ARNOLD FRIEDMANN ORAL HISTORY

ALLIE BRUDNEY:This is Allie Brudney, and today is November 8th, 2011. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Arnold Friedmann, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Arnold, do I have your permission to record this interview?

ARNOLD FRIEDMANN: You certainly do.

AB:Thank you. All right. So, could you briefly tell me what you know about your family background?

AF:My family background on my mother's side goes way back in Germany. We had a genealogy -- I think it started about 1735. My father's family came from Suhl, 1:00Thüringen. And I could not trace him back quite that far. But they were both middle-class families. I guess my mother was more middle-class than my father. And my mother was born in Nuremberg, where we lived and where I grew up. I guess I should tell you a little about my childhood?

AB:Yeah. Do you want to start by describing the neighborhood you grew up in?

AF:Well, we lived in a very large apartment -- very upscale apartment. And my father was a lawyer and did very well. And I was born in 1925, I guess, which makes me eighty-six years old. And surprisingly, growing up in Nuremberg, which 2:00was the city of the Nazi party conventions, I had a good childhood -- almost a good childhood -- because A, my parents were very protective, and B, my friends were, I would guess, a hundred percent Jewish. I went to an elementary school, a German elementary school. And we moved at one point, and I went to the second one. And I think I -- there were two Jewish children amongst forty non-Jewish children. And I remember one incident when the teacher gave an assignment, we should all try to come back with information about our family, how far back we can trace them. And when I came in with the information that I can trace my family to the eighteenth century, she said, "All right, children, we'll change the assignment. We'll do something else." I think that I had relatively -- I had 3:00very negative experiences on the way to school. We were often accosted. There was a young -- a child my age or maybe a year older who always tri-- and it was a woman, so she didn't dare -- hitting me, but when I went with my sister, she called us "juden stinker," which means "smelly Jews." And there were incidents of that kind. But I don't really -- once I was beaten up, but not too seriously. So basically, I think I did all right. In Germany, after four years of elementary school, you could opt to go to a high school -- a gymnasium -- and instead of the Latin school, my parents enrolled me in a Reform gymnasium, where 4:00we had French instead of Latin, that sort of thing. And I did extremely well. Every day we had an assembly in the courtyard and everybody had to sing the "Horst-Wessel" -- the Nazi song -- and the Jewish children, of course, did not. And it was extremely uncomfortable. But I did well. In fact, I think I was the best in a class of about thirty. And two years into that -- it must have been in 1936 -- I was kicked out -- all the Jewish children were kicked out. And luckily, there was a very good Jewish high school in Fürth. Nuremberg and Fürth are built together. And I was transferred there. And in fact, that school was much better, much more demanding than the German gymnasium. I dropped from 5:00being number one to number four, because there were a lot of other smart Jewish kids. And I really learned in that school how to study. And it gave me a good background for the rest of my life. The trip to the school in Fürth took about thirty minutes. And there were a bunch of us living in Nuremberg. We took the streetcar, the trolley car, and I think almost every day, we were attacked verbally when we got off at the last stop before our school. We pretty much ran to the school, because if we walked too slowly, the German kids would come and try to beat us up. We usually managed to get in and -- without being beaten up. 6:00And the school, by law -- by German law at that time -- had to have one gentile teacher amongst all the other ones who were Jewish teachers. And luckily, this man arrived usually on the same streetcar, so when he was there, we walked very quietly and nobody did anything. However, that school in 1938 -- my very last day in school was November the 9th, 1938. And I'll get back to Kristallnacht in a minute.

AB:All right.

AF:And after Kristallnacht, on the tenth, in the morning, we found out the school had closed. And actually, I never went back to high school. Go ahead.

AB:Before we jump to Kristallnacht, can we go back to your lower school and sort 7:00of -- or your change between the German gymnasium and the Jewish high school. What was that like for you to switch?

AF:It was not too difficult, because I knew some of the children from our area where we lived. So, the adjustment was not very difficult, to my surprise. I thought the -- and I mentioned it earlier -- the Israelitische Realschule in Fürth, the Jewish school, really was better and more demanding. One of the difficulties for me was, it was quite religious. And I grew up in a -- like many German families -- totally assimilated family. We were members of the Jewish community, which was a liberale Synagoge, which was the equivalent of a Reform 8:00synagogue in the United States. And this was also our social life. There was a children's group, and I was a member of the Habonim, which was a Zionist group. And because I knew a lot of the kids, that adjustment was difficult; the fact that it was religious was very hard for me. But being -- at that time, I was, I think, eleven years old -- I was easily influenced and I decided, Oh, that's a good thing; I'll become religious. And I remember one day I came home and I told my mother, I would really like her to have a kosher household. And my mother said, "That's a wonderful idea, and I think you should do it the moment you get married and set up your own house." So, that was the end of that. I did not 9:00switch to a more religious community; we continued. And I had my bar mitzvah. And I think I was the penultimate Jewish kid to have it. A friend of mine had it after me, and then they burned down the synagogue. That was even before Kristallnacht. They burned the synagogue and that was the end of that.

AB:Could you describe what sort of a typical German -- assimilation family was like?

AF:Yeah. Well, I mentioned earlier, my father was a lawyer. We always had a maid and cook. My mother was probably the world's worst cook, but she knew how to bake, but we always had somebody who was a cook. We led a comfortable life. We traveled a great deal. My parents took us for every vacation -- summer, winter 10:00vacation, and Easter vacation -- to Italy. And they were very good friends with the owners of a hotel in the Dolomites in the city of Brixen or Bressanone. And actually, as a child, I was fairly fluent in Italian, 'cause my parents also became friendly with an Italian family in Arezzo: a man who also was a lawyer, and there were two children, same age as my sister and myself. And we had an exchange. My sister and I went there for four weeks one summer, and the following summer the two children stayed with us. So, I had a very orderly and comfortable life, which, of course, changed after Kristallnacht, but I'll get 11:00back to that in a minute. One of the things -- it was very limited under the new Nazi laws for Jews to go anyplace, so my parents were able to rent a garden in Nuremberg. That was not unusual -- about ten minutes from our house, 'cause we were not allowed anymore in any of the public gardens and the zoo and places of that kind. And we went almost every day to the garden; we played there; there was a little shed with -- where my mother was able to make tea and cookies and stuff. And so, our life was not bad in that sense. Should I get to Kristallnacht now, or would you like to --

AB:Wait one second.

