LEO MELAMED ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is December 13th, 2012.  I'm here in Glencoe with Leo Melamed 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?

LEO MELAMED: Yes.

CW:  Thank you.  So, to start, can you tell me what you know about your family background?

LM:  Well, actually, I know pretty much everything about my family background.  It's a question only of how far back, but --

CW:  Let's say your grandparents' generation.

LM:  That's as far back as I can tell you.  My mother's father was a grain dealer in Bialystok.  And I never met him because he passed away before I was born.  So, all I know is -- when I said I know pretty much everything, I take that back, 'cause I thought you meant immediate family and you took me back a generation.  But so, I do know that.  My grandmother, who I knew very well till the age of seven when we fled from Poland was -- lived in our house.  We 2:00owned a small bungalow in Bialystok.  And she lived upstairs and she would be my nanny, in effect, because both my parents worked during the day.  They were Yiddish schoolteachers.  And so, I lived with her, really, and I was an only child.  And so, for those seven years of my life, she took care of me in every way: feeding and being, in effect, a mother during the course of the day.  My schooling didn't begin till that year that we actually left.  I was seven, I was just entering first grade, and the world changed.

CW:  Right.

LM:  So, for my mother's side, that's about all I can tell you that I know.  3:00My grandmother was very good at making pickles and the like and whatever you do -- to put them in jars and so forth and taking care of the house and me.  I didn't know much of anything else.  On my parents' side, I knew -- also not my grandfather.  He was a Talmudic stolyer [carpenter], a Talmudic person and a stolyer.  That's a -- what do you call it when you work with wood?

CW:  Oh, a carpenter.

LM:  Carpenter, thank you.  It was a senior moment.  (laughs) You're gonna get some of those.  Anyway, so he was a carpenter and -- but he, too, passed 4:00away before I was born.  So, again, I knew my grandmother from my father's side, his mother.  And since she lived apart from us, I didn't know her that much.  I knew her to be my grandmother and to see her at the normal occasions when grandparents would appear, but I didn't know her very, very well.  I did know, however, my father's sister, who was much younger than my father and therefore much closer to my age, although in retrospect, I was seven, she was probably nineteen or so.  So, it wasn't very close age group.  But 5:00nevertheless, she and I had a bonding because of that relationship.  And it was clearly the person I loved outside of my parents most.  She would go on vacations with us when school allowed for her.  And she was a gorgeous woman.  I have pictures to prove that.  And also, very caring.  And she really liked me and that was fun, to be with her.  But as far as her own persona in terms of what she planned to do with her life and her thoughts and her group of friends, I didn't know that.  I was too young for that.  Another couple of years, I would have known a lot more about all of this.  But to the age of seven, you 6:00get to know only a little bit.  I knew, of course, my parents very well because they stayed with me most of my life thereafter.  So, that's a background I can give you.  We lived in Bialystok, as I said, and we owned our own bungalow.

CW:  Um-hm.  I just wanted to tell you, also, if you want to answer in Yiddish at any point, that's also fine.  I -- ikh red yidish [I speak Yiddish], so -- (laughs) ikh farshtey [I understand].

LM:  Good.

CW:  And so, are there any family stories that were passed down through generations?

LM:  Well, some.  My father's younger brother fell from a scaffold, he was a carpenter, and he died as a young man.  So, there was always that story 7:00around.  Most of the stories, though, that I was aware of occurred from that point forward, that related to me and my parents in our escape, which took over two years.  And we -- of course, I was a participant from that point forward.  They couldn't get rid of me.  So, there I was in all events that were taking place -- I was a part of.  But historically, my parents were teachers.  And both of them, ardent yidishistn [Yiddishists].  So, inside the house, we spoke only in Yiddish.  In fact, my whole life, I spoke only in Yiddish as it related 8:00to them, in their presence, or to them till they passed away.  And that was my first language.  But it was a language that was maybe a bit different than the Yiddish oyfn gas [on the street] because my parents were yidishistn and teachers.  And so, I learned more or less a literary form of Yiddish; I spoke it very well.  In later time, I became a reciter of Yiddish -- a retsitor.  And on the stage, also, in Yiddish stage as a result of that.  I question whether I really had great talent in terms of being on the stage, although I imagined I did.  But so, my upbringing was, you know, in a very high literary 9:00form of Yiddish.  And I didn't know any Yiddish swear words until I became an adult many, many years later that -- I learned it from others, because I grew up in this purity of Yiddish by two academics who lived their life in Yiddish, who taught Yiddish, who wrote Yiddish.  My father was a well-known writer.  Both of them were bundistn [Bundists].  You probably know what that means.  But it's, of course, the socialist wing, the Jewish wing of the socialist party.  So, they were ardent socialists, but bundistn at their core were yidishistn.  10:00They believed the Yiddish language was the common bond of Bundism.  I think Yud Lamed Peretz maybe wasn't a Bundist but he taught them that.  And my father was -- I mean, devoted to Yiddish in every way you could imagine and passed that on to me.  Now, my father was an agnostic.  My mother, I think she accommodated him, but in the house, she kept kosher, sort of.

CW:  Can you just tell me -- describe your home?  What were the traditions and what did this bungalow look like?

LM:  Well, in year 2000, I took my family back to Bialystok.  My father always 11:00said that he didn't want to go while he was alive because there was nothing there for him anymore, and he was very right.  My father was -- very brilliant guy.  He knew that there was nothing there for him.  There wasn't.  But we found -- I brought my family after they passed away -- and my parents passed away -- I took them on this trip to Bialystok and I found the section where we lived and even, I believe, the house we lived in.  A relic, then, but nevertheless still standing.  What it was was a wooden bungalow.  If there was a front door, I never used it, because it was the kitchen door you entered into this large kitchen, in the middle of which stood a pot-belly stove and the kind 12:00of wooden shelves where the dishes and stuff would be placed and so forth.  Then, to the right, you entered a living room that was dominated by a white porcelain -- stove, I guess, is the way to put it because it had a latch where you would put in wood to burn and it was where my bobe [grandmother], which was grandmother, would sometimes cook things for dinner.  So, there was a stove there, but it was all white.  That was the white brick-like thing and it dominated the room, the living room.  It wasn't a living -- it was a dining 13:00room with a table and a small couch and chairs.  And then, there was a bedroom off to the left where I had my bed and my parents had theirs.  It was all there was to it.  My father's greatest achievement, he thought in those days, was he built us an indoor washroom himself.  He was very handy and -- I guess a product of the fact that his father was a -- did I say stolyer, which means carpenter?  Yes.  And did you know that word?

CW:  No, but it does make sense once you say it.

LM:  Yes.  So, he built us an indoor washroom himself.  There was an outhouse 14:00till then and here -- we're the only ones in the neighborhood that could afford an indoor washroom, if you believe it.  And it was with a pull chain, of course, that you flushed it.  But he built the whole thing.  But it was off the kitchen, so it was in the house but you had to go through the kitchen to get to it.  That was a big happening in our house.  My parents would leave very early and get back very late.  I was left to my own devices most of the time, except for weekends, when they were around.  And I had friends on the outside, children that I would play with.  Outside, I spoke in Polish, but not with the 15:00Jewish children.  With them, I would speak in Yiddish.  We were part of what was the Jewish quarter.  It wasn't the ghetto, but it was the Jewish quarter, and there was a synagogue down the street, a synagogue that was still standing when we went to visit in year 2000.  And it was for that reason I knew I was in the neighborhood because the synagogue had the right name and all the description and so forth, a plaque on its side.  And I knew I was there on the street, Piastowska seven, zibn [seven], was the address.  And there were a row of these little houses on that -- I mean, to own a home in Bialystok for Jews was a big thing.  I believe most Jews couldn't afford that.  I don't know where they lived.  Maybe they could.  But it wasn't much of a house.  I just 16:00described it to you.  It had an attic and my bobe lived in the attic.  So, there was one room up there and a bed and an outside stairway, not an inside stairway.  So, you'd have to get into the outside and then walk up.  They wouldn't let me do that very often, but I did now and then sneak up there. 

CW:  And what were the signs of having, in the home, of having two yidishistn as your parents?

