ALEX LAUTERBACH ORAL HISTORY

AGNIESZKA ILWICKA:My name is Agnieszka Ilwicka, and today is 15 February, 2013. I'm in Los Angeles with Alex Lauterbach, and I would like to record an interview for Wexler Oral History Project, provided by the Yiddish Book Center. Alex Lauterbach, do I have your permission to record this interview?

ALEX LAUTERBACK:Yes, you do.

AI:Thank you. Can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

AL:I know -- I have a couple of sources. One is my conversation with my mother and with my father. And then, we had a cousin in Jerusalem, who tried to trace the Lauterbach family. And he got as far as beginning of the nineteenth century. 1:00And it's thought that the Lauterbach family came from Germany, and during Napoleonic period, migrated East. And we have quite a family tree that was composed by him. He interviewed people, relatives, and he published a whole book. In fact, the first family history book, published in Israel, was his. And I have several editions of it. And the last edition was coordinated by a very distant Lauterbach cousin in Texas, who -- we found out that we had converts, we 2:00had converts from Judaism to Christianity, we had people who claimed they were never Jewish, and so on.

AI:But would you say you grew up in a Jewish home?

AL:Yes, I did.

AI:What about your house felt Jewish?

AL:Well, because our respect for my grandparents, we had a kosher home. Otherwise, the grandparents couldn't eat at our house. But we had a ham on the windowsill, so we could make ourself a sandwich with ham or Polish sausage, but without ever putting it on a plate. So you had to take a piece of bread, if you want to put butter on it, then you went to the windowsill, and there was a package of ham or sausage, you made a sandwich, and you ate it away from the table.

AI:Did you celebrate Shabbat?

AL:Every Friday night, we went to my grandparents, and we had a Shabbat dinner. At our home, we did not -- we had sentimental dinners on Friday, but they were not religious dinners. It was a family gathering.

AI:What was what you were do together in your family, like celebration of holidays?

AL:Yes, we celebrated New Year, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, and of course, Passover. We also celebrated Hanukkah, but on a small scale and other holidays. In fact, we -- when my father -- when he moved to the third 4:00floor -- or fourth floor by American standards -- father built a Sukkah, a special facility, so we can celebrate certain holidays. And that facility had a glass roof that could be opened up, so you could see the stars. That was for certain holiday. And I still remember when he celebrated a holiday in fall, and we opened the glass roof to the sky, because tradition required it, we found out soot landing in the soup, chicken soup that was being served. I still remember vividly the pieces of ash landing in the chicken soup. And we used to put on 5:00warm clothes to celebrate a holiday there, and then, we went back to the warm home of one floor below.

AI:What languages were spoken in your home? What is your language?

AL:I was born and raised in Polish. My father spoke Polish, he spoke German, he spoke Yiddish. He -- and then, there were my father's parents, who among themselves, spoke Yiddish, and they spoke Polish with us. So there was -- and then we had -- we are taught German, because German was a very important language in Poland, as far as -- if you want to go in a scientific field, you had to have knowledge of German.

AI:Can you describe the physical space of your home?

AL:What?

AI:Where did you live? Where did you grow up? Please tell me about your area and neighborhood.

AL:Oh. We lived on Krupnicza Street in Kraków, which was two blocks away from the main square. When I was about five or six, father built another story on top of the building we lived in there, and there, we had a large apartment, where the floors below had two separate apartments. On our floor, we had one big apartment. Half the house was for our daily use, the other half of the house was rather impressive. Two living rooms and a fancy dining room, and a room that was 7:00supposed to be father's library, but never worked out too well that way.

AI:Was there a particular political atmosphere in your home?

AL:A political atmos-- yes, and it changed. At one point, in the late '20s and early '30s, we felt much more Polish than later because of growing anti-Semitism. We became more and more aware that we are Jews, rather than Poles. And conditions in schools and universities encouraged that dichotomy of attitude.

AI:But you were a member of any political party?

AL:No. I was too young to be a political party! I expressed my views, but nobody was very interested in what I thought.

AI:What about your father?

