HARRIET BONFELD ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is October 27th -- 28th, 2010 and I'm here at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts with Harriet Bonfeld. And we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Harriet, do I have your permission to record this interview?

HARRIET BONFELD: Yes, you do.

CW:Thank you. So, I thought we could start with a brief -- if you could tell me briefly what you know about your family as far back as you know.

HB:Well, my dad was born in 1897 in a little town outside of Odessa. I'm trying 1:00to remember the name. It may come to me, but I don't remember it right now. And he always talked about his childhood. He always talked about the town he lived in, his family. He had one brother and one sister. The brother came to America and we knew his brother and brother's family. His sister never came to America and I think that she died not long after the Holocaust. But my father did communicate with her after the war, because I remember him getting letters from her. Her name was Rivka. And I think it was a sadness in his life that he never saw her after they left Russia. But he did have a brother who came here. My father used to love to tell us stories about his family and his life in Russia. 2:00He was one of the first Jewish people to ever go to the University of Moscow. He fought in the revolution. I remember him telling us about the night of the Winter Palace. I think that he fought there. He loved to tell us stories about his grandparents, and my brother and I were just talking on the way up here -- his grandparents -- the youngest one died when they were ninety-six or ninety-seven. He had four grandparents who lived almost to be a hundred years old. And it was wonderful to hear him talk about them. And I thought, Oh, well, our family really inherited this wonderful gene, that we're all going to live that long. Unfortunately, my dad did not. He died before his seventy-second birthday. For all intents and purposes, he was very well educated. He came to 3:00America first when he was about fourteen years old, I believe looking for his father who had left Europe and came to America. And I believe he was a professor out at Ohio State University, in chemistry, my grandfather. My father came looking for him, then they went back together. And then, my father came to America a number of years later. I was very young when my paternal grandparents died. I don't remember my grandmother. She was about -- I was about a year old when she died, so I don't remember her. I do remember my grandfather. He was about -- I mean, I was about seven when he died. Six or seven. He was a very nice man and a very scholarly person. And I had nice memories of them. My father, as I said, loved his family immensely. He was so proud of his children 4:00and it was like, if we went places -- and I did go a lot of places with my parents when I was younger -- one of the first things he always wanted to do was to show off his children. It was just in him. He was very much a family man. And he just wanted to show people that not only could he produce writings, but he produced wonderful children. So, I had very happy childhood memories. We used to sit around the dinner table and since there were five children, we really did not eat together very often. And there was a big age difference between the eldest and the youngest. It was a fourteen-year difference. So, when my older brother was, let's say, fifteen, sixteen, he was almost on his way to college. And my younger brother was just a little boy. So, we didn't eat together as a 5:00family that much. But I used to love to wait for my father to come home from his office, just so that we could sit and listen to the stories he would tell us then of his experiences and -- of the day or of the experiences in life. And he always had a story to tell about something that happened in our daily lives.

CW:Yeah.

HB:He was a wonderful storyteller, yeah.

CW:Did he have stories about his grandparents, or --

HB:The only ones that I remember particularly were that they were well-off. His grandparents were well-off. He would see them fairly often. And for all intents and purposes, I think that they were close. I mean, I don't know how close. But his parents did -- as I say, came to America. I don't believe his grandparents ever came here, I -- they probably died before World War I or something. But 6:00when he lived in Russia, they were very close, so --

CW:Okay. Did he ever describe the town or the place that he --

HB:Let me think. I know he spent a lot of time in Odessa, which is where I thought he was really born. But then, I found out it was a small town outside. So, I really don't know very much about the town itself. But I know that he was very interested in the arts from the time he was a young man. He started writing poetry when he was very, very young. And, as I said, he went onto the University of Moscow, which, at that time, Jewish people did not -- they were not easily accepted there. But he did go on and study there. And I guess maybe the fact that his grandparents had money, were people of means -- that helped with it. He 7:00never really stressed that. He talked about more the positives, rather than the negatives. But he did have friends from there and one of the friends from Russia, from his small town, was Marc Chagall. And my brother will tell you a wonderful, wonderful story about Marc Chagall and my father. And I remember my father telling us that story and it's -- when you have a chance to look back and rethink, you say to yourself, Oh my goodness, is this really something that happened? And it was something that happened. He was -- my father was a very historical person. Everything had its place in history. And when you realize that that was his life, not just history, it sort of means a lot to you.

CW:Yeah. Did he talk specifically about the revolution?

