950. I graduated college in 1949, went back to the job in Washington, DC. My wife at that point was going to NYU. And we married in January of 1950. And then, we -- the job terminated in Washington, DC, a year later -- two years later, I guess it was. Yeah, 1952. And we decided, Well, we'd always wanted to see the West Coast, the Golden Coast and all that. And we packed up and put our things into a trailer and our skis as the 32:00last thing. And before we left New York -- my wife's parents, Eva's parents, were living in New York. But they had an adventurous spirit of their own, and they said, Well, if you're driving west, you have to go through Santa Fe. It's so beautiful, and you mustn't miss it. So, I had a job interview coming -- no, I had a job. I had been interviewed. I had a job waiting for me in California. And so, we slowly drove west. And finally we got to Santa Fe. And Santa Fe blew us away. We stayed in this very, very fine hotel in Santa Fe. It was the best place in town. We opened the window in the morning, and there were the Sangre de Cristo Mountains shimmering at us, white snow glistening. I say, "Eva, we're gonna go skiing, right here, right now." (laughs) Unpacked the trailer, which we had pulled along, took the skis out, and off we went skiing in this -- we had 33:00skied before, in the White Mountains and the Green Mountains, snow maybe two inches thick. Very little snow in New England. We came there, and the snow was four feet deep, and it was a totally different experience. And we loved it. Then, we looked around the next couple of days, and we went out to the San Ildefonso Pueblo. And we got to know the people there, very easily, partly because my wife being an artist always carries art supplies with her. And she was sitting there; she was sort of sketching. And the Indian kids were gathering around her. Before long, they had the pencils, they had the crayons, they were painting next to us, formed this circle around us. And we were sitting there, smiling away and laughing and enjoying them. And as a result, we got to know their parents. And we were easily sort of part of the community after that. And we stayed in Santa Fe for the next half-year, because we said, We like it here! 34:00We're gonna stay. And I found a job in engineering, thanks to the landlady that we had there. And had a wonderful time. And thought of staying there the rest of our lives. Things intervened, and the job where I was working, they had no more supplies. They had to lay us off. So, there I was in Santa Fe without work and far away from home but close to the West Coast. Okay. We go out to the West Coast. So, in Santa Fe the water was very good for women, and that's where our first child was conceived. That water just did it all. (laughter) And Claudia was born -- no, she was actually born -- we went to the West Coast, looked around, didn't like it, came back east. And at that point I got a job in Springfield, Massachusetts. But the job sent me right off to work in Newport, 35:00Rhode Island. And so, she was born in Newport. And we lived in Jamestown, Rhode Island, opposite Narragansett Bay there, if you know that area. So, she was number one. And then, three years later a little miracle happened, and number two came along. Number two right now is in Tibet. And (laughs) that's a long story. And then, I thought that was it. Two children, two girls, it's fine. Love them, I enjoyed them. Let's not have any more. My wife said, "Oh, it's so nice to have a third one. Can't we, Jack? Can't we?" So, eventually, you know, we agreed we can. And we had our third child -- a third daughter, as it happened. And so, Maya came along, and that was very fine. So, we have three daughters.

SR:Lovely.

JA:And they're spaced three years, five years apart.

SR:And would you say that your daughters grew up in a Jewish household?

JA:Well, they certainly identified with Judaism. And we held -- especially the easy holidays like Hanukkah, you know. You light candles, one more each night. So, it's a very beautiful, very ceremonious time. And we sort of held Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But we were never members of a congregation. We tried, and for whatever reason, we were never happy with a congregation. And when we moved to where we live now, Littleton, from -- we moved there from Newton -- there was no Jewish community right there. So, we said, Well, the closest thing to that is a Unitarian church. So, we were sort of members in the Unitarian church for a while. But that didn't go for us very well either. So, we said, 37:00Nope. Not that. So, we're basically unaffiliated with really any religious society. But our three daughters certainly know they're Jewish. Two of them definitely practice it to some degree. The one that's right now in Tibet, she does not. She's more Buddhist. She certainly knows she's Jewish, no question about it, but she doesn't practice anything related to Judaism. And if she could, I think she would live permanently in Tibet. But we'll see what happens there.