AL:My father was city councilman of Kraków, and there was the Jewish block. But he was elected to the city council, I think it was '38 or '39 -- '38. There was such a division. There was a Polish block, and there was a Jewish block. And the Jewish block was a minority in the city council. Otherwise, we were not politically active. Father was active in Zionist movement.

AI:How much -- he was a member of any strong Zionist group, or he was just supporting Zionism?

AL:I was not in any Zionist group. However, I did go in the summer to a Jewish camp, which made us more -- made me more aware that we were -- that I am Jewish. 9:00My brothers were, during conversation, often mentioned to me, that in the early years of grammar school and high school, they felt quite Polish. But each year, the attitude began to change. The pressure from outside -- and I think was tragically foolish, the Poles suddenly didn't want the Jews to become Polish. There was an obvious conflict.

AI:Can you please describe your neighborhood growing up?

AL:The neighborhood was, I would say -- the streets that I lived in were probably twenty, thirty percent Jewish, and say sixty, seventy, eighty percent 10:00gentile. And we -- a while we lived in perfect harmony, but then pressure was exerted on some of the Christians to move out of apartment houses where Jews lived. When we moved into that house, half the tenants -- at least half the tenants were gentiles. By the time the war broke out, there was only one gentile tenant in our apartment house.

AI:And who was that person?

AL:It was Professor Zubrzycki, professor of gynecology at the university. And I think I mentioned the other day, my brother applied to the medical school at Jagielloński University [sic], and father asked Professor Zubritski to support 11:00his candidacy of admission. He said he did, and then, he didn't pay rent for a month. So the price of -- it was a very low price to pay for getting into a medical school, that at that time already had numerous clauses. Roughly ten percent of the students could be Jewish, so admission to the medical school there became not -- well, the first matter was, "What is your religion?" If you are Jewish, you have chance of the ten of -- be one of the ten percent of admitted students. That meant that university did not admit people on the basis of their qualification, and skills and knowledge, but had a racial element in it.

AI:So who were your friends?

AL:Well, since we are perhaps a capitalistic family, some of my friends were, say, from the upper echelons of the Jewish community. One of my friends was the son of a dentist, the other one was a director -- the son of a director of chamber of commerce, and so on. Poland became much more stratified in the '30s, both religiously and income-wise, because children from wealthier families could go on vacation, could go skiing. I went skiing with my friends, to Zakopane, or Krynica, or whatever. So actually -- while there was discrimination, we lived 13:00quite a good comfortable life. But that was life on the very small percentage of the Jewish population, most of which was really very, very poor. And they suffered both from poverty and from anti-Semitism.

AI:Tell me, please, were there aspects of Jewish culture that were particularly important to you as a child or a young person, while you were growing up in Kraków?

AL:No, I don't think -- I lived on a narrow bridge. On one side was the Jewish culture, and the other one was the Polish culture. And one time, I saw that these will blend, but they didn't -- while they blended earl-- to some extent earlier, it became quite -- difference became more and more acute, and of 14:00course, this was resolved when the Second World War broke out, and destroyed the Jewish community of Kraków totally.

AI:Did you attend Jewish film, theater, concerts or cultural events?

AL:I attended theater, I attended opera. I attended some concerts of artists. I went, for example, I saw "The Dybbuk" by the famous Habimah Theater from Palestine. I went to see Yiddish operas, Goldfadn's Yiddish operas. But what -- with my friends, we lived in a milieu that was largely Christian, but -- and it 15:00was under constant change, especially with Hitler coming to power, sudden Polish right and nationalists started imitating German methods and -- and this became more and more acute. And it really hurt, it really hurt.

AI:What kind of books did you have in your home?

AL:Well, we had -- my favorite book were -- was an encyclopedia in German, because there was a ton of information there, and it was encyclopedia, multiple -- twenty volumes or so. Very nicely illustrated. That was my favorite job, was 16:00to go take a volume, and just glance through it, looking mostly at the pictures. Then we had, of course, Sienkiewicz, we had Mickiewicz, we had Słowacki, we had Fredro. We had all the Polish literature classics, and we read it, and we knew it well, particularly Sienkiewicz's trilogy was my favorite reading.

