VICTOR GILINSKY ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: So this is Christa Whitney, and today is October 14th, 2013. I'm here in Santa Monica, California, with Victor Gilinsky. Is that how you pronounce it?

VICTOR GILINSKY: Yes.

CW: We're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

VG: You have my permission.

CW: Thanks. So -- also, I would invite you -- if at any point, if you feel like saying anything in Yiddish -- or if you want, I can ask you things in Yiddish --

VG: Okay.

CW: It would be great to do some of that.

VG: Actually, I feel I should be interviewing you. (laughs)

CW: (laughs) You can interview me after we're done. (laughs) So, fun vanen 1:00shtamt di mishpokhe [where does your family come from]?

VG: Well, my father's family's from Lithuania. And my mother is from Warsaw. But her father was also from Lithuania. Her mother, I don't really know. And --

CW: Do you know where -- the names of the towns that they're from -- or cities?

VG: My father, yeah -- he was -- he grew up -- born in a place called Linkmenys -- and these are kind of Yiddish names -- and grew up in a place called "Duksht," which in Lithuanian is "Dūkštas," or something like that. Actually, I went there in the late nineties. And it was pretty interesting. Anyway, that's where he was from.

F: Hold on one second. I noticed there was a little static on the mic. I just want to --

CW: Do you want to take that out?

F: Yeah.

CW: Does that cut it?

F: A little bit. (pause) One second. Yes, maybe that's better. There's a (UNCLEAR).

CW: I think it's just the room noise.

F: Okay.

CW: Yeah. I don't think -- I think it's not our stuff.

F: Okay.

CW: So what do you know about your parents' childhoods and grandparents?

VG: Well, my father actually wrote some things -- his memoirs never got published, but I translated a few pages of it. It's pretty interesting. And he 3:00grew up in this little town and went to work early. He was obviously very bright, and he somehow learned non-Jewish subj-- you know, secular subjects -- and just had a sort of burning desire to learn. And -- well, there was a movement -- sort of a secular -- of getting access to the secular world. Mostly in Hebrew, actually. And the path to getting into the outer world was really to go through the yeshivas, 'cause the guys -- I mean, first, they went to the yeshiva, and in the yeshiva, they learned -- got access to the city and all these political movements and so on. And that was sort of the path to political 4:00liberation. So he -- I think it was kind of like in "Babar," you know? A rich old lady -- a rich lady helped him -- probably paid his fare to Vilna -- now Vilnius. And he went to yeshiva -- in fact, he went to a couple of the best yeshivas -- and got involved with socialists. And the rabbi caught him reading Marx under what he was supposed to be reading. And they warned him and told him the next time that happened, they'd throw him out. And it happened again, and so he had to leave. And then I think he went to work for a newspaper -- kind of a runner -- and he became -- that was kind of his university.

CW: So he was actually exposed to secular literature from other students in the yeshiva?

VG: Well, there was a movement of learning secular subjects, but it was mostly in Hebrew, actually.

CW: The Haskalah?

VG: Yeah. And so that was kind of the path. But pretty soon, he became very strongly involved with Yiddish. And he qualified as a tea-- he learned everything on his own -- and he never went to school, other than yeshiva -- I mean, kheyder [traditional religious school] and then yeshiva -- and passed a teacher's exam when he was very young. And then he went back to Duksht to give 6:00supplementary classes for kids that were just going to kheyder or something. And in Russian -- I don't know where he learned all -- I mean, of course, it was under the czar, so this was all part of czarist Russia. So it was amazing. I mean, he would've known, of course, Yiddish and Hebrew, and Russian, Polish -- 'cause it was part of Poland -- sort of Polish area, mostly -- Poles lived there. You know, all these people, they knew lots of languages.

CW: And do you know what his parents did -- anything about them?

VG: Well, there were stories. One is that -- they probably did different things. I went back to Lithuania and talked with remote relatives. They must have had a 7:00small store at one time. And the father was also a fisherman, so they fished in the lakes -- and used to put the fish on the train early in the morning -- so, like, three, and then it would get to Vilna by seven, and for the markets. And I was involved with nuclear energy in my -- professionally, so when I was there, there was a very large nuclear plant in Ignalina -- one of the biggest in the world -- which is now shut down. So I went to see the director -- actually, the deputy director. And he invited me -- he was very nice -- he said, to invite me as a visitor. I said, "No, no, you're the visitor." (laughs) You know, you're using my ancestral fishing waters. (laughs) But he didn't understand that. (laughs)

CW: And what about your mother? Do you know about her life?

VG: Well, she grew up in Warsaw. And a very different household -- the 8:00grandfather was -- I mean, her father was -- worked somehow in trade -- dealt with fabrics. I have a picture of him downstairs. You know, he's an old Jew. Of course, he's probably half my age, but with a long beard, you know? And a black coat. But they spoke Polish at home, which is kind of interesting. And I think the mother was educated in a European way. And the girls went -- there were several, three girls and a son -- boy -- who -- he sent the boy -- the son -- to Canada to become a rabbi, and because of various things that didn't work out, he 9:00ended up in Montreal in the shirt business. But later he became an impresario -- he used to bring cantors from New York up to Montreal. But the girls were educated and went to a very good school. But they were very poor, so they -- it was kind of like a middle-class family hanging on to middle-class education and respectability. And -- well anywhow, it was -- she actually -- my mother got a college degree when that was kind of unusual.

CW: And were your grandparents religious?

VG: Everybody was religious. (laughs) So they would have been religious, yeah. Well, not -- I don't know about the grandmother, because -- and she died relatively early, when probably my mother was, I would guess, still a teenager. 10:00And as I said, they spoke Polish in all -- certainly the grandfather was a sort of very religious Jew. And of course, the people in the villages would have been -- I mean, everybody was religious, so.

CW: And was your mother also exposed to socialism?

