HERB MOLIN ORAL HISTORY

JORDAN KUTZIK: I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center with Herbert Molin, and --

HERB MOLIN: Yeah.

JK:  -- we're going to record an oral history interview. 

HM:  Right.

JK:  Do I have your permission to continue?

HM:  Yeah.

JK:  Do I have your permission to continue?

HM:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah.

JK:  Okay.  Can you tell me about your family background?

HM:  Well, my family background will start with my mother and father, of course.  I can't go too much further.  My father was brought up in a Hasidic family and was sent to the synagogue regularly to learn how to pray.  He couldn't stand praying, so when praying came time, they gave him a shot in the 1:00fanny.  The rabbi in those days was entitled to let you know where it's at.  They took him home, and then his sister gave him a couple shots, so that it went back and forth with this whole business with the religion.  Somehow, he couldn't take it, his whole (UNCLEAR).  But he heard about something in the woods that was going on.  And at that time, there was a left-wing movement that was going on, the pre-revolutionary movement.  So, he started to go there.  And religion became an out thing with him, and the movement became the most interesting thing.  He didn't become particularly active, but he became active in the sense that he wanted to get the hell out of there, and he wanted to come here, to this country.  Okay.  Which he did.  My mother was brought up in a kind of very placid family.  Again, a religious family, but not a Hasidic, not particularly religious.  But my mother somehow or another was not attracted to 2:00the religious aspect of Yiddishkayt, but the cultural aspect.  And she too decided that Russia was not for her.  The White Russians used to go through that area, and there were pogroms.  And my aunt, who was once -- has a piece of her flesh missing after a bomb, et cetera.  So, my mother came, and she came to this country, started to work, became part of the workers' movement at the time -- and was also very interested in the music and in the art, into theater, of Jewish life.  So, that was the beginning. 

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  They came -- they were brought together -- my mother a little later in life and my father a little later in life, in a sense that they had to get 3:00married and have Jewish children.  They didn't know each other.  She came from the Ukraine, actually, which was part of the Soviet Union.  He came from Slonim, Poland, which is part of Poland -- which may have been part of the Soviet Union at the time.  But they both wanted families, and so they got together.  And they were living in a -- area of Brooklyn -- I think it was East New York or otherwise, something close to there, where the population was totally Jew-- Yiddish. 

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  And spoke only Yiddish.  They knew some words in English.  And so that my early life was totally controlled by knowing Yiddish.  I knew nothing but Yiddish until I went to the elementary school in later life.  And that was -- it was a very fine life.  And (laughs) I have, like, one incident I remember.  4:00I'm walking through a woods, and I see a dead dog, and I see some Christian child and I didn't know, but fortunately I had a friend of mine, and I said, "Dortn ligt a toytn hunt [There's a dead dog over there]," and he looked at me, and he was gonna beat me up, but then the girl explained, she understood.  But things like that.  But otherwise, it was a fine movement.  My father then was running a candy store of sorts with a friend of his.  And he didn't like the whole area.  He didn't like the setup.  He originally came -- I forgot this -- he originally came, and he was a cloakworker, in men's cloak, and he did good work.  But he didn't like the idea of working for anybody.  He wanted to be on his own.  So, he opened this store with this person, friend of his.  He didn't like that either.  And he finally looked around, and he made (UNCLEAR) somebody he knew, and they found a store in Astoria, Queens, if you know anything about 5:00the area.  And so, they bought it.  It was called a kind of specialty store, 'cause it sold cigars, cigarettes, soda, candy -- but fishing tackle, BB guns, all kinds of -- baseball mitts, everything.  And that was the beginning of my life as a -- in the United States, actually, more or less, (UNCLEAR).  And I started to go to the elementary school, and I learned how to raise my hand and say I wanted to go to the bathroom instead of what I would say in Yiddish.  And it became a whole different life.  And interestingly enough -- you asked me about my folks, but what the area was -- a very mixed area.  Italian, Irish, Catholic, Protestant.  And it was not much -- not hardly any anti-Semitism.  But my father was a yidisher [Jew], a very strong yidisher.  I remember we had 6:00a collection of Sholem Aleichem books that he had acquired.  We had -- I still have some of the books.  We have one book, "Di royte [The reds]," which begins with Abraham somewhere, George Washington, and ends with Nikolai Lenin.  You know, all kinds of things.  And he brought -- he became a member -- I don't know if you know -- heard, if you did -- of the organization the IWO.  All right.  So, he became active in the International Workers' Order.  He didn't become a running actor, but he -- you know, busy, the business was very -- twenty-two hours a day they ran the business.  But he wanted his children to appreciate Yiddishkayt.  And so, he brought in a shule [secular Yiddish school] from the IWO, nonreligious.  And that's where I became more trained in Yiddishkayt.  I learned how to write, how to read, how to speak better, and who 7:00was who.  And he was very -- it was very much so.  And this area was interesting enough that he brought it in.  And also, he brought in the -- and we used to go to picnics with the IWO, and his main activity, aside from the business, was reading the "Freiheit," the -- and reading "The Day."  And he loved Jay Goldberg and "The Day," that was his God, and -- and that was it.  That was the beginning of my life.  And I developed a few relationships, not much.  And I was with a few friends until a few years passed.  And beyond that, after -- later -- still talking about my family, we saw Thomashefsky; we saw all the theater people.  We saw the violin players, and my mother made sure that I got the violin lessons and my sister got the piano lessons.  And this is 8:00her thing when she got married; this was it.  And aside from she wanted the kids to be educated, to go to college, to -- I mean, it -- and when -- religion itself became a non-factor in this family, in the sense that it was never even discussed.  It was never planned.  It was nothing.  We were Yiddish, and that was it.  And that's my growing-up period.