SR:Now, you lived in India for a while.

JA:We lived in India for two years, and we've been back about eight times since then. So, we have very strong ties to India. We first were going to go overseas in 1965. I was teaching engineering, and the majority of my students were going 38:00into military engineering of some sort or another. Even though I'd been myself a military engineer -- when I was working for the Naval Gun Factory that was all military engineering -- I didn't like it. I thought that was the wrong way to go. It was too strong on the military. And I don't want my students all to go in that direction. Well, I couldn't shift that, but I could shift myself around. So --

SR:Where -- excuse me, but where did you teach engineering?

JA:I taught then in Springfield, at Western New England College. And later on, I taught in Lowell, at what is now the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. When I started there -- this is in 1969, when we came back from India -- it was called Lowell Technological Institute. It had been started years back as the Lowell Textile School, around 1890 or 1892, when Lowell was a major textile town. So, they needed textile engineers of sorts. And so did the school. When I 39:00got there, the textile department was just fading out. And I started there in my field, mechanical engineering. And after three or four years there in Lowell, I started my own department and headed that for many years. So, that's another story. I had an appointment to go to Nigeria in 1965 from UNESCO to teach there for three years. We were on our way over to Nigeria by way of UNESCO Paris when Nigeria broke apart in civil war. So, my going over there, or us going over there, was canceled right there and then. And (laughs) at that point, I had a three-year leave from my school, Western New England College in Springfield. And when I got the news that we wouldn't go to Nigeria, I either wired them or 40:00called them, I don't know which thing. "Hey, by chance is my position still open, or has it been filled?" "Oh no, it hasn't been filled yet; come on back." So, we went back to Springfield, went back to the house that we'd rented out to a very nice couple. They said, Well, we can understand. We'll move someplace else. Went back to our own house and lived there for two years. But then, this other opportunity came along to teach in India. This was part of the US-India agreement on aid or something like that; I can't remember the details right now. But we went in 1967 with our family for two years to this town of Mysore, South India. And that was a lovely interlude, very nice. I can tell you lots more about it, endless --

SR:Yes, I'd like to hear more about it.

JA:Well, (laughs) where shall I start? Okay. So, we got this notice that we 41:00would be going to India, to Mysore. And we took out a travel guide -- you may know it --- Fodor's travel guide, very thick volume. And I remember the line in the book saying, "Mysore is no eyesore." And we got there in September of 1967. At that time, the Gulmohar trees are in full bloom, like rosebushes, all over the city. It's luxurious in feeling, luxurious in sight. And this position that I had was with Ohio State University, and they had a team of three people already there in the city. They had prepared for us a nice little house -- not so little, in fact -- nice house where we could move in. So, we were established right away when we got there. We had this nice house. And the college campus was 42:00not far away. And it was part of the University of Mysore. So, I was attached to the University of Mysore. And my project was to teach engineering teachers to be better engineering teachers, American-style. And so, I had four states within my line of duty, so to speak, which was Mysore state, which is now called Karnataka; Kerala, the most southern state -- still the same name; Madras state, which is now called -- what is it called? I don't know. I can't remember. The town of Madras is Chennai now, then Madras, on the south coast -- Tamil Nadu is the name of the state; and Andhra Pradesh. So, I had four southern states where I visited colleges that had engineering programs or universities that had engineering programs to try to work with the professors there to upgrade the 43:00programs. And when my tour of duty was over, two years, I had the possibility of staying on in Delhi. My wife and I talked this over, said, Did we really want to live in Delhi? 'Cause living is sort of stratospheric in some ways, you know. You had a lot of servants, and these kids would go to this classy school and so on. And my oldest daughter, Claudia, at that time had been out of school two years. She was sixteen. We thought, Well, no, I think we better head back to the States and have her go to a regular American high school so she could go on to college. So, we came back in '69 and lived in Newton because Newton had a good school system, and we had friends from India living in Newton and so on. So, that was good to go there. So, we stayed in Newton for two years. I got this job in Lowell at the university, at that time Lowell Technological Institute, and 44:00was commuting back and forth from Newton to Lowell. We'd rented, signed a contract for two years and said, Well, okay, at the end of two years we'd better look around. And you look around at different houses, different locations, try to find a place not too far from where you work. And by a stroke of good luck we found this charming house in Littleton, Mass, old house, built in 1835 or thereabouts. And Claudia was just at the age where she went on to University of Mass at that point. Ananda -- Andrea -- second daughter, she was in high school. And the youngest one, Leah, was in elementary school at that point. Am I loud enough? Am I talking loud enough?