VG: Well, she -- she, I think -- yeah, but I think probably in her twenties. I think she really learned Yiddish kind of late. I mean, she would have understood Yiddish, but as I said, they spoke Polish at home. And I think her Yiddish came sort of later. And later, she was a teacher, and so on, in Yiddish schools. But it was not, like, from the beginning.

CW: So, can you tell me about, first of all, what is the Medem Sanatorium?

VG: Well, they got -- there was a movement to start up Jewish schools. It was actually done under the Germans in World War I, because the -- under the czar, you couldn't start up schools -- I mean, not only not in Yiddish, but in -- you couldn't do it in Polish, either -- it had to be in Russian. They did allow Hebrew schools, because that was regarded as a religious language, and so it wasn't considered to be threatening in a kind of national way, as you might regard Latin or something like that. And my father was a teacher in -- this is a 12:00long answer, but anyhow -- my father was a teacher in the Hebrew schools. He introduced Yiddish into the Hebrew schools, sort of unbeknownst to the organizers of the schools. And he and others started up Yiddish schools at the time where World War I -- he would have been one of the younger people, but Peretz was involved, and so on.

CW: The TSYSHO schools? Was that what it was?

VG: Yeah, I think that came sort of later. But that's basically it, yeah. And they also got the idea to start up a kind of institution -- initially, for kids that suffered from tuberculosis, and gradually became a more general kind of thing. So that was in the '20s. And I don't know exactly where the idea came from, but he certainly had a great deal to do with kind of developing the idea. 13:00And I think it was his imprint, really -- that's the -- what the nature of the thing was. And he -- in the late thirties, he went to -- came to Amer-- you know, he had a movie made, which is the Medem Sanatorium film --

CW: "Mir Kumen On."

VG: Right. And that -- he took that to America, to collect funds for -- he showed it here. And actually, there was a bit in that movie of me in there -- in an earlier version -- but he took it out, because he didn't want to -- any suggestion that he had abused the funds -- mis-- you know, used the money to -- for his own family. So -- but that movie could not be shown in Poland, because 14:00-- it just showed -- it showed the -- a Jewish institution to be too modern and too -- too -- so much better, really, than anything else that was available in Poland then. The -- well, the government was strongly anti-Semitic, and didn't want to show Jews in a particularly favorable light.

CW: So it was banned?

VG: Yeah. So I actually remember as a little boy being taken secretly -- to a secret showing of the movie. And there was a little part of me feeding chickens. (laughs)

CW: So what do you remember of the sanitorium? What did it look like?

VG: Well, I was just a little kid, you know? I mean, I -- when we left, I was just a little -- five and a half, or something. And we'd stay there in the 15:00summer time. And I remember there was parts of it -- they had a biological garden and a weather station and a place where the kids rested and all kinds of other stuff. And other things I just remember from the movie and what I heard about it.

CW: Can you describe what it looked like and where it was?

VG: Well, it was actually quite close to Warsaw, although at the time it was kind of in the country. It was probably not ten miles -- less than ten miles, or something. Maybe it was even ten kilometers. And it was a former -- like, an estate, which they bought. And I think there was one main large building, and then they built up other things around it, took kids in. But the thing about it was that it was an incredible contrast with the life of these kids in Warsaw. 16:00And so -- it was like a children's republic.

CW: Yeah. So do you remember about the other kids who were there?

VG: Not really. I mean, what I remember is really from seeing the movie, you know? But I don't actually remember --

CW: Do you have a sense of what your first memory was?

VG: My first memory of anything?

CW: Yeah.

VG: Yeah. I mean, I remember being in a crib, but I don't -- I mean, I don't know, so I would have had to be pretty young. So I remember --

CW: What do you remember of Warsaw, if anything?

VG: Well, actually, quite a lot. I remember the house we lived in. And also, 17:00before we left -- well, our maid -- actually, everybody had maids, but -- except the maids didn't have maids -- used to take me to the park, and so I remember the Saxon Garden. And then before we left, actually, it was -- the war had started -- my mother took me around the city, which was bombed at that time, just to kind of see different parts of it and -- and leave.

CW: Do you remember when the war started?

VG: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, we were in the sanitorium. And we drove back -- you know, and everybody got in cars -- drove back to Warsaw. 18:00People didn't really understand what was -- what was happening. I -- you know, people looking back cannot comprehend -- cannot put themselves in the position of -- even just generally, the Jews in Poland at the beginning of the war. Because as I said, the Jewish schools started with the encouragement of the Germans, who were actually encouraging various national groups to undermine the 19:00Russian state. So there was a kind of confusion. Because on the one hand, you heard these horrible things Hitler was saying, and people knew that bad things had happened in Germany, and so on. On the other hand, their experience with the Germans -- which was only twenty years earlier -- it's like us in the early nineties. Suppose you had really good experiences in the early nineties, and now the same people are coming back -- they sound different, but you sort of think it will probably work out okay, you know? Or it won't be too horrible. And it was kind of like a little like that. So then when we actually left -- and we didn't leave because we were Jewish, we left because my f-- my father left earlier, 'cause he was a city councilman in Warsaw, and the government wanted those people to leave, 'cause they still had the idea they would re-form in the 20:00east and start up another army or something, so they -- all the army-aged people they wanted to get out of the way. Only two weeks later -- seventeen days later -- the Soviets took over eastern Poland. Then it became clear that was the end of Poland. And my father sent -- like, paid a peasant to come and kind of go back into the German territory -- German-held territory -- contact us, and get us out to where he was, which was in the Soviet territory. It wasn't a hundred percent clear which side was better, because -- well, I'll explain that. So, we left. And you would think that people would be saying, You are so lucky you're getting out of here, the Germans have taken over, I wish I could go with you. It 21:00wasn't like that at all. People said, You're crazy to leave. You're leaving your apartment. You're leaving all your things. How can you possibly leave? So it's -- you know, things that are -- happen long ago, like the Holocaust, was once in the future. And so it was unknowable. And so the thinking of people was very different than people today imagine, I think, looking back on it.

