FRED IRVING ORAL HISTORY

ALLIE BRUDNEY: This is Allie Brudney and today is Thursday, February 16th, 2012. I am here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Fred Irving and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record this interview?

FRED IRVING: Absolutely.

AB: Thank you very much. All right, so I guess I'd first like to just begin asking you about your experiences as a POW. And so, how did you get into the service?

FI: Well, I was in my senior year at Brown University when the war broke out for the United States. And I come from a family of six children. I'm the youngest. 1:00Five boys and one girl. So, we all volunteered, much to the dismay of all my relatives who castigated my mother for letting us do that, because the law at that time was that you can always leave one son back. And my mother got them to shut up by asking, Which one should I leave, and she's proud of all of us, so that ended that. I wanted to go into the Air Force. So, an Air Force recruiter came. And let me back up a bit. When the war broke out, I started to take pilot training at Hillsgrove Airport in Rhode Island at five o'clock in the morning. And the recruiter asked me, Where in the Air Force would I like to go? I said, "Well, I don't know." There's pilot, bombardier, navigator. He said, "Well, 2:00we'll let you finish Brown, take a" -- accelerate in the summer, if I would agree to become a navigator, because they were very short of navigators and the Air Force wanted college graduates to be navigators because it took a lot of studying and a lot of different subjects, like meteorology and all that sort of stuff in your head to have a good memory besides. So, I agreed to become a navigator. So, they said, Fine, we'll let you finish -- get your degree. And I went to the summer -- and three weeks later, I was called as a navigation cadet, went into training, took all sorts of primary training like an infantry officer, and I took specialized Air Force exams, and they said that there was a dilemma 3:00because I passed all the exams and I could be anything I want. Would I still honor my commitment to be a navigator? And I said, "Well, sure." So, that's how I became a navigator.

AB: So, what does a navigator do?

FI: A navigator takes the airplane to the target and back. He tells the pilot where to fly, how high to fly, how to get to the target. And if hit, which happened in the plane I was the navigator, then he has to steer the plane from the target to the base, back -- base as possible. And I did that. At least I got it, when we were hit over the target and had to leave the formation -- and the 4:00formation consists of, usually, maybe a hundred four-engine heavy bombers and flying at -- oh, about twenty-three thousand feet altitude. And we dropped down to about fifteen thousand feet and had to leave the formation 'cause two of our engines were on fire. And --

AB: So, can you back up and explain --

FI: Sure.

AB: -- what the mission was, what you were doing?

FI: Oh, the mission was to -- our specialty was oil refineries and this mission was to Blechhammer, Germany, deep in the Balkans. It was a synthetic oil field. And with the Germans always being short of fuel for their tanks and what have you, they were very important. I'd been on the Ploiești, Romania raids four times where we lost many, many, many planes. And I managed to steer the plane -- 5:00when I say steer, I mean give directions to the pilot. And I got as far as mid-Hungary when German fighters came, knocked out another engine. So, the plane cannot really fly under one engine when you have four. And we kept losing altitude and it was obvious that we'd have to bail out, parachute out. And the engines were on fire. And, so I say, I got them as far as Hungary. Mid-Hungary when these German fighters came at us. And then, suddenly, I saw the German fighters do an about-face. Then I looked and there were the Tuskegee Airmen and 6:00they chased the German fighters away. German fighters were afraid of the Tuskegee Airmen 'cause they're so good.

AB: Can you explain who they were?

FI: Yeah, Tuskegee Airmen were -- it's an all black fighter pilot squadron. The US military said that black people don't have the intelligence to fly an airplane and there was a lot of argument on that when one of the generals in the Air Force said, "Well, let's give them a try. Let's see if they can know which way a plane's supposed to fly," and you know, so degrading it was shameful. And they trained in Tuskegee, Alabama. That's how they got the name, and they painted the tails of the fighter planes red, so they also got the Red Tail group, like the movie that's playing now in town about their life. And they not 7:00only did very well -- fact, they excelled in it and were more expert than the white fighter pilots. So, they were allowed to fly but they had to be escort only. They're not supposed to fight the Germans and all that sort of stuff. But they disregarded that.

AB: So, after you saw them coming in, what happened?

FI: The German fighters saw them and did an about-face, an absolute turn away, and I saw them off in the distance and they wouldn't touch us. So, the Tuskegee Airmen went after them, shot two of them down, then came back and it was obvious to them that with the plane on fire, we had to bail out. But they stayed with us and kept the German fighters away until all of us could bail out. I was the last 8:00one to bail out because there was -- one of the nose gunners who was -- well, he went wild, he was so frightened, and I had to make sure that he got out. Otherwise, he would have gone down with the plane and I couldn't see that. My conscience wouldn't let me do that. So, as soon as the Tuskegee men had to leave us, then the fighters came and shot down the fourth engine, so the plane just went all the way down while I was still in the plane. And I managed to get this kid -- I call him a kid 'cause I was twenty-two going on twenty-three and he was eighteen or nineteen. To me, that was a kid. (laughs) And I had to, in effect, put his parachute on him and push him out of the plane and I pulled the ripcord 9:00for him before he left the hatch. And I was almost immediately captured by Hungarian farmers. They didn't like the idea of this plane burning up their farmland, so --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