SR:Yes.

JA:So, it was a very comfortable setup for us. And we thought, Oh, good. We are 45:00on the street that has a sidewalk. The kids can walk to school. Great. We wanted that. We were there about two years when I -- let's see how this works. Well, I'd been teaching by that time about four years at Lowell. And I was coming up for a leave of absence. So, during the leave we went to England for a year and I had an internship at Nottingham University. And when we came back, we felt that my daughter, my middle daughter, just didn't fit into the school system anymore. So, we --- sent her off to a private school. End of sidewalk walking. (laughs) She had an hour's trip to school from then on. Anyway. That's a roundabout story. I loved teaching a lot. And I was able to form my own department there, 46:00brought four or five of my colleagues from mechanical engineering into my new department, and taught there for twenty years. It was till I retired. So, I had a great time.

SR:That's fun. You mentioned when you filled out the questionnaire that you'd like to talk about when Indira Gandhi went to Cochin some --

JA:Oh, right. Yes. Well, Cochin is on the Kerala coast, and it's famous for various things, but one is a wonderful old-time synagogue, the oldest in India, formed somewhere around 1490 or thereabouts. I mean, it really goes back a long ways. These wonderful tiles there, and very beautiful service. And Indira Gandhi went there to celebrate the -- was it five hundredth? The three hundredth? I can't remember which anniversary it was, but it was a big to-do all over Cochin, 47:00although the synagogue itself, the community, was by that time rather small. And now it's down to around five people. It's really gone. The Jews of Cochin have either migrated to Bombay, Delhi, or Israel. So, there are only a few old-timers left there. It's kind of a sad state. And the synagogue now is basically a national shrine. And you can visit it as you visit any religious shrine. But it's very beautiful, and it's built sort of like the old Chinese kind of style, with Chinese tiles and so on. Of course, when Indira Gandhi was there, everything was fluffed up, so to speak, and a wonderful service and lots of people there. How many were Jews, how many were non-Jews, you couldn't tell. You cannot tell as an outsider an Indian Jew from an Indian Muslim or an Indian 48:00Hindu. The Hindus themselves can tell pretty well, but we couldn't. So, the synagogue was filled with people, and it was quite wonderful.

SR:I should think so.

JA:And I've been back once since then with an Indian friend, and it's worthwhile visiting, even today.

SR:You have grandchildren?

JA:We have only one.

SR:Only one.

JA:By the name of Netanya, like the city of Netanya on the Mediterranean Sea.

SR:And is she being brought up in a Jewish household, would you say?

JA:My daughter Claudia, the oldest one, and her husband, they attend and belong to a Jewish congregation in Philadelphia. And so, she was brought up to some degree. She was not bar mitzvahed --- bas mitzvahed -- nor is my daughter bas 49:00mitzvahed -- but they -- they're Jewish. Let's put it that way. And they attend synagogue, or temple, whatever. And this granddaughter, I can't tell you which way she's leaning.

SR:I noticed that you're involved in many volunteer activities in your community, particularly environmental --

JA:Yes, yes.

SR:-- types of programs?

JA:Indeed. Some five, six years back now, together with some other friends, we started a subgroup of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, called, of course, the Littleton Climate Action Network. And so, we're trying to turn the town green. (UNCLEAR) I have a meeting coming up beginning of January on that. It's a very, very slow process to turn a community around on anything. And this 50:00in particular is going slowly. Now, there's some parts of the community that have moved pretty fast. The school system has done an excellent job of changing the schools' use of energy very drastically -- saved a lot of money, and the money goes back to the town, basically. So, that's been good.