CW: So your parents were both active in the Bund?

VG: Well, especially my father. My mother was, I suppose, a party member and --

CW: Can you just explain --

VG: -- participant, but I don't -- yeah.

CW: Can you explain what the Bund is?

VG: Well, the Bund was the Jewish Workers' Party -- Socialist Workers' Party -- 22:00and by the end of the thirties, it was the largest political party -- certainly on the left. I think -- it was not a ma-- I mean, most Jews, I think, still belonged to the traditional -- or identified with the traditional religious parties -- religious communities -- but as compared with, say, the Zionists or the communists, and so on. The Bund won -- in the elections for the Jewish community, they were the dominant party, and -- toward the end -- and represented in certainly the city council, and I believe in the Polish parliament, as well -- the same.

CW: So do you remember what the apartment in Warsaw was like -- your apartment?

VG: We had a small apartment -- two, three rooms or something. But we -- (laughs) -- as I said, we had -- we lived on the second or third floor, around a courtyard. And -- I'm trying to remember now --

CW: And so then where'd you go when you left Warsaw?

VG: Well, we went in the middle of the night. You got into a truck, and were headed east with a bunch of other people. And we got stopped by Germans along the way. The Germans had already been there for a while. And we eventually shifted over into wagons. We went from -- as far as the truck would go. And then 24:00we were like -- you know, you see these long -- these pictures of these refugee trains -- you know, people just -- long roads filled with refugees -- and it was like that. And you just kept going, you know? And eventually we made it to -- I think it was Bialystok -- and hooked up with my father somehow, which was quite amazing. The problem -- I said it wasn't clear which side was better -- the Soviet secret police was out to get anyone in the Bund. Because the Bundists were socialist but anti-communist. And there's a -- it goes back a long way, because it was because of the Bund that the communists became the Bolsheviks. 25:00Because at some point, in the dispute, they walked out of the meeting, which left the communists as the majority. And that's how they became the Bolsheviks, which means majority, and the other ones became the Mensheviks. So the communists were really out to get them. And so it was very dangerous for my father. He had to get out of there. Some of the people were arrested, deported, shot. And so at that time, Lithuania was still independent, and the plan was to get to Lithuania, contact our friends in America, somehow get from Lithuania to Sweden, and then come to America. And so we -- he got to Lithuania, and then -- we didn't go together, because he -- if he got caught, he didn't want us to get 26:00carried off with him, 'cause we could still -- if we were just by ourselves, we wouldn't be in quite as dangerous a situation. But anyhow, we -- you hire a guy in these situations, and there are smugglers and people who take you across, and I remember -- in a wintry night, and we went through the snow. And I remember the Soviet border guards with their dogs. I mean, I couldn't see 'em, but you could hear 'em in the night. I don't know how far they were, but -- probably quite a distance, but at night, it carried. So -- and -- but you had to worry. Like, the crunch of your steps, you know? And we went down these little river -- not valleys, but sort of banks that were down below the fields, and crouched 27:00down, and getting through, and we got across. Of course, we hooked up with my father. And I went to kindergarten in Vilna. This would have been the beginning of 1940 or end of '39, maybe -- something like that.

CW: What were your impressions of Vilna?

VG: I don't really remember Vilna. I have to say, I don't have any memories of that. But what happened was that before -- we contacted our friends in America, trying to make arrangements to travel here, and it was basically the unions here that helped us -- particularly the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. David Dubinsky was president. He and my father were in this sort of Jewish self-protection gang when they were, like, sixteen, or something like that -- 28:00carried guns.

CW: Can you explain sort of the Jewish self-protection groups?

VG: Well, I don't really know any more about it than that, but the fact is, there were -- you know, there were pogroms, and, you know -- so it was a matter of protecting against these kinds of possibilities. And there were always gangs of hooligans or people who would get incited to -- I mean, you know, considering what had happened in the twentieth century since then, it was nothing. But then, it was considered horrible. And it was horrible, on a personal level. But --

CW: So you were in kindergarten in Vilna, you were saying?