AI:Why?

AL:Because it was so well-written! And then my -- there were certain books that I enjoyed reading. I belonged to -- I was a member of the Alpha Bookstore, where I could check out one book at a time. And so, they had a catalogue, and I looked through it, and I sat there reading many books dealing with the First World War, 17:00like Erich Maria Remarque, Maria Remarque book, and other books. I wanted to know what was going on in the world, and the Polish library had, the Central Library had quite a selection of books. I still remember just before I flew to Warsaw, to -- my mother and grandmother quickly went there, and returned the books that I had checked out. And what happened afterwards? It's unimportant. But I had a clear conscience. I returned the book that I borrowed.

AI:Can you briefly tell me about your education, both in terms of general education, and Jewish life?

AL:I was in the Szkoła Powszechna, Grammar School, Świętego Wojciecha, St. 18:00Adalbert, and then I was admitted to the gymnasium, called "the third gymnasium," and the number was 358 of Jan Sobieski. And that was a prestigious high school, and we had classes six days a week. So Sunday, I could sleep in as long as I wanted to, but the Catholic students had to go to church on Sunday morning. Some of them were jealous because -- that I was Jewish, but that was not, not a big reward to be Jewish, at that point. That was -- I never finished high school because I would have graduated in 1940, but the war broke out in 19:001939. Later on, during the war -- early year of the war, I was in Stanisławów, then in Lwów when the Russian commissar announced -- I was already under Soviet occupation --- and when the commissar announced to the student body that it will have the honor of spending three years in the Soviet army. As high school graduates, I dropped out, and for the same reason, my brother, who needed only one more exam to get his M.D. degree, dropped out of the university medical school. I came to this country, of course I didn't finish high school, so I applied to UCLA. I was put on probation for one semester, and when I passed the 20:00classes, they allowed me to continue studies. And I studied chemistry, and one point, I received the only letter I ever received from President Roosevelt. The letter said, "From the President of the United States. Greetings! You are to report for induction into American armed forces at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California," which I did. And then, I became a soldier of American army. I will -- after so-called basic training, I was yanked out because of fairly high scores on various tests, and was sent to Oregon State College in something called Army Specialized Training Program. Which was a rather strange 21:00institution, because they yanked out people that had two or three years of university studies. But only in the scientific field. And we were sent to Oregon State College to take classes that were specified by the Army department. We did not know why we had to take classes. We took calculus, we took mathematics, and then we were sub-divided in various groups, so -- with specialized fields. Like surveying, electrical motors, and so on. Of course, you didn't ask why you were sent there, because it was wartime. And at one point, our unit was sadly 22:00disbanded. Later on, I figured out that the unit was disbanded when a test at Alamogordo showed that America is making good progress on atomic bomb. I found this out, of course, years later. We was group of thousands of young college students who were fed at a certain definite rate into the Manhattan Project that produced the atom bomb. So people like I were trained in outside universities, then taken into the Manhattan Project to help with development of the atom bomb. That was the end of my atom bomb career, and eventually, I was sent to counter-intelligence school, a Japanese counter-intelligence school, and of 23:00course, when I completed the course, I wasn't sent to the Japanese front, I was sent to Germany, where I worked for the counter-intelligence.

AI:We will talk more about it later, but I would like to ask you one more question. Looking back on your childhood, what values or practices do you think your parents were trying to pass on you? Onto you?

AL:Well, they would -- I was a spoiled brat. (laughs) But basically, they pressed on us to learn foreign languages, study history, find out what's going on in the world so we would not be such a narrow outlook that, for example, Orthodox Jews had. We were encouraged to find out what's going on in the world, 24:00and make up our own mind afterwards.

AI:So far, we've been talking about the early part of your life. Let's fast forward. Can you give me a snapshot of your life today?