SR:What kinds of things did they do?

JA:To start with, the former superintendent, Diane Bemis, knew of a consultancy firm from Texas that comes to the schools and say, Okay, we can turn the energy picture around for the school at no cost to the school system and with an annual saving of X amount, determined by the size of the school. For us, the savings over ten years was a million bucks, something like that. And it was accomplished 51:00primarily through basically making people more aware of what needs to be done to save energy: that is, turn off the computer when you're not using it. Turn off the lights when you're not using them. Keep the windows closed unless it's a warm day when you want it open. All kinds of small modifications of the system. Plus some technical adjustment, but it was not basically a technical probes. There are other consulting firms that come and do all kinds of technical adjustments: to the boiler, to the way electricity is used and so on. But this was more sort of a management scheme. And they managed the school systems -- all four schools -- to do a better job of harvesting energy, or not using energy. And it's been very successful. And I like that part. (laughs) The police department has a new building, which is very efficient. We have what's called a 52:00"muni," a municipal light department. We buy locally power, electric power, from the big distributors and have a local network. And in town we have the cheapest electricity in the state. And the town electing manager is very savvy on all kinds of ways of saving energy, one of which was to change the workweek from five days a week to four days a week. So, they're working longer hours Monday through Thursday, but they're saving sort of fifteen percent of the energy cost as a result, which is pretty significant. He also bought some Priuses to drive around in and other things like that. The light bulbs all over town were changed in the streetlights. So, there are a good number of what seem like small modifications, but overall it makes a big difference. Now, we have a huge IBM plant that has moved into town. We had the plant there; it was part of Digital 53:00Equipment Corporation for a long time. Their lights are on all the time. And we are saying, Hey, wait a second. This could be a much greener style of using a building than what you're doing. So, we're talking to them, trying to get them to turn off the lights, to turn off the machines.

SR:Do you use solar panels or wind turbines or things like that to --

JA:Wind turbines -- we don't have a good -- what's called a wind regime. That is, there isn't sufficient wind blowing in most parts of the town to do that effectively. We do have a hill that is between Boston and the town. And if we mounted wind turbines there, it might be a good thing. But so far, nobody's moved on that. And, you know, you always want funding from the state and so on, and that hasn't been around. Right now, if you follow the industry, there are 54:00possibilities of having home solar panels on your roof that have come down in price enormously. So, I'm just right now negotiating with a company to possibly install those, if I can get enough credits, if I can get enough state credits to make this financially effective. We may do it; we may not do it. I don't know yet. But that's coming. And I -- (laughs) I was calling a woman who was very active, as I was, in the nature conservancy in town. We have a local organization. And she says, "Well, I went to the solar store recently, and whose name did I see there? Yours. Right above mine." So, she's also trying to get solar panels under the same funding scheme. Whether we will or we won't, we don't know yet. But we're working on it.

SR:That's great. When you filled out the questionnaire, under "Community 55:00Activity," you put something that I never heard of, and I tried looking it up, and I --

JA:What was that?

SR:B-o-r-a-z-r-d.

JA:Say it again, please.

SR:"Borazrd" or something like that?

JA:B-o-r--

SR:--a-z-r-d. Maybe it was a typo.

JA:Sounds like a typo. I can't --

SR:Maybe. I just wondered what that was.

JA:(laughs) It doesn't bring anything to mind.

SR:Okay. Is there --

JA:I'm -- as I say, I'm active with the Littleton Climate Action Network, which is part of the state Climate Action Network. I was a longtime trustee of the Littleton Conservation Trust, which -- marvelous organization that basically 56:00installs and maintains walkways throughout the town and does other conservation work. It was started by two local doctors about seventeen years back. And then, we had no public path in town. And now we have lots. And it's marvelous.

SR:Do you have any involvement with Jewish life today?