JK:  Hm.  So, you talked a little about it, but what was Jewish life like in your neighborhood? 

HM:  Jewish life was -- you mean in Astoria?

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  There wasn't -- the Jewish life was actually the synagogue, more or less.  But my father -- you know.  Otherwise, it was just my friends.  I used 9:00to wait for them to get through with the synagogue so we can go play cards or play something together.  I did not go.  There was no -- the Yiddish life -- actually, was talking the -- that's speaking to each other in Yiddish.  That was it.  And most of the businesses in the area were run by Yiddish men and women.  And that was it.  There was no special -- there was a synagogue.  But then again, the synagogue was not -- religion was not the issue.  You got ready for your bar mitzvah; you got ready for your wedding.  It was not an exciting issue in the family -- in the community. 

JK:  Um-hm.  Did you celebrate any holidays together?

HM:  Yeah.  But that was -- we celebrated the holidays, but not, again, by any 10:00religious activity.  They closed the store on Yom Kippur, got somebody else.  They took off a day or two on Rosh Hashanah and went to the mountain.  And that was it.  There was not a religious activity at all.  And it was just -- as Jews, they celebrated it.  And the only other is when my bar mitzvah came, my father says, "You want a bar mitzvah?"  I didn't even know what he was talking about, very frankly.  And we never had a bar mitzvah.  There was no participation of that.

JK:  Um-hm.  You mentioned the Yiddish theater.  Did your fa--

HM:  The Yiddish --

JK:  The Yiddish theater.  Your family --

HM:  The theater?

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  Oh, yeah.  I still got something at home.  Oh yeah, Maurice Schwartz -- I don't remember a lot of it now.  Oh yeah.  There was -- down on the -- you know, downtown, in the East Side, and the (UNCLEAR) -- I can't remember.  I 11:00have a problem remembering now.  But we would see all the Yiddish plays.  Very definitely.  My father -- one play scared the hell out of me, but I don't remember what the -- we saw all the plays, all the actors, all -- and that was it.  That was part of the family deal. 

JK:  You mentioned that your father was involved in the IWO and read the "Freiheit."

HM:  Right.

JK:  Were there any other publications he read, or --

HM:  Well, I told you we had a volu-- we had a whole seri-- I gave it to YIVO.  (laughs) I didn't know about you guys.  But they had a whole volume of Sholem Aleichem.  They had a lot of stuff.  I still have some stuff home that I will tell my kids about.  Oh, yeah, he was -- and he was very interested in -- not Lenin and not -- Stalin was out, but Lenin.  And he had a -- I forgot 12:00who, but he was interested in a Russian left-winger, and he was part of the re-- and he had material.  He was an avid reader of the -- both the "Tog" and the "Freiheit."

JK:  Um-hm.  You wrote that your family wrote to relatives in Europe.  What do you remember about --HM:  No, I wrote.

JK:  Oh, you wrote to --

HM:  I wrote.

JK:  -- to your grandmother.

HM:  I wrote to my grandmother.

JK:  Wow.  What do you remember from that?

HM:  Well, I remember that they were -- it was absolutely insane for the bobe [grandmother] to get a letter from her eynikl [grandchild] in America.  It was just absolutely unbelievable.  But I don't know if I still have anything.  My kids are gonna have to go through a lot of stuff.  I have a lot of letters, cards, that were written in Ru-- you know, from Russia.  And my sister has a 13:00lot of stuff too.  And sometimes I think she knows more than I do of what happened.  And so, there is stuff around.  There's some of the books I have.  But I haven't particularized it.  So, I don't know whether she -- there was a card written to me or -- I don't remember what I have.  But I do have material.

JK:  Do you remember what you were writing about when you wrote to her?

HM:  I was telling her simple stuff, like, Ikh gey tsu di shule [I go to school], I'm going here, I'm doing that, I'm doing this, how are you feel-- (UNCLEAR) the bobe and those -- you know, what -- just -- what am I gonna write?  I'm a kid.  The most I was was ten, eleven, at that time.  So, what am I gonna write?  But the idea of getting this thing from -- I know, because when she wrote back there was an excitement.  And there would be in the 14:00community.  So --

JK:  Do you remember what the name of the town she lived in was?

HM:  The time?

JK:  The town?  Where she lived?

HM:  Oh, Medzhybizh.

JK:  Medzhybizh.

HM:  Oh yeah.

JK:  Oh.

HM:  Oh yeah.  Medzhybizh had a large Jewish community, as I recall.  And that's where she was, the whole family.  What was interesting about that, I did find out, it's like -- where my father grew up, they had the divisions.  They had the nonreligious; they had the half-religious; they had the serious religion.  They had a group for everybody, and the same thing in Medzhybizh after a while.  They had a whole Yiddish community that went all different ways.  But my mother was never pushed -- as far as religion, never pushed.  Yiddishkayt, oh yeah.  That was the story.

JK:  You wrote that you met Yiddish writers at the IWO shules.  Do you remember who you met or anything about that?

HM:  No.  The only thing I saw recently is by what's-his-name.  The grandson of Thomashefsky, is it?  Where he wrote about his grandfather. 

JK:  Uh-huh.

HM:  Do you know what I'm talking about?

JK:  Yeah, Mi--

HM:  Very recent.

JK:  Michael Tilson Thomas?

HM:  Yeah.  That's the only thing that I really remember recently seeing.  But otherwise, a number of things happened to me personally.  I had a severe illness during a very early -- ten -- and it took away a lot of my memory, so a lot of the things happened that I don't recall.  But I remember the very 16:00serious involvement.

JK:  Do you remember what a typical class at the -- do you remember what a typical day at the IWO shule was like?

HM:  Well, it wasn't a day; it was a couple hours.

JK:  In the --  

HM:  In the evening.