VG: Right. But before we could get out -- I mean, people started here getting 29:00visas for us and so on -- not a simple matter, but anyway -- because the United States was trying to keep -- not to fill quotas, and was not helpful at all about letting Jews in. But before we could get out, the Soviets took over Lithuania. And so we had to move -- we had to hide in a -- not even a village, a tiny hamlet or a -- like a farm that took in boarders. And so it was our family and the family of Abe Brumberg -- the Brumbergs -- my father was the director of the Medem Sanatorium, Brumberg was the, like, deputy director. So it was my mother and father and myself, and Brumberg, his wife, and their son, Abe 30:00Brumberg, who died not too long ago. And we were just hiding there. And in fact, every day, he would -- not even stay there, he would try to spend all day in the woods, just walking around, so in case anyone came by, he wouldn't be there. And there's a very elaborate story as to how they got false papers and bribed the NKVD people -- the NKVD is like the predecessor of the KGB. And it was not an easy thing. But if you had dollars and -- (pause) -- there were several key ingredients. I don't know whether you've heard of this fellow, Japanese consul Sugihara. Well, it all started with some Dutch students who went to the Dutch 31:00consul, who really had no authority anymore, and got a stamp to go to -- a visa to go to Suriname and Curaçao in the West Indies --- which was kind of, like, meaningless -- it was like getting a stamp to go to the moon. But they then went to the Japanese consul, and he gave a transit visa -- like a -- I mean, knowing there was no way the guy could get to Curaçao, you know? And people heard about this, and everybody started to going to the Japanese consul. We, by then, had a visa -- permission to come to the United States. But we had to get out of the Soviet Union. And we just happened to be in Kaunas -- Kovno -- when all this was 32:00happening. Because there was really a three-week period or so when Sugihara was giving out visas, 'cause after that, he got taken out of -- pulled away. And so we got a transit visa to Japan. But then you had to get permission from the NKVD to travel across Siberia to Japan. And this was a very complicated enterprise, which involved false papers, bribery, blackmailing -- all kinds of things. Anyway, it -- and we eventually got permission. And we had some -- the money. So I remember that we traveled by train. There would be these compartments -- like, four bunks -- and so we had three bunks, and in the fourth one was a Soviet 33:00officer. And my parents took turns sleeping, so as not to reveal who we really were. (laughs) I mean, it was that kind of thing. And it's hard to believe just what it was like. We spent a few days in Moscow. Well, first, we were in Minsk -- just sleeping on the floor in the train station waiting for a train. You know, it was like, wartime, you wait days, you're sleeping on the floor. Now, for a kid, it's kind of a little bit fun, but -- (laughs) -- but objectively, it -- it wasn't too great. There's a Sholem Aleichem story about the kid whose 34:00father dies and they have to sell the furniture for the funeral. So they have to sell the bed, so he gets to sleep on the floor. Turns out, he always wanted to sleep on the floor. So. (laughs) But anyhow, so we went to Moscow, and my mother's sister was there. She was the wife of a prominent Polish communist who was arrested in Poland. He was in jail, and he got out, and as soon as he got out, he went to the Soviet Union -- just in time for the purges. So he got immediately sent -- as almost all the Polish communists were either shot or sent to the camps for long sentences. And so he was in the camps at that time. And we went to see her. And she was kind of under suspicion as a wife of an enemy of 35:00the people. And I went with my mother, and we wanted to give her a sweater. So it was too dangerous -- too suspicious -- to carry a package. So I remember I wore the sweater, and when we got there -- in her -- I don't know that she even had a room -- a whole room -- but in her partition, took off the sweater and gave it to her. So it was that -- you know. And it's kind of a funny story with my father -- he was -- he didn't stay at the hotel, because he was afraid one of the Polish communists would spot him and turn him in. So he would just walk the streets of Moscow. And he spoke perfect Russian, so that was not a problem. But he would get on a line just to kill time -- like, food lines -- and then when 36:00he'd get to the end, he would buy whatever it is -- a roll, or something. And this one time, he got on a line, and he didn't know what it was. And eventually he got in, and it was a barrel of fish. So it was too dangerous to have stood on the line for two hours and say, "I don't want any fish," you know? So he had to buy a fish. So he said, "Okay, give me that one." So the guy goes -- (makes sound of a fast movement) like this -- "Here's the fish." And my father said, "Could you wrap it?" Well, nothing had been wrapped in the Soviet Union since 1917. (laughs) So they immediately knew this was a foreigner or something. They said, who are you? What are you? And then the other giveaway was that his clothes fit, because nobody had clothes that fit. So anyway, he grabbed the fish, put it in his pocket, and he ran off. Fortunately, nobody went after him. And then he had to find a place to throw the fish, so -- which again, you can't 37:00walk on the street and just throw a fish down, so -- (laughs) -- so he had to go find some back alley. But anyway, that shows you -- it's kind of funny, but -- the level of fear. And actually, before we left, my mother's sister came -- my aunt -- came to our train. And it was too dangerous for her to meet with my father, but they worked out that she would come to the train -- she would take out a cigarette, he would just be there and light the cigarette, and that's all -- and then he'd get back on the train. And somebody followed her from her apartment house and turned her in. She was arrested, and she died under interrogation. So it's just unimaginable, you know? A lot of people here were 38:00sort of sympathizers and didn't really understand what it was all about, you know? And at this time -- like, my neighbor across the way still holds up the Hollywood Ten, who were defending this system while we were there and Stalin was killing Jewish writers. But anyhow, such is life.

CW: So then you eventually got to New York?

VG: Well, we got to Japan, and then we crossed the ocean and came to New York, right.

CW: Any memories from that part of the journey?

VG: Well, yeah. We crossed the country, and then we stayed in a hotel. So actually, the unions put us up in the Upper West Side. In fact, I was just in that neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. And then we got an apartment in the 39:00Arbeter Ring houses up in -- near Van Cortlandt Park. And I went up there, too, just recently. And it's still a nice neighborhood.

CW: Can you describe it?

VG: Well, they had these -- the unions built houses -- apartments -- for workers, and I -- initially, I think they were just rented -- I'm sure they were just rented -- and reasonable rents and so on. And it was a nice neighborhood -- just like a -- just a -- (laughs) -- first of all, everybody was Jewish. Because I have friends who grew up, like, in the Middle West or something, and they were the only Jews in town, and they have this feeling about being oppressed or discriminated against or that they were -- we never had this feeling. (laughs) I 40:00mean, it just -- (laughs) -- we knew that down the street, there was Bailey Avenue -- the Irish guys were there, and if you went down there, you got into a fight. But basically, it was just very comfortable. And it was a -- kind of a -- intelligent group of people. 'Cause they were mostly sort of working class, or people who had small business -- stores -- but with an intellectual cast -- you know, part of the socialist movement, unions --

CW: Um -- sorry --

VG: Yeah. No, it was a nice -- and it was -- for kids, Van Cortlandt Park, it was fun to play there. Yeah, it was a good place.

CW: So was everyone in your building of the same political party? Were there -- did you have different factions in the building?

VG: Well, I don't think they were, like, Bundists, or anything like -- there 41:00were a bunch of Bundists that had come from Poland and were in these houses, but most of them were sort of American -- you know, more American types, or had been in the US for a long time. And sort of labor people -- unions. But not tied specifically to, like, the Bund, which was really a Polish party -- I mean, Jewish party in Poland.

CW: So we were talking about the languages of your parents' homes. What about the languages that you were exposed to and were speaking?