HB:Yes. I remember him telling us the night of the revolution, when they stormed 8:00the Winter Palace, he was a very young man. He was probably eighteen, nineteen years old. And he was one of the members of the army that stormed the palace. And I couldn't believe it. I mean, I was a young kid and I said, "Daddy, you were really there when it happened?" And he did tell us about what went on and how it was -- for an eighteen-year-old or a nineteen-year-old to be in a place like that and watch it happening must have been incredible. We read about it, but we didn't know. He told us. He told us that it was a very moving experience. It was -- I'm sure it was very frightening. I mean, you didn't know if you were going to live or die. I mean, it was that bad. I don't remember if he was wounded. I think my brother would remember that more. But I think that he may have been wounded in that. But soon after that, I think he came to the States in 9:00the 1920s to stay here. He had been here once, and then I think he came back here in the 1920s, and then just remained here for a long time. So, yeah.

CW:Yeah. So, what was it like growing up?

HB:Well, first of all, being one of five children was not the easiest thing. I had a lot of shoes to fill, if I may. My older brother, Gary, was a genius. He was one of the most famous physicists in the world. And he was doted upon tremendously by my parents. I mean, you couldn't have been more proud of a human being than they were of him. But that never took away from us. I mean, there could only be one of him and we were the other children. But they never made us 10:00feel, in any way, that we were inferior to my brother. They were very loving, very devoted. My mother never worked after she got married because her job was to take care of her family. I was the youngest child for seven years of my life until my brother was born, my brother Norman. And so, being the youngest child, you're sort of doted upon, also. And then, when he came along, my role changed a little bit. But it was -- we had a very, very happy childhood. The only negative was that my father used to have very erratic sleeping hours because he wrote all night when we were sleeping. So, during the day, he would sleep until he went into his office at the "Tog Morgen-zhurnal," where he was the city editor. And so, we had to be very quiet, I remember that. And that was a little difficult 11:00because when you're young kids, you're up in the morning and you're -- so, that was the only negative that I can remember. Otherwise, I used to look forward to my dad coming home from work. And it was six, seven o'clock at night and we would sit and talk a little bit and then he would tell his stories. And one of the other things I remember, he always loved to have a glass of tea at the end of his meal. And most of my friends' parents would drink a cup of tea. Not my father. My father drank a glass of tea. He would put a cube of sugar in his mouth and then drink the tea. And I guess it was an old Russian custom or something, but it was a little strange for me. And the other strange thing that he did, he put salt on his watermelon. Yeah. And I remember when I was a little girl -- certainly during the summer, when you would eat watermelon, before he put the first piece in his mouth, he would put salt on it. And these were very 12:00sort of extraneous things for me. I never saw that before. But I learned to understand and as I grew older and I met other people who did similar things, I said maybe it wasn't so strange after all. But he laughed a lot. He made us laugh a lot. And he used to call me meydele [young girl] and -- I guess because I was the youngest daughter, that was my nickname. But I -- it was a very tender time for me. I had very, very happy memories of him. And unfortunately, six months after I got married and moved to Paris, right after I got married, I got a telephone call from my older sister telling me my dad was very ill and I should come home right away, which I did. And, at that time, he was in the hospital. And I don't know if he ever really knew that I was there, because he died a few days later. And so, it was a very, very difficult time for me because 13:00I had -- I loved him so dearly and I just felt that I had left at a time when maybe I would have had another six or seven months with him. And it sort of soured my time in Paris. I made my husband come back not too long after that because I couldn't live over there knowing that my dad had died, and it was very sad.

CW:Yeah. Could you talk a little bit more about the kind of language he used in daily life?

HB:Yes. He spoke English fluently. Of course, he spoke English and Yiddish and Russian, as well. Between him and my mother -- my mother was American-born, but she did speak Yiddish fluently. And so, they would speak Yiddish a lot to each other. Russian, I don't believe they -- that I ever heard them conversing to each other. He would speak to his children in English. The only time he would 14:00ever speak to us in Yiddish is if -- 'cause I studied Yiddish a lot. And so, he knew that I was able to converse a little bit. Certainly not on his level, but I could. So, he did speak to us in Yiddish. But most of the time, his main language was English with us.

CW:Can you describe the neighborhood?

HB:Oh, that we grew up in? We grew up in the Bronx, right off the Grand Concourse, on a street called Sharon Avenue, which, at the time that we grew up, was a very middle-middle class -- it was a very Jewish neighborhood. It was certainly not luxurious. We lived in a doctor's type apartment. We walked in right from the street. It was crowded because there were five children. I mean, 15:00it was not one of these sprawling, fourteen-room apartments. But we always had a place for ourselves. The neighborhood was safe. One of my favorite things that I used to do at night, I remember -- my dad would go into Manhattan on Friday and Saturday nights to meet with his contemporaries or writers or other people and I used to wait for him to come home. I would sort of -- even after I came home from wherever I was, I would wait, 'cause I knew that he would come home a certain time. And when he came home, then I felt safe that he was home. And when I think back about it now, that's what the parent is supposed to do for the child, not the child for the parent. But I was always very concerned about his being home and everybody being safe. And the neighborhood was -- as I said, it was a Jewish neighborhood. It was off the Grand Concourse, which sort of meant 16:00that you had made it. That was the thought of people in those days. We lived right across the street from my mother's mother. So, I spent a lot of time up there. The schools were all within walking distance of where we lived. It was a happy time. It was a very, very happy time in my life. And I think it was a very happy time for my father. He seemed to really thrive. He got along quite well with my mother's siblings. She was one of eight children and he was always -- everyone always looked up to him, 'cause he was the writer and the poet. And so, they always, I guess, felt that he was -- he had really achieved something. Not that they hadn't achieved, but that he had achieved something in a world that was not just as small as theirs. That he was always being invited places and 17:00traveled to Montreal and Israel -- and I think he went to Argentina, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. He just was a world-renowned name at that point and everybody felt very good. Even neighbors felt, Oh, the Feinberg family, we were sort of looked up to as not just being your normal family.