LM:  Well, at that age, I didn't know the distinction of being a Yiddishist.  I accepted the reality because these were my parents.  And I spoke hekht [cultivated] Yiddish.  When I came to this country, I was a novelty.  I was, 17:00by then, nine years old and spoke such pure Yiddish that it was unbelievable that a child of nine years old -- the community here in this country had known Yiddish, of course.  But they knew it as a second language and -- or even if they knew it as a first, they'd already Americanized sufficiently with English phrases involved and so forth.  So, suddenly, here's a child that speaks better than any of them.  And naturally, I became rets--- (laughs) -- a reciter of poetry.  My parents pushed me into that.  And I loved it.  So, in terms of growing up with yidishistn and your question, to the age of seven, it didn't 18:00make any difference to me.  They were parents.  It was later that, of course, the discovery, who they were, made sense and then enwrapped me in a Yiddish world without question.  In Poland, the only thing I was certain of -- somehow, I knew that I was going to be a SKIFist [member of the Bundist youth organization SKIF].  Now, a SKIFist was the youth organization of the Bund and I was destined to be a SKIFist.  That part I knew, although I was still not of the age where I could be a SKIFist.  But it was someday.  And that, I no doubt got from my parents.  Where else would I have gotten that?  But I knew that was my future.

CW:  Was Yiddish literature or other art forms part of the home growing up?  19:00Were you --

LM:  Absolutely.  At all times.  My father made it a point to read to me.  My mother would read to me.  My father would make me read.  And the holidays that we celebrated, whether it was Passover or Hanukkah or any of the national type holidays the Jews celebrate were all non-religious.  So, they substituted, because they were bundistn -- and they substituted it with a literarishn yontev [literary holiday].  So, who were the literarish teachers of the time?  It was Sholem Aleichem, Yud Lamed Peretz, Reyzen.  And these names, to me, became next 20:00door because I would read their poems and -- I mean, as a six, seven-year-old, you don't -- I'm not talking deep philosophy here.  But my parents would make sure that I lived with the Yiddish underpinnings in literature.  I was just about to start grammar school and learned, to my chagrin, that my parents were not going to let me go to their school where they taught.  They taught in Grosser shul.  Grosser shul was the first accredited Yiddish school in Bialystok where graduating from this grammar school allowed you, theoretically, to go to Gymnasium, which is high school.  None of the other -- there were 21:00other Yiddish schools, because it was a big Yiddish population, well over a hundred thousand Jews, but none accredited.  And my parents taught in Grosser shul and advised me that they didn't want me to go to Grosser shul for the obvious reason that I would be treated as if I were a teacher's pet and they had no intention -- they were very smart people.  They had no intention of saddling me with that.  I was very, very upset when they took me -- this is just before war broke out, 'cause I was entering that September and September 1st, 1939, war broke out.  So, sometime in August before the war broke out, my mother and 22:00father took me to meet my first-grade teacher-to-be at Fabrikaner shul.  It was not the Grosser shul.  And it was a surprise to me.  They must have not prepared me sufficiently because this scene stands out in my mind.  I am embarrassed my parents something terrible because the teacher put forward her hand to shake mine and I slapped it.  I'll never forget that.  Terrible embarrassment to my parents.  But I was terribly upset that I was going to be with this teacher and not with my parents in their shule [secular Yiddish school].  And that's all about all I can remember, because I never did enter the school.  The world changed almost within a month of that.

CW:  And you were telling me earlier that there was no -- that it was a secular home, more or less, that you were growing up in.  Can you --

LM:  Not for my --

CW:  Not --

LM:  -- grandmother.

CW:  Not from your grandmother.

LM:  My grandmother bentsh likht [to bless candles] every -- certainly every Friday, I remember, and so forth, perhaps -- and at holidays.  My mother could bentsh likht, but in deference to my father, did not.  So, my grandmother did, and I used to -- she used to do that in front of me and so forth.  So, I knew there was a religion.  I really didn't know of it as religion, but I knew it was somewhat different than what my father believed in.

CW:  Were there any traditions or superstitions that you remember from your bobe?

LM:  Not from her.  But generally speaking, the holidays were very well recognized in the house.  Passover was a very big holiday, as were some others.  And so, we would always have a yontev [holiday].  We would always sit at the table and have a special meal and the usual things.  There wasn't a hagode [the book of readings for the Passover seder] at Passover, but there were stories.  So, my father would read some story of somebody about a Passover incident or something like that.  This is -- I remember.  And I want you to know that I carried forward that part of the tradition to this day because I am not religious, so to speak.  I never even had bar mitzvah.  My father wouldn't consider that.  My children had bar mitzvah because I left it up to them and 25:00they all chose to.  Peer pressure, I think.  But the traditions that my father instilled in me, I carried forward.  And my mother, as well.  Carried forward into my own life and in my own family.

CW:  And can you tell me a little bit about, I mean, from the young child's perspective, what the neighborhood in Bialystok was like and --

LM:  It was poor.

CW:  -- the Jewish community?

LM:  It was very poor.  But I didn't recognize that.  You don't recognize that when you're a child, you really don't.  'Cause you don't have the ability to compare.  So, what do you know?  But in retrospect, I know that it was very poor.  All the houses were of the kind I described.  There was the synagogue, there was -- you played on the street.  And there were a lot of kids.  But we 26:00were of a bit of a higher class.  Teachers.  Maybe they get paid more and they are also respected.  So, my parents had that going for them and, as a result, I recognized it.  I didn't get the respect or anything like that.  I was just one of the kids on the block.  And it was a block and you played outside except in winter.  And Polish winters are tough, so you play a lot inside.  But during the spring and summer, I lived outside.  The memories I have were clearly with other kids, all the time.  There were -- they all died.

CW:  Do you have memories of your father writing?

LM:  He was always writing, yes.  So, either reading or writing is how I remember my father.  But again, that wasn't in memory of the days before -- while we were in Bialystok.  That's all later in time and it isn't during the escape when I didn't see anybody reading anything.  But later in life, when we got to Chicago and finally life took on some normalcy, my father was a -- avid reader and writer.  And always teaching, though.  He never missed an opportunity to teach me in the process.  So, I was instilled in Jewish literature, literatur.  I'll tell you more about that as you proceed.  But as 28:00much as I would absorb, they were there, pressing forward in Yiddish.  So, I grew up in a yidishe svive, mit yidishe literatur, mit yidishe lider, un mentshn, un [Yiddish environment, with Yiddish literature, with Yiddish songs, and people, and] -- on and on.

CW:  Tsi gedenkt ir a balibste lid [Do you remember a favorite song]?

LM:  Yo, ikh ken, ikh ken dir [Yes, I can, I can], if I could be -- use the familiar -- ken dir zogn [I can tell you].  But let me back up.  When we eventually ended in Chicago, because mayn eltern zaynen gevorn lerer in yidishe 29:00shul, nokhmitog [my parents were teachers in Yiddish afternoon school].  So, after school, Yiddish school.  And both of them in separate schools.  So, there were two -- there were actually three.  And I even attended.  My mother became my teacher eventually, and I went to Yiddish school.  Later, I went to Yiddish mitlshul, which is high school, and my father became my teacher.  So, I had them from both the professional point of view as well as in the house.  Our house -- we lived on 3210 West Haddon in Chicago.  That's the northwest side of Chicago.  The hub -- a pot of Polish, Jewish, Irish, Italian, mixture, all 30:00living together in various parts.  Not a section.  It was everybody.  It was -- my next door neighbor was -- we lived on the third floor walk-up, next door neighbor was Polish.  Krofchek was his name, their name.  He had a little boy, Jimmy, and Jimmy and I were good friends.  He was maybe a year younger than I was.  The point I was getting to is that our apartment, our home, became somewhat of a mecca for Yiddish literature and culture.  It was a cultural hub because of my parents.  So, if authors, Yiddish authors came through Chicago, 31:00clearly they would come far a glezele tey, mit dem melamdovitshes [for a cup of tea with the Melamdoviches].  My parents kept their original name, Melamdovich.  I kept it longer than they did.  So, don't make the mistake of thinking that I discarded it.  In fact, when I became eighteen and had to gain citizenship on my own, I insisted that the name stay Melamdovich.  They had changed theirs when they were -- earlier than me, then -- became citizen.  So, I went through law school with the name Melamdovich and my first license in the Illinois Supreme Court is under Leo Melamdovich.  Later, I had to go petition the court to allow me to change it back to -- not back, but to Melamed.  So, I joined my parents' name and it became Melamed.  But at any rate, the 32:00Melamdoviches' house, home was a hub of Yiddish literatur, Yiddish kultur [culture].  And if authors would be coming through to do something in Chicago, officially speak or something, they would have a kabales-ponim [welcome party] in our house.  Everyone.  And one day, I was probably thirteen or fourteen at the time, my parents told me that Avrom Sutzkever is coming to Chicago and that I should prepare to recite, "Dos yingl fun ayzn," "The Boy of Steel," to --- this is Avrom Sutzkever's poem, very, very powerful poem.  And I had recited it 33:00already to audiences, because I became quite well-known.  I had three worlds later in life.  They only came together much, much later.  One life was my Yiddish life, one life was my institutional financial life, and I was a bridge player, which is an altogether different life.  And they didn't come together -- maybe to this day, they're not really (laughs) joined.  But they sort of did.  So, in those years, my Yiddish life was very distinct.  My friends on the street had no knowledge of it.