AF:Okay.

AB:(laughs) I'm just -- I'm curious. So, you had a bar mitzvah.

AF:Yeah.

AB:But was your family -- did you celebrate any other holidays?

AF:We went to the synagogue on the High Holidays. Actually, we went to the synagogue either Friday night or Saturday morning. For my mother -- my father didn't always go, but for my mother, it was her social life. And it was my social life, because I belonged to the youth group. When I prepared for my bar mitzvah -- I don't remember who it was, but it was held in the premises of the synagogue, and I think it took about a year and a half. And I was very proud. I was able to sing my Parshah and did very well. However, that was already in 1938, so there was -- my parents had a party for my friends and a party for 13:00their relatives and friends, and all the presents that I got were suitable for emigration, because everybody at that time knew we had to get out sooner or later. I got impossible presents like steamer trunks, big trunks where -- with coat hangers and stuff that by now I'd probably make a fortune selling it as an antique. And I got all kinds of briefcases, and everything that one could possibly think of for emigration. And the timing -- my bar mitzvah was in May, and at that point already, because of all the laws, I -- usually the only social life I had between my bar mitzvah and Kristallnacht -- I had two good friends 14:00who lived not far -- who lived in walking distance. When we went to the synagogue, and I usually went with my friends, we pretty much ran. Let me digress for a minute. We were in Nuremberg a few years ago -- we were actually invited by the city of Nuremberg -- and we got there half a day early. And I said to my wife, "I would like to see, there's a big church, the Frauenkirche." And my wife said, "But you must know it well." I said, "Are you kidding? I would not have dared to set foot in a church as a Jewish child." And the way we got from our home to the synagogue, we pretty much ran, because if we walked too slowly, there was a good chance that we would be attacked by some of the children. So, after my bar mitzvah until Kristallnacht, my social life was basically within ten minutes of our house and the synagogue on Shabbat or Friday evening.

AB:You mentioned a couple of times the youth group. What did you do with them and can you describe --

AF:Well, I was actually -- it was held in a -- the meetings were held in a community center of the synagogue. It was called the Habonim, which was a Zionist group. We had all kinds of activities. Actually, we went camping overnight one time. We were in a play called "Die Jungen vom Gusch," which means "The Children from Gush" -- was in Palestine at the time. And I think it was the only time in my life that I acted. And my mother thought I was very good, but nobody else did, so I did not become an actor. And I guess we played games. We 16:00had -- sort of an organized group -- a boy who was two years older was the leader of our group. And it was very much a Zionist group. And I don't think I knew any Hebrew at that time, but it was predicated on the idea that we would all hopefully go to Palestine. That was way before Israel. And interestingly enough, my parents knew that sooner or later, we would have to leave. My mother made a trip to the United States -- this was in 1936 -- and my father went to Palestine to see where we want to go. And it turned out that we went to Palestine, but I'll get back to that later on. Well, all right.

AB:All right. So, sticking to your childhood a little bit longer -- so did you 17:00have -- did your family have seders?

AF:No. We were invited occasionally. Not every year, but we had friends and there was a public seder and -- we did celebrate it, but my mother always bought matzah, which rested together with bread in the breadbox, so we were not exactly very observant. But we did -- because of our belonging to the Jewish community, we celebrated all the holidays, and -- including special food, like, carp, I think, was the favorite food for Friday night. And always a big dinner for Rosh Hashanah. But as I said, we were not the only ones -- I think the German Jews 18:00were assimilated and were so -- they were German Jews. My father was an officer in the German army in World War I, and he belonged an organization called the German Jewish Frontkämpfer, the people who were -- and he was really fighting at the front. He was wounded twice, had the Iron Cross. And the whole milieu of the German Jews was deeply involved with the German culture as much as with the Jewish cultural traditions. But I suspected our family was not untypical of being Jewish -- being culturally very aware of being Jewish, but having the long 19:00tradition of German literature, music, et cetera. And I guess looking back, it was almost impossible for people like my parents to anticipate and to accept what happened under the Nazis, 'cause they were so fond and proud of their culture and literature and everything German.

AB:So, what kind of books or music did you have or hear in your house?

AF:Well, we had a very extensive library. And my parents did have -- in fact, I still own the complete works of Heinrich Heine, the only famous German poet. In school, I had to start -- I think at the age of eleven, I started Goethe and 20:00Schiller. And we had all the classics. And I think about thirty percent of the books that my parents had were books that dealt with Judaism, books by Feuchtwanger and Hofmannsthal and all of the Jewish writers. I would summarize my childhood as a combination of German and Jewish culture. And I'm sure that this was typical for most of the assimilated Jews.

AB:So, looking back -- well, okay. So, you've been sort of skirting around Kristallnacht. Do you want to -- would you like to sort of explain --

AF:Yeah, let me --

AB:Yeah.