CW:So, what was that like for you, in school?

HB:Well, I always felt very proud of my family -- always. I felt that maybe we were sort of chosen, if that's the word you could say, that we were different. We were very well-educated at a time when not a lot of Jewish people were 18:00well-educated. My father, my older brother, my older sister, myself, and my brother Norman were all very, very well-educated. My middle sister, who was the third child, I guess found it very hard to live in everyone else's shadow, so she would not go to college. She just went in a different route. And she did nicely. But it was very hard, although my parents never, never compared one child to another. They didn't say, well -- 'cause they knew that at least my brother was in such a category that really nobody could compare to him. And he was a very humble human being. He never, never, never flaunted his intelligence or his achievements. And my parents didn't, either. Everyone knew about my older brother because he did achieve so much. But it wasn't that my parents went out 19:00on the street and talked about it. People came to them. We had a very, very nice social life -- and I say we. I didn't have it. My parents had it, because there were always people coming to our home: famous writers and the intelligentsia. That's what I used to call them, because Friday night or Saturday night was like a salon at our house. All these people that you read about years later were in my house, talking to us, playing with us! And these -- this was my father's circle of friends. And it was a nice feeling. I felt different from a lot of my friends. They were nice kids and I loved them and I played with them and everything. But I always felt that my family was different, because we did have such a bent on literature and poetry and the people that came to our houses.

CW:So, can you remember some --

HB:Oh, yeah. Itzik Manger was often at our house. Chaim Grade was at our home. Glatstein was at our home. My brother said he thought he remembered Leivick being at our home, which -- I don't exactly remember him being there, but I do remember meeting him. I don't know if it was at our home or elsewhere. Who else? There were always people there. Maybe some other names will come to mind.

CW:Do you remember any specific night or encounters with these people that was particularly memorable?

HB:Well, I think they all admired my father for having a large family because I 21:00don't think that they did. If they had any children, it was probably not more than one. And here was my father with this whole retinue of children around that him and -- as I said, my father was so proud of us that he would sort of parade us in front of them. And I started studying Yiddish when I was probably -- let's see, four and another four's eight. So, I was probably about eight years old. I started at a Workmen's Circle shule [secular Yiddish school] and I loved it. I mean, I was thrilled going to it. And my older sister, not my middle sister, although she may have gone, too -- my eldest sister went, as well, and -- so that my father could sort of talk to us on a very low level in Yiddish. And I felt very proud that I was able to understand a little bit of what his circle 22:00were talking about, even though I wasn't able to be part of it, really. But I felt that I was included in some way. And I think my father was very proud that his children were studying the language because I think he hoped that one day we would be able to read his works. I was able to read some of his articles in the newspaper. His literature was a little bit above me. Even though I could read the language, I don't know if I was sophisticated enough to really understand a lot of what he wrote. But I would go in and look at some of his works at his desk and read it. But as I said, I don't know how much I could really get out of it. But it was a very rich home life, certainly not monetarily, but as far as what we got from our life. And I don't think many of my friends did get that.

CW:So, can you talk about -- a little bit about your mother?

HB:My mother was a saint, truthfully. She was such a good lady. And all she wanted was to please my father and her children. She was a very beautiful woman when she was younger. I had seen pictures of her -- but never really did anything with that. I mean, she -- I guess her aim in life was to have a family, raise children, and just be a good wife. And my father adored her and he was very proud of her and took her to a lot of places because he wanted to show her off. She cared for her children more than any mother I have ever known. I wish I could be as good a parent to my children as she was to us. She had the patience of a saint, and let me tell you, with five children, you had to have patience. 24:00She was devoted, she was kind, she was good. I used to tell my friends, even recently, when you have seven mouths to feed -- nowadays, you put down something in the middle of the table and that's what people eat. My mother made different meals for each of us. If we didn't like this, she would make something else. That's the way she was. She always wanted to please us. In my young years, I can't remember my mother getting angry. I never saw her angry. Later on in my life, I did see her get angry, but there was reason for it. But she was kind, she was giving, she was loving. She was a very wonderful lady and we loved her.