CW:  Well, I want to ask more about Chicago, certainly.  I'm just -- I don't want this to be a large part of the interview but if -- could you just tell me the overview of how you escaped and got to --

LM:  Chicago?

CW:  -- Chicago?

LM:  Okay, as an overview, (sighs) what happened was that my father, Itskhok Melamdovich -- Itskhok Meyshe Melamdovich, because my mother would call him Meyshe, middle name -- was on the Bialystok city council.  Meant he was an alderman elected to the council.  The only Jew elected to the council.  And when war broke out, the mayor called a meeting of the council and advised -- there were twenty members of the council.  Advised them that it is his information that when the Germans came in, they would use the leadership of the 35:00city as hostage, hostages, and they would be taken to prison and used as hostages should anything happen in the city that was against the orders of the Nazis.  And therefore, their life was in danger.  And so, the mayor took it upon himself to create a -- escape route before the Germans came in.  He had retained a truck and he offered all twenty council members to join him and leave Bialystok so that they aren't taken as hostages.  And my father had a decision to make, because there wasn't an offer to take the families.  It was just to take the councilmen that -- who were in danger.  And him being a Jew was a special danger yet.  And so, the decision between my mother and father was that 36:00he should take the shot and leave.  And did.  And I recall that scene in the middle of the night with the bombs falling and machine gun fire in the air where my mother woke me up in the middle of the night to say goodbye to my father.  And we met and we said goodbye.  It was kind of a Hollywood scene, everybody crying.  And my father and the others left on the truck.  Nobody knew where they were going and we didn't know, my mother didn't know what would happen next.  Of course, what happened next is that the Nazis came in, the Germans came in, took over the city.  Sure enough, they came looking for my father as a 37:00hostage, and I remember that scene vividly.  But I'll spare you this; you said to do it quickly.  Okay.  For a long time, we didn't know where my father was and -- anything.  And one day, one evening, my mother -- our neighbors, their friends who had a telephone, the only ones that had a telephone in their house, got a call.  It was from my father and he wanted to talk to my mother.  And the -- Mrs. Lunden was her name, Lunden was her last name -- came, called my mother.  She went, she rushed, and she came back and said to her mother, my grandmother, and me that, "Meyshl says we must leave, mir muzn, haynt bay nakht, 38:00avekgeyn fun bialistok.  Dos iz der letster moment ven mir kenen nokh forn tsu lite. [we must, tonight, leave Bialystock.  This is the last moment that we can still travel to Lithuania.]"  That's Lithuania.  "And if we don't do it now, he doesn't know what's going to happen in the world and whether we could catch up to each other.  But now, if we leave now and leave everything behind and just go across the border" -- as if you could just walk across the border.  It's kind of silly but -- and he also knew that Wilno was the place to go to, that Wiln would be given up by the Russians to the Lithuanians.  There was always a tug of war as to who owned Wilno.  Vilniu is today the capital of Lithuania, as a matter of fact.  But at that time, it was Poland.  And so, we -- the idea was to get to Wilno from Bialystok.  Don't ask.  My mother had to 39:00make the decision.  Of course, she made the decision to go.  And she packed hardly a bag with some stuff because we didn't know that you weren't coming back or anything like that.  And she left her mother and my aunt, my father's sister who came to say goodbye, and the other grandmother.  There was a scene there and we left.  And I'll spare you the methodology of getting to Wilno.  Wasn't easy, and --

CW:  Well, you can tell me these things if you like.  I just don't want to --

LM:  No, no, no.  No, no.  (laughter) It was first on a train.  It was normally a two-hour ride; it was twenty-four hours.  And it wasn't a ride.  We'd get off, we'd be stopped.  There was -- be machine-gun fire.  There was bombs falling and you heard it, and so forth.  So, you got back on the train and then it would move awhile and then there would be noise and gunfire and we'd 40:00be rushed off the train.  And it went on that way for the whole night.  And something on the order of twenty-four hours later, we ended up in Wilno.  And sure enough, the next day, Lithuanians took over Wilno and we were on the other side of the war.  Suddenly, we were not in the war zone, 'cause Lithuania was not yet attacked.  In fact, the Germans never attacked Lithuania.  It was the Russians that attacked Lithuania, later, when Hitler and Stalin made a pact to divide Europe, this and that.  So, we were in Wilno and we didn't know how long this would be.  Nobody knew how long the war would be.  In retrospect, you know these things.  At the time, you know nothing.  Rumors.  And I was only seven years old, so the rumors didn't even reach me.  But my parents had 41:00friends in Wilno.  Wilno was a very big Jewish center, as you know.  Some say the yerushalayim [Jerusalem] of Poland, maybe, where the YIVO was born and -- my father was involved with YIVO.  He took me there, in Wilno.  And so, they had many friends and the friends were necessarily also our saviors, in a way.  We got a one-room apartment.  One-room.  Bedroom.  And my parents were given jobs as teachers in Wilno.  And I was taken right away into school.  That's one of the things that a child of parents who are teachers suffer, is the school business.  It becomes the only thing that's in your parents' mind: get your 42:00child to a school.  And I suffered this consequence.  My whole growing up, I was in school in -- never actually in Poland except kindergarten, but in Lithuania, learning Lithuanian.  Then, the Russians came and took over and my father had to run away because he was a known writer of anti-communist propaganda, so to speak.  And that means he was on the NKVD list, which was later the KGB.  So, he ran off.  But I went to school.  So, first I learned Lithuanian, then I learned Russian.  Not much, either language.  And then, our trek began when my father got the Sugihara entry visa through Japan.  That 43:00wasn't enough because you had to get out of Russia, and you needed permission to do that.  Well, that wasn't easy to get, nor was it a certainty because if the foreign affairs office where you applied recognized my father's name, Isaac Melamdovich, as that guy on the list of the KGB, you weren't getting out.  You were going to Siberia for sure.  And they had to make the decision of whether to take the risk or not.  And as my father explained to my mother and me, sitting on the bed in this one-room in Wilno, "Es makht nisht keyn shayd" -- how did he say it?  He said, It made no difference, because if he doesn't apply, 44:00they're gonna catch him or the Germans will get us.  If he applies and gets through the net somehow, maybe there's freedom.  And so, they applied.  And he was living in the forests of Kovno.  Years later, that became -- that forest is part of a movie that you may have seen.  I'll ask Betty for the name of the movie since I won't remember.  Recent movie.  The forests where the partisans lived and built a social system for all those who escaped.  But that was later in years, maybe two years later.  At that time, this was a hideout for refugees that were running and so forth.  He lived there.  Eventually, the visa came in.  Not the visa.  The entry visa to Japan.  And he applied for permission 45:00to leave Russia.  We were granted -- slipped through the cracks.  And we took a train from Wilno to Moscow.  I spent some days in Moscow, and during that period of time, my father took me to every historic spot in Moscow.  Lenin was his big deal, because you know, that's the difference between the communists and Bolsheviks.  Lenin was the other guy.  Stalin was the bad guy in his world.  And so, I went to see Lenin laying in state.  (sighs) Fifty years later, I was invited by Gorbachev to start a futures exchange in Moscow.  And I came and I 46:00went to visit Lenin's tomb.  And you know what?  Nothing had changed.  But (laughs) that's another story.  The man looked like he was as I remembered him as a kid, lying there.  Great scene.  So, we were on a Trans-Siberian Railroad that normally takes two days or something.  How 'bout three weeks?  The train would pull off, you never knew -- was a one-line train, east and west or north and -- east and west.  But you never knew, when it pulled away, whether you were ever going back.  And so, it was the scariest time for my parents ever.  They always spoke in hushed tones that, If we wake up tomorrow and the KGB is 47:00there, the jig's up.  They tried to keep all that from me, but children recognize these things.  We ended up in Vladivostok, which is the outpost of -- on the Japanese sea.  We crossed the Japanese ocean in a junk boat, which they tell me was not a junk boat.  In their view, it was a real ship.  But we slept on the floor just the same and transported three days across the Japanese sea to Suruga -- was the name of the port in Japan.  We ended up in Kobe.  The Jewish community in Japan was very much concerned for us, and not just us.  Sugihara gave out three thousand visas.  And so, there was a constant flow.  We were 48:00the early guys and that's one of the reasons we made it to the United States, too.  Anyway, so we were in Japan and my parents applied for permission to come to the United States.  And very few, a handful, got permission.  There were very few, and there's a reason for that.  And we were on that list.

CW:  And why were you on that list?  Do you know?