JK:  In the evenings.

HM:  You sat -- or it was in afternoon, I think.  I remember sitting in the train with my mother.  You'd just go, and -- you go whatever it is.  I may still have some of the books that I had from the IWO.  And you went through the book, and you read it, and you talked about it, et cetera.  That's what it was.  And you learned -- I knew how -- I still could deal with it.  That's why I read the words there.  But not anywheres near the way I was able to.

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  So.

JK:  Tell me about your schooling.  Where did you go to school?

HM:  Oh, in -- well, when I went to -- when we moved to Astoria there was an elementary school, 122.  And that was the school I went to.  And that was the school I began to really learn English and to work.  I think I started there -- I don't know whether it was kindergarten or first grade.  And that was it.  That was my school for a period of time until I graduated in the eighth grade.  There again, what -- the only thing that was interesting about the community is that I remember -- there was no point in me -- it was nothing more being Jewish than being Catholic or than being Protestant.  It didn't happen.  Most of the Italian kids came from immigrant family.  Most of the Irish kids came from immigrant family.  And it was a community of situation, a community of interest. 

JK:  What was it like growing up during the Great Depression?  Do you remember anything about that?

HM:  Well, the Great Depression I was very fortunate in because the -- my father made a decent living.  And so, we were never hurt.  And that too was what happened is that -- I think I wrote that too -- they made a little extra money and were able to send me to camp.  And I went to -- if you know -- from Camp Kinderland.  All right, and Camp Kinderland was a yidishe [Yiddish] camp.  And, again, it was a left-wing yidishe camp.  And they didn't practice anything but Yiddishkayt.  They, again, worked with teaching you -- dealing with you in Yiddish, having Yiddish plays, speaking Yiddish.  They also spoke 19:00English; it wasn't only that Jewish was the prominent -- but -- and they celebrated Yiddishkayt, what was -- Sholem Aleichem, whoever they could, whatever names they could, or the -- they also knew some of the people that became very big in the movie industry.  (laughs) What the hell.  He just died recently.  The director, I think.  What was his name?  I remember him as a little boy walking there.  (pauses) I -- that's the thing; I don't remember names.  I don't remember names.  But we had Maur-- (telephone rings)

JK:  (UNCLEAR)

HM:  -- a number of people in Camp Kinderland who did go to Hollywood and did -- this guy did very well.  What the heck.  I -- really, I'm sorry.  I -- you really -- you know who I'm talking about?

JK:  Nah.

HM:  He just did the movie -- (phone rings) -- which he won the Academy Award 20:00and -- and then there was the -- Paul Muni was in the Yiddish -- the name Paul Muni mean --

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  Well, he was in the Yiddish theater.  Muni -- Weisenfreund, I think was his name.  That was -- what the hell?  If I called my son, then he'll remember (laughs) who it is.  But these people were out.  The other guy who married the Greek actress who -- he was the director of the theater in Camp Kinderland.  Well, for me, I liked the experience.  It was just -- I went there a number of 21:00years.  And it was a very wonderful experience.  Again, it wasn't -- it was just the idea that -- it was a homey kind of feeling.  That was the main thing -- which I felt about Yiddish all the time.  It was a homey thing.  And -- if I can think of the name, I'll tell you.

JK:  Do you remember any songs that --

HM:  Songs?

JK:  -- songs that you learned at the camp?

HM:  Well, I remember some songs.  (laughs) I don't know if they -- "Afn pripetshl brent a fayerl,/un in shtub iz shoyn heys,/un der rebe [On the hearth a fire burns, and in the house it's warm,/and the rabbi]," "Zitst a bokher, un er trakht,/trakht un trakht a gantse nakht [A young man sits, and he thinks,/thinks and thinks the whole night long]" and -- there were so many.  I 22:00knew them all.  I can't remember them particularly.  (pauses) I can't.  That's the big part of it; I don't remember a lot of these names.

JK:  What was going to high school like for you?

HM:  My high school? 

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  The name?