AL:Well, when you are ninety years old, you don't have that much of a very exciting life. Fortunately, I learned how to use a computer somewhat, and I like books. What you see behind me is a small part of our library, because at a certain point when I realized that the local university does not have a good selection of Polish classics and Polish books, I decided to give it all away to University of California Slavic Library. It was kind of sad feeling to depart 25:00with books, but my children don't know Polish, nor do they have the sentimental attachment to pre-war Poland that I do. So I simply started cleaning shelves, and eventually gave almost all Polish books away, which was kind of a lonely feeling, like getting a divorce.

AI:I would like to ask you about historical events that were particularly formative to your sense of identity.

AL:Well -- there were several critical moments. One was the end of the Second World War when we found out in much greater detail than heretofore, about what 26:00happened in Poland during the war. And growing anti-Semitism among Poles, so the idea of -- of returning to Poland, we gave up very early. We didn't want to -- we felt that America is offering us a chance to live as Jews without persecution, or with -- or with almost 100% complete freedom. There was anti-Semitism in the United States, but it was like nothing that was going on in Poland. So this was one decision we had to make to remain in the States. The second one was creation of Israel as a country that gave a tremendous boost to 27:00our ego. This -- this pre-war concept, "Jews cannot fight, they are cowards on the military field," sadly, turned out to be complete nonsense. It was pumped into the mind by the relentless anti-Semitism that existed, but it didn't apply to all the Poles, but a large number.

AI:Can you give me an example of anti-Semitism which was particularly hard for you?

AL:Well, I still remember -- I will never forget it. I remember standing in the corridor of my high school, and there were about ten of us standing around, chatting about events. And I said something, and a young man named Forkaski, son 28:00of professor of French literature on Jagiellonian University in Kraków said, smugly, "Don't talk to me! I don't want to talk with Jews!" That was a cruel blow. And I looked around, and nobody came to my defense. It was like I was slapped in the face, and nobody took my side. That really hurt, and I feel the hurt till this day. There were others, students in school I was friendly with. Then I found that there was a clique of anti-Semites that started putting pressure on individual students who were friendly with me to break off social relations.

BEN SHEPPARD:[UNCLEAR]

AI:How about your brother experience at university? He was Jewish student of medicine.

AL:Yes. Numerus clausus, and there was a certain number of Jews admitted, and then the university declared that Jews cannot sit with Christians on the same bench. So they created separate Jewish benches for Jewish students. My brother studied medicine in Kraków, and he never sat down on a chair, because a sign of protest, he and other Jewish students, accompanied by a few Christians would stand in the back and refuse to sit on benches assigned according to religion. That was something he learned how to live with, but of course, you can imagine what he was thinking about. My other brother finished high school in Poland, studied economics in Vienna, and then in Italy, so he was not very much 30:00involved. It's -- it's a very complex situation, because Jews played a very important part in the Polish economy, in the Polish literature, in Polish theater, Polish music, so -- I think Poland thought it couldn't do without them. Now they do very well without Jews. But, for example, Warsaw Radio had an orchestra, which was conducted by Jewish dir-- organized by Jews, and most many Jews played at the Polish radio. And I still remember we listened to Radio Warsaw that has -- was identified with a melody of all of Chopin's tunes. And I 31:00remember listening to it in September, 1939, when you heard the signal from Warsaw Radio station, and then, it was silent, which meant that Warsaw surrendered to the Germans.

AI:I would like to come back to the question about your identity. How did you consider yourself in this pre-war Poland, and post-war America? Did you feel more Jewish, or did you felt like you belonged to the country where you lived?

AL:You know, there was -- probably depends on what the day, or daily events were. My grandmother said, "Your first obligation is to Poland, because this is place of your birth, this is where your family prospered over centuries, should 32:00be our first obligation." And we felt we were Polish citizens! Might be we were discriminated against, but then, who is -- who leads a perfect life? So we came to this country, and we had a friend who was a member of the Polish government in exile in London. He started sending us information about what's happening in Poland during the war. We first saw that this was propaganda. But later on, we found out this was the destruction of Jewish community was real, and tragic. And at that point, we decided that we'll -- we'll try to become Americans. And which 33:00we did. But of course, you cannot cut off all the dreams, the thoughts, the memories, so we are kind of Jewish-Americans with a Polish tinge to it.