CW:Can you tell me what kind of food she would make?

HB:Well, my father loved steak. That I remember. And some of us did not like steak, so we wanted lamb chops. So, she would make steak and lamb chops. And 25:00then, there were those who did not like lamb chops or steak, so she would make a hamburger. And then, for those who did not like that, they had to eat whatever was left over. I mean, there was a limit to what she would do. But, as I said, we didn't all eat together, so that she was in the kitchen, I think, from the morning until night. She was always doing something in the kitchen. And this is really what she loved. And the neighbors loved her. She was a very warm, understanding person and they would come to her with their problems and whatever. And she never really turned anyone away, even if she was tired or she was busy with her family. You could always knock on our door and -- my mother's name was Florence, and Florence would be there to talk to them. She was a very kind woman and I think, in a way, they complemented each other, 'cause my father -- not so much with the neighbors or that. I mean, he would acknowledge them, 26:00whatever. But he was not involved with them, but my mother was. And I think a lot of the neighbors sort of looked up to my mother, that she was married to someone who was at his level or whatever. My father was very dapper, also. He used to wear spats and walk with a cane and smoked a cigarette in a cigarette holder. And even when we tried to get him to stop smoking, he would still hold the cigarette holder in his mouth. We figured that -- well, that couldn't be as bad as smoking -- he smoked a lot. He smoked Pall Mall, I remember that, and those were the worst possible cigarettes you could smoke. And it's interesting that his children didn't smoke. I mean, one of my older sisters smoked for a while, but the rest of us did not smoke, maybe because we always saw my father with his cigarette. He was very dapper. When he used to come around the corner 27:00from the Grand Concourse to our street, we always knew he was coming because he was walking with his cane and his cigarette holder and his spats and he was really -- he was theatrical, in a way. He was very involved with Maurice Schwartz in the Yiddish theater and I guess maybe some of that rubbed off on him, too. But I think that that was the look of the day, that people -- that's the way they used to dress and that's the way they used to carry themselves. It as a very different era than it is today.

CW:Yeah.

HB:So, I have very wonderful memories of both my parents. A happy childhood. Can I say we never fought? Of course not. I mean, obviously we fought. But it was never to the point where I wanted to run away or I ever wanted to get even with 28:00them. It was never like that. I revered my parents. I just -- I think that I felt that I was the luckiest one of my friends because I had parents who were so devoted and so loving.

CW:Yeah. Can you talk about -- or were there other music or other --

HB:Yes.

CW:-- art --

HB:Yes, yes.

CW:-- in the family?

HB:We were all given piano lessons. It was something that you did. You didn't have a choice. You were just told you were going to take piano lessons. And I'm very glad now that I did because I love classical music, I listen to it all the time. We did -- it was a very culturally rich home. There were always books everywhere. (clears throat) Excuse me -- in all lang-- in Yiddish and English. The Russian, I don't think any of us read. But I have a niece from my older sister who does read Russian. And she was over in Russia, I think, during one of 29:00her semesters abroad or something. And she actually translated one of my father's Russian poems into English. So, Russian did play a part somewhere in the family, even though not of his own children, but one of his grandchildren. We loved music. My father, in particular, he loved music. My mother had a beautiful singing voice. She would hum tunes all the time. And I remember that we used to sing a lot of Yiddish songs that I learned in Yiddish school. And then, we would come home -- I would come home and we would start singing them. And I guess my mother remembered some of them from her own childhood. So, she would sing with me and then maybe one of my other sisters would sing along. One of my fondest memories of my father was when Hanukkah came, we were never too old to play dreidel. And I remember every Hanukkah, my other would make 30:00wonderful potato latkes and my father would sit us down after dinner and we would play on the kitchen table. We would play with the dreidel. And no matter how old we were, we always played for money and it was so much fun because it was a family thing to do. I think we played that probably until I left home in my twenties. It was just a lot of fun and it was a family gathering type of thing. My two eldest siblings were already out of the house and I think probably my middle sister was married by then. So, at that time, it was just my brother and myself, but we still loved it. We would look forward to it, playing dreidel with dad.

CW:Yeah. So, were there -- was there any religious component to your house?

HB:It was much more of a cultural tradition rather than religion. My father, I 31:00don't think that -- in my knowledge, I don't ever remember him going to a temple. My mother did light candles on Friday night. She went to temple when there were holidays and I would sort of tag along with her. But we did not go to Hebrew school. I went to Yiddish school. My older sisters both went to Yiddish school. Both my brothers were bar mitzvahed, but there was not real religion in our home. I think my parents felt that -- I mean, we were all Jewish, but I think that my parents wanted us to have more of a cultural background than a religious background.

CW:And was there a sense of politics in the home?

HB:Yeah. My father had been a staunch communist when he first