JK:  Well, what was --

HM:  High school was a very fine experience too.  It was called -- it was Stuyvesant High School, in New York.  And at that time, (laughs) I think it was ninety percent Jewish.  And it was an all-boys school.  It was fine.  It was very fine.  I -- Yiddishkayt was not emphasized there in one way or the 'nother.  You went to school, and you went to home, and you went to -- I think 23:00most of the kids didn't even bother with Yiddishkayt or any other part of it.  So, we -- I don't know.  It was fine.  We went there for four years and then worried what we were gonna do after that.  And after that, I guess, it was the war.  And I was fortunate enough to be drafted.  During that illness I told you about, for me personally, I had lost my left eye altogether and had it removed.  And it was not only a bother, but it made me -- in those days, you were a cripple.  And a cripple -- but the Army fortunately did not teach -- show -- put me down as a cripple.  They put me down as a limited service, which 24:00was not a 4F.  In those days, 4F was the thing.  So, I was limited service.  And another thing that people don't know or haven't kno-- didn't know for a while is that we weren't winning the war.  It was not Hollywood-style; we were not winning.  We were having our ass kicked in to begin with -- and so, they drafted me.  Which was wonderful for me.  And at the -- before that, I got to know from the Nazis, before I was drafted, because we had Nazis in the neighborhood.  Astoria was a very interesting place.  Astoria had a lot of fields.  And the Nazis would come into the field; the Communists would come into the field.  All groups would come in.  And there were certain areas of 25:00Astoria that were both.  But there was something else in Astoria which I -- which was the first time I began to really observe anything, and -- as far as the Nazis was concerned or anything.  There was a church around the corner from where I lived, and that was a Catholic church.  And at that time, there was a Father Coughlin, who was a -- I don't know if he was a Nazi, but he certainly was an anti-Semite.  And he had a radio program and was influencing a good part of the country.  And unfortunately, he -- the priest, the head priest in the church around the corner was a great believer of Father Coughlin, so that the 26:00people in his church began to listen to what Father Coughlin was saying.  And for the first time, anti-Semitism showed its head in where I lived.  And the Nazism showed its head, because there were some people there who believed in what the Germans were doing.  And that's when I got a taste of where we were at, more or less, as far as the war was concerned.  So, I didn't do anything at that particular time.  I was just -- but I did get drafted, and I was delighted to come into the Army and serve my -- you know, serve.  One of the ironies of that whole situation was that they didn't know what the hell to do with me.  What are you gonna do with this one-eyed guy in the Army?  I don't know where it came or how; they decided to make me a cop.  A nice Jewish kid from New York 27:00that went to Stuyvesant to become a cop.  So, I became -- they wanted me to be a cop in New York, and I said, "I'll never live through the war in New York."  Because I started to learn how to drink; I started to learn how to fool around; and I figured I'd be (UNCLEAR) time.  So, I told them, "I don't want to go to New York."  And they listened to me, because I had this special designation in the Army because I had one eye.  So, they said they're not -- so they didn't make me a cop in New York; they made me a cop in Maryland, in a place called the Aberdeen Proving Ground.  Which was fine, except they too did -- we had this -- during the war there were areas that we would keep German prisoners.  And they lived better as German prisoners (laughs) in the war in here than they lived 28:00there.  And so, they once offered -- this is just a story aside -- they offered me to guard the German prisoners.  I refused to do that because I very clearly felt at that time that if I was to guard a German prisoner and he looked at me cross-eyed I'd blow his head off.  So, they didn't.  And I became a cop in a regular course of duty and lived my life out at the time until I got discharged.  After the discharge, I figured, Well, where am I gonna go to school; what am I gonna do?  Which -- there was no question in -- these are things that were never questioned in my family, in my mother, my father.  You're gonna move on.  You're gonna go to college.  You're gonna go here; you're gonna be a doctor; you're gonna -- there was no issue about that.  It was a kind of innate thing.  If you want to, you can become a violinist or a pianist, but that's it.  So, that was the question after that.  We then came 29:00and went -- I went back to college.  And I became very active in college against Nazism, against any of this anti-Semitism or -- period.  And I lived through my college days, and I met my second wife, and we got married, and -- where -- what else?  Did we -- the point is that Yiddishkayt is really interesting.  That even Douglas, for a while I tried to get him to go to the shule.  But afterwards I also went to the Sholem Aleichem Shule for a while too, and I -- they're still alive, the Sholem Aleichem shules, as far as I know.  I was trying to get him -- he couldn't sit through theirs.  So, but now I've gotten my kids interested in Yiddishkayt, which -- if I haven't succeeded 30:00on the longer run, the kids are interested.  He's becoming -- came here; he's read me here.  He -- his sister is very involved in Yiddishkayt and his other sister.  So, from that point of view I feel somewhat satisfied.  I, frankly, have not -- except joining organizations or -- that are fighting anti-Semitism and Nazism, sending money if I have it to these organizations, this is my thing right now.  It has been for years.  I'm very -- got deeply involved in raising my family and working.  And during my own time and raising my kids, I -- they all know I'm a yidishe, regardless of what the -- and they've all -- they're all 31:00yidishe.  My two daughters did something they didn't want to tell me about and didn't invite me to: they had bar mitzvahs.  (laughs) I don't go to bar mitzvahs.  I went, I think, to one bar mitzvah about forty, fifty years ago.  I don't -- it's -- as a matter of fact, I lost a couple kids who were -- I was friendly with because they heard me say something that I don't -- I didn't understand about a bar mitzvah, so they didn't want to talk to me.  But that's it.  But aside from that, they are -- they're Yiddishists.  My oldest daughter has a -- involved in a (UNCLEAR), but aside from that, she taught -- when she's teaching, she was teaching the kids in the school, she was not teaching them (UNCLEAR); she was teaching them the Jewish hist-- the Yiddish (UNCLEAR).  And right now she's doing something, too.  And my youngest daughter too is intere-- you know -- those kids went to a little bit of a Hebrew school.  (laughs) Which 32:00I -- but they were bar mitzvahed.  Did I go to their two bar mitzvah?  Oh yeah, I refused to -- that's another funny part of the story.  I refused to go to bar mitzvahs or anything.  I told them, "It's just not me.  I don't --" -- and I felt -- this is your -- people are gonna love hearing this, who wear a yarmulke.  Because if you listen to the language that's behind what they're saying at the bar mitzvah, it makes no sense whatsoever.  It doesn't say anything.  "God loves you"?  That's nice.  "God loves you"?  Then he must have loved the Nazis in (UNCLEAR).  I mean, the whole thing is -- well, at any rate, my daughter (laughs) started to cry, so I said, "All right."  I said, "I will go to your bar mitzvah.  But don't mention me as the proud father.  Don't 33:00introduce me.  Leave me sit in the back, and leave me alone."  So, we made that deal, and I went to the bar mitzvah.  Turns out that the [shofar?] that they're passing has come from the ghettos during the Nazi period.  And so, they're passing it from -- passing, family to family.  How can I refuse?  They ask me to stand up there and pass the shofar.  (laughs) I couldn't refuse.  So, I became part of the whole deal.  But that's been the extent of my -- of a lot of my adult Jewishhood.  And so, okay, so you got bar mitzvahed.  A lot of my kids, after they got bar mitzvahed, they're going in different directions anyway.  And I'm sorry that -- but this is my -- you know, the whole Yiddish -- what bothers me in the main -- about what's going on and what went on in Israel 34:00is the lack of understanding of what Yiddishkayt has meant.  Not only nationally, but as a concept internationally.  And I think -- I hate to say this, but it's true -- but one of the biggest mistakes that they made in Israel was not making Yiddish the language of that country.  And I have -- initially, when I got out of the Army and I was going to college, the college had students from all over the world.  So, they had students from Israel.  So, I went over, and I said, "Oh, well, we finally got there.  We're there."  And I went to these two guys, and I said in Yiddish, "Nu, vos tut zikh dortn -- vos? [So, what's going on over there -- what?]" in some proud way.  They looked at me and said, We don't speak that language anymore, in a Yiddish accent.  That threw me 35:00altogether.  I couldn't understand that.  And I couldn't understand Israel.  And unfortunately -- I've been to Israel; it's not that I'm talking up there.  I think one of the biggest problems that Israel has murdered itself with is two things.  Of course, Hebrew, essentially, is the religious language.  And so, the warmth and the intelligence and the -- of Yiddish, they wouldn't let Yiddishkayt in it.  They didn't let Yiddish singers in there for years.  The Yiddish choral group in New York couldn't go there; they wouldn't let 'em.  You didn't speak Yiddish in the streets, although you could speak -- this was a -- this became -- very serious problem to me.  And what am I gonna do, love what isn't?  And that's -- it's still a problem.  As a matter of fact, I read an 36:00article by Moshe Dayan's wife, who is -- where she's talking about that, in a sense, that Israel's committing suicide the way it's going, in not recognizing what was really the substance of Yiddish life: the Yiddish language, the Yiddish books, the Yiddish (UNCLEAR).  And that imposing a Hebrew concept that -- of chosen people above the idea of being people in a huge community.  This is --- I'm very political this way, and this is part of what's been going on.  I've been to Israel twice.  I came back the first time very -- there was no Yiddishkayt there.  A woman came in and practically whispered in Yiddish.  They couldn't talk.  I said, "What the hell am I doing here?"  And I came back 37:00with that attitude.  I went a second time; it wasn't much better.  Because in substance, I think very, very strongly that the warmth, the intelligence, and everything that Yiddishkayt brought to the world is being denied on the basis of which it was brought, for the very people that brought it.  So, that's my political (laughs) -- my political being.  And I just hope that -- you know, the only -- the main thing I want to do with this is to give copies so that they'll go at the end -- my kids and my grandkids -- and take a look at what Yidishkayt means to the -- I mean, it's ridiculous.  You know, it was not -- 38:00that was not the essence of what people are.  A yarmulke is not the essence of what you are.  I don't care who you are or what you are.  That's not gonna ring.  And if you really believe that you're chosen above any other group because you're Yiddish and wearing a yarmulke, you're not going anywheres.  You're not going anywheres else than that other person who is not Catholic and doesn't go to church or is Catholic and go to church.  Ven m'shtarbt, shtarbt men [When you die, you die].  (laughs) That's my story.  That's my son, the son of my father.  They came to my father when he owned the store and said to him -- my father was five foot seven, and he was all muscle.  And what he did, he picked up a hundred papers at the end of the week.  He'd have a hundred 39:00papers to draw for the weekend.  And he put it on his shoulder and took it from the truck and put it in his store -- this little guy, five foot seven, all muscle.  So, when the Father Coughlinites came around, they started to say, You gotta stop selling the "Freiheit" and the "Daily Worker."  He says, "What do you mean?  I'm in America; what do you mean I stop selling?"  They said, You'd better stop selling.  He had an iron pipe behind this counter, and he says, "You come and tell me to stop selling, we'll talk to each other."  And he had the iron pipe in his hand.  And he sold the "Daily Worker" and the "Freiheit."