AI:So where do you think, in your sense of identity, is the state of Israel? How did you feel after establishment of the state of Israel?

AL:Well, I tell you, I was interviewed the other day, somebody asked me a provocative question. I said, "I'm a very rich man." And he says, "How come?" "Because I have three homelands, ojczyzny. We have Poland, Israel and the United 34:00States." So I'm very comfortable with having emotional attachment to Poland, but I'm really an American. When I was in American counter-intelligence it became very clear to me that what I'm doing is primarily to help America, country that gave me an opportunity to learn, to develop, to create my own identity, and this very nice home that you are filming it in.

AI:Can you remember a time when you felt particularly Jewish? When your Jewishness was more important than anywhere?

AL:Well, I felt it primarily when we heard what happened in Poland. I didn't 35:00want to deny that I am Jewish, and my -- it's a difficult situation, because the more Jews died in Poland, the more -- the stronger was my association with Jews. In case -- in this day, something that I thought I would like to mention, that you didn't ask for, but -- before the war, there were over three -- close to 3,300,000 Jews in Poland. Great majority were Orthodox. But there was a community, perhaps, of three hundred thousand of Polonized Jews. We had a much larger influence on Polish community than the Orthodox Jews, because Orthodox 36:00Jews wanted to be, largely, in their own world. We were Polonized. We took part in the theater, in the movies, in poetry, in books, in publishing, and in scientific fields, where talented Jews were sometimes freely and sometimes reluctantly admitted. And when the war broke out, we were completely destroyed. Assimil-- Polonized Jews became of no interest to anybody. And here I feel that we are deserted both by the Jews and the Poles. That we are an integral part of the Polish society was quite obvious. We were discriminated against, but we were active in it. And this is something which I feel very strongly about, that 37:00everybody talks about the Orthodox Jewry, but very few people mention the assimilated Jews, which were much more Polish than Jewish at one point.

AI:What kind of Jewishness assimilated Jews brought into Polish culture?

AL:Well, first of all, they admitted that they claimed they are Jewish. And as such, they said, "We want to take part in your social and -- life, in your culture. Some of the most prominent experts were Jews. The most famous one is the Ashkenazi who wrote a biography of one of the Polish heroes. And this time, the joke was, "Before you would be admitted to the Academy of Science -- of Arts 38:00and Sciences," they -- the joke was, they had to go to the bathroom to see if you were circumcised or not. The Poles needed the Jews, but they never wanted to admit it. Uh -- if you ever need any proof of it, look at number of Polish Jews that received Nobel Prizes. So, they were a very important element in Polish life, but nobody wanted to talk about it.

AI:How do you feel about it? Do you feel -- do you feel sadness about this situation?

AL:Of course, it's a painful situation, because there was a whole society. We strived toward certain goals. We wanted to be part of a larger Poland. My 39:00conversation with a Polish priest who was here on my house -- in our house, here, a few weeks ago. I told them that I discussed this with my brothers, and we thought that true Poland would be a Jagellonian Poland of the sixteenth, seventeenth century, when Poland was composed of Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Lithuanians -- Poland at that time was one of the most formidable countries, and one of the largest country in Europe. When Poles joined other nationalities, they were able to create a magnificent empire. That didn't last long, but it was a very interesting experiment, and I'm kind of hope that one day, Poland would -- Poles would realize that being between the two giants, 40:00Germany and Soviet Union, or Russia, that Poland can survive only if it joins forces with its neighbors to find a balance between Eastern Russian and Western Germany. Otherwise, Poland would be crushed again, I'm afraid.

AI:Let's talk about Jewish culture. Is there a particular work of art, book, piece of music that had a specific -- special impact on you? What was it?

AL:Of course. I was -- let's say we went to a concert in Kraków. We preferred to go hear Jewish musicians, where -- because we had some kind of emotional attachment to them. I prefer to read books written by Jews in Poland, because I 41:00felt a common bond with the author. It doesn't sound very clear, but I felt it.

AI:Have there been any particular individuals, people, who have had a special impact on you?

AL:There were, but they changed from day to day, or from month to month, depending on what I was reading, what I was studying, what I was thinking. There's a Greek saying, "Panta rhei, everything flows." And so, my thoughts, loyalties, dreams, wishes, were a function of the time when I was under influence of a book, or a public speaker, or simply, I let my mind run wild, and 42:00tried to find answers to questions. And sometimes, I concluded, is better not to have all the answers, just keep on thinking about these problems.

AI:Let's talk more about great historical events which gave impact on your life. Where were you when the war break out?

AL:I was in Warsaw at the Bristol Hotel with my mother and my grandmother. It was September 1, 1939. At about 2:30, we were awakened by a series of explosions. Noises that seemed to come from far away and nearby, and being young, and naive, and stupid, I thought that this perhaps, the Polish army's 43:00secret maneuvers to prepare Poland for war. Or perhaps this was a series of explosions in a chemical plant on the outskirts of Warsaw. It was only when we got to breakfast at the hotel in the morning that we found out that Germany did not declare war on Poland the way it was done until then. It simply invaded Poland allegedly because of Polish provocations.

AI:And how did you -- how did you get back to Kraków?

AL:I didn't get back to Kraków. My father came in our family car with a driver called Ivan Techenko. He came to Warsaw. And by the way, he was stopped by Polish police in the early days of the war, and there was very suspicious of his last name, because it sounded German. And father had his identity card as a 44:00councilman of city of Kraków. And when the police saw it, they apologized, let him go. I have this -- member card of -- identity card of my father's councilman still at home. When we found out the Polish government fled east to Lublin, we followed in our car to Lublin, and by the time we got to Lublin, the government moved somewhere to the south-eastern corner of Poland, near the Romanian border. We followed in that direction, but we stopped in Stanisławów, and there, we discovered -- there, we found our own little place where to live, and hid the car in a nearby barn. The moment the rations came in, somebody denounced the 45:00presence of our car in the barn. The Russians came in with drawn pistols, and demanded the keys to the car. We refused to give it to them, so they pointed out that outside the window, there was a Russian ZIS truck with a machine gun, mounted on a tripod. And the machine gun was aimed at -- at the apartment where we were. And somehow, looking at the barrel of the machine gun from the wrong end clarifies your thinking very quickly. We gave them the keys to our beloved Tatra, and never saw the car again.

AI:How did you escape from Poland, and when?

AL:Well, there was no more Poland after September of '39. We were in L'vov, and 46:00we contacted -- my brother was in New York to see the New York's World Fair, and consider the possibility of migration. He was supposed to return on the Polish steamship Batory, on the 6th of September, but Germany invaded Poland on the 1st, and I don't think he ever got refunds on his ticket. (laughs) Back to Gdynia. When the mass arrests started, we realized that my father, both as a Zionist, as a capitalist, and somebody who refused to accept Soviet citizenship, would be deported to Kazakhstan, where most was a favored deportation area by the Soviet NKVD police. We sent them a series of telegrams, said, "We need foreign citizenship." And a friend of my brother had a sister who had an affair 47:00with the Nicaraguan consul. And the Nicaraguan consul stole three passports, and issued it to us, so we suddenly became -- it's a long story, but basically, we became Nicaraguan citizens. And the Soviets did not know what to do with six Nicaraguan citizens in L'vov, so they finally gave us permission to leave, and many adventures later, we found ourselves in Vladivostok. We crossed to Japan on a Japanese transit visa as Nicaraguan citizens, and at that point, we called my brother on the trans-Pacific telephone line. And we said, Well, we will have to go from Japan to Nicaragua, and he said, "No, you cannot, because these are 48:00stolen passports!" So again, we looked for possibility. First, we got back our Polish passports, paying under the table, to the Polish embassy in Tokyo that was starved for money. And they got us Polish passports, we bought again visas to the Dominican Republic, for a change. We -- and then, we traveled to United States, and there, we had a very emotional moment. We landed in San Francisco Erev Passover, the evening before you celebrate Passover. And we were in a little hotel, and father pulled out of our suitcase, the Haggadah, the book of prayers and stories that you read at Passover. And we came to the line -- I 49:00think I mentioned it to you -- "Avadim hayinu ba-arah b'mitzrayim" [sic] -- "We are slaves in the land of Egypt." And it suddenly dawned on us, it was an emotional moment when we realized that the story is not the story of Jews of three thousand years ago, it was our own history! We were slaves in Soviet Union, and we escaped. From then on, we had some friends, and we eventually settled in Los Angeles, crossed the border to Mexico, and got immigration visas, and we returned to Los Angeles now as legitimate immigrants.

AI:You said, "we." So who escaped with you?

AL:My grandmother, my parents, my brother and his wife. There were six of us.

AI:How did the Holocaust affect your family?

AL:Well, in the case of my father's family, it was -- almost everybody was murdered. My mother's family, those who remained in Poland were all -- I don't think any of them survived. We had some relatives, distant relatives, both my father and mother -- of my father, in Palestine, who had migrated earlier because of anti-Semitism in Poland. And several relatives of my mother, including my mother's brother, who settled in Palestine. Another brother was killed at beginning of the First World War. He was a Zionist, wanted to settle 51:00in Palestine, and I know that he disappeared. His donkey, on which he rode to Jerusalem to -- as an Austrian citizen -- returned to his village, but he was never seen again.

AI:And where were you when was founded the state of Israel?

AL:I was here in Los Angeles.

AI:How did you feel about it? How did you find out?

AL:Well, we had the radio, you know. There was no TV yet. We had radio, telegrams. It was a rare emotional moment.

AI:Do you remember who told you about that?

AL:No, I don't. But I remember we sat around the table with my family, trying to 52:00figure out how these -- this organized element of Jews in Palestine would survive the war. And it was somewhat of a miracle, perhaps.

AI:Tell me, how does your connection to Yiddish, Yiddishkeit, and Eastern European Jewish heritage feed into your broader sense of Jewish identity?

AL:Yiddish and Yiddish culture is to me not a close relative. It's a distant relative, but it's a relative just the same. We in Kraków at the time looked down upon Yiddish as a bastard language, because it -- under already Zionist influence, we said, "Either you want to speak Polish, or you want to speak Hebrew!" Yiddish was a largely distant from us, because, of my friends, nobody 53:00spoke Yiddish. My father's family and friends all spoke Polish. We were Polonized -- Polonized Jews. Uh -- I remember going seeing Goldfaden opera. On High Holidays, we used to go to the synagogue, but not with a great deal of enthusiasm. And then, we would take a walk around Kraków, Kazimierz, a Jewish neighborhood, and this was like an expedition in the unknown! Because we had -- it was very romantic, it was very exciting to see people dressed in these long kapotes [long coats traditionally worn by observant Jewish men], and the hats with the foxtails on it. It was very exciting! But was not my world.

AI:What you were thinking about them?

AL:Well, it's like you have distant cousins, you -- they are your relatives, but not close relatives.

AI:Did you visited Kazimierz, bookshops?

AL:Pardon?

AI:Did you visited bookshops in Kazimierz?

AL:The main bookshops, no -- the main Jewish -- good Jewish -- most antique bookshops like the one where I work, were in Kraków on Szpitalna Street, and there were several families, like the Tafets, the Zeydans, who, for couple of hundred years, dealt in used books. And I remember going -- when you are young, you go and you are curious. And I found out the many university professors used to go to these bookshops, looking for rarities. And many of them, they might not speak perfect Polish, but they could identify books, and they sold them. So 55:00after the war, I went there, looking for the stores, and found that there are none.

AI:How, if at all, has the language influence your sense of identity?

AL:No, it didn't.

AI:None of your language? You -- how many languages you speak?

AL:I used to speak more. I can speak Polish, I can speak German. I can speak English. I have fragmentary knowledge of several other languages, but not fluent. I spoke at one time pretty good Russian, because being in the counter-intelligence, we talked to the Russians, and had some -- actually, when you speak Polish and German, you can understand many of the Slavic languages, 56:00and when somebody speaks Dutch, or Flemish, you can figure out more or less what is being said. But you could never do it with the Hungarians.

AI:What has been most important for you to transmit to the generations after you about Jewish identity?

AL:It's -- uh -- Jews can cope with anti-Semitism much better than with assimilation. We have three children, one is very intensely Jewish, one fairly Jewish, and one not really that deep into Jewish history and culture. But they all identify themself as Jews. This is a result of the remnants of anti-Semitism 57:00in American society. You don't -- at no point do you want to be ashamed of it. So you, quite often, make an issue of it sometimes completely unnecessarily.

AI:Are there any specific rituals or traditions that remain important to you, or have taken on new meaning in your adult life?

AL:Well, the most important, I think, is -- emotion is the Passover holiday, because it always remind us of our -- at least for me -- of our Soviet slavery, so to speak.

AI:Have you adapt or change Passover in anyway?

AL:Pardon me?

AI:Have you adapted or changed Passover for your own--

AL:Yes, you have to, because the children and grandchildren live in a different world than we do -- we did. So you have to adjust it more or less to changing conditions. One son-in-law carries on the Passover service for two, three hours. I -- we do it in much less time, because he insists on reading every word of the traditional Haggadah.

AI:As a parent or grandparent, what decisions did you make about the type of Jewish environment you wanted to create for your grandchildren and your children?

AL:All our children went to Jewish afternoon classes. Some became deeply 59:00involved in Jewish matters, others did not. I never felt that -- I just wanted them to know about our past, our family history. I wanted them to feel, but then, I didn't want to impose views on them. They had to work out their own outlook on life.

AI:But did you went to the synagogue with them?

AL:They went with us to the synagogue. I'm much Jewish emotionally than religious -- religiously. I have my own ideas, and I told the children, you -- "I want you to be acquainted with Judaism, and then you have to figure out on your own. I don't want to force anything on you." Which is probably different 60:00than was in my family for the last two thousand years.

AI:Have there been any specific rituals that you have adapted for your own family life?

AL:No, I don't think so.

AI:How do you think the identity of younger generations of Jews differs from yours?

AL:Well, they are much more -- we are obsessed with the Holocaust, and with tragedy of our own families. They look at it -- to us, Holocaust is still alive today. To them, this belongs to modern history.

AI:I would like to ask you one more question about Yiddish. What does Yiddish mean to you today?

AL:Yiddish is a language, perhaps somewhat like Latin. It's a classic language 61:00of its own, has its own culture, and its own history, but is not my language.

AI:Despite the recent growth of interest in Yiddish, some people says that Yiddish is dead or dying. What do you think?

AL:Latin has been dying for two thousand years, but is still used. There is a big community in Israel of the ultra-religious that do not want to speak Hebrew, because this is lashon kodesh, holy language, so they speak Yiddish. They all have it. And there are large areas in New York, where the Orthodox speak Yiddish. To me, being Yid-- a Jew, has very little to connect with Yiddish --

AI:We are nearing to the end of our time, but I would like to ask you, what is for you to being Jew?

AL:Just look around this room. I have here, now that I gave a large part of my library away, you have here encyclopedias, reference books, Bible -- Bible translations, Bible commentaries. This is a very part of my existence. And Yiddish is not a very important part of my outlook on life. I have a sentimental attachment to it, but being Jewish is much wider concept than Yiddish. Yiddish 63:00is one of the many languages that Jews spoke. We have Greco -- we have Greek-Hebrew version. If Yiddish is German-Jewish Hebrew, you have Greek-Jewish, you have Spanish-Jewish, you have Iranian-Jewish, Kurdish-Jewish languages. Yiddish is one of the many languages that Jews spoke. It's not the only one, it's one of many. The other ones are falling slowly by the wayside. If this will be the trend, I don't know.

AI:Alex, I would like to ask you what advice do you have for future generations?

AL:(long pause) That's a difficult subject, because -- just because I am old, 64:00doesn't mean that I am very wise! (laughs) But the most important thing to me is know your family, your family background, because that's a treasure that you should cherish. What to do -- I don't know, I really don't have a good answer to it.

AI:Thank you.

AL:Okay.

[END OF INTERVIEW]