AF:That was probably one of the most important and terrible events in my life. We were woken up about midnight by loud banging on the door. And about eight -- seven or eight people in SA uniform shouted, "[Haus suchen?]," which is -- official -- the term is "search action," and it implied that this was a legal search action. We had no idea what it was all about. They rushed into the apartment, into every room, opened every door, didn't say a word. And my sister and I were frightened, but we had no idea what it was. And after about ten minutes, they left. We had no idea what it was until about ten, fifteen minutes 22:00after they left, the telephone started to ring. Relatives and neighbors called, because my father at that time was known as a lawyer who had all -- his specialty was emigration of Jews, and he knew all of the authorities and everybody knew that he was an officer and war hero. So, they asked, Can we come over? It turned out -- by luck, or maybe because of my father's reputation -- the first couple that came were neighbors, all bloodied up. They had been beaten up, their furniture had been smashed. The worst was, an uncle of my mother's and the whole family were -- well, my uncle was killed in front of my cousin. They 23:00lived in a big house, and he was actually thrown down the stairs. We didn't know it at the time. And they stamped -- with their boots -- stamped him to death in front of my cousin. My cousin, his sister, and their mother came over. They stayed with us for several weeks after that. My cousin Rudy never spoke about it, until about 1970, when he was interviewed. He went to England on a Kindertransport with his sister. My aunt did not survive. She was -- like many others who were killed. So, he never spoke about what happened. And in 1970, the BBC in England had a program; he was interviewed and -- pretty much like I'm 24:00interviewed now -- and it came out. And that's the first we knew -- what horrible things happened. Coming back to Kristallnacht itself, we had a large apartment, and my cousins, the aunt, and a couple of neighbors stayed for quite a few days. An almost -- I wouldn't say happy, but a positive experience was that in the morning, we heard banging on the door again. The door to the apartment had frosted glass, and looking through -- and I went with my mother to see who it was. And there was a man in SA uniform standing there. By that time, we knew what had happened to the rest of the Jews, and we were very frightened. And it turned out it was the fiancé of our former maid. Our maid had to go 25:00because there was a law -- nobody under the age of forty-five was allowed to work for Jews. So, we knew the fiancé, and he was a member of the SA. He brought us a bag full of fresh rolls and he said, "I just came to tell you, don't go out today. Stay home." And that's what we did. And the next morning -- I don't remember how we heard about it, radio or newspaper, that the school, the Israelitische Realschule was closed. And so, the 9th of November, 1938 was my very last day in high school, ever. And I guess I'm probably one of the few PhDs who never finished high school, but I made up over the years. After 26:00Kristallnacht, four or five days later, the Gestapo came to arrest my father. And luckily, he was not sent to a concentration camp, but he was taken to the basement of the Gestapo building, and for several days, was mistreated very badly. He never told us about it. I heard about it through a book from other people. And he came back and he looked ten years older, four days later. And he said, "Jetzt, gehst raus," which is, "Now we're getting out of here." And he mobilized every possible connection he had. There were absurd laws at the time. The Germans -- everything was done according to the laws, and one of the laws was, if you wanted to leave the country, you had to pay a tax; but if you didn't 27:00leave the country, you would be killed. So, there were all of these terrible obstacles to overcome. With luck and perseverance, my father was able to find very distant relatives who put up a bond, which was about twenty thousand dollars, in order to obtain a legal visa to Palestine. It was called a certificate of immigration. And from November the ninth until -- it took until the thirty-first of December, when we finally crossed the border into Switzerland, and our first day -- it was 1939 -- we stayed a couple of nights with relatives in Switzerland. We then went to Italy for three weeks, where I 28:00had an uncle. And from there, we went by ship to Palestine. I'm sort of jumping ahead; you probably want me to go back.

AB:No, that's okay. Well, now that we're in Palestine, what was it like to move from Germany to there?

AF:The beginning was very bad. We had absolutely no money. The money that was put up by distant relatives, my father immediately returned it. And the only possession that we were legally permitted to take out of Germany was a shipping container of household goods and furniture. But we arrived without a penny. And for the first four or five weeks, we were split up with friends that my parents had in Nuremberg, friends who went to Palestine much earlier. I stayed with one 29:00family; my sister stayed with the -- with my father's former law associate; and my parents were put up with a family who were very well-to-do -- they were bankers. So, for four or five weeks, we were refugees, you know? We couldn't even stay together as a family. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but then, finally, my father decided to move to Tel Aviv. All these friends were in Jerusalem. I think he felt there would be better opportunities for him to make a living in Tel Aviv. And they took an apartment. And after about five weeks, we moved in with the furniture that had arrived by that time. And immediately, 30:00before it was even delivered, my parents decided to sell some of the furniture, including a very beautiful dining room. And I think the first six weeks or so, we lived on the proceeds of the furniture that they sold. By that time in 1939 -- they got to Palestine in February, I believe -- it was already very difficult. There was not an awful lot of food. And I think life was pretty much of a struggle. My parents took a two, three-bedroom apartment, and immediately rented one room. My sister and I slept in what was also the living room, and my parents had the bedroom, and I think was renting one room. My mother did 31:00part-time work as a nurse; she was trained as a nurse in World War I and was a Red Cross nurse. And I don't even remember what my father did at the beginning. But my parents did not have the money to send us to school. High school -- it was -- there were fees: not very high, but we just didn't have any money. So, the choices that we had were very limited. I had always been interested in woodworking -- I did a lot of jigsaw work as a hobby -- and I said, Well, if I have to work -- if I cannot go to school -- I would like to learn cabinetmaking, and I became an apprentice. My sister apprenticed as a dressmaker. And I think 32:00my salary as an apprentice was, like, two dollars a month, but that helped. And my sister got about the same. With that and my mother's part-time work, we managed to survive and subsist. When the war broke out in -- oh, and by the way, the plan was, when we left, my grandparents were left behind for a while. They had lived with us, and when my parents -- after Kristallnacht -- got ready for emigration, my grandparents were placed in a home for Jewish elders in Nuremberg. And I remember saying goodbye to them. And my father said, "As soon as I'm settled and have enough money, I will send for you." And of course, that never happened. So, they wound up in Terezin, Theresienstadt. By sheer 33:00coincidence, my wife's grandparents, who were from Vienna, also wound up there. They all died there; we never found out whether it was illness or starvation. Terezin was not the worst concentration camp. It was -- used to be, like, a small town for many army barracks. But conditions were pretty terrible. But I was reminded of that because when the war broke out in 1939, we lost all contact with my grandparents and with all the other family members. I lost my grandparents, two uncles, one aunt, and several cousins and second cousins. All 34:00total, ten close relatives and about twenty distant relatives. We never found out any details, but they were all killed. I was jumping around -- coming back to Palestine. When the war broke out, I continued my apprenticeship. And we did not experience -- Tel Aviv was bombed a few times, but not too serious -- by Italian planes and -- the Italians were not very good fighters, so they missed most of their -- whatever they wanted to bomb, and there was no major damage. There was very little food, and the fact that you couldn't get much food and my mother didn't know how to cook -- I'm surprised that I survived. Also, the only way to cook was a little Primus stove -- it's like a camp stove with petroleum 35:00-- petrol -- neft -- it was called "neft" in Israel -- and you had to pump it up. So, my mother had two of those things, and it was pretty bad. My parents, trying to prepare for the emigration, bought a new refrigerator, and it turned out the current -- the German current -- didn't work in Palestine, and there was no way to convert it, so they had to pay to convert it to an icebox. And it was airtight. And every day they came in Tel Aviv with the icebox, and we had to run down and buy a quarter-block of ice. And that's the way we lived. So, the conditions were pretty bad. But I continued my own apprenticeship. My father, by that time, started a very small enterprise, which was the equivalent -- not the 36:00equivalent, but it was -- minute -- like, the automobile association that we have here. Nobody had done that in Palestine. He did that together with somebody else, and I think for about two or three years, he earned enough money that we were able to exist. By 1943, I had been apprenticed for four years, and I had basically completed my apprenticeship, and I was a very good cabinetmaker, and I loved it; I enjoyed it. But on my eighteenth birthday, in 1943, I volunteered for the British army. There was a fair amount of -- there was no draft, because 37:00Palestine was a mandate -- mandated by the League of Nations to the British. There was pressure both from the British and from the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish shadow government, to volunteer for the army. The British wanted -- needed soldiers, and the Jewish Agency wanted Jews to be trained, looking ahead for an eventual Jewish state. Let me go back -- or rather, let me ask you --