JA:Yes and no. More no than yes. Of course, we celebrate, to some degree, some of the holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Hanukkah and Pesach, those. Are we celebrating them in any big way? No. Do we go to synagogue? No. Do we have Jewish friends? Primarily. So, it's a mix. There's a synagogue in the next town, Acton, which we could join. There's a synagogue -- there are two. One is very 57:00Hasidic, and one is very sort of Reform. But we're not members of that. There's a very nice synagogue in Concord, which is about twelve miles from us, and we know a number of people there. So, we are acquainted with the people. We have chosen not to join any of them. And that's a regret in some ways. I keep urging my young friends, "What are you doing about sort of religious education for your kids, young kids?" We talk about it. But (laughs) that doesn't mean much. And as I say, my daughters are very aware, very aware.

SR:And do you have any other stories or anecdotes that you'd like to talk about before we wrap up?

JA:Oh, I could talk about a thousand -- (laughs) it's funny. Last Monday, this past Monday, I was with a bunch of storytellers. There're six women, I guess, 58:00and myself. My wife is the one that brought me in. And I was telling them a story from my childhood when -- my sister went to school in Sweden. My parents took her out of the German school system and sent her to Sweden. And we were on our way over to visit there. And on the way, we're staying in this small hotel in Denmark. And I was telling this story about how I went walking with the dog early one morning in the woods there, and I got lost, severely, to the point where I didn't reappear at all, and my parents got very worried because a) they were woods; b) there was a big area that was swamp-like and people had disappeared there. "Oh, my -- oh, Hans, he's gone." They called the state police. And I was wandering out all over the place. And being in Denmark, I felt 59:00I couldn't talk to people, which was all wrong, of course, because many of them would have known Germany. But I couldn't do that. And so, finally, after wandering around about four, five hours -- oh, the dog had gone under a fence. I followed the dog. And I found myself inside a cemetery. (laughs) I was scared, so scared. I ran out of this place, trying to see where the dog went. I couldn't find the dog. And I was on the street. And then, I thought, Oh, next village, that's where I live. That's where the hotel is. But it wasn't the next village, it wasn't the next village, it wasn't the next village, and so on. And finally, after struggling and trying to find the place, eventually I ended up by this very big farm gate. This big dog (makes growling noise) out at me and looking me in the eyes, so to speak, and baring his teeth. (laughs) And my heart sank, and 60:00I started crying. I guess I was about eight, nine. And this lovely farmwoman came out and pulled the dog back in and took me by the hand and took me into the kitchen, gave me this big strawberry bread sandwich and a big glass of milk. And then, while I was chewing away, she had heard on the radio of this lost boy and the state police was looking -- called the state police, and about twenty minutes later my father and the state police came along, picked me up. So, that's one of the little stories. So, I was thinking about that this morning, and I said, "Gee, when I think back of all the places I've been to and all the coincidences and all the things that had happened, I can tell endless stories and make them into children's books." I've written two anyway. And they could be just so much fun. So, I was thinking of -- I visited the Taj in India; when I visited a very special bird sanctuary in India; time in Israel, when we spent 61:00time being in Israel; when I taught in Egypt -- (laughs) endless stories. So --

SR:Yeah. You didn't talk that -- when you -- that you taught in Egypt.

JA:Well, when I retired -- actually, through the friend with whom I stayed overnight last night, he was then an (UNCLEAR), a member of what is called the IESC, International Executive Service Corps, which takes executives from various industries and sends them as volunteers overseas. The volunteers and their wives -- or the volunteers and their husbands, whichever happens to be the case -- get sent to countries around the world to help those countries improve in some specific area. Now, I was not an executive; I was a professor. And they said, Well, with your training, you can help universities or technical colleges overseas. So, I had two assignments: one in Egypt -- I went there twice -- and 62:00once in Albania. And in each place, my job was basically to improve technical education as we'd done in India. And I had a very good time in Egypt; I had a very good time in Albania. And I think I contributed a little bit -- very little bit, little bit -- to improving education there. And my wife was along in one instance in Egypt as well as Albania. And she taught Albanians English. And to our great surprise, our very great surprise -- Hoxha had been the dictator in charge for years and years -- many people knew basic English. And how did they know? "Well, we just kept listening to the radio. Kept listening." And they were such a fine group of people. It was wonderful. And then, Egypt was similar -- not quite the same, but similar. So, we had wonderful, wonderful times, both in 63:00Egypt and in Albania.