LM:  Yes.  I can even show you why I was on that list.  Some fifty years later, the State Department releases all its documents -- after fifty years.  And one day -- I was a member of the United States Holocaust Museum.  As a council member, I helped create the museum.  And the curator, who knew me, called me up and she said, "You'll never believe the document I'm looking at.  49:00The State Department released these; we're going through them.  They gave it to us.  We don't even know why they gave it to us, but here is one reason.  I find a -- official letter from the State Department to the ambassador in Tokyo saying that if a family, Melamdovich, mother, and children (laughs) is in Japan, give them passage to the United States.  They are on the endangered list."  The endangered list meant they were being chased both by the Germans and the Russians.  So, he was on that -- we were on that list.  I don't know, there were three hundred or so, probably, on that list.  And the AFL-CIO had submitted that list to the State Department and it got -- it was granted 50:00permission and this letter went out, or official statement went out, with all the stamps -- I'll show you before you leave.  I didn't get the original.  Museums don't give away original -- you probably know that.  So, I got a copy.  But at any rate, that was the reason we got out.  My father always thought that he got out because he answered the questions so brilliantly.  They posed these questions like, "Are you gonna work if you get to the United States?"  And the theory was that if you said yes, you would be taking a job away from an American citizen.  But if you said no, then you're gonna be a ward of the state.  That's no good either.  My father had the perfect answer.  He said, "I told them I was gonna be a Yiddish schoolteacher.  How many jobs am I taking away?  From who?"  (laughs) So, he answered all right answers.   Maybe so.  Anyway, he didn't know what I learned later.  He was already gone when I 51:00got this letter from the State Department.  And that's a short version of two years.

CW:  Yeah, well, if we have time, maybe we can go back and I can ask you more about that.  But as a child coming to Chicago, what were your first impressions?

LM:  Well, you're skipping some -- as a child, for the previous two years, I lived a very unusual life.  I lived in my head.  I was not part of the adult scene and I had, in Wilno, some friends my age.  But mostly, I lived alone.  Certainly, on that trek across Siberia, on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, I was alone.  And when I went to these schools, I didn't get to know the kids.  I 52:00wasn't there long enough.  So, Japan, learning Japanese didn't really work.  So, I was a bit of a different child when I arrived in the United States, more grown up than most kids nine years old.  I had seen a lot, I had been through a lot.  I had learned what fear was through my parents' eyes.  And I knew what their risks were, again by more feel than being told, although sometimes they talked.  And so, I was -- what I'm trying to describe is not -- I was very capable of acclimating.  Whatever the hell was thrown at me, I pretty much could absorb it and deal with it.  And so, here I was in a new -- yet another 53:00language in another country.  And overwhelmingly beautiful.  But children, with other children, have difficulties.  If you're a foreigner with an accent, we -- I couldn't even speak the first word of English, forget the accent part.  Nothing.  In New York, my parents did the most brilliant thing.  We first went to New York.  My mother had a sister there.  And again, to my chagrin, it was summer.  We came in April of 1941 to this country.  War with Japan broke out in December of the same year, where we had left.  And so, summer was coming up and my parents and all the people they knew -- I mean, they were very sought 54:00after people, my parents, in New York 'cause they had just been -- arrived from this trek and they knew things that no one knew and so forth -- were advised that there was a Yiddish camp that I should be sent to, Kinder Ring in New York.  And my parents did the unthinkable: they took a kid, nine years old that had gone through all holy hell and knew not a word of English and threw him to the wolves and Kinder Ring.  Two months later, I walked out of there speaking English.  And as you can see, without an accent.  So, they were very smart.  And by the time I got to Chicago, which they had -- their jobs then materialized in Chicago, we moved from New York to Chicago -- by the time I got here, I was 55:00speaking -- not without an accent.  It was still obvious I was a greenhorn.  And kids are vicious about greenhorns.  They don't take suddenly -- they don't take well.  And particularly, I couldn't play baseball.  I had never seen a baseball in my life, let alone a bat, and let alone could I hit the ball with the bat.  This is a bad thing for kids.  So, I had a miserable time in Chicago from -- I entered in something like fourth grade, grammar school.  I graduated and then entered high school when I was thirteen.  And in high school, by the time I entered high school, I had no accent and nobody knew I was a foreigner.  And I told nobody.  And I was just like one of the kids.  All new kids.  56:00Grammar school, high school.  Different.  And I became an American, accepted.  I became president of the class.  So, there was no more stigma, the -- and I maintained that silence of who I was throughout my -- it wasn't until university that I spoke about my status as a foreigner.  High school -- when I would be on the Yiddish radio programs that they would tape, and I was always on soap operas in Yiddish -- and so, if there was ever a role for -- a kid's role, I had it, always, till my voice changed.  And then, I had lover parts.  But I 57:00wouldn't tell.  It was on on Friday nights.  It was taped during the week and on on Friday nights and I wouldn't tell anybody that I was on.  I would excuse myself and go and listen, but I wouldn't tell 'em that I was on a Yiddish talk -- a Yiddish soap opera.  Nobody.  None of my friends.  Lived kind of two lives.  That's why I say that the Yiddish world kept quite distinct from the rest of my life.

CW:  So, can you describe that home -- you started to a little bit before and I took you back.  But can you describe the Yiddishist home in --

LM:  Yes.

CW:  -- in Chicago?

LM:  Yes.  Well, that was very, very serious.  I grew up in Yiddish.  I went 58:00to Yiddish schools and I had my parents, who were teachers and Yiddishists.  And so, Yiddish literature was home for me.  And not like my father or mother because I was also in school and so forth.  So, I had limited time for that.  But I certainly was different than any other child growing up in a Yiddish home in Chicago during the '40s and later.  And then, my parents -- because I did have a flair for talking, a little bit, and maybe even some talent, in quotation marks, they began pushing me and I began to be being asked.  At that time in the '40s, there was a great Yiddish-speaking population in Chicago.  Not newcomers, 'cause the newcomers didn't come till after the war.  This was still during the war.  But there was a great population.  Two Yiddish newspapers: "Der Tog" un [and] "Di Tsayt."  And so, there were many events and here I was, a star.  A young kid, ten years old, eleven years old, twelve years old, who could speak and recite Yiddish poetry.  My mother would spend hours with me, my father, as well, teaching me, "No, he doesn't mean that.  He means this.  Say it this way, not that way," and explaining, What does the poet mean by this or that?  So, I went through -- education process no one else did.  No one else did.  Very few.  I mean, I don't know.  Maybe there was one or two other kids of this sort in this kind of a -- environment.  And I have a raft of poems and 59:00stories that I would read to the audiences, on to this day.  Not many years ago at the YIVO, a YIVO event in New York, they asked me to come and recite.  And I did.  Very recently, last year, I was chairman of the fundraiser that occurs once a year in Chicago on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial Museum.  It's a book and author thing, it's called, and I was chairman of that.  And I gave them the recitation of "Dos yingl fun ayzn" in English.

CW:  Tsi gedenkt ir [Do you remember]?

LM:  Yo, ikh gedenk es, un ikh hob es iberzetst [Yes, I remember it, and I translated it] in English.  Ikh hob iberzetst mer vi dos -- ikh hob iberzetst a 60:00dray, fir greyse poemes [I've translated more than that -- I have translated three or four great poems].  My favorite was Peretz's "Monish."  Do you know Peretz's "Monish"?  Well, when I gave a rendition of "Monish" -- it's a long -- what do you call it?  It's not a poem.  It's --

CW:  It's --

LM:  -- I don't know.  There's a word for it.

CW:  It's sort of, yeah, like a -- epic or something of --

LM:  It's an epic, yeah.  Well, I have it on record somewhere, the recording, because I would give that to many audiences.  I was the one and only, I want to tell you.  I was good.  And my parents made sure I was good.  You can imagine having two theater directors on you twenty-four hours a day!  And so, I would 61:00learn them by heart, these things that -- do you know who Dina Halpern was?  Do you know the name?

CW:  Um-hm.

LM:  Well, Dina Halpern was, of course, a great actress and -- world renown.  And she was a disciple to -- my father was her mentor.  She would call my father to learn vos meynt dos [what it means], explain the deeper meaning of something that she was reading or something she was going to recite or give.  Eventually, she and her husband created the yidish teater [Yiddish Theater] organization in Chicago.  And naturally, I was the star actor of the troupe.  She was the directress and star but it -- she put together a lot of very 62:00talented people and we put on "Mirele efros," all kinds of plays that would be seen at the Douglas Park Theater and they would run for weeks on end.  So, this is the environment in which I grew up.  "Dos yingl fun ayzn," I'd rather not --

CW:  Okay.

LM:  -- I'd rather get it and read it to you.

CW:  That's fine.

LM:  If you would like --

CW:  Sure.

LM:  -- I will do that.

CW:  Okay.

LM:  If I can find -- yeah.