JK:  Wow.

HM:  That's my story.  Aside from anything else.  But, I mean, that's my story.

JK:  Who was it that came in and --

HM:  Huh?

JK:  Who was it that came in and threatened him?

HM:  No, they -- after a while, they didn't come near him.  He was that ki-- he was a tough -- he was very (laughs) -- he was awful tough with me, too.  He 40:00stopped being tough after this illness I had.  But he was a tough guy.  And what he believed in, he believed in.  And that was it.  And he fought for it.  And that's what he --- in part brought me.  And my sister, who was also a tough kid and also has a Yiddish background -- not quite the same as mine, but we learned from the same people.  And my mother used to be a strike -- she was fortunately not involved in the garment workers, but she was working at the time and became a married mother and was there.  Anyway.  [Du bist nokh -- du host mer frages [Are you still -- do you have more questions]?  (laughs)

JK:  Yo, yo [Yeah, yeah].

HM:  Go ahead.

JK:  So, you were involved with politics and the Progressive Party.  Can you 41:00tell me about what you remember from that era?

HM:  Oh, sure.  It was very interesting era.  It was Henry Wallace who's running for president.  I forgot the name of the vice president.  But it was organizing the groups to go out there and politicalizing and ringing doorbells, and it was just doing the regular political stuff.  And there was a strong belief that, you know, when Mr. Henry Wallace -- whether true or not, I am not gonna say -- but that a change was needed from what was going on in the country, the lacka-- I felt there was a lackadaisical attitude in relation to what the politics was, and that a change was needed and that Henry Wallace and whoever -- I forgot who, former vice president or something -- would (UNCLEAR) people to change it.  And so, what -- there was the normal kind of politicalizing.  The 42:00only thing I do remember is -- I don't know if the name Harv-- Marcantonio means anything to you.  Well, Marcantonio was the great left-wing Italian congressman from New York.  And we once had a -- I remember a big meeting and getting together with Marcantonio and Henry Wallace in Yankee Stadium, and the real feeling that it was gonna happen.  You know, you get this feeling, like, Tomorrow it's gonna be.  Of course nothing happened like that.  Henry Wallace became a non sequitur.  But that was the period that we -- I was involved in, and -- whatever.  However it worked out.  What I did do essentially is I became -- I was very active in Queens College, and I found that the left-wing was very isolated from the student body.  And I said, "That reason is that 43:00because they're not becoming part of the student body."  So, I got involved, and I got them to organize both basketball teams, et cetera.  So, we became more part of the student body.  And we grew as a group, pretty much, much larger.  What happened, everybody went their own way, and a lot of them -- one of my dearest friends, I don't know if you ever heard of him, became a very known individual -- but I don't know what you'd call him.  Like, somebody who fought individually for all kinds of rights: of Indian rights, of workers' rights, all over the -- mainly from his home in Missouri and from New York.  And he got thrown out of New York, and he got the shit kicked out of him.  And, 44:00as a matter of fact, I think NYU college (UNCLEAR) room of his stuff, et cetera.  These were good friends of mine, and also the University of --