SR:Very interesting.

JA:Yeah.

SR:Well, you have had a very rich and satisfying --

JA:I feel that.

SR:-- life --

JA:Yeah, I feel that.

SR:-- and job.

JA:Very rich. Very satisfying. It's still going on.

SR:Yes. Yes. And I want to thank you for speaking to the National Yiddish Book Center and to have this in our archives. So, thank you very much.

JA:You're most welcome. I hope it serves some purpose.

SR:I'm sure it will.

JA:And very nice talking to you and being interviewed by you. Thanks so much.

SR:Thank you.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

SR:So, we're doing an addendum now. Jack thought of a couple of more stories that he'd like to have on tape.

JA:Right.

SR:So, would you tell us about --

JA:Sure.

SR:-- your bar mitzvah?

JA:Well, especially I want to talk about my grandparents now. As I was telling you earlier, my grandparents were born in the small town -- village, I guess -- 64:00in northern Germany. My grandfather was about as Prussian as they come. And (laughs) his work was as an insurance salesman. So, every morning, he would take off and walk through the town and knock on his clients' doors and I guess collect the insurance money. I don't really know the details. But they had a lovely home, and they're about the only family I knew, among our Jewish acquaintances, who had his own home in the small town. And when we -- my father -- had the immigration visas and all that, we went to say goodbye. And I remember sort of driving to their house and having them come out as we were leaving. And the tears were rolling down their faces, and they're standing by this fence. We were in the car, leaving. And it was really a sad, sad story, 65:00situation. And we left them. We never saw them again. But my grandmother kept writing us. And I have a number of their letters, and my sister has many more of her letters -- most of which I can't read very well, because they're written in this formal German style that I was taught, but I can't remember how to read very well. And somehow, somehow, they managed to stay in their own home until they died. The way the German laws were at the time, Jews couldn't have maids that were non-Jewish. And so, the lovely woman who had been working with them for years, they had to leave -- her go, basically say, "Out. Finished." And then, they took into their house a younger family, somewhat younger than my mother, to stay with them and help them. And so, from them we got the news eventually, in the 1940s, 1942 or '43, that first one and then the other one had 66:00died -- in the house -- of sickness or old age. My grandfather at that point had just about reached ninety, and my grandmother had just about reached eighty. And so, remarkably they were never touched by the Germans. Nothing happened to them. And one of the perhaps myth, perhaps real stories, is that my grandfather, whose name was Adolf, like Adolf Hitler, wrote to Adolf Hitler with the following idea: "Listen. I was in the Franco-Prussian War. I served Germany --" well, Prussia -- "as a soldier, and therefore I should be considered special. Not only that, my son, Herbert, was in the German army, and he was killed during World War I in the first week of the war," and buried in Belgium, I guess it was. "And 67:00that should give me some consideration, you know, from the Nazis." And then, some other things about what he had done. And whether this is real or not, I have not checked. I don't know how to check it, actually. I suppose it can be checked through archives. But I haven't done that. But this is the myth as to why they were able to stay in their own house and die in their own house of old age, nothing else. They were never deported or anything. Unlike my wife's mother, who was deported to a concentration camp, and unfortunately, unhappily, died in a concentration camp. So, we never had that experience on my father's side -- on my -- I got this wrong. On my mother's side. My father's parents died long before. So, that's the story I wanted to tell you, how very strange, how remarkable it is, that my grandparents were able to stay right there. 68:00Unfortunately the house they lived in was destroyed some years later, so I can't really visit anymore. But their headstones are in the cemetery and very visible.

SR:Ah, nice.

JA:So, that's what I wanted to add on.

SR:Okay. Thank you very much.

JA:Thank you so much, Sandra.

[END OF INTERVIEW]