CW:  Yeah.

LM:  I know where to find it, yes.

CW:  And you began to tell me a story about Sutzkever and reciting it --

LM:  Oh, yeah.  So --

CW:  -- for him.

LM:  -- Sutzkever, "Dos yingl fun ayzn," which clearly was my favorite -- it's 63:00not a very long poem -- was coming to Chicago.  And there would be a kaboles-ponim at our house, of course.  I got to tell you about my bar mitzvah, too, which is a rare, rare, unique thing. 

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:  So, you were telling me about when Sutzkever iz gekumen in shtub [came to your house].

LM:  Oh, yes.  So, Sutzkever was coming through and my parents told me that they would have me recite "Dos yingl fun ayzn" to him, the author, the poet.  And it was kind of a scary thing for me.  I was thirteen or fourteen.  I had done the poem.  I knew I had done it well.  But here was the poet himself, in the flesh.  And probably around -- the apartment could not handle more than 64:00forty people.  Was that big.  (laughs) But there were forty people in the place.  Sutzkever was the big name.  He was on his way, actually, to Israel.  He eventually settled there.  And I was a very short kid.  I mean, I never grew very, very tall.  But when I did grow, it wasn't till I was eighteen and nineteen.  So, at the age of thirteen, I was one of the shorter kids around.  So, they put me on a chair so that I could be above the audience.  Sutzkever sitting on the couch, directly in front of me, and I recited "Dos yingl fun ayzn."  And literally, he had tears in his eyes.  He got up.  I was standing on this chair.  He embraced me and whispered to me, "Es iz an emese 65:00gesheenish," that it was a real happening.  So, I'll recite it to you.  He wrote this -- you know that Sutzkever was a partisan in the Wilno Ghetto.  (coughs) And so, he wrote this in Wilno after the war.  "An oysgebrenter shvartser mogn-dovid/af zayn shtern,/di hor vi koltns kropeve,/di oygn -- ayz in friling,/un oysgeshtartste gele ripn unter lekher shmates,/ shpant a yingl, 66:00trogt zikh mitn kenigsberger shlakh,/ongelent on sukevatn shtekn. [A smoldering black Star of David/on his forehead,/hair tangled like nettles,/and eyes -- like ice in the spring,/and boney yellow ribs jutting out fun under the hole-ridden rags,/a boy walked, dragging with him the disaster of Konigsberg,/leaning on a gnarled staff.]"  (imitates bringing down a staff with authority) "Breyte verbes toplen zikh in vaser,/kornblimlekh lokn durkh di zangen --/un der yingl, ongelent on shtekn,/aylt foroys,/vi nit far im dos vakhsekhts./Bloyz fun tsayt tsu tsayt/er tut dem kop a vorf ahinter,/vi a foygl forshndik, vi vayt iz nokh der shturem:/im dakht zikh nokh, men yogt./Zog mir, kind, vuhin iz dayn gehayl,/tsi vart af dir a shtub, a tate-mamen?/Blaybt er shteyn farglivert oyf a 67:00vayl,/vi s'volt di velt farshelt a luke-khame. [Huge willows dip into the water,/cornflowers peek out from the ears of corn --/and the boy, leaning on the staff,/hastens forward,/as if our vigil over the slaughter is not for him./Only now and again/he turns his head to look behind him,/like a curious bird, checking how far away the storm is:/it seems it pulls him./Tell me, child, where do you hail from,/do you have a home, parents?/He remains standing, stiff for a while,/as if the world were shadowed by an eclipse.]"  That's a -- eclipse.  "Kh'hob keynem nit./Men zogt, in vilne iz a shul faranen,/gey ikh dort,/iz nokh vayt fun danen?/Shteln mir zikh beyde oyf a barg/un ikh vayz im on vuhin tsu shpanen./Hoybt er unter gor di velt in torbe/un er lozt zikh ayliker nokh geyn/durkh shtok un shteyn./Shray ikh im fun vaytn:/yingl, yingl,/un du 68:00aleyn/fun vanen bist, fun vanen?/Tsindn zikh vi tsunter/zayne kneytshn,/di oygn nemen shmeltsn bloye gold,/un funem lipn-vinkl tut a shmeykhl zikh bavayzn:/fun vanen bin ikh, ha?/Ikh bin fun AYZN! [I don't have anyone./They say that in Vilna there is a synagogue somewhere./I'm going there./Is it far?/We both stand there on the side of the mountain/and I show him where to head./He strains under the weight of the whole world in his sack/and he heads off in haste to continue/between the tree stumps and rocks./I yell after him:/Boy, boy,/and you yourself/where are you from, where?/His folds catch fire like tinder,/his eyes start to burn a blue-gold,/and from the corner of his mouth a smile begins to show:/Where am I from, huh?/I am of STEEL!]."  You know, I haven't recited in Yiddish in years because I translated it, as I said, and in recent years, the last ten, I've been asked to read that but I read my translated English version, which I know much better now than the Yiddish.  It was a little difficult for me.  But that was the poem that Sutzkever -- and when I recited it at that age, I was better than I am now, and he told me that it was a true story.  So, it 69:00was quite an event that sticks out in my mind.  There's another event that sticks out in my mind.  Several.  Many.  I said I would mention to you my bar mitzvah because that is rather important.  Here were my parents, certainly no religion.  I couldn't be bar mitzvah.  But the thirteenth birthday was an important birthday in Yiddish culture.  And -- even to them.  And so, therefore, it was going to be of a special note.  They were going to invite the who's who of Bialystok to our apartment and I had to prepare for something special for that event.  And what was it?  I would write my autobiography in Yiddish and read it to the audience.  Took a year.  They prepared me for a year.  I wrote it.  I have it to this day.  And I read -- it showed up in the 70:00newspaper the next day, the whole story written up and so forth.  So, here was their form of bar mitzvah, right?  Literaturishe yidishistn [Literary Yiddishists].  It celebrated bar mitzvah, but in a different fashion.  It was the coming out of a Jew, and he had to do something special to signify that event, to signify the happening.  And you celebrated in one way or another.  You don't have to celebrate it in a synagogue, reading the haftorah.  You celebrate it in this fashion.  Well, it made some noise in the city in terms of the Yiddish world understood this.  But my English world knew nothing of this 71:00and so forth.  So, that stands out in my mind.  There was another incident that I never forgot.  My parents would take me to every Yiddish event as long as I was of an age where they could still force their decision on me.  By the time I got to seventeen, it started to get harder for them.  But till then, I went to all the events.  So, if my father was speaking or reading or someone was coming through with a -- or an actor, a troupe, or something, I was there.  And often, I was introduced to the audience and would help recite something.  But most of the time, I just went with them.  One day, they told me that Meyshe Mendelson was coming to Chicago.  Meyshe Mendelson was the number one Bundist in the world and a great orator and a great literary -- I don't know literary, 72:00but a scholar of sorts.  It was a big deal, and that I was going to come with them to listen.  I was ten years old, eleven maybe.  It was held in a hall that had -- a thousand people came in Chicago to listen to Meyshe Mendelson.  Before he spoke, everyone rose and sang the bundish [Bundist] anthem: (singing) "Brider un shvester, fun arbet un noyt, un ale vos zaynen tsezeyt un tseshpreyt!  Tsuzamen, tsuzamen, di fon iz greyt.  Zi flakert fun fayer, fun 73:00blut iz zi royt.  A shvue, a shvue, fun leybn un teyt! [Brothers and sisters, workers in need, and everyone who is scattered and spread out!  Gather together, gather together, the flag is ready.  She flickers with fire, she's red from blood.  An oath, an oath, for life and death!]"  Goes on.  I knew it, of course, as a child.  So, they -- thousand people stood up, singing this -- and there's a moment in time, singing, "Di shvue [The oath]," di bundishe shvue [the Bundist oath].  And then, Mendelson spoke, in Yiddish, of course.  Firebrand.  Even as a ten-year-old, I could tell this was some sort of personality.  But he said something that never left my mind.  And forever, it has motivated me in many different ways, but one way in particular.  He said 74:00that the only way to achieve immortality is to tie yourself to an ideal which is immortal.  Ten years old, but I understood that.  And I'm sure he was speaking about the Bund, his ideal.  But it translates to anything you want.  And when I took over the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, that became my ideal.  I knew that this was an ideal that could transcend mortality.  And so, it became my ideal and maybe that's the reason I did what I did with the institution.  It is today the biggest in the world, and so forth.  But I do know that that influenced me: Meyshe Mendelson, the Bundist who is, what, five-foot-seven, but stood so tall 75:00in my eyes.  And that whole scene of a thousand people singing "Di shvue," so powerful.  Never left me.  I'm not a Bundist; I'm a capitalist.  But still, I have many of the Bundist trappings in my life.  One I will tell you because you are a woman, so you should know this.  Equality, to my parents, was a plank that was first and foremost.  "Ale mentshn zaynen brider, vayse, gele, broyne, shvartse.  Misht di farbn oys tsuzamen, s'iz an oysgetrakhte mayse. [All people 76:00are brothers, white, yellow, brown, black.  Mix the colors up together, it's all an invented story.]"  There are no colors.  It's all the same.  You mix them up, they're all equal.  They're all equal.  And my mother would sing that, that's -- Mendelssohn's -- Goethe's words to Moses -- not that Moses Mendel-- Mendelssohn the artist, sing it to me.  So, I grew up with that fundamental pillar, all -- everyone is equal.  It's not true.  The world doesn't live that way.  I had to learn that the hard way.  I learned it eventually, that the world didn't think like I did, and you had to account for 77:00that.  There are many moments in my personal history, like when I became a lawyer and I hired from a YMC school -- cheapest way I could go, to hire a secretary, and she was black.  I hired her because they told me she was the best in the class.  So, I hired her.  About two weeks later, I took her to lunch, a Bar Association restaurant.  And two weeks later or three weeks later, I was called by the ethics committee, on the carpet, 1955.  Was I revolutionary inclined?  Was I a rabble-rouser?  Do I realize what I am doing?  This is the Bar Association, 1955.  I didn't know.  I had no knowledge of what they were 78:00talking about.  I learned.  Pretty fast learner.  I got it, eventually.  But I took over the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1967.  I wasn't chairman yet, but I took it over anyway.  I was elected to the board and I was just as good as chairman.  You know what the first thing I did?  Removed the requirement of gender -- only males on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  First thing I did.  My mother didn't know I did that.  But I told her.  That's what she taught me.  And I removed that.  In 1967, that's before the New York Stock Exchange did it, I believe.  So, I thought you'd enjoy that.  Anyway, that's how I was brought up, so I didn't know.  (laughs) When I first became chairman in '69, I started to hire -- create departments.  Yeah, I was a lawyer and I 79:00was organized in my head and I was pretty smart.  Anyway, I was creating different departments.  So, I start to hire the head of this department, I interviewed people and got them -- and one day, the president of the exchange, who was an old-timer, been there many, many years, was very nervous.  He said, "I got to talk to you.  Got to talk to you.  Leo, I got to talk to you and promise me you won't get mad.  You got a temper.  I don't want your temper.  Can you promise me you won't" -- I said, "Everett, tell me already!  What the hell do you want?  What is it?"  "Promise me!"  I said, "I promise."  He says, "Listen, you've hired seven people."  I said, "I know."  He says, "You know they're all Catholic?"  (laughs) I said, "They're what?"  How did he know?  I didn't know!  But imagine.  I told you, I learned the hard way.  It's not all equal!  But anyway, I said to him if he ever says that to me 80:00again, I'm gonna fire the son of a bitch.  (laughter) I didn't care who they were, and it never dawned on me to -- I'm not putting myself on a pedestal.  I'm just telling you how I grew up.  This is what it was.  Later, I learned.  Now I've got lots of prejudice like everybody else, (laughs) I think.  But that's what I was in my early days and it was all from my parents.  This is Bundism at its best, I think.  And my mother was certainly the influence here.  So, our household, as I described to you, was as different as you get.  I doubt if there was another one in the city like that, certainly.  Maybe in New York, there were others, but not in Chicago.  And I grew up in this atmosphere, in this environment, and Yiddish was part of my being.