JK:  What was his name?

HM:  Huh?

JK:  What was his name?

HM:  Norman Forer.  Norm Forer.  Norm was a very known guy -- as an individual, mainly -- in all these political activity.  And he was a very dear friend of mine.  Another friend of mine was called before the House Un-Americans Committee.  We had all that kind of stuff going on.  I guess they missed me (laughs) by some (UNCLEAR).  And that was that period, the McCarthy period that we all went through and fought through -- and got hurt, a lot of us.  But the only thing that held me back is -- going ahead academically I -- 45:00little worried about where we were gonna go, and -- but that worked out.  So, the only thing is that we gotta worry about the present period now, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen with Yiddishkayt.  And I'm personally very worried.  You know, I'm glad we have a Jewish -- but I have very -- feelings that I don't know where the hell not only Yiddi-- but the Jewish -- Israel is going.  I don't know.  I don't care if it's (UNCLEAR) or something, but I don't know.  And I don't know if Israel knows where it's going.  But I do know that my feeling about Yiddishkayt -- in other words, it's not just the language; it's the whole manner of living and the whole manner of speaking and the whole 46:00manner of caring is -- was, to me, much more substantial than what's going on. 

JK:  (pauses) You worked as an attorney.  What led you to --

HM:  I worked --

JK:  What led you to become an attorney, and what type of law did you do?

HM:  (laughs) What led me to become an attorney is very funny because I told you I had this illness.  I became academically not quite what I was before.  I really wanted to be a doctor.  But I wasn't worth -- science was not something I could deal with.  But I could deal with memorizing laws and bullshitting around laws.  What else is there -- you're taking two sides to a question, right?  So, you take whatever side is gonna pay you or not pay you, or you 47:00believe it or you don't believe it.  So, I figured, Well, I was gonna get married.  I met this lovely lady.  And I said, Well, what am I gonna do?  I'm not gonna become like my father and run a goddamn store.  And I'm not gonna go to work at a factory.  And I'm not -- a matter of fact, (laughs) that's ano-- I can tell you -- there's a few more stories I'm not gonna tell you (laughs) right now.  There were other stories.  But I -- like, my friend went, and he was -- went to union and went -- you know, sort of thing.  I wasn't gonna do anything like that.  I decided, Well, I'll have a family; I'll make a living, if I make one, and go.  And that's what I did.  So, in law I could get through.  I could memorize the law, and I could bullshit around the law.  So, I became a lawyer.  What did I do?  I did many things, but actually I ended up working 48:00for the City of New York.  And I did many things.  I prosecuted people who hurt their children.  I also was involved in a great deal of surrogate's court actions in getting money from people who legally -- or illegally -- received money from the city.  And in the main, this is what I did until I retired.  And I did; I prosecuted people that were doing nasty things, and I defended people that weren't doing nasty things.  But in the main, I worked for the city.  I worked for them about thirty-odd years, and that was it. 

JK:  You've lived in New York City for pretty much your whole life. 

HM:  That's right.

JK:  What do you think of the city?

HM:  I'm a New Yorker.  When people ask me, "I am a New Yorker," is all I can 49:00say.  I've been all over the world.  After I retired, my wife died.  I was very fortunate in meeting another woman, and she retired too at that point.  I've been all over the world.  I've been in Paris.  I've been some of them twice.  New York is my town.  And the more I look at it, the more I see -- it's not only my town; it's becoming everybody's town.  I don't know if you've been at the East Side or you were ol-- or, yes, you're old enough to know what the Garment Center was on the East Side when they had the pushcarts there.  There are no pushcarts there; there are mountains of buildings, way up to the sky.  And there are young people going around by the hundreds there that love New York.  And this is where they're staying.  Where I live now, they're just building three houses.  They're building 'em right around the corner.  And why 50:00are they building?  For the kids that can't make it in New York; they'll come up to -- 'cause I'm not far from the city.

JK:  Where do you live now?

HM:  It's Kingsbridge, but they're gonna call it Lower Riverdale.  If you know Riverdale -- you know Riverdale?  Well, I'm at the foot of the Riverdale hill, Corlear Avenue.  So, what it's gonna be is these three houses are gonna be -- make this fancy Riverdale.  Which is what's happening.  It's crazy, what's gonna -- but I'm a New Yorker, that's it.  Even now, I can't go to the shows that I used to, I go to -- I was a member of everything.  I still am a member of a lot of things.  I went to all the shows.  I went to all the -- you know, physically I can't do that anymore.  And I don't have my wife with me anymore, so I got that problem.  But I'm not leaving -- (UNCLEAR) -- I'm not getting out 51:00of New York until they take me out on a stretcher.  That's it.  But it's -- to me, it's a very viable area.  And it's more viable.  I see that now.  More and more -- what they did with the East Side is unbelievable.  Considering what I know the East Side or any of these streets here.  Pushcarts, and you go there, look for a goddamn pushcart so you can get a quarter cheaper or a nickel cheaper here.  Forget it.  Gotta learn how to push a -- elevator button to go up to see who you want to see.