VG: Well, we spoke Yiddish at home. Yeah. Well, in Poland, we spoke both Polish and Yiddish, so I was like -- you know, it was just -- and I can't remember whether my parents spoke Polish -- certainly people who came in. Or I think with 42:00the maid, I would have spoken Polish, even though she was Jewish -- I think -- I'm not sure, actually. But I certainly would have spoken Polish with the maid. My mother was really, in many ways, I would say, more Polish than Jewish. I think the literature that she related to -- she also studied in Austria briefly -- I mean, less than a year, but still, she kind of identified with -- she knew German. In fact, when we were leaving Warsaw -- after the Germans had taken over 43:00and the place was bombed -- we were walking along the street, and a German officer said something like, "Oh, nice little boy," or something like that. And my mother answered in German. And he said, "Oh, you speak German." And she started reciting German poetry to him. They had some exchange. And I give it as an example of sort of mental confusion, because, you know, they had just come in -- I mean, he seemed a decent sort, you know? I mean, they're not -- there must have been one out of a hundred somewhere that were not terrible. But she didn't say this because she was afraid, and she didn't say this to get by or something like that. She said it because he seemed to respond reasonably, and he was a representative of this higher culture, you know? (laughs) But I think there was 44:00a kind of mental dissonance or something, you know? But anyway, so I was just talking about my mother. She studied in Austria. And actually, my father studied in Berlin for -- I think he was there like a year, early twenties. But -- yeah. I forgot where we were.

CW: In your home in New York, did you speak -- what were the languages around?

VG: Just Yiddish. Actually, that's what I was getting to -- we spoke Polish and Yiddish at home, but when we left Poland, they dropped Polish. So we just switched to Yiddish.

CW: Are there any phrases that -- you know, Yiddish sayings that you remember 45:00from your parents?

VG: Sayings?

CW: Sayings, songs, I don't know, curses?

VG: (laughs) Curses were in Polish. (laughs) My mother did not speak a sort of pithy Yiddish. She spoke a kind of a YIVO Yiddish, you know what I mean? Not to disparage that, but -- I don't know if you know what I mean. It wasn't -- it's -- well, I was just listening to -- I looked on YouTube, and I think it was one of the Yiddish writers -- Yitzhak Manger or somebody like that -- and he was -- it's just a lecture he gave. And I have to say, it's a Yiddish that I never heard. Because the socialists and all of these people, they spoke a kind of Max Weinreich Yiddish -- I mean, it was kind of a -- I don't know whether more 46:00educated or more -- but it wasn't -- it didn't have that sort of folk quality -- with expressions and quite a bit of Hebrew, actually.

CW: Do you remember aspects of Yiddish culture in the home -- music, books, newspapers?

VG: Well, of course, newspapers. Well, even in New York, when we were there, there were four daily Yiddish newspapers. And --

CW: Which ones did you get?

VG: Well, I'm sure we got the "Forverts." But he probably got some others, too. I mean, I can't remember what the other -- I mean, there was a communist paper, I'm sure we didn't get that. And oh, by the way, one of the places we went 47:00through in Siberia was Birobidzhan. And my father got out of the train, and he sees some guy and he started speaking Yiddish to him. The guy just about had a heart attack. He says, "Listen, get right back on the train. Anybody hears us, we're both gonna be deported." So it was not the Jewish paradise that anybody thought. In fact, one of his brothers was killed in the purges. He was an agronomist in Birobidzhan and was executed as a Japanese spy. So -- it's just crazy. But one of the first people who knocked on our door when we came in to apartment 2A in 3951 Gouverneur Avenue in the Bronx was a Mrs. Stein, who was about this big -- this tall - with a little pushke [alms box] for Birobidzhan. 48:00And my father says, "Come right in, we were just in Birobidzhan." (laughs) Which is like the last thing she expected. And so he started telling her about Birobidzhan. And she screamed at him that he was a fascist dog, and she ran out. But not only that. Later, when I came out of the building -- she had this son, Carl Stein, who, I understand -- because I connected with people -- even in his sixties was a bully. But this was -- (laughs) -- he was -- I was maybe six or seven, he was maybe nine. And so he jumped me. And he banged my head against the sidewalk, and I was bleeding. And Mrs. Stein was saying, "Hit him again, Carl! Hit him again!" (laughs) It was so -- anyhow, I always meant to somehow catch up with Carl Stein. (laughs)

CW: This was because of the Birobidzhan comment, you think?

VG: I think so, yeah. (laughs)

CW: Woah. And so what was sort of the community that your parents were in? Did people come visit you in your apartment and other (UNCLEAR) or --

VG: Well, there were certainly -- in the community, they would have Bund meetings and all that kind -- I mean, those people still stuck together. And I went to Yiddish school with Marvin -- with a picture of Karl Marx on the wall and -- a little basement room -- with Larry Novak -- (laughs) -- who -- I think Marvin told you, he broke somebody's thumb. (laughs)

CW: Do you remember that story?

VG: I don't, actually. But just hearing it from Marvin.

CW: So this was the Arbeter Ring, the Workmen's Circle?

VG: Yeah, yeah. And then after that, we went down to the high school, which was down on Fourteenth Street, down near Union Square. And after a while, I sort of dropped out of that. I was the youngest of the group that came from Poland. And I remember walking with a bunch of these -- and they were maybe thirteen -- and they were all talking about going back to Poland. And I remember, I was, like, seven or something, "I'm not going back." (laughs) But this is another thing people don't understand. In, like, 1942, my mother was working in a millinery shop. It was really hard work -- I mean, awful -- just to make a few bucks, so that -- 'cause my father didn't make much money. He was a -- I don't know what 51:00he was doing at that time -- might have been just a teacher. And she got offered a job in the Slavic division of the New York Public Library, which is fantastic -- I mean, in terms of -- professionally -- 'cause she knew all the languages. And she turned it down, because it was less money than working in the millinery shop, and since we were going back, anyway, in a year or so. So this was still the mentality -- that, what is the point of starting up -- I mean, she was, like, thirty-nine, or something like that, so -- which, to me, is kind of young. (laughs) But -- although I think then, people were a little bit -- felt older. People didn't live as long. But -- oh, she lived until ninety-nine. But -- yeah. 52:00She -- the feeling was that they were going back. And only after, you know, the news came that all the Jews had been killed, and so on -- but that took -- it took a while to sink in. So it's -- when we look back on all these things, you say, why didn't people do this? Or, why didn't people do that? Or, why didn't the Jews leave? Or, you know, whatever. Why didn't she take her job in the public library? Her life would have been completely different. They just were in a different mindset, you know? So.