CW:  And I wanted to ask you about your father writing.  Do you remember that?  Did he have specific habits about when he wrote and --

LM:  I mean, I don't remember the habit part.  I remember him writing a lot.  What he was doing, he was lecturing.  He had many -- wasn't necessarily for publication.  Reams of stuff that he wrote were lectures that he was going to give or gave or was planning to give.  And because he was a very desired speaker at events, you know how they do --- khaver [comrade] Melamdovich is coming to redn [speak] and so certainly people came to listen.  And that's what he was always doing.  That or something else.  They organized -- oh, of course, he was also preparing for classes and he had the older kids.  As I said, I was in high school with the mitlshul with my father and others.  They 82:00organized the most unique thing you can imagine: a third seder festival, because the first seder and the second seder are religious things.  Third seder, that's cultural.  And so, the schools in Chicago for years would have a third seder festival that the citizens, Yiddish citizens, Jewish citizens of Chicago would come to a hotel where it was a banquet with tables.  And on the stage, the kids would perform.  So, they'd sing, they'd recite, they'd dance.  I among them, till later when I had kids, I would bring them to this event.  Betty and I organized a Yiddish school in the suburbs because we had moved to the suburbs as the kids -- and when they got to the age of seven, eight, we wanted them to have 83:00a -- education in Yiddish but the schools were in Chicago, so we organized our own Yiddish school that lasted for some fifteen, sixteen years until we ran out of students, I guess.

CW:  What was it called?

LM:  Well, in English it was the North Shore Yiddish School.  So, yidishe shule organizatsye [Yiddish secular school organization].  Nothing fancy.

CW:  So, you spoke Yiddish with your children?

LM:  Unfortunately, no.  I was a busy guy.  I had devoted my life to another ideal and the upbringing was my wife, who learned to understand Yiddish.  She can probably speak, too, but she wasn't good enough to teach them in Yiddish.  84:00And I didn't -- I failed in this respect.  It was something I really live with as a failure.  I could have easily, because, what the hell?  But I never did.  Now, all the three kids went to Yiddish school.  My daughter can probably understand Yiddish when I speak with her because she's very -- so can my sons, but they don't speak it and they can't read it.  But they understand it.  So, they got that much because they went to the Yiddish schools, as I said, and they did have a lot of Yiddish in the house from my parents.  And one way or another, they got to the point that they fully understand Yiddish today.  When I talk to my son or daughter in Yiddish, they'll get what I'm saying but they can't speak it.

CW:  And ven redt ir yidish, haynt tsu tog [When do you speak Yiddish today]?

LM:  Ikh red ven ikh hob a -- s'nishto vu tsu redn yidish in shikago.  S'iz 85:00geven a mol, a sakh tsu ton in yidish, un ikh hob alemol gehat mentshn -- khaveyrim, oder mentshn vos ikh ken, velkhe hobn geredt mit mir in yidish.  Ober itster iz nishto tsu vemen.  Es iz do mistome yidn vos kenen nokh redn yidish -- ikh ken zey nisht.  Ven ikh bin geven in [I speak when I have a -- there is nowhere to speak Yiddish in Chicago.  Once upon a time, there was a lot to do in Yiddish, and I always had people -- friends, or people that I knew, who spoke Yiddish with me.  But now there is no one.  There are maybe people who can still speak Yiddish -- I don't know them.  When I was in] -- in the United States, in the museum iz geven a por mentshn vos venen gezesn mit mir un mir flegn nor redn yidish [there were a couple of people who sat with me and we used to only speak in Yiddish].  Ben Meed, Vladka's husband, they're both passed away.  Vladka is a very famous partisan lady in the ghetto and he, too, was a freedom fighter.  So, Ben and I would -- when we'd meet, we'd meet several times a month and we'd talk only in Yiddish.  And there were others 86:00there who could speak in Yiddish and that was -- in fact, I couldn't talk to him in anything but Yiddish.  It was automatic.  When you see Ben Meed, you talk in Yiddish.  And now, I have a habit that you'll like.  It's unique, probably.  I travel a lot and at the airports, I often see di shvartse yidn [the black-hat Jews], the Lubavitcher, the Hasidic.  I know they all know Yiddish.  So, as soon as I see them, I go up to them and I say, "Rebi, di redt in yidish [Rabbi, do you speak Yiddish]?"  And they look at me.  "Yo [Yes]!"  And we speak in Yiddish.  So, I speak out opportunities to do that.  Last year, I was in Shangzhin or Shangzhou -- Shangzhou in China at a conference I 87:00was going to.  And I'm in the hotel and I was with my Chinese interpreter, young lady, and I see a black hat.  I say, "Wait a minute."  And I run over to him and I said, "Vos tut ir in shangzho?  Vos tut a yid do? [What are you doing in Shangzhou?  What is a Jew doing here?]"  "Vos heyst, vos tut a yid do?  Ikh hob skheyre.  Mir handlen.  Du vilst geyn tsu khabad? [What do you mean, what is a Jew doing here?  I have business.  We're doing business.  Do you want to go to a Chabad house?]"  Well, I don't know if I -- my father would not have approved.  I said, "Yo."  He takes me and the young lady, walks me out to a Chabad in Shangzhou -- un mir hobn geredt yidish [and we spoke Yiddish].  The other time, last year, I was in Shanghai and I went to a synagogue.  Now, for 88:00me to go to a synagogue is now very, very normal.  They don't know that I'm not religious and -- but there's always somebody there that speaks in Yiddish.  If it's not the rabbi, it's somebody else, and I'm always seeking that out.  So, I did that in Shanghai, I found a whole group of them who spoke in Yiddish and they marvel at mine.  'Cause it's no accent, it's -- der emeser [the real] -- what's known as "hekhte yidish."