JK:  How did being Jewish influence how you decided to raise your children?

HM:  To raise my children?

JK:  Um-hm. 

HM:  Well, I -- just in being a fair guy.  I mean, that's (UNCLEAR).  And to 52:00develop as much interest in Jewish life as I can in them, period.  And that was about it.  In the meantime, to have a fair political concept, to have a fair relationship, period.  That was it.  Nothing was going on more than that.  And to think about becoming a doctor if you can't become (laughs) -- if you can't do anything else, if you're not a great painter and you're not a great writer and you're not -- whatever it is, my own attitude is, Become a doctor.  It combines all the best elements of that.  In other words, being a doctor, you'll be a good scientist, and you're gonna have to be a very smart guy, which means you're gonna have to be a good mechanic, a good artist.  Because you can come in on a broken foot, three guys, and only one might give you the right 53:00diagnosis.  Two can tell you -- it's like, when my daughter got graduated, and they had all these young doctors in there, I warned everybody, My friend, not to talk to a doctor about a thing.  You'll have forty-two diagnoses.  You're dead.  But my own view is, truthfully, that was it.  (laughs) What am I gonna tell you?

JK:  Are you involved with the Jewish community in any way today?

HM:  No.  Not more than sitting here sending money.  I'm a member of B'nai B'rith.  I'm a member of -- I get the "Forward."  What else?  And I learned about an interesting Jewish organization, too.  You know, you don't know where -- I send money to -- a big activity is sending money to organization.  Don't 54:00get me wrong; I'm sending twenty-five dollars.  I'm not sending a fortune.  But I believe, What the hell, they need money, and I want to -- it's something I can do now.  I found a woman's organization, an international woman's organization, Jewish women, that are fighting and working within various countries, fighting for the rights of women.  Not necessarily Jewish women.  No religion, no nothing.  They're just fight-- they're a Jew-- international something or other of Jewish women.  Never knew, never heard.  I sent them money.  (laughs) That's it.  I sent another one I found money too -- that was very interesting.  There's a woman who is a -- whatchama-- if you ever heard of her already, let me know -- who was fighting for the rights of children that are 55:00molested by priests.  There's an organization like that.  So, that's what I do, main thing what I do.  Okay?

JK:  Um-hm.  You wanted to talk about the presidential election?

HM:  I think it's a horror.  I think it's an absolute horror.  And I think what it is is almost -- we're committing suicide.  I mean, I feel bad about Mr. Obama.  I feel that he could have been much more forceful and significant as a person, and that he could say, "Yes, I'm a black son of a bitch, and this is what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna make life equal for whites and blacks."  You don't have to smooth -- I understand he's getting a little tougher now, hopefully.  This other guy is nonsense.  Fifty thousand dollars a day, he's 56:00gonna worry about you in the street?  It's absurd.  So, it's very -- to me it's very clear.  Not only that, but I want --- listen, you know -- the opening of the Tea Party and all that shit is an opening to fascists in the United States of America.  Part of that group is fascist.  And if you don't know it, just look beyond.  Whether they're yelling religion or anything else, this is part of that group, and it's very, very scary.  It's true, we've had it before, and it's true we beat 'em back.  But it is not -- I don't want to see it.  And this guy is -- what does he know?  Since when do they have four people sitting around talking about birth control and the elements that go into birth control, 57:00with the condoms and shit like that?  Four guys running for America, talking like that?  It's a disgrace.  That's my view. 

JK:  What would you rather them talk --

HM:  Huh?

JK:  What would you rather them talk about?

HM:  Oh, I'd rather hear them talk about god-- nonsense, you know, how I scratch my ears at night.  But this is my view, and what the hell.  If I got an opening to give it, I'll give it.  And so, I'm gonna order twenty-five of these or whatever it is, because -- and I'll sell it to people.  Either they'll like me more, or they'll like me less.  I won't sell it; I'll give it.

JK:  Do you have any advice for future generations?

HM:  (laughs) (pause) You know, I -- only I can say is what I would say to any of my grandkids: go find your way legitimately and honestly, and work within the bounds that you can.  That's all.  There's nothing more I've got to say.  Period.  I mean, I -- it depends on who I'm talking to, what I would say more individually.  But actually, as a general proposition, that's it.  Go make your own way, and find your own way, and deal with it.  Period.  And deal with it legitimately.  That's very -- "legitimate" is a big word.  It means as 59:00little bullshit as possible.  (laughter) That's what it means. 

JK:  Is there anything else you'd like to discuss, or --

HM:  It was fun doing this.  (laughter) I've enjoyed it.  And I'm enjoying giving this out, because we're gonna have a lot of fun with it when (UNCLEAR).  I'm sure there are parts I didn't talk about.  And, you know, there were a lot of experiences.  How I escaped arrest when they wanted to arrest me, and I worked out of it.  There were a lot of things that were -- I was on a demonstration once, and the cops were grabbing you to arrest you, and I worried --

JK:  Well, which -- what was it a demonstration against?

HM:  Knickerbocker-Davis at City College.  They were known anti-Semites.  And 60:00so, we had a -- we went together, college students, to demonstrate.  City College at that time -- I don't know where it is today, because I don't -- it was up on the hill.  And we were demonstrating at the bottom of the hill.  And we were demonstrating, and then the cops decided -- they brought a paddy wagon, and the cops decided that they're gonna be throwing people in the paddy wagon.  And so, every time I went by a cop, I would go like this so he couldn't grab me.  And the cops got very nervous because there were two thousand kids sitting up there, and if they got mad about what's been going on, they'd come down on the cops.  But anyway, it worked itself out.  It worked itself out.  And one guy was arrested.  And in those days, if you got arrested, you weren't able to become an attorney.  An arrest was held against you, not even a conviction.  61:00And if we had to fight, we had to fight up to the Supreme Court to get things straightened out as far as it.  Another thing is that -- I don't know if you know anything about -- do you ever know about Paul Robeson and Peekskill?