FI: These Hungarian fighters -- I mean farmers -- came after me and I couldn't understand their language. I could understand some German 'cause I took three years of high school German and I wasn't a bad student. So, that helped me a great deal. And I wondered what they were gonna do with me when they -- I soon caught on when they took me to a tree, put a rope around one of the branches, the other end of the rope was around my neck, and started to string me up. But they made the mistake of not tying my hands or my feet. So, my hands were free, 10:00I pushed them away. So, they came back, repeated the operation of rope up and around my neck, tied my hands, but the dumbbells didn't tie my feet. So, I kicked them away. So, the third time, we went through the same procedure except my hands and my feet were tied. They put the noose around a lot tighter than before. They strung me up. They claim that my feet were actually off the ground. I don't see how that's possible, 'cause if your feet are off the ground, you're hanged. But my feet were off the ground, apparently, for about -- a few seconds when two German soldiers came up and made them release me because they wanted me 11:00for interrogation. And so, what I did is there was a shack and they put me and a couple of our gunners that happened to come out of the plane -- the plane was on fire completely. One of the things I did that I think -- my story, as I get into it -- I dropped the bombs before I left, because if you didn't and the fighter hits a plane, it goes up in flame, explodes, and everyone would have been dead. This way -- one of our aerial gunners was killed in the plane and the other nine of us escaped. See, an ambassador -- not an ambassador, a navigator operates out 12:00of the very front of the airplane. Well, in effect, he's standing on a cloud, he's standing on the -- and it was a lousy maneuverable plane. Like for instance, for some reason or other, when they built the plane, they had the navigator stand with his back to the front of the plane and the only instruments was if -- so I had to add 180 degrees in my head every time. And so, one of the questions they asked me when I went in is, How good am I in math? And I told them that Brown offered me a fellowship if I would major in math, but I saw no future in that. That's how dumb I was at that time. And I wanted political science. And they put us into a shack, in a shack that was all buggy. A lot of 13:00bedbugs and all kinds and -- before it got dark and two of the gunners were crying. So, I told them, "Let's play tic-tac-toe," which we did with the squashed bugs. Then, this gunner who -- I was having trouble -- comes up with a little notebook. And I said, "You're kidding. You're absolutely kidding. The Germans will love that notebook." So, I made each one of us tear out the pages, chew the pages, and then swallow the pages.

AB: What was in the notebook?

FI: Names of friends and relatives. He had about forty names. And that made it dangerous for those people. And the next day, I was told that I have to stand in 14:00front of this stone, have an ID picture taken, and then they'll shoot me. And so, I says, Oh, okay, if that's the way it is. And for some reason, his gun jammed. I don't know why, how. He looked at it and there was ammunition in the gun. And then, he remarked in German, "These American fighters, they're strange people. They don't die." (laughs) And the interrogator, first thing he said was, "You're Jewish." And I said, "How do you know?" He says, "'Cause you got a long nose." So, I said, "My goodness, how come you're sitting where you're sitting?" 15:00And he said, "Warum, why?" And I said, "'Cause turn your head this way. Yours is even longer than mine." So, I got beat up a bit. And it's good that my dog tags fell off when I parachuted out because it had an H on it, which surprised me because I thought long ago -- in fact, about seventy-five years ago now, although I grew up in a Jewish family -- my mother was Jewish and I -- it was supposed to have nothing on it. And I think if it had something on it, I wouldn't be here talking to you, 'cause a lot of Jewish fighters were either killed or sent to -- was like a death camp and the -- let me backtrack a bit. My 16:00father died when he was thirty-six of misdiagnosed appendicitis. And my mother was thirty-two when he died. I was four years old, the oldest was twelve, and we had to go onto welfare.

AB: So, I want to get to your early childhood, but --

FI: Oh, okay.

AB: -- why don't we finish this story and then we can go back and move backwards in time.

FI: Okay.

AB: So, you were --

FI: What I was coming to is that I was discriminated a lot because I always wore hand-me-down clothes which never fit. And people at that time -- we had to go on 17:00welfare and -- okay, so I'm in prison and then they decided that they'll move me to Budapest. This was a little town called Magyaróvár where I got shot down in Hungary. And I was moved there in a cattle car and it still smelled -- there were all the animals in it. And they put me in solitary confinement for three days. They put in with me on the second day someone who claimed that he was an American. Spoke perfect English. But it was obvious he was -- no way was one of our flyers, 'cause he had this silk scarf and leather jacket. And we flew in 18:00sweatshirts. So, when I gave him nothing, no information, they yanked him out. Every day, we stood in line -- there were other prisoners, also in isolation. And I had a tiny, tiny compass for escape purposes. And I had it in between two of my fingers. When the guard discovered that another person did -- and it happened to fall out of his hand at the time. So, he went down and when he discovered mine with his whip, and they all had little whips, he hit me so hard on my neck that I still have lots of troubles with my neck, almost as if he 19:00severed my head from my body, and I was put back into solitary confinement. Then, they decided that this fellow is -- can't seem to die. So, they put me in the back of a truck, open truck, tied my hands at my feet, and with a loudspeaker yelled, "Death to this American gangster!" And this was later translated for me. That's what the loudspeaker was saying. And I was stoned for one solid hour. They all thought that this time I was dead. I was limp and I guess I looked dead. So, two of the Hungarians, one took my feet, one took my hand, my head, and just tossed me into this building and -- where the next day, 20:00they would take me to bury me. And I was almost dead. Then, I decided, Why should I let them get away with this? And that revived me, just that thought. So, I told them, I said, "All of you can go to hell. I'll outlive all of you." And they then put me in another building with other flyers who were shot down and stayed there about a week or so. I'll skip some of the part.