CW:  Right.

LM:  So, I seek it out, but it's instances, it's not an ongoing thing as it used to be.  I had a friend at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange whose name was Ruby Carl who spoke in genuine Yiddish, grew up as a khosid [follower of Hasidism], I think, and spoke in Yiddish.  And on the floor of the exchange, he and I would talk in Yiddish only.  Used to sing a song.  When business wasn't so good, he'd sing a song called, "Shtil in shtetl [Silence in the village]," 89:00nothing's happening.  (laughs) Yeah.

CW:  Well, I have one more question, but do you have anything else that you wanted to be sure to say?

LM:  I've covered my life in Yiddish to you.  I think I did pretty good.  I have many of the books -- my father's books are in a different room, but they're in the library -- of its own.

CW:  Is there anything else you want to say about him or your mother?

LM:  Yeah, well, yeah.  I think I should add that I'm only here because of him and his foresight.  We got out of the clutches -- I don't know, within months -- later, we would never have gotten out and I would have been one of the million and a half children that perished in the Holocaust, I'm sure.  My first girlfriend, seven-year-old girlfriend, her name -- Esther Kaman, who I met in 90:00Wilno, was shot to death six months after we left Wilno.  So, it was right behind us.  And my father figured that out somehow, to get out.  And I imagined over the years -- he would not tell his story.  None of those people liked to talk about it.  I'm a survivor, but I'm of a different generation, and I talk about it.  All the time, right?  Meetings or everything or anything, right?  And I've devoted my life to preserving their memory and I do a lot.  But they didn't.  They lived their life as Jews in Yiddish, but they didn't.  To their crowd, maybe, they talked.  Not to the outside.  So, my father didn't 91:00want to write this down and I bought him a recorder device and gave it to him and said -- showed him how it works.  And all he has to do is just talk in when he feels like telling the story.  I know the story of our escape, but only through their eyes.  I was seven years old.  What do I know that they suffered and what they -- the decisions that he made.  How many?  A hundred, two hundred, five hundred different decisions, any one of which might have meant the difference of life or death if he made the wrong decision here or there or wherever, right?  All those decisions, I don't know what they were.  I just know they had to have been.  And I also know that he made them right.  So, he was a brilliant man, maybe enormously brilliant in every way.  Take, for 92:00instance, this -- when this kid -- there was this kid, graduated law school.  And to them, this was as big a happening as can be, a -- immigrant kid becoming an advokat [lawyer].  Hell, that's -- big deal.  And yet, I had already been exposed to trading and fell in love with it.  And so, I wanted to buy a membership when I was twenty-one.  You could buy a membership.  I changed that, too, 'cause if you can die at eighteen, I said, you got to be able to buy a membership at eighteen.  And I changed that.  But Vietnam, Korea, you know?  So, I said to my father that, "I want to buy a membership and it's three thousand dollars," at the time.  And I didn't have any money.  Would he 93:00consider borrowing me -- lending me three thousand dollars?  Their life savings was probably five thousand.  So, I took 'em to the exchange.  Now, what did he know about this wild wonderland of trading?  He knew.  He instinctively understood and he would say to me, "Zey keyfn un farkeyfn, un dernokh dem, keyfn zey un farkeyfn?  Un zey makhn gelt oder zey farlirn gelt, yo?  Un du nemst di orders fun danen un du brengst es vu zey zanen, di [They buy and sell, and after that, they buy and sell?  And they make money or lose money, right?  And you take the orders from there and bring it to them there, the] -- the brokers, yo?"  "Yo."  How, why, how?  He lent me the three thousand dollars, which, as I say, was maybe half his life saving.  So, instinctively, a very, very smart 94:00guy.  Learned.  And he'd lecture, he created festivals.  He and my mother.  My mother was an equal.  That's another thing that you must understand, although I -- spoken more of my father than my mother, there was an equality between them because that's how they lived.  My mother was probably the first of the movement for women rights in Poland, maybe.  She was herself a worker in school and an equal breadwinner.  They were paid equally in the Grosser shul.  And she, more than my father, of course, instilled this equality ideal in me.  95:00But the two of them were extremely smart people.  Educated and very, very smart.  Both of them university graduates.  My mother went to lerer seminar in vilne [Yiddish teachers' seminary in Wilno], which is the holy place.  My father went to a university in Belgium.  And so, maybe I've done a little better -- more justice than that.  He didn't write his story, he didn't talk into the -- when he passed away, I found the box with the recorder unopened, right?  So, he would not do it.  And therefore, it was lost, because only he and my mother knew the whole story, every inch of it.  I only knew what I saw or what they told me or what was later reinforced through conversation that I heard, but not the full, real story.  And that's too bad.

CW:  Tsi hot ir an eytse far di kumedike doyres [Do you have advice for future generations]?

LM:  Tsi kh'hob an eytse far di kumedike doyres?  Ven mayn tate iz geshtorbn [If I have advice for future generations?  When my father was dying], (coughs) hot er mir gezogt az yidish iz shoyn toyt.  Far vos? [he told me that Yiddish was dead.  Why?]  (coughs) Excuse me.  Vayl s'iz nishto ken lerer [Because there are no more teachers].  (coughs) Tsu ifhobn a shprakh muz men hobn 97:00lerer.  Di lerer lernt men kinder [To sustain a language, you have to have teachers.  The teachers teach the children] -- [BREAK IN RECORDING] Far em iz geven -- er iz geven zikher az di yidishe shprakh geyt unter vayl s'i nishto keyn lerer.  Ikh farshtey dos.  Un es ken zayn az er iz gerekht.  Ober, vos er hot nisht gevust -- es shtarbt nisht.  Yidish -- m'zogt s'iz do an arab spring -- ikh veys nisht.  Ober a yidish spring -- yidish friling iz take do.  M'dakht zikh.  Vos du host mir gezogt vegn vos iz in shikago dem weekend, un in pariz mit a monat tsurik, un in gevise erter, ze ikh az mentshn viln epes ton 98:00mit yidish.  Ikh veys nisht -- di shprakh vet keynmol nisht tsurik kumen vi es iz geven in eyrope.  Hitler hot gevunen vayle isroyl hot gemakht a groysn toes.  Un mayn tate iz geven zeyer, a groyser -- bashuldiker fun isroyl.  Zey hobn nisht gelozt yidish zayn a shprakh in isroyl veyl zey hobn gevolt az hebrayish zol vern di shprakh fun land.  In der emes hobn zey gekent ton beyde zakhn.  Ven zey voltn gelozt yidish blien in isroyl, volt di shprakh geblit.  S'i do a sakh lender mit tsvey shprakhn.  Ober ben-gurien un di zayonistn -- 99:00mayn tate iz geven zeyer anti-zayonistish.  Er hot gelibt isroyl vi a yid, ober nisht in der teoretishe vegn vi yidish -- shpetsiel vegn yidish.  Iz -- un ikh bin oysgevoksn in dem zelbn veg. [For him, it was -- he was certain that the Yiddish language was going under because there were no more teachers.  I understand that.  And it could be that he was right.  But, what he didn't know -- it's not dead.  Yiddish -- people say there is an Arab Spring -- I'm not sure.  But a Yiddish Spring -- Yiddish Spring is really happening.  It seems so.  That you told me about what's happening in Chicago this weekend, and in Paris last month, and in various places, I see that people want to do something with Yiddish.  I don't know -- the language will never come back to what it was once in Europe.  Hitler won because Israel made a big mistake.  And my father was very, a serious -- accuser of Israel.  They didn't let Yiddish be a language in Israel because they wanted Hebrew to be the language of the country.  In truth, they could have had both things.  If they had let Yiddish flourish in Israel, the language would have flourished.  There are a lot of countries with two languages.  But Ben-Gurion and the Zionists -- my father was very anti-Zionist.  He loved Israel as a Jew, but not in the theoretical because of Yiddish -- particularly because of Yiddish.  So -- and I was also raised in that same line.]  (pauses) Ikh veys nit vu [I don't know where] -- where I was going with this.  You asked me a question --

CW:  An eytse.