JK:  Um-hm.

HM:  Well, I was there.

JK:  Wow.

HM:  I was a guard at Peekskill.  I participated quite in a number of these things.  I was a guard at Peekskill.  When the other people left, I was forced to stay behind.  And they put a machine gun (laughs) in the middle -- I mean, the goddamn cops put a machine gun in the middle.  First of all, they took you over, the cops came in, and it was the cops; there was the National -- who came in? -- the cops, the Guard, all the groups came in to stop us.  And what they were doing was they frisked us, and then they got us lined up in another part of the area.  In the meantime, the folks got out.  And my proposed wife at that 62:00point was driving the car, and they threw a rock in the car, and they got glass in her eyes, and she had to be hospitalized.  And so, I -- they -- whatchamacallit.  So, they kept us lined up like this to make sure we -- but they put a machine (laughs) -- I'll never forget it.  Boom, boom.  Can you go?  And then, it was very funny.  So, they lined us up --

JK:  They shot the gun?

HM:  Huh?

JK:  They shot the gun?

HM:  Huh?

JK:  They shot the gun, or --

HM:  No.

JK:  No, no.

HM:  No.  Then they got -- they made a deal with the governor -- I think it was Dewey at the time.  So, they made a deal that they'll let us go.  And they sent back buses for us.  What was really funny -- so I sent back the bus, and they -- a friend of mine was going on this bus, and another friend wanted to go with him.  He says, "I'm gonna go on that bus --" -- and they whacked him on the (laughs) head, You'll go where we tell you to go.  And that was it.  So, we went back, and, okay.  Peekskill was Peekskill.  But hey, you know, it's 63:00serious business.  They can knock your head off, you know?  It's not joking.  And it was a lot of fun.  It wasn't fun, obviously.  But it was interesting.  I felt very good about it, because I had a little piece of something -- a nail opener -- I felt was a good weapon, and nobody took it away.  (laughs) So, if worst comes to worst -- but then my wife got glass in her eye and had to go to the hospital and get it taken out and -- but she came out all right, and I came out all right.  And it was an experience during that period.  It was a lot of nonsense went on, and I was on a number of demonstration, but -- during that period.  Another demonstration in front of a -- it was a "No blacks admitted," you know.  So then, they came, and they wanted to kick the living -- it was a 64:00white establishment that had no -- wouldn't allow blacks in.  And so, I was marching on that.  And that became a problem.  When I was a kid, I first moved to Astoria, and I hardly knew English, there was a guy that would come and say things about the Jews.  And he came one day, and he'd give me a punch or something; he came another day.  So, one day I picked up a bottle; I broke his head open.  My mother had to take me out of the neighborhood.  (laughs) I'm in serious trouble.  So, I had to be hidden for a while.  But, I mean, this is -- yeah.  But this is Yiddishkayt.  That's the whole point.  This is Yiddishkayt.  I mean, all the -- and the original -- the whole irony of the situation that the original Jews who made it and established it were all Yiddishists -- in Israel -- were Yiddishists, in the substance.  So, what are 65:00you gonna do?

JK:  Were you active in political things in the '60s as well?

HM:  Well, wait a minute.  No, the '50s I quit.  Fifties is when I started a family.  Forty-nine, I -- my daughter -- no, no.  When was she born?  No, '50s I got married.  No, I got married in 1950, and that -- then I decided to quit.  My daughter didn't get married for a while because I had a number of problems at the time and so afterward she -- but '50 I quit.  Fifty, I got married, '50 I was going to law school, and that was it.  And they told me to watch my ass in law school because they may -- the guy who was the dean of law school thought that Douglas MacArthur was the greatest living human being that 66:00was (laughs) -- and that we once went -- I got a conditional on constitutional law.  (laughs) And this guy became a judge of this black family that got in trouble in the South because they were a very progressive group of blacks.  So, me and him got conditionals on constitutional law.  And so, we got in front of the dean, who -- I forget -- he loved -- we started with 250 people in law school.  Just opened up recently.  It was closed because of the war.  And it was an offshoot of Columbia Law School, because they believed in a different philosophy in terms of lawyers.  He knocked it down to fifty of us left.  So, he took me and Paul -- what the hell was his name?  His brother became the hotshot of New York County, the control whatever it was.  Whatever you have in 67:00East County, have one of them.  Sutton.  Oliver Sutton.  So, Oliver and I, (UNCLEAR) -- (laughs) I won.  He didn't do too much.  But we got through law school.  And he became a judge, and it worked out.  Yeah.  There were a lot -- a lot of things went on.  It was an interesting period. 

JK:  Wow.

HM:  It's gotta be somebody else's day now.  My day is gone.  I can't walk.  But it moved, you see.  The thing is, it moved.  McCarthy didn't get -- you know, he went, and of course a lot of hurt, a lot of problems, and a lot of -- but period.  World War I, after it was over, was a very painful period and a 68:00period of the whole Depression period, the strikes and all that.  But it came through.  And now -- I don't know.  But you got this period, period.  And hopefully it'll come through.  And one of these days, we'll reach a period where we don't have to come through.  (laughs) And that's what it's all about.  Anything else you got for me?

JK:  No, I think that's it.  Thanks --

HM:  Huh?

JK:  -- thanks for coming and talking.                 

[END OF INTERVIEW]