AB: So, I'm just wondering: I assume that not everyone was driven through town in the same way and stoned. Do you know why you were chosen?

FI: Yeah, because they couldn't kill me earlier. They said -- and this was 21:00translated for me in prison camp by one of the guys who knew Hungarian. They said I should have died when I was hanged. I should have died when I was so-called shot and the bullet didn't come out. I should've died from starvation and I didn't. So, they said, Nobody escapes stoning. So, they decided that whether they lose face or not, I should've been killed long ago. So, they were going to fulfill their duty and make sure I never left Hungary alive. And that's why I was -- I don't think others were that -- and then, I stayed in that building with others for about fifteen, twenty days. And then, we were told we 22:00were going to be assigned to our permanent POW -- and this other place was [Sagon?], and the Polish planes in Germany -- and this was for an officer camp. And our camp was divided into three sections: one for British, one for American, and -- two for American, one for British. And for reasons I didn't understand at the time, they put me in with the British. I was the only one of the group who was assigned to the British. And they put me in a room bunking with the Britishers, where we fought the Civil War -- the Revolutionary War -- every day between the British and American. And they always called me the rebel.

AB: Did you find out later why you were placed in that --

FI: I don't know. I think later, they assigned some others 'cause of overcrowding. But this time -- you see, the British had a radio going, map-making and all that sort of stuff. And they put me in with that group. And the British thought, Uh oh, I'm a plant, 'cause in their radio, they were warned to beware of someone who looks American, they claimed to be American, but he really was a plant, really was a German. So, I was given the silent treatment for over a month until I blew my stack and said, "Look, I'm one of you! Why are you doing this?" Well, they finally leveled with me, saying that they're the 24:00ringleaders of the second escape group. You see, the first was called the "Great Escape." And although I was no part of that, I helped bury the ashes of the urns that the Germans just arbitrarily -- just shot every other one. So, this group that I was put in with had a -- Australian, a Czech -- yeah, mostly we were British but there was a Czech and an Australian. And the secret radio told the group to beware of an American coming in, and seems that the very day that I went there, that he's a spy, a plant. So, they thought that I must be he. And 25:00that's why I got the silent treatment. Finally, when I blew my stack and said, "What are you doing to me?" So, then they leveled. They told me that they're the ringleaders of the second escape committee. I was given my choice of joining them or not. I suppose I said, "I don't want to." They said, You'll still be shot, 'cause the information you could pick up is too valuable and we couldn't afford it. So, do you want to be shot as a member of the group or be shot because you didn't want to be a member of the group? So, I took the decision, so easy -- and what we did, I had to work my way up the ladder and my job was to follow a German guard as he made the rounds of the barracks. And every time he got within fifteen feet of the barracks, I was to shout, "Goon in the block." We 26:00called the guys goons. And so, we were starved, cold. According to the Geneva Convention, they're supposed to feed us the same as flying officers, their flying officers. But the commandant told us that they're gonna feed us, but only up to seven hundred calories a day, that sometimes they may even forget to feed us, he said, which was quite often, as a matter of fact. And we then weren't allowed to work. We all wanted to work, but only enlisted personnel could work. Officers were down the -- that's the only part of the Geneva Convention that they honored. And we would've loved to work, to just get out of camp. And we did 27:00things that annoyed the Germans. We did it on purpose.

AB: Like what?

FI: Oh, like calling them goons and following them around or -- I think I mentioned this in my story, make them think we're -- super powers, like, we each took a book as if we were reading in the dark. That scared the heck out of the Germans. Or we would pretend we're trying to escape and, Oh, we were caught. And another thing that they never caught on is when you're digging the tunnel and you had to put the dirt someplace, well, the Germans had us -- this camp was 28:00built in a forest. And when they cut down the trees, they left the stumps and they had us remove the stumps, which left a hole. And they never caught on that the hole was suddenly filled, of course, from the dirt. They never caught on. Also, the British were genius people, actually. You needed the slats, wooden things to hold up the dirt on the side. And we slept on -- they issued seven wooden slats and the straw mattress, paper -- and to get the slats, we all agreed, those of us part of the committee, that we would donate those slats, 29:00four of the seven -- it's why all of us had bad backs -- and when the guard would come at night, he'd look to see that everything's all right, and the British taught us how to always switch four slats to one of us with lightning speed. So, when the guard shone his flashlight on one -- and you can always -- the Germans are so routine. Everything has to be done just right, so you knew in advance, fairly much in advance, which one they're gonna see if you got full slats. So, we would switch at night. They never caught on where the wooden slats 30:00came from. And the second committee of which I was a member started another tunnel. And this time -- you had to have had a sense of humor. In the early days of the war, when the British were in the war, the Germans allowed them to build a theater, bring in sports equipment, or all sorts of instruments.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

FI: The British group, that's where I was billeted, decided that they'd have fun with the German guards. So, they built the entrance to the tunnel in the aisle, in the seat reserved for the commandant when they put on plays. And whenever they had to have a loud noise, the one person who played, like, the saxophone, 31:00he would play that and our diggers would have to remove some heavy stones and -- makes noise. German commandant never caught on. Then, a little after Christmas, we were freezing. There was always snow, rain. Temperature -- was having the coldest winter in thirty years. Our huts were never warmer than forty-five, fifty degrees and, yeah, that's very cold. And they allowed us to take stumps or -- they never gave us any wood or fuel, but we would have to go around in the camp and find sticks and all that. So, most of the time, it was under fifty degrees.