LM:  Oh, the eytse iz -- ikh hof az in an ander veg, nisht vi a shprakh vos 100:00m'redt yedn tog af di gasn fun isroyl oder di gasn fun shikago oder nyu york, ober az alts a shprakh vos lebt in kulur, in yontef, in literatur, af der bine [piece of advice is -- I hope that in some other way, not as a language that is spoken every day in the streets of Israel or in the streets of Chicago or New York, but as a language that lives in culture, in holidays, in literature, on the stage], maybe.  Kh'hof azey.  Az di eytse vos ikh hob iz vu men ken, loz es blien, helf es blien vi men ken -- yeder oysvarg -- eyb s'iz do aza vort, ikh veys nisht.  Ikh darf a kuk ton in vaynraykh -- iz a simen, un es iz a refue 101:00vos ken helfn oyflebn di shprakh in an ander forme -- nisht vi s'iz geven -- ober ikh vil nisht az hitler zol gevinen.  Az -- ikh tu vos ikh ken, mit vifl ikh ken un vu ikh ken.  Ober, azey vi ikh hob dortn gezogt vegn dem forverts, vos ikh meyn a yidishe -- afile af english iz a yidishe tsaytung a zeyer a vikhtiker simbol -- nisht simbol.  Vi zogt men "tool"?  Ikh hob shoyn fargesn. [I hope so.  So the advice that I have is to let it flourish, help it flourish in any way you can -- every sprout -- if there's such a word, I don't know.  I should take a look at Weinreich -- is a sign, and it's a remedy that can help bring back the language in another form -- not what it was -- but I don't want Hitler to win.  So -- I do what I can, with as much as I can.  But, just like I said then about the "Forverts," that I think a Jewish -- even in English, a Jewish newspaper is an important symbol -- not symbol.  How do you say "tool"?  I've forgotten.]

CW:  S'iz mit a hey [It's with a hey] --

LM:  Yo [Yeah].

CW:  -- epes mit a hey [something with a hey].

LM:  So, anyway, a tool that is necessary.  So, I do what I can.  I don't speak enough with people in Yiddish because I don't have anybody --- you know, people still know words every now and then, and English has adopted a lot of Yiddish words and they live that way.  And sometimes, they're not really --- (laughs) they're sort of an abortion, but they live in one form or another and that's good.  But what Aaron Lansky is doing is holy work.  This is the way in which you could help the yidish friling [Yiddish Sprint], so to speak.  Rebirth, really.  It's not a friling, it's a -- geboyrn -- vider geboyrn vern [birth -- being born once again].  It'll not be in the Yiddish language.  But 103:00when my father passed away, we had the shiva in this house.  And we had a lot of people come by.  Lot of people.  And in walked a man who -- I didn't know who it was.  He came up to me, an older gentleman, and said, "Ikh bin bendzhamin mid.  Ikh bin vladkes man [I am Benjamin Meed.  I am Vladka's husband]."  He was Vladka's husband, Ben Meed.  And, of course, Vladka -- I grew up never having met Vladka, but knew she was Joan of Arc because of the way 104:00that people, my parents, described her.  My parents knew her and they were more of the same generation.  Not really, but closer than I.  And so, Vladka was a gestalt.  And so, here is a man coming into this -- to pay his respects to my father.  Came in from New York to pay his respects to my father.  Imagine that!  And he's Vladka's husband!  My God.  So, he stayed and we talked.  And he said to me, "Vos vestu ton tsu gedenken dayn tatn [What will you do to commemorate your father]?"  He meant, Honor your father.  I don't know how he 105:00said it, but -- so, I said, "Oh, I've already done quite a bit.  I helped create a Yiddish class at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel.  I funded the translation -- no, the publication of Yud Lamed Peretz's -- my favorite -- his favorite author's books at the YIVO -- they were printed."  And other things and so forth, and he said, "Nisht genug [That's not enough]."  "Vos heyst, 'nisht genug'?  Vos ken ikh ton? [What do you mean, 'not enough'?  What can I do?]"  "Aha!" zogt er, "Du muzt undz helfn mit dem muzeum.  Mir muzn hobn in amerike a museum -- a yad vashem fun amerike." ["Aha!" he said, "You must help us with the museum.  We have to have a museum in America -- an American Yad Vashem."]  "Oh!" so, I said, "S'iz a vunderbare idea!  Ikh vel es ton. [It's a 106:00wonderful idea!  I'll do it.]"  "No, no, no, you have to be appointed by the president to get on the Museum Council."  I said, "Okay, I'll do it."  He said, "No, no, no, it's very hard.  You have to get the appointment by the president."  I said, "I can do that."  He said, "Really?"  I said, "Yeah.  I will do that."  And, of course, I went -- the elder Bush was then president.  And he said, "The very next appointment, of course," and I was appointed.  And Ben and I remained friends till he passed away.  But it was that moment in time that -- again, my father's connection.  The man came to pay his respects to my father and brought me in to what became one of my mainstays of advancing the 107:00Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.  And I spent the first fifteen years of its life on the executive committee and did something quite special for the museum.  The museum was founded on three principles.  Elie Wiesel founded the idea of the museum, at first with Carter but later finished with Reagan.  And the three principles were: one, as a museum that told the story of the Holocaust.  The artifacts, the history, all the detail of the Holocaust, that there should be a place of memory.  That was the first thing, and that was being created and on its way.  The second thing was a national memorial.  Once 108:00a year, in the Rotunda, as you know, there is the memorial at the -- on the date of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto.  They have a memorial at the Rotunda and this year, in April, last April, Obama spoke.  But Hillary has spoken there, you know, the dignitaries, and I've been to many.  I once recited this poem in Yiddish at the memorial for the Holocaust.  The third thing was a Committee of Conscience because Elie knew that it wasn't enough -- it wouldn't have a raison d'être if it didn't protect the future.  And the future was -- the Committee 109:00on Conscience would be the future to point whenever the burst of genocide occurred anywhere in the world.  It must use its moral weight, the museum.  Who else?  Who better than that museum to point and attract the national conscience to this fact?  He couldn't get that done because -- now, this is all before the museum opened because there was a -- remember, also, that until the '70s, late '70s, the Jews never talked about the Holocaust -- till the 1978 -- the Skokie march was sort of the beginning of the conversation, national 110:00conversation of what happened.  And so, there was that.  And then, there was the issue of the government, United States government, has given us their land to put the museum on and memorialize the Holocaust.  And now, we're gonna have a committee that may point to something that's happening in Africa and we don't know the politics.  Maybe it's a landing base for the United States Air Force and we're going to step on their toes.  And how dare we do that anyway?  And maybe it's better to be quiet and not to make such noise about -- when I became a member in 1992, that was my mission.  No way.  No way.  I was going to finish what we started and nothing was going to stop me.  And so, my very first 111:00act -- I was a rabble-rouser, just like the Bar Association thought.  And the very first thing I did was I told the chairman I was gonna do this.  And he said, "Well, maybe it's not the way to do it, just so open.  Let's talk about it first."  I said, "Listen, we've talked about it for eleven years with Elie Wiesel.  He's not here.  I am.  And I'm doing this.  I'm introducing a motion to create a Committee on Conscience."  He said, "Well, would you agree that I entertain the motion to create an ad hoc committee to discuss the Creation of the Committee on conscience?"  I said, "Okay.  Create the committee."  "Will you be chairman?"  "No, I haven't got the time.  I'll be vice chairman."  Because they had their personnel, they had the people.  Well, for the next two years, the committee, the ad hoc committee, discussed this, had 112:00hearings, brought in people.  And one day, I -- her name was -- the chairman of the committee was the vice chairman of the council -- Ruth Mandel.  So, I said, "Ruth, we've gone around and 'round in a circle in this thing.  The one person, the one entity you haven't called is the State Department."  "You want to kill it?" she said.  "Call in the State Department.  They'll tell you we can't do it, that we'll step on their toes."  I said, "Listen, I'd rather hear it from them than from Jews."  She said, "Okay."  Her name was -- last name was Murphy.  I don't remember her first name.  She came in and she was very prepared and she said, "What are you saying?  You must do this!  It is your 113:00duty to create the Committee on Conscience.  Will some of us not like what you say?  Of course.  The hell with it.  The hell with them.  You must do this.  You must use your moral voice and tell the world when you see it.  Who better than you?"  It was shocking.  And, of course, the Committee on Conscience is today a central pillar of the United States Holocaust Museum.  And I did that.  So, Ben Meed, to my father, to me, and we passed the torch, so to speak.  It's pretty good.

CW:  Great.  Well, a sheynem dank farn shmues [thank you very much for the conversation] -- and thanks for making time to speak with me and share this with the project and the Yiddish Book Center.

LM:  Oh, I think Aaron Lansky is one of the outstanding yidishistn [Yiddishists] and doing his thing.  And he's done it very, very well, and I am one of his friends.  He has many, thank God.  You do a good job.  Thank you.

CW:  Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]