CW: Did they -- were there -- I mean, were there specific stories or things that you remember that -- your parents wanting to go back to?

VG: I'm not sure I understand your question. But my father had a position in Poland -- he was sort of a senior educator, you might say, and you know, the 53:00head of this institution -- which, to a large extent, he created. And he was a city councilman. Here, at the time, he was just a teacher. In fact, he went off to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to live in a little room, 'cause that's the only job he could get -- making probably twenty-five bucks a week or something. So of course they identified -- you know, if you could go back -- I mean, after all, if you could see ahead or if you could see clearly, he was here in 1938 for several months. I mean, the smart thing would have been to come and stay here, you know? But -- because this was already -- Hitler already took over Austria, you know, and so on. But it was not clear. People did not see it that way at 54:00all. In fact, at the beginning of the war -- to go back to that -- people -- you know, Hitler's -- it all started with Hitler saying he needed to have a corridor to Danzig -- Gdańsk -- which was then an international city, although controlled by the Germans, and mostly German population. The Poles didn't want to give them the corridor. So he attacked. And we suppose this was sort of the pretext -- in reality, he was planning to take over Poland and go on to Russia, even though he had a pact with them. But people thought, Well, I mean, you know, he wanted Danzig, I guess he's gonna get Danzig. But the idea that they would stay there and just take over the country was -- had not penetrated. Because 55:00looking back on it, they took over Austria and then they basically took over Czechoslovakia, but somehow, there were, like, special circumstances -- you could sort of explain things. The Austrians were German; he took over a part of Czechoslovakia that was German. And if you go back to other wars fought in Europe -- like, 1870, the Germans wanted Alsace and Lorraine. They fought a war with -- they actually got the French to attack them first, but anyway, they got to Paris, they dictated terms, but then they went home. I mean, they took Alsace and Lorraine. So the idea that they would just take over and our lives were over and everything was over for the Jews -- that had not penetrated at all. I mean, there were a few far -- you know, people who got the idea and got out. But they were, like, you know, one in a thousand. So it all looked very different. And I 56:00think, actually -- probably -- the Germans at that time were not clear what they were going to do, either, because they didn't know how much they could get away with -- how much the rest of the world would let them get away with. They didn't know how much they could get away with with the Germans themselves -- would the Germans go and kill people? I mean, they weren't sure how they would react. Well, it turned out it wasn't a big problem. But -- so -- to understand, you have to, like, put yourself back and wipe your mind clean of what comes next.

CW: I want to move forward a little bit here, but I first -- looking back on your parents and growing up with these intellectual activists, what kind of 57:00Jewish identity do you think they were trying to instill in you or pass on? Was there something that you can --

VG: Well, my father -- I think my mother did not have a fixed idea about that, but my father certainly did. And he was very, very -- I would say almost fanatical about Yiddish. I mean, I learned reading and writing Yiddish before I learned anything else -- when we were in the woods. (laughs) But also, they were just occupied with their lives. They would go to work early. They'd come at probably seven. I ate with another family. I mean, people were -- it wasn't like 58:00you drive around in a Volvo and take your kid around to karate lessons or something like that. (laughs) So everybody was just busy keeping their life together and keeping their job. So it wasn't -- they had no idea what I was up to. I mean, the kids just needed the parents of any of the other kids. And it only became a problem when you forgot to come home, because you were off running around in the park. I mean, there wasn't this -- I notice around here, for example, kids -- I don't see any kids playing together. It's like their parents are taking them around everywhere. Or they kick 'em to play with another kid or something like that. But you don't see, like, a gang of kids running around 59:00doing stuff. But that's how we were. And my father was very -- wanted me to -- well, he was very strong about having me identify with Yiddish, and so on. But they were also -- you know, when the news started coming out about what was going on in Poland, they were all in great depression. They were going to meetings. I remember going to funerals all the time -- for the -- people. And -- yeah. And then they'd have these sort of memorial meetings. And they'd sing the "Shvue [Oath]," you know. You know how to --

CW: Can you -- do you remember it?

VG: I don't. Marvin does. (laughs)

CW: Well, can you explain what it is?

VG: Well, it was the -- it's the anthem of the Bund. But if you look at the 60:00words, it's like, these people that are ready to give their lives -- "I swear, I swear." And so -- yeah, I remember going with them. In fact, I remember one of the great leaders of the Bund died. Noyakh was his name -- I don't know what his -- what his actual name was. They all had sort of pseudonyms that they had used as their secret names in czarist times. And they were all -- people in these groups were just fervent believers, and they -- it's hard to des-- anyway, the thing I remember is that they decided he was the oldest member of the party, 61:00that therefore there should be -- the youngest members should stand at his -- around the casket. Well, for a little kid like me, seven years old, standing next to a dead body -- (laughs) -- and so what happened is, I just went into a fit of uncontrolled giggling. (laughs) That's the only way I could cope -- I think. But I guess -- I mean, I wouldn't ima-- I wouldn't dream of putting a kid in a situation like that. But they all felt like, you know, we're all -- this is like -- I don't know, maybe it's like that in the Muslim world today, you know, or somewhere -- but all sort of fighters, including the youngest ones. And, well, when I was a little kid in Poland, I was the youngest member of the SKIF 62:00-- the Socialist -- I guess kinder [children's] something or other -- and so I had short pants, white shirt, red scarf, marching in the May Day parade. And actually, this guy who wrote the book that Marvin is translating, he was the guy who provided security for the parades -- I mean, it was his guys -- because there were other people who would attack the parade. And since we reached the Medem Sanatorium, at one point the communists attacked it.