AB:Yeah.

AF:-- to ask questions before I get to the army.

AB:(laughs) So, one of the things I was wondering is, what was it like to be a German Jew in Palestine?

AF:In the beginning, all of our friends -- my sister's and my friends -- were all German. We had a group of friends -- in Hebrew, it's called a "chevrah." You 38:00know, we had a very good time. I think in the early years we spoke German to each other; after a couple of years we all learned Hebrew. And my Hebrew was never very good. I was fluent in Hebrew, of course, but since I could not get to school, my reading and writing was minimal. I think my best Hebrew was when I was in the Israeli army, which comes much later, when I was sort of forced to learn to read the general -- pekudat malkal, which was the general orders, but I'll get back to that when I get to the Israeli army. The German Jews -- we lived in Tel Aviv, in the apartment that my parents rented, in the north of Tel Aviv, which was the Tzafon, where a lot of yekes [German Jews] lived -- yekes 39:00was the nickname for German Jews. And all of our friends and my parents' friends were former German Jews. There was a separation between us and the Yishuv -- the Old Yishuv are the earlier immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe. And the German Jews were very snobbish and looked down their nose on East European Jews. And Yiddish was never spoken by any of the German Jews. I learned Yiddish -- but I'll get back to that -- when I came here. But life was not unpleasant. With the exception of a couple of air raids, shortage of food -- everything was rationed -- we led a fairly good life. All my friends in the chevrah -- in the group of 40:00youngsters -- were working. I had a very good friend, he apprenticed in metalworking. We all -- one or two went to school, but the majority were -- like myself and my sister, were apprenticed in some kind of trade. We went on tiolim, which was excursions to nearby places. We had a kind of a small official group through one of the synagogues. Interestingly enough, we arrived, and very early in our first weeks, my parents wanted to join the Jewish community, and then it turned out they didn't have the money to pay the minimal fees, so we never did. And what happened -- like other Jews from Germany, the little religion they had, 41:00they decided, Well, now that we live in Palestine, we really don't need it. This is a Jewish country, or the beginning of a Jewish country. And out of that very small synagogue that my parents had tried to get in, there was a leader -- a youth leader of the group, so they helped us organize. And we had parties, we had excursions, we had meetings. And nobody had a telephone. And we all knew how to whistle. I wish I could whistle; I would give you the tune, which was actually based on a very silly German song. And the way we communicated -- most of us had bicycles by that time -- we lived on the third floor and somebody whistled our tune, and then we went down, and that's how we communicated. And we 42:00had basically a fairly good time. The interesting thing is that in spite of Hitler and the horrible Nazi laws, I had a relatively good childhood. And then, as a youngster, a teenager, during the war until I joined the army, and working pretty hard and learning how to be a cabinetmaker -- I still had a relatively good time. I started at that time to take private lessons -- my high school stopped when I was thirteen -- with private lessons and group lessons and correspondence courses. It took a long time. I think I passed the equivalent of the -- what is it called here? The high school equiv-- I can't think of the 43:00abbreviation now -- I finally passed it. But between work and the social activities and taking lessons and trying to study, I had a very busy life. One of the problems I had -- I wanted to become a member of the Boy Scouts, but you had to have a uniform, and we just didn't have the money to buy the hat and the uniform, so I never did join the Boy Scouts. But I survived.

AB:So, how did you feel --- now that you've talked about school -- how did you feel not continuing in your education?