AB: So, what happened as the Soviet and American troops were sort of moving closer?

FI: In about the middle of July, the Soviets broke through the Polish plains and they were just about twenty miles from our camp. So, we thought, Oh, boy, we got us liberation. But the German High Command was afraid to release us. They told us that us flying officers will be the last released and as a matter of fact, they will never release us. And then, we got word that Hitler personally wanted the commandant to convey the following message, that we have more to fear from the Soviets than from the German -- and they wanted us to join the German Air Force and drive the Soviets away. And we all laughed and said, You got to be crazy. So, another message came from, they said, Hitler personally, that he'll 33:00never release us and if we try to stall or wait for the Soviets, they'll just shoot us right on the spot. And we were given thirty minutes to take whatever we could and start marching away from the Soviets. And we slept in the snow. The German guards were confused, didn't know what to do. We marched one time thirty-six straight hours. Naturally, since -- there was no access to food other than what you can pick up as you marched. There were some Red Cross parcels that they said, Okay, we'll give you some of those and that's it. And finally, some 34:00of the guards blamed us for forcing them to march, too, in this kind of weather. So, one guard in particular said, given the chance, he's gonna kill all of us. And what we decided to do, what I decided to do, I guess, it's just I -- there was an empty warehouse and the German guard said, "We're gonna put you in there for the night." Well, not because they took pity on us, but four of the German guards froze to death on the march. And they wanted two volunteers to go into this -- there was a dispensary, strictly for the Germans. There was -- used to be a German sub base. So, I saw my chance of getting rid of this guy who wants 35:00to shoot us. And I used to work in a pharmacy after school. And I saw something that looked familiar, cascara sagrada. It's a laxative. Looks like M&Ms. So, I swiped the bottle, purposely let him see me put it in my pocket. He said, "What have you got there?" And I said, "Chocolate." And he grabbed it and just poured the whole damn bottle into the palm of his hands and just went -- poof! (laughs) Never saw him again. (laughs) Then, we marched and we marched in the snow and slept in the snow. And they didn't give us any food and there were -- literally, I would say, three or four days without food. And many is the time I would try to scrape away the snow to see if there's any grass there so I could maybe chew on grass. They say it keeps cows alive, why not me or us? And finally, we passed 36:00a farmhouse. We saw a great big pile of cabbages, which they use to feed their cattle. So, all of us prisoners broke loose and grabbed the cabbages. The guards kept shooting. I'm not sure whether they killed any of us because everyone was looking out for himself by that time. But I did see a hen and I remembered someone telling me that if you hit the back of a hen quickly, she'll lay an egg. So, I tried it and sure enough, she laid an egg. And I'm about to crack the egg when a guard came up, grabbed it, and said, "I'll give you ---" X number of 37:00seconds "-- to get back into formation, otherwise I'm gonna shoot you right on the spot." And he took the egg. So, I almost came close to eating something. And we marched and we marched and finally reached Nuremburg, which was -- oh, which could have been about eighty miles away. Again, no food. And we were billeted there. It had bunks. It used to be a German Army facility. And I was so full of lice by that time and wet -- you didn't dare take off your shoes, otherwise your feet would explode. I wasn't feeling well. But I saw a shack with -- couple of 38:00faucets, they were cold water faucets. So, I undressed completely, 'cause the lice was killing me, and I was having welts all over. And I came down with a high fever and there was a German dispensary, strictly for German military, so I sneaked in, told the doctor -- he spoke perfect English 'cause he got his medical degree in the United States. I said, "I don't feel well. I want you to take care of me." And he was about to call the guards when I grabbed him by the throat and said, "One more move and you're dead." And he said, Well, he's not gonna give me any medicine and he told me that I had pneumonia and I was gonna die before the night was out, he said, "So why waste all this good medicine?" 39:00So, I said -- I had, by that time, let him go. So, I grabbed his throat again. I said, "I've still got the strength to squeeze harder. You give me that medicine or, if you don't -- and if I die, you go with me." So, he gave me ten aspirins and said, "They won't do you any good." I said, "I want 'em anyway." And I nibbled one, each time. But after he gave me the medicine, I let him go and sneaked back. In the meantime, all my colleagues burned down the bunks, anything wood they saw, built fires inside the building, never thinking that we could set the building on fire. And I nibbled the aspirins, little by little by little. 40:00And again, I stayed alive. And then, we were there two months. There was day and night bombings by -- night time by the British, and the daylight time by the Americans. And I'll never forget one of the British guys, a bomber who was hit -- his plane was on fire. He could easily have saved his life by parachuting out. The plane, however, would have hit our bunkers, our building. He would have been safe and all of us would have died. But he stayed in this plane till he cleared the building, and obviously he was killed. And I'll never forget that, his bravery. And we were in Nuremburg for just two months, I guess. Then, again, 41:00when American forces broke through and were heading toward Nuremburg -- so, we were given about a half hour again to take whatever you can carry and start marching again. And we marched and we marched and somehow, the guards suddenly came up with a few potatoes. So, we shared potatoes with our group. And they're usually half rotten, but you didn't care. And by this time, I had a pot belly. My cheeks were pretty fat, which meant starvation. And we marched for about fifteen days. There was still snow on the ground. One of the German guards tried 42:00to surrender to me and he started -- he wanted to give me his rifle. And I told him, "No way am I gonna carry this heavy rifle. Just give me all the ammunition you've got and you carry that empty rifle." And it was soon, about the fifteenth or seventeenth day, suddenly American planes dropped leaflets saying -- and it was in German -- "Do not harm these people or retaliation will happen," which meant that the war was gonna end soon. But we marched and reached a prison camp at Musberg, which was a little bit south of Munich. And there, there were thousands of prisoners and they were divided into compounds. One was American, 43:00one was Russian, and one was all other nationalities. The Russians hated us Americans, absolutely. You can just tell by their speech, by their appearance. And we were there maybe a couple of weeks or so, when general word came again from Hitler, so they said that the commandant was to kill all the American flyers and he refused. So, he then told us that the SS were coming and they were to kill all of us, including him for failing to kill us. General Patton heard about this, so he deviated from where he was headed and came to our camp at the 44:00same time that the SS came. And there was a two-day battle. General Patton had us dig trenches, for us to lie in. Bullets were flying all over the place and General Patton eventually defeated the SS. And that was April 29, 1945. And Patton announced, "You're now liberated." So, he and his tank group tore down all the gates and the Russians then came at us. The Russians were about to kill us. There was a horse farm there. They rode the horse farms into our camp. They had sticks, trying to kill us, and then General Patton made us get back into the building. He said, "We're not done yet." And he drove the Russian soldiers back 45:00into camp and set up a gate so that they couldn't come at us. And we -- eventually taken to a camp in -- right outside of Paris called Lucky Strike. They wouldn't send us home 'cause they said, We don't want your family to see your condition. So, we're gonna fatten you up. And word came out, also, to the American soldiers that they were not to feed us 'cause it would kill us, you know, suddenly good food. And we would be fed separately. And I remember following one of the GIs back who was eating a Hershey bar and I begged him to let me lick the wrapper. (laughs) And eventually, we got on a ship, came home. I 46:00was still a little puffy. People said, I thought -- everybody claimed they didn't feed you. Why have you got such a belly? Well, it was a starvation belly. And actually, our cheeks and the stomach deflated after about two or three weeks. So, it was a temporary thing. But I was in and out of hospitals by the VA. I was mistreated. Sometimes I wondered if they were the Germans. By the VA, for instance, one doctor, American doctor who was in a military hospital in Maryland, who refused to treat me because he said, "All prisoners of war were traitors." I said, "What do you mean, traitors?" He said he knows what happened. 47:00He said we all set our bombers on fire and bailed out so we could lead the life of Riley in the rest camp. Well, I found out where he got this idea. He came from the South. The United States brought a lot of German, Italian prisoners of war to the United States. And they fed these prisoners as if they were in a rest camp. Movies, dances. They let 'em choose their menu and all that. And even worse, they had black soldiers waiting on these prisoners, doing their laundry, acting as waiters and busboys. And that's always, always bothered me.

AB: So, I just want to make sure that we have enough time. So, can we go back to your childhood?

FI: Oh, sure.

AB: You mentioned your mother earlier and said that you grew up on welfare.

FI: Yeah.

AB: So, can you tell me about your mother?

FI: Yeah, she came to this country from Russia when she was nine years old. And she was one of ten children, I think. And her parents thought that she was the most home-loving and most gentle and said one of her children has to stay home from college, from high school or whatever, elementary school, and help her raise all the other children. So, she never learned how to read and write. And she always thought that her sisters -- there were mostly sisters -- of course, 49:00they went to school, they must know what to do and not to do. Well, we kept saying, Look, going to school does not mean intelligence. And she was a very intelligent person. She obviously was Jewish and her parents were Jewish so, yeah, she was, too. And we grew up in a Jewish household. And we lived in a black neighborhood. We were the only white people in the whole area.

AB: Can you describe what that was like?

FI: What's that?

AB: Can you describe -- what was that like?

FI: I saw no difference. They were people. And I had -- my playmates were black. Never occurred to me that they were a different color. And then, one of the -- I 50:00was great friends with one of them, was a little kid about my age, about six or seven, and I would play with him after -- first I met him in kindergarten and knew him. And one day, he came to me and said his mother said he can't play with me anymore. And I said, "Why?" And he said he didn't know. So, I got to admit I went home crying and said that, "Jimmy said he can't play with me anymore." So, my mother went to his mother and said, Did her son do anything to him or anything? Said, "Oh, no, no. It's just that as he grows up, he's gonna have to learn what prejudice is like and may as well learn it at a young age," 'cause he would be looked down on. And we found a way secretly to still play with each 51:00other. But I thought, My God, what is prejudice? I didn't understand. People, kids my age and a little older made fun of me 'cause my clothes didn't fit, I had hand-me-downs. But that's where I first learned about prejudice.

AB: You said before that your home was Jewish. What does that mean to you?

FI: It was a very friendly environment. I went to shul with my mother. Then, I don't know what happened. I used to have to, my brothers and I, would have to go to Hebrew school after elementary school, first off to kindergarten and then, 52:00till I was bar mitzvahed, thirteen. And the thing I started to wonder is, what's going on when there was a -- the usual elections in the United States. And she said the rabbi said she had to vote Republican. I said, "I don't understand." He said, "When she came to the United States, there was a Republican president. Therefore, every Jew has to vote Republican." I said, "That's crazy!" But I had trouble shaking -- my brothers and I couldn't shake her. I said, "Do you like what the Republicans stand for, are doing?" She said, "No, no, there should not be a Republican president." So, I said, "Well, why are you voting Republican?" 53:00"'Cause the rabbi said so." So, then I started to wonder, What kind of a religion is this? And then, at Hebrew school, the instructor would sometimes -- always say -- he'd pick me out and say, "Did you do your homework?" And I said, "No." He says, "You've got to do your homework or else you're not a good Jew." So, I asked, "Well, what's a bad Jew?" I actually asked him, "What's a bad Jew?" And a bad Jew is one who does not listen to the rabbi. That's his definition. And then, when it came Yom Kippur and we all went to shul and my mother would sit upstairs in the balcony and I would sit with my brothers and grandfather 54:00downstairs. And I said, "Why can't I sit with my mother? I don't want her to be alone." And she wouldn't have been, of course, but I was told, "The Jewish religion demands this." And I said, "Why?" They said, Because the Torah demands it. And that's the only answer I ever got. Then, there was -- when we lived on the other side of town to where the Hebrew school was and I had to pass a Catholic church with the cross on top. So, I looked up at it. And in Hebrew school, I said, "There's a big church that I pass. It's a beautiful building and 55:00it has a cross on top." Well, the teacher said, "You don't ever do that again. When you come here tomorrow, put your face down so you don't see the cross and you turn around three times." And I said, "Why?" He said, "Because I said so." The only answers I ever got was either the rabbi said so or he, the teacher, said so. Could never get any other kind of answer. So, I started to rebel. I refused to learn the Hebrew language. I could understand Jewish because my grandparents and mother would speak Jewish at home. But I said, There's got to 56:00be something wrong here. So, I got out a book from the library about religions, all kinds of religions, and I suddenly saw they all had their customs and all that. But nowhere did I read that the rabbi had that much power. So, by this time, I was in high school, I think, a freshman or sophomore. And one of the things I read about in this book was Unitarianism. And I said, That's like Judaism except it's more liberal. Maybe that's what I am. So, I decided that's what I am. So, I told my mother and she said, Well, it would please her very much if I got bar mitzvahed and it would please her father, my grandfather. But otherwise, you thought it out and you do what you think best. And when it came 57:00to marriage, my classmate, she came from a Catholic family. Her mother was Catholic. Her father was Scotch Presbyterian, in Scotland. And she lived in Williamstown, Massachusetts, lived at their home. And her only concern was that people were gonna say that, Your children will probably be Jewish. And I said, "Ah, I read enough about it where it comes from the mother's side, (laughs) not the father's." And so, when it came to marrying this fine woman who died two years ago -- and, of course, my relatives got after my mother and all this and 58:00I'm gonna go to hell and she's gonna go to hell for tolerating a non-Jewish daughter-in-law. And it turns out that my wife almost felt the same as I and she had turned Unitarian. Not because I was turned, but just so happened. (laughs) And my mother, we told my mother and she said, "Is she a nice girl?" I said, "Yes, I want you to meet her." She met her, she said, Oh, indeed she's nice, and she said, "Don't let our relatives get away with what they're trying to tell you. Compatibility is much better than being the same religion."

AB: So, you said that your mother wanted you to get bar mitzvahed, though. So, you had a bar mitzvah?

FI: Yeah, I had a bar mitzvah.

AB: Do you remember what you did for it, what it was like?

FI: Oh, I had to read the Torah. And my grandfather tutored me a lot so I could read it. And I put the shawl and all that sort of stuff -- and then, I told my mother, "I don't think I can do this anymore." And she said thank you for pleasing her and her parents.

AB: Did your grandparents live with you?

FI: No.

AB: Or near you?

FI: No, no. No, they lived separately. He was a baker who spoke four languages. And he was an outspoken guy like I was. And his very first day on the job, he tried to unionize the bakers and he was put in jail for a day (laughs) and was told, "Don't do that again if you want to keep your job." (laughs) So, my mother 60:00was quite a liberal person. My grandparents were quite liberal. My grandmother on that side lived to be a hundred. She fell down, broke her shoulder, had to be put in a nursing home. And she met my wife and she said, "You couldn't have done better." (laughs)

AB: So, can you tell me just briefly how you ended up with your career, since this -- it's pretty amazing?

FI: Well, I knew I wanted -- I was interested in international affairs when I went to Brown. They wanted me to major in math, but I, as I say, I saw no future. So, I said political sciences for me. And then, when the war broke out, 61:00I said, I chose the right subject matter because something has to be done so there's no more war. And that dwelled on me constantly, prison camp. I said, There should be no war. Then, when I -- released, I went to graduate school, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and decided I'll enter the Foreign Service. And that's how I -- and rose rather rapidly, as a matter of fact. And I'm a graduate of the National Law College, which is the most senior military school. And graduates, your agencies, it's Army, Navy, Air Force, and State Department. 62:00And they're allowed ten students from CIA or other international agencies of the US government. And generally, you're chosen to go there when your agency decides that you have leadership qualities and will eventually be ambassadorial material. So, like maybe five or ten years in advance, they come to that conclusion and it's an honor and -- to go to the National Law College.

AB: I know that I read a little piece of what your wife wrote about when you became an ambassador and your mother's response. Can you sort of talk about how your mother felt when you were named ambass--

FI: Oh, she was so proud. And it also put my relatives, her sisters in their 63:00place, 'cause they all predicted that I would come to no good 'cause I'm so different. They said, I'm too outspoken. State Department used to say, You'll never get ahead because you speak your mind and you do things that are not traditional. And I say, I do things because, one, I think about it and, two, 'cause I think it's right. And criticism never bothered me. When it came to selection process of going to the National War College, there were some traditionalists. One undersecretary of state, which is quite a high job and sort of responsible for the final decision, who goes, decided that he would try to 64:00veto my going because I was thirty-eight years old and State Department had a long-established rule that you had to be at least forty. And I said, "What's that got to do with intelligence?" So, I decided, I'll fight that. Well, the deputy secretary of state heard about this, looked at my record, and he overruled that guy. (laughs) So, I got there at age thirty-eight and I got there one grade. You had to be FS-02 and so, it's sort of equivalent of Army colonel or Navy captain. And so, your Foreign Service grades go by equivalency of the Navy. And so, an ambassador's the equivalent of a vice-admiral, and they thought 65:00age thirty-eight was too young to be a vice-admiral. It turns out I was the youngest guy there. The selection board, the next year, they're independent, promoted me to the equivalent of a brigadier general, which -- they said, He's too young to be the equivalent of a brigadier general, but that didn't bother me or anyone else, for that matter. And then, I got another promotion two years later, which is unheard of, where I became maybe the equivalent of a major general. And then, when I became an ambassador, that was the equivalent of a vice-admiral.

AB: So, I have a couple questions sort of about -- yeah, so, your views, having been an ambassador and worked with the State Department, how do you think that different languages influence identity?

FI: You mean like a Frenchman speaking French or American speaking French?

AB: American. I mean --

FI: Well, it's important that you know a foreign language. My languages were German and Spanish. In fact, you had to know a language. And if you were pretty good but not really the best, then the State Department sent you to language school for anywhere from six weeks to twelve weeks. And that's why I polished up on my German. And today, I couldn't speak a word of Spanish. But being with the 67:00Germans during the war so long and three years of German in high school and -- I could speak better German than Spanish eventually. And knowing some German probably saved my life in prison camp, 'cause I knew what was going on.

AB: Did you also -- you mentioned that your mother and grandparents spoke Yiddish together.

FI: Yeah.

AB: Did you ever pick any of that up?

FI: Yeah, I could -- well, you know, Yiddish -- different from Hebrew, that's just the -- yeah, so it's Yiddish they spoke to each other. And I spoke English to them 'cause I was such a rotten student at school. But my grandparents could 68:00speak English. But to each other, they spoke Yiddish.

AB: I was just wondering if you'd picked any of that up because it's a Germanic language.

FI: That could be. Maybe that's why it was a little easier, yeah, to understand what they were talking about in prison camp.

AB: Yeah. So, we have some time left but I guess I'd like to talk about the transmission of culture from generation to generation. And I'm wondering if any, and maybe not any parts, but if there's any part of Jewish culture that you feel was especially important to you or that you sort of took as part of --

FI: Yeah.

AB: -- that was transmitted to you?

FI: Yeah. I felt, and I'm speaking as a person who grew up -- although technically she was considered an Orthodox Jew, she was really a liberal Jew. And I picked up certain things that I thought liberal Jewishness was recognizing, that there are different cultures, they're not bad. Some are, some aren't, but mostly bad. The real Jew does not discriminate even against other religions. And I also picked up that you look for what's inside the person mentally and physically. And you know, it's very interesting, in my marriage, my 70:00wife knew more about Jewish customs than I did. She just thought that being a Jew is not all bad, 'cause I told her what I experienced. And she said, I'm looking at the wrong end. And even though she came from a Catholic family, (laughs) she, I would say, knew more than I did! (laughs) But from an early age, having felt what prejudice was like -- in being very distasteful -- even though I was a Unitarian, I would sometimes say, I'm part Jewish. And I would say, I'm 71:00never ashamed of that. And I look to my mother, who is a fine person, and I say, when it comes down to the crunch, Judaism is a fine religion. One thing I always wondered about, I could never get an answer -- in fact, I asked the dean of divinity school at Harvard, "Is being Jewish a nationality or a religion?" And I say when somebody asks me, Am I Jewish, I first say, "Why do you want to know? I'll answer you, but why do you want to know?" And they have trouble answering 72:00that. And I said, "Study the Jewish culture. You'll find it's beautiful. It really is." And you know, the Unitarian church that I belong to, they celebrate all Jewish religions. They have seders, they have Rosh Hashanah. And I used to wonder, Am I in the wrong building? And so, I respect all religions except some practices, and I suppose we're all the same. But I've always forthright said, Yes, if you're talking about a religion, yeah, some part of it and I'll always be proud of it.

AB: What has been important for you to try to transmit about religion or 73:00culture, or anything, really, to your children and grandchildren?

FI: Well, I told them that they could be anything they want. And they'll find the good in every single religion. They can find the bad in every religion, too. And I told them what it was like among my Jewish playmates when I grew older, which was always fine and pleasant. And yet, I would remark, "Don't ever be ashamed to tell people that you come from a Jewish family." And as I say, when I 74:00was sent to -- ambassador to Jamaica, there was one Jamaican who said, "You're Jewish, aren't you?" And I said, "As a matter of fact, I was raised as a Jew but I'm not now. But I look upon it as a religion. So, let me answer your question this way. I used to be a member of the Jewish faith, I respect the Jewish faith, but at the moment I'm not," and let it go at that. I must say that in my whole career in the State Department, I was never, never discriminated against, even when I said I grew up Jewish. And Jamaicans really respect the Jewish faith and 75:00they say it's an honorable faith.

AB: So, we're nearing the end, but I guess I have sort of two things I'd like to circle back to, and one is -- so, you mentioned that as a child, your mother went on welfare for your family. And so, can you sort of describe what that meant at the time?

FI: Yep. It meant -- people look upon it as a disgrace. They look upon it as taking money from the taxpayer and not paying my taxes, or my mother -- and I 76:00was looked down upon. And I thought maybe it was because we lived in the black neighborhood. Maybe so. But even other playmates that I had, white, they knew I must have been on welfare, and I must look terrible 'cause my trousers are too wide or too short. My sweater would be buttoned or be rolled up a lot or -- my mother always made sure that we were clean and we all wore clean clothes. But we were looked down upon. We were looked down upon not only because we had lived on 77:00welfare for a couple years but because I had black playmates and by some white people because I was Jewish. But that didn't make me want to leave being a Jewish -- I had other reasons.

AB: So, the other sort of random question, I know I read in your -- what you wrote about being a POW that you were interrogated by someone who had been born in the US or raised -- can you describe -- I'm just --

FI: Yeah.

AB: -- so curious about that.

FI: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was sent into interrogation and to my surprise, he greeted me, "Hello, how are you?" Perfect American English. And I said, "Are you American by any chance?" He says, "Oh, yeah, I lived in Long Island, New York." So, I ask him why he wanted to be a traitor. He said, "Easily." His father was 78:00in World War I, American Air Force, Army, and the United States agreed to give the veterans a bonus. I remember that. They never did get them a bonus. And secondly, he said, the Germans were gonna win anyway. So, I said, "I got a good memory," that, "I'm memorizing your face at this very moment and I hope I bump into you again." And then, he said he was gonna interrogate -- oh, I asked him -- oh, then he told me all about myself: when I went to high school, where I lived, where I went to college. I said, "That's astounding! How do you know?" He said, "Germany knew that sooner or later they'll be fighting the Americans, so they put sleepers in the United States in various major cities. Subscribe to all 79:00sorts of newspapers, listen to the radio." And he said, "Americans are really braggarts. Someone gets married, it's in the newspaper. So, our sleepers cut out the thing." And he said, "We delayed a week before we put you through this interrogation 'cause we wanted to see what our sleepers had on you and this is the information we had on you. So, you don't have to tell me a bunch of stuff 'cause I already know." And he said, "Now, where was my Air Force base?" And I said, "If you know so much, I'm not going to tell you." And I said, "I'm not allowed to anyway." Then, he said he's gonna interrogate my engineer. And I said, "Well, may I be present," which was never done and I knew he was gonna 80:00spring a surprise. They lived next door in Long Island. Now that has got to be the most fantastic thing.

AB: Did you ever meet this man again?

FI: No.

AB: Never found out what happened to him?

FI: No. He told me that he's saving an American uniform. And so, if by chance, we win the war, all he has to do is change clothes and just attach himself to a group that's being sent home. And he said, "You American soldiers are gonna be so glad to go home that you bother -- don't count how many you're supposed to be, so you never knew that there was one extra," or would never know.

AB: So, I have a couple more questions. So, to continue with your time as a POW, do you think that it made any difference that you had come from a Jewish family, 81:00being a POW? Do you think it made you feel any differently?

FI: No, when I was shot down, I honest and truly thought I was of a different religion. Not that it would save me. I wouldn't have told them anyway. But there were some of my colleagues I later learned that still had their dog tags with the H on it. Hebrew. Why mine broke away and fell -- 'cause I didn't disengage it -- but those of my colleagues who were Jewish -- and, when asked, they said, Well, you tell me. And they said, Well, we think you are. And after the war, I 82:00heard that they were treated like the people who were part of the Holocaust. And it's very interesting: my ID card where the guy interrogated me, where we compared noses, he wrote down Jewish. And then, when we broke into the warehouse after the war and we found ID cards, he crossed it out. And I wonder, why in the world would he do that? And the only thing I could think of was before Hitler, he must have had some Jewish neighbors, probably respected them. But to this 83:00day, I don't know why he crossed it out.

AB: That's fascinating.

FI: Yeah.

AB: So, are there any other topics that you would like to touch on?

FI: No, I've left out quite a bit on the POW side and on the diplomatic side and --

AB: Yeah.

FI: -- and, no, it's an interesting discussion we're having.

AB: Your life is fascinating. Well then, my last question for you is, what advice do you have for future generations? (laughter) You've been an ambassador, you've been in war.

FI: Well, really, if it follows what I've done is don't be afraid to speak your mind. Not in a sorehead point of view, but somebody asks you your opinion, give it to them. But give it to them because you feel that that's the right thing. Be 84:00frank, be honest. And sometimes I tell people who are obviously, well, like black people: don't let prejudice or being prejudiced against destroy your goals. As a Foreign Service Officer, I and two other colleagues helped black students pass their Foreign Service exam. And don't be discouraged if you flunk it one time or a second time. And just be yourself.

AB: All right, thank you very much.

FI: (laughs) Well, I thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]