CW: Yeah, can you explain what --

VG: Well, I just read about it -- I mean, that's all I know. But somehow they got involved -- well, of course, they were trying to undermine the whole thing, and they managed to get some of the workers there to side with them. But anyway, there was an actual armed attack by the Jewish communists on this Medem 63:00Sanatorium. And Bernard Goldstein, who was the head of the militia, he organized protection and defense. And they also had guns. Yeah, so these were tough people.

CW: Yeah. So when you went off and became a physicist, did you maintain connections to Yiddish -- was that part of your adult life?

VG: I would say not really. 'Cause actually, when my father died, I was in my teens -- early teens. And after that, I actually -- well, I guess for a while, I 64:00continued speaking Yiddish with my mother. But then I sort of shifted over, at least partly, to English -- mostly because I felt that my Yiddish -- 'cause the only people I spoke with were my parents -- my Yiddish was really sort of a child's Yiddish -- or I didn't continue and develop kind of an adult conversational Yiddish. So I felt in our arguments, she was at a great advantage. (laughs) So I just decided to switch to English. (laughs) But my father wrote an article in the "Forverts" saying how he regretted that I had not gone to a talmud-toyre [Talmud Torah], which -- he was never -- of course, he 65:00grew up in a religious setting, and went to yeshiva, and so on, but he was not a believing person. Although in later years, after the war, he would show up in the shul -- and of course, he knew all this stuff by heart -- you know, the American Jews were surprised that he wasn't -- he didn't have to sit and read it -- but he did it for sort of cultural reasons, to identify. But he wrote this article -- which I have somewhere -- saying he regretted -- not because he wanted me to continue with that, but he wanted me to have that as a base. And he actually said something like, "It's really nice that he became a physicist, but there, he's just contributing to the broad world." But he sort of seemed to wish 66:00that I had done something that was more specifically Yiddish.

CW: I'd like to ask about when you said that you went back to Eastern Europe. When did that happen, and why did you do that?

VG: Well, I get the "Forverts," the Yiddish and the English. Anyway, in one of them, there was an article by -- God -- Dovid Katz -- do you know him? And he's been sort of interviewing people in Eastern Europe and Lithuania. And he had an article about this guy who turns out to have been part in the Gilinsky family, 67:00and he talked about how were it not for the Titanic going down, they would all be in America, and so on. And indeed, it turned out that they had sent one of the -- they wanted to come to America, and so -- they didn't have any money, but they had enough money to send one person sort of halfway, like, to England. And so they picked one of the younger boys, who was a locksmith. And he got as far as England. And then he went on the Titanic. And the story I heard was that he was a locksmith on the Titanic, but if you open a book on the Titanic, he's listed as Eliezer Gilinsky, as a third-class passenger. And he went down with the ship. But anyhow, he had this article, so I decided to go visit this guy. 68:00And I visited him and a bunch of other people. And there were some other people from --

CW: Your relatives?

VG: -- who knew -- well, distant relatives, yeah, one of whom knew my grandparents. And so I spent some time with him. And he died soon after that.

CW: So what did you find in Eastern Europe?

VG: Well, I told you. I had been to Warsaw many years earlier -- I went one time in the early sixties, actually, and went to visit the Medem Sanatorium, which was then some kind of girls' school. But this time, I went to Lithuania, and 69:00went to my father's village, and saw all that -- pretty interesting -- and heard some of the stories about my grandparents.

CW: Yeah. Do you feel like an Eastern European at all? Is that part of your identity?

VG: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm -- I don't feel -- well, how to put it? I mean, I feel American. I mean, I -- there's really nowhere else I can imagine -- well, maybe northern Italy. (laughs) But it's interesting -- I had my DNA tested, and I belong to this haplogroup -- you know, from the Y chromosome -- that is also heavily represented in Italy. And the two places I find I feel the 70:00most comfortable -- even though I don't really know Italian, barely -- I just know a little Italian -- is Italy and Argentina, because Argentines are basically Spanish-speaking Italians. Because I always look around. Because if you go, say, to England -- I mean, I speak English, they speak English, but I could never in a million years be English, you know what I mean? It just isn't -- it's not me, you know? But Italy, I sort of feel like I could be -- this could be home. (laughs) Northern Italy, anyway.

CW: So when you were in these two trips to Warsaw and Lithuania, what did you learn there that you didn't know before?

VG: Well, in Warsaw, I can't say -- well, I did. I did, actually. This is kind 71:00of interesting. I met one of my mother's closest friends. She was a little bit older. She took her in when she was very poor, in desperate straits -- this woman took her in and was kind of her mentor. And so she told me a lot about my mother's early life -- which, it turned out, upset my mother terribly. And she never talked with that woman again. So yeah, I learned quite a bit there.

CW: What did you learn?

VG: Well, about her past life with another man before she married my father, and so on. And also, her early life -- her home. Her mother died at some early 72:00point, and as I said her father remarried very soon after that -- a few months after that. And the girls were very upset. And one of them committed suicide -- her favorite sister. And it sort of had a traumatic effect on her. You know, actually, the woman told me these things hoping I would understand my mother better and that she would get along better with me. But when I got back -- and then she wrote her that, you know, "I've told your son these things, and I hope you'll both find a way to be together better." But my mother was very upset 73:00about that, and said it was all lies, and so on. So she didn't want anything known about her past.

CW: And what about in Lithuania?