AF:It was difficult. I was very unhappy. I was very jealous of those of my friends who were able to go to school. On the other hand, I knew that there was no money for school and that I would somehow have to get my formal education 44:00through other means. I don't think I was unhappy to the point of being emotionally disturbed. We had so little time that sometimes, comparing my teenage years to high school in this country, I think we -- we just didn't have time to be foolish, to hang out, to get into drugs or God knows what. We led an extremely pressured and busy life. But since I had a number of friends who did the same, I was able to cope with it without -- at least I don't think I had any emotional problems. It was just hard.

AB:Did you continue to read?

AF:Oh, yes. I continued to read. I started to read English. And I think by the 45:00time I joined the British army, my English was passable. And all of that -- there were all kinds of evening schools to which we went. I don't know how I got the energy, but I worked -- physical work as a cabinetmaker all day long, and then I went to evening school and private lessons. And then, we still had enough energy to have parties and have a good time.

AB:All right. So, why don't you tell me about your time in the British military?

AF:Well, as I mentioned, I volunteered on my eighteenth birthday. I was sent to a very large camp called Sarafand, which was the major British camp, not too far from Tel Aviv. And on the first day, I was given a uniform. And, you know, the 46:00usual thing that happens in the army -- you are assigned -- not a room, but you are assigned a spot where you can put down your mattress. But on the very first day, I met a fellow yeke -- German Jew -- who volunteered the day before I did. And this happens to be a man who became my best friend. And after, what is it, sixty-five or so years, we still are. He lives in Israel. He became a very high government official, state comptroller. And we have been friends and traveled together for the last sixty-five years. And that made it very easy to adjust to army life. The camp in Sarafand and the recruit training that we had was very, 47:00very tough. It was almost as rigid as the Marine training in the United States. And we had training for three months. There was a lot of marching and -- I'm sorry, I shouldn't use the word in an interview, but it was bullshit -- you know, polishing your shoes and all of that. But we had a lot of physical training, obstacle courses, forced marches. And I was in terrific physical shape. It was rough. But in later years, when I was forty or so, I thought, Gee, it would be wonderful to go back into the recruit training for two weeks to get back into shape. And we learned shooting: weapons training, guns, machine guns. It was not easy, but again, I had a rel-- I guess my nature is basically 48:00optimistic: I had a relatively good time. One of the difficult problems was the barracks. Everything was infested with bedbugs, and the only way I was able to sleep is to take a blanket out on the -- on a concrete floor and sleep outside. It's amazing what you can do when you are young. I slept quite well with one blanket on a concrete floor and covering myself with the blanket. I don't think I could do that anymore today. But those were some of the hardships. But everybody else in that camp had to deal with bedbugs and -- I understand now, we are now in 2011, they are coming back, and I hope they are not going to attack me anymore; I really suffered intensely. Other than that, I survived the 49:00training. And through no doing of myself -- I'm not sure how they -- in the army, you don't ask questions; you do as you're being told. I was assigned to the Ordnance Corps, the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. And my first posting was another camp in Palestine. And I was trained in several courses as an ammunition specialist. And I spent the first three, four months in the army in Palestine. I was then transferred to Cyprus, and by that time I was a fairly competent ammunition specialist. And I spent a total of over two -- two and a half years, almost, in Egypt. And because of the training that I had, the army -- the 50:00British army -- would not let me go. I was very foolish and I volunteered at one time for the parachute corps. Luckily, they rejected me, because it always came back to the fact that they invested all of their training and they didn't want to let me go. I volunteered for the Jewish Brigade, which was formed officially under the -- as part of the British army. And they were actually -- my good friend Jacob was accepted, and he saw some action in Italy. They would not let me go. And the last time -- and I tried to transfer out of the Ordnance Corps -- is when I volunteered for the translat-- what was really the secret service, because I knew German. And they said, Yes, we would like to get you. And I was 51:00transferred to a temporary camp in Cairo. And then, the orders came: No, he has to go back to the ammunition corps. So, I never saw any action. Most of the time that I spent was in a camp for over two years in Egypt, a camp in the desert between Cairo and Alexandria, which was a huge ammunition depot where all of the surplus ammunition that was left in the Middle East -- by Germans, by Italians, and the British -- ammunition -- was collected. And I got there in 1944, and I was there until 1946, when the war had ended. And our job was to demolish the ammunition, to get rid of it. So, every day at two o'clock, we had lots of 52:00German prisoners of war, Italian prisoners of war who were the people who loaded up the trucks. At one time, when we didn't have enough prisoners of war, they hired Egyptian work gangs. And we piled up huge piles of ammunition. At two o'clock, they were set off in an ammunition -- which -- you could feel the ground shaking sixty kilometers away in Cairo. Every time that I was on leave for weekends or in Cairo, I knew at two o'clock, the shaking -- and nobody else knew what it was.

AB:Did --

AF:The time that I was there was not unpleasant. We had an army camp with all 53:00the normal military facilities. There was a -- it was called a NAAFI -- I cannot think of the equivalent in the army here. You know, it was like a -- for entertainment, for drinking. We drank huge amounts of beer. By that time, I had been promoted twice. For the beginning I was a corporal, and then I was promoted to sergeant, and I thought I was very important. And as a sergeant, I was transferred out of the barracks into the sergeant quarters, where it was quite luxurious; we had three people in one room instead of barracks. (coughs) We had 54:00a different dining hall, which was called a sergeant mess. And life was not bad. This was towards the end of my time -- after the end of the war in 1945. They were very short of personnel, and I became, in that ammunition depot, the acting transport officer. And I felt very important. I had the right to requisition railroad carts -- cars -- to deliver the ammunition from all over. We received some of the ammunition in a little village nearby, in a canal where it was brought in by barges, and my job was to organize it all and get it stored and then get it blown up. And I was issued a motorcycle. And I thought that I was 55:00probably the hottest item around, on my motorcycle with large leather gloves and a helmet. And I thought that I basically won the war with the help of one or two other people like Montgomery. I should digress -- do I have time to digress? Before I joined the army, the Germans under Rommel advanced, and luckily, Montgomery stopped -- in the Battle of El Alamein -- we were very much aware -- by that time I was seventeen-and-a-half -- we knew what was going to happen, and we were very much afraid, because we knew if the Germans will not be stopped, they'll get into Cairo, they'll get into Palestine, and it would be our end. We 56:00were very much aware of it. So, we were very, very lucky. And I think that Montgomery and the British Eighth Army saved our life.

AB:Can we --

AF:I'm jumping around.

AB:That's okay. Can we jump ahead now to the Israeli war for independence and ho-- to '48 and why --

AF:Yeah. Okay.

AB:-- you decided to come back?

AF:I left -- okay. I was discharged from the British army in 1946. I, like all the other Jews in the British army, got an early discharge, because by that time the British knew that they couldn't trust us. We smuggled ammunition, other people smuggled uniforms. And so, I was discharged at the end of '46. I went back to work in cabinetmaking for one year, went to evening school, and I -- 57:00because of my background in cabinetmaking, I became interested in either architecture or interior architecture. There was no way I could study it in Israel, so I decided, I will come to the United States, which I did in 1947. I came again without any money -- well, I had two hundred dollars, and most of that went immediately because I had -- I took a job as a cabinetmaker, and I had to buy tools, which -- I don't know whether they still do that. And I worked for one year as a cabinetmaker. I went to evening school to the Brooklyn Museum Art School. By that time, I had finished my high school equivalency, both in the -- in Palestine and I took the equivalency in -- at New York University, so I was 58:00eligible to apply for college. And it was not easy, but I was finally admitted in '47 -- '48 -- to Pratt Institute, which was my first choice. And then, the war broke out in Palestine -- and I immediately volunteered. And I was in the first group of about forty Jewish kids from -- former Palestinians and American volunteers to get back to -- at that time, it was Israel already. I missed the first few weeks of the war. We landed in Haifa, and I was immediately approached -- because of my British army background, I should go into an officers' training 59:00course. I wanted to do what I could to help. I didn't want to get killed, so I said, "No, thank you," 'cause I knew the young officers -- in Hebrew it's called an MM, a madrich -- never mind. I opted not to take that. And the army was still totally casual; there were no uniforms. And I contacted my old friend Jacob, who was at that time, by sheer coincidence, in the camp where we both -- were both trained as recruits for the British army, that had become a big camp for the emerging Israeli army. He said, "Why don't you come?" And I took a bus and he introduced me to the company commander. And when he heard my background, he 60:00said, "Yeah, we could use you. We need a quartermaster." So, I had no uniform, no rank. We slept in barracks, male and female. It was like a kibbutz. And I became the regimental quartermaster of the Godot Moriah, which was a very respected fighting regiment. We at that time were actually -- when I joined, it was part of Palmach, which was the commando of the Israeli army. But again, I survived without getting into any actual battles. After a few weeks in Sarafand, we were transferred to Jerusalem. The road was under the Arab control; we had to go on back roads, in a large convoy which -- on a road which was called the Burma Road -- it was unpaved most of the time. There were several hundred 61:00people, and I was res-- by that time, I was responsible for ammunition and for all of the supplies. We managed to get to Jerusalem, and our job was to protect the -- we had the outlying -- they were called [mishlat?], which was a -- I can't think of the British -- of the English word -- to provide the protection for Jerusalem. At that time, there was already the first armistice, but in spite of the armistice, there was a lot of shooting. Again, I think I had many lucky breaks in my life. The room that I had been assigned in a former Arab apartment house in Baka -- one night they were -- a shell was shot, exploded in it. There 62:00were four of us in the room, but we were out when the shell hit. As the quartermaster, we had a -- like, an army camp headquarters in Baka, and the quartermaster -- the stores, ammunition and all of that was at the entrance to the camp, and at one time I was standing there, and an Arab (UNCLEAR) there -- we could see the Old City -- took a shot at me, missed, and the bullet bounced off the wall. I was foolish; I never picked it up. I should have picked it up as a souvenir. So, I was really lucky many times. In spite of the official armistice, there were some military action. I was in one where we were supposed 63:00to conquer Bethlehem. And the Israeli army was as screwed up as all armies, and usually, we -- I think we won because the other -- the Arab armies were worse. But we were supposed to conquer Bethlehem, and we were in a camp at the border, outside borders of Jerusalem. And I was the senior rank there -- I was a sergeant major, a "rav samal" in Hebrew, and I found that here I was -- and I was not really a good fighter. And I met -- I didn't meet him -- the commanding general was Moshe Dayan, and we were standing there, we had ammunition, 64:00everything, ready to attack Bethlehem. Dayan came by and I saluted, stood at attention, and he said, "Get that ammunition out of here! You will be shelled at six o'clock!" And I'm thinking, How does he know? But he knew. I got everybody who was around -- we managed to get all of the ammunitions under shelter -- inside a building, and at six o'clock, they started to shell us. By that time, some of the fighting officers had arrived, so I was no longer in charge, and I was very happy. And we never managed to conquer Bethlehem at the time, because everything was screwed up, but that's another story.

AB:All right. Why don't we skip very far ahead --

AF:Okay.

AB:-- to sort of, now, could you give me a very brief snapshot of your life today?

AF:Okay. I came back to the United States in -- after the -- one year in the 65:00Israeli army, in 1949, just in time for the semester at Pratt Institute. I graduated with a BFA, and they asked me to stay on, and I became a teaching assistant. I eventually got a master's degree. I did all kinds of professional work -- part-time with an architectural firm, full-time sometimes. And then, Pratt offered me a position as a junior faculty member, and I got stuck. And I always continued to practice design, but I started to teach in the department of interior design. And by 1972, I was a full professor and the head of the -- the 66:00chairman of the department of interior design. And in 1972, I decided that I will have to get out, do something else; otherwise, I'd be there forever. I was on every committee and I was very much part of the Pratt Institute establishment, and I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. By that time, I had written books and I was well-known in the field of interior design, and I had several offers, and I took the one from the University of Massachusetts, where I started a professional program of interior design and architectural studies within the department of art. After I retired -- and by now, the program that I started is now architecture and design, and it's the only accredited program at a state university in New England for a master's of 67:00architecture, so I'm very pleased about that. Even so, I'm now retired, and I'm just an emeritus professor. But I was pleased with what I achieved.

AB:So, you said you've started -- you've learned some Yiddish and taken some --

AF:Yeah. I --

AB:Can you talk about that?

AF:I had mentioned earlier that German Jews had no knowledge of Yiddish and looked down on it. And I became aware of the fact that the Yiddish literature was very rich, and I became very interested in it. I took a class with Ilan Stavans, who is one of the big names for the Yiddish Book Center, on Yiddish literature. I took a class in Yiddish at Hampshire College. In learning in retirement, I took a class on Singer's literature. I read a lot of the Yiddish 68:00literature -- in English. My Yiddish has never become very good, but because I know German and I know Hebrew, the mixture makes -- I can understand Yiddish, but I am a very, very slow reader. By now, I haven't done it in a while. I don't really know -- think -- I wouldn't be able to carry on a conversation. But I love Yiddish as a language. I think it is a richer lang-- it's almost a plastic language. It is richer than German, and I'm sort of sorry that I didn't learn more. And I think the literature -- people like Singer, Peretz, Sholem Aleichem -- Moykher-Sforim -- all of these are wonderful writers, so I guess my -- and I 69:00mean -- and I was a member -- I became a member of the Yiddish Book Center from the word go. And I remember because I am also a -- I was an associate dean in humanities and fine arts at the university, and -- but the Judaic studies -- you know, I knew everybody, and I'm not honorary, but I was like a member of the Judaic studies, and I remember that the very first pre-opening meeting was a little cocktail party at the Yiddish Book Center, to which I was invited, so I feel I'm part of it and have been part of it for as long as it existed.

AB:How did you originally become interested in Yiddish literature?

AF:It goes back to New York, where I rented a furnished room from a -- I worked and then later on -- even when we were first married, we lived in a furnished 70:00room, and we rented it from a woman who came from Russia, was highly educated, with a Yiddish background. And all the people we met through her were highly educated, and I somehow sensed, Gee, they really know more than my parents and the German Jews who thought they know it all. And that is what aroused my interest in Yiddish and Yiddish literature. And ever since, you know, I started to read a lot.

AB:How do you think Jewish languages -- so, Yiddish and Hebrew -- have influenced your identity?

AF:A lot. I'm still not religious, not at all. I'm counted as a member in the Amherst Jewish community, but only because I want to be counted. I don't think I've -- no, I've never been to a service. But I am a very -- culturally, very 71:00aware Jew, because of my knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish, and some of the books. And that has become a very, very important part of my life, and continues to be. And I think I am as good a Jew as any, without being religious. And it's not a paradox. I don't think -- I shouldn't say that, but I'm -- possibly, I am a Jewish atheist. That's a separate religion.

AB:What's important for you to transmit to later -- to other generations about Jewish identity?

AF:I think the Jewish culture, which goes back many, many thousands of years, 72:00and has formed my attitudes towards life. Even in Germany and here, when I was never religious, I am culturally a Jew first -- well, I'm not sure. I'm also a very good American. As an immigrant who became an American, I equate being Jewish and American, and I'm probably a better citizen than most. I remember that in '68 or '72, when the student revolts took place -- we had the SDS and other societies -- I was out there preaching to the students how to be a good American. So, what I think I would like to transmit to future generations is the 73:00freedom that America has given me, the culture that Judaism and my background has given to me, and I think the two together are very much compatible. Even today, when things are pretty awful in the United States in terms of the economy and politics, I have not lost my optimism for the future of the United States. And one reason why I am such a believing American is, it is really the one country where Jews are able to be Jews and citizens at the same time. And that is what I hope the future will hold.

AB:So, you've been talking about your Jewish identity. Is there a time -- is 74:00there an experience that you think was particularly formative to your identity as a Jew?

AF:I think it started when I became a pupil in the Jewish school in Fürth, the Realgymnasium. It was a very good school. As I mentioned earlier, it was much more religious. By the way, one of my classmates was Henry Kissinger's brother, and I knew Henry Kissinger as a child. He did better than I did. And he's not religious, either. And I think that -- those two years established my Jewish identity more than anything else. And I've never lost it. And I never will, even if I'm not religious. And I don't think the two are incompatible.

AB:Is there a time that you've felt particularly Jewish, either in a good way or 75:00a bad way?

AF:I think the Hitler laws -- the years under Hi-- growing up under more and more restrictive laws and the horrible Kristallnacht experience made me very, very conscious that I am a Jew. And I will never be anything else. And I never want -- I don't ever want to be anything else. But the Nazis under the Hitler laws created a very proud -- culturally proud Jew that they -- I don't think they had that in mind.

AB:How do you think the Holocaust and World War II affected you?

AF:It will never go away. You know, I mentioned earlier -- I lost my grandparents and uncles and aunt and many people. On the other hand, for the 76:00first thirty years in the United States, I would not permit German to be spoken in our house, I never bought a German product, and I was full of hate. And it took me a long time to overcome that. I now can deal with it. I know that Germans today -- the young Germans -- are totally different, and are great friends of Israel. But it was difficult.

AB:How did you begin to overcome that?

AF:I went to a professional design conference in Finland some thirty-five years ago, and I met a young German woman, and I sort of -- you know, I said hi, turned away, and she came after me and said, "I think you don't want to talk to me because I am German." I said, "Well, yes, I guess so." She said, "Let me help you." She did. She has become a good friend, and she still is. I was the 77:00resident director for the university in Freiburg seven years ago, and we visited her, and I could li-- I would never accept a German passport, but I could live in Germany without any problems seven years ago, because it is a different country now, and different people. God knows whether it will continue that way. I worry, because the new generation of German Jews are emigrants from Russia, and I am not convinced that anti-Semitism is gone forever. It is right now. But anyhow, for me, it is not -- I can travel to Germany, which I couldn't for thirty years after I left.

AB:What was it like to live there for a year?

AF:To be there?

AB:Yeah.

AF:I had no problems. Both my wife and I stayed away from anybody our age. 78:00Because people never -- I came back and I jokingly said, "Oh, I've found out there never were any Nazis in Germany," 'cause whoever we talked to said, "Oh, my parents were anti-Nazi." But the young people are okay today, and they are the closest allies of Israel, right after the United States, so I don't have any problems right now.

AB:So, for your professional life, you were a professor of interior design, right?

AF:Yeah.

AB:So, is there any particular work of art that had a special impact on you?

AF:I was very influenced by the Bauhaus. My first professor at Pratt was a 79:00German who had come -- gentile who had come here to the United States, and he had been a year at the Bauhaus, and the whole education that I had, and the whole influence, is predicated on that. And when I came to UMass, I was given a choice to go, with my very small beginning program, to the art department or to landscape architecture, and I opted for the art department, because I had that tradition of the first year, the foundation year, which was first done at the Bauhaus, and then it was done here. And incidentally, I also became an adjunct professor of landscape architecture. But my influence was not a particular artist and not a partic-- it was the group of designers and artists from the 80:00Bauhaus. And my former students still tease me about it, but I have consciously tried to continue that tradition, and I think it has served me well. And I myself -- I designed a lot of furniture over the years. I practiced interior design. And I think my kind of work and my style of work was heavily influenced by A, the Bauhaus; B, the 1950s, including the Scandinavian design. And I designed and made a lot of furniture. So, we live in an apartment now, and I'm surrounded by the things that I designed and made over the years.

AB:All right. So, we're nearing the end of our time. Is there anything that 81:00you'd like to add that we haven't touched on? Anything more about Jewish identity or about Yiddish?

AF:No, I think I'm grateful to having discovered Yiddish background, Yiddish literature. In fact, I am almost finished reading Aaron Lansky's book right now, and I think Aaron did a wonderful job in creating the center. And I find myself almost a little bit envious that I grew up a German Jew rather than a Yiddish-speaking Jew. But I think I have managed to combine the two. And I'm happy to have discovered Yiddish and Yiddish literature. But I still am 82:00influenced by, you know, what I grew up with -- the German literature -- and the whole tradition of German and Yiddish culture is sort of what identifies me today as a Jew -- as a Jew and an American.

AB:So, some people have said that Yiddish has been dying, is dead. What do you think about that? And what do you think make language living?

AF:I don't think any language should ever die. There are many languages -- American Indian languages that have almost died. And I think in terms of the cultural tradition of the world, Yiddish was in grave danger of dying. And I 83:00think it's a good thing that it did not. And I think that -- thanks to Aaron and the Yiddish Book Center, that it continues to thrive. I don't have any statistics, but I believe there are many universities in this country and in other countries that Yiddish is being taught as a language. I am not sure that it is essential to create new writers in Yiddish, but I'm glad that it continues, and I think -- as I said earlier, it's a rather beautiful, plastic language. And I'm glad that it has been revived and continues. And this very center where we are sitting now is really what is responsible for it. So, I will -- my parting words would be, thanks to the National Yiddish Book Center.

AB:So then, I have two more questions. Do you have a favorite Yiddish word or phrase?

AF:No. I use a lot of Yiddish words. Many of my gentile students made fun of me -- that I was trying to teach them Yiddish. Everybody knew what a shmate [rag] is. And I used to bring a lot of Yiddish words, shlemiel and -- I don't think I have a favorite word. And a lot of the Yiddish words that I like are almost part of the English language now. Not a particularly single phrase or word, but I use many of them. And I have spread the good word to many non-Jews.

AB:What are some of the words you use regularly?

AF:Oy vey, I can't think of them, there are so many of them. I like to tell the joke, the difference between shlemiel and shlimazl -- I'm sure you've heard it and everybody has heard it. I use words like ganef. I can't even think of them, because they have become part of my vocabulary. And in New York -- actually, when I was a student at Pratt in New York, one of my good friends came of Italian background, and he grew up in a Jewish-Italian neighborhood in New York, and he taught me my first Yiddish words. And in Israel and in Palestine, I didn't know any Yiddish.

AB:What were your first Yiddish words?

AF:Kh'veys nisht [I don't know].

AB:(laughs)

AF:Kayn aynung. Don't know.

AB:So then, my last question is, what advice do you have for future generations?

AF:It's a little presumptuous to give advice to future generations. Being a mixture of a German Jewish and American background, an admirer of Yiddish, my advice for the future is to keep it up. My advice to future generations is, don't have any wars ever. I was in two armies, and I am by now a convinced pacifist. No war -- not the war in Iraq and not the war in Afghanistan -- should ever have taken place. And my hope for the future is that the kind of mixture that we have now -- the many, many different cultures that come together in the 87:00cities or even in a small town like Amherst -- people from Asia, from all of the world -- that is what I hope the future will be. Maybe a hundred years from now or two hundred years from now, if we don't manage to blow ourselves up, that there will be less difference between the races, less difference between Latinos and Jews, and in that, I see the future and hope that the future will be one without war. So, that's it.

AB:Thank you.

AF:My pleasure. Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]