VG: Well, I learned about the village and the grandparents -- the fact of the fishing -- the fact they were fishermen, which I kind of like. (laughs) And that the grandmother -- you see, the Polish-Lithuanian border was closed. Poles and Lith-- they were very much at odds, because in the settlement, the Poles got -- or grabbed Vilna -- Vilnius -- which the Lithuanians regarded as their traditional capital, but actually, it was mostly Poles that lived there at that 74:00point. So there was no contact between -- you couldn't get ac-- but once a year, on Tisha b'av, the Lithuanians would allow people to cross -- I think partly to allow bodies to be buried on the other side or something like that. Although somehow -- that's what they said, it didn't make sense to me that they would keep the body for a long time. But anyhow. Maybe a casket, or they -- whatever. But she would come across. He was on the other side, and she was known for coming across with baked goods and stuff. And she was very famous for that. So that was -- yeah. But you know, my father never talked about -- he had ten brothers and sisters -- I think originally thirteen, but he never talked about them. And this fellow told me about -- the guy, the agronomist -- and also, 75:00there was one was a communist commissar high up in the army, also executed in '38 or so. And all the rest -- one was in the Red Army, died in the Red Army -- and all the rest died under the Germans -- were either killed or starved to death. But I never heard anything about -- and you know, you'd think -- I don't know whether he went to visit them periodically or he didn't. I don't know. And also, I only met my grandfather -- that I can remember -- once. And this was in the same city. And I think my mother must have been very much at odds with her father because of this background I was telling you about. Because we were in the city, you'd think you'd see your grandfather. And only when we left do I 76:00remember seeing him. So they had -- there was that whole world of modernizing. Like, for example, my father -- all these kids who had been in the yeshivas, they became very secular -- not all of them, but I mean the group that went into the socialist movement -- became very secular. And he said that on yeshiva, he would walk around with girls, smoking. And I think later, he was kind of ashamed of that, 'cause that would horrify the religious Jews. But you know, these people -- I mean, what they saw is that all that religion was holding everybody back and kept them locked in these towns in useless activity, just no access to information, to the world, to outside culture. 'Cause my father -- as I said, he 77:00was totally devoted to Yiddish and developing Yiddish, but he wanted the kids to know Polish well, and so on. Well, anyhow. Another world.

CW: What are the lessons -- the sort of takeaways -- are there things that you've learned from your parents, looking back?

VG: That I learned from my parents? (pause) Well, I mean, I think -- probably more from this socialist tradition than from Yiddish tradition, but it's kind of Jewish socialist tradition. You know, sort of the ethics of -- ethical -- I 78:00remember when I was very, very small -- probably out of the crib, but talking and -- I remember asking -- I think I must have asked, "What is socialism?" or what is -- (UNCLEAR) about Marx or something. And my mother explained it this way: she said, "Well, suppose a workman makes a very beautiful violin, and he's very poor and he has to feed his children, and he sells it to this rich person." And then she said, "Well, who does the violin really belong to?" And I sort of understood it still belongs to the workman. (laughs) But I mean, I sort of got the idea that -- you know, sort of a -- I don't know if there's a point here, 79:00but it was sort of her way of explaining the ethics of it all.

CW: Well, I want to end by just asking about what you see as sort of the role of Yiddish today. Do you see a future for Yiddish?

VG: Well, I mean, in a way, Hitler won the war against the Eastern European Jews. Right now, Yiddish as a sort of living language is used by the very religious Jews, and it's kind of a somewhat different Yiddish than I grew up 80:00with. It's hard to be optimistic about it, but you never know. I mean, there's like a -- there are all these languages come back -- Welsh. (laughs) But, I mean, there are different circumstances. I mean, because Israel was formed and picked Hebrew, I think Theodor Herzl probably wanted German -- expected if there was a Jewish state, it'd be German-speaking, and girls playing Beethoven, you know? (laughs) But it's kind of interesting reading -- I mean, have you read Herzl's books? It's worth reading. Yeah. Really interesting. Because it's not anything like Israel. (laughs) I mean, it's -- very liberal, very -- you know, 81:00he was looking for a country that anybody could come to and participate in. I think in one of the books, the hero is a German engineer, and he eventually stays there and becomes a citizen of this country. He did expect it to be kind of a high-tech place. But it was just a very diff-- and also, he didn't feel that all -- he was not nationalistic. And he was not religious. And he didn't feel that all the Jews had to go to this place. It was just, we will have a place and we can be respected. But the Jews who want to go there will go there, Jews that don't want to go there don't have to go there. And he even says that Jews who don't want to be Jewish -- he says, "Now, if you give up being Jewish, it's like you're a traitor. But if there's a thriving enterprise, then you can 82:00decide for yourself, and no one's gonna think ill of you if you decide not to be Jewish." So it's very different than the Zionist movement has become. But anyhow. You know, since they picked Hebrew, and they did everything they could to suppress Yiddish, to the point where they attacked meetings in Yiddish in the thirties, and so on. It's hard to see how that would come back, 'cause, you know, the Russian Jews that came there, they don't speak Yiddish -- their language is Russian -- half of them aren't even Jewish. (laughs) Not that that's bad. (laughs) But I still get the Yiddish "Forward" --

"Forverts" -- and try to read an article -- one article when it comes, just to keep up. And occasionally speak a little bit of Yiddish with Marvin. (laughs) That's about it. (laughs) But I think my kids are not -- it just isn't getting passed on. His kids don't speak Yiddish. And unless there's a thriving society -- the only place where little kids are on the streets speaking Yiddish are the very religious Jews, so I would say the future of Yiddish is there.

CW: Well, a hartsikn dank -- thanks so much.

VG: Thank you. (laughs) Now we find out how you came to Yiddish. (laughs)

CW: Well, thanks from me --

VG: Your turn to say. (laughs)

CW: -- and also from the Yiddish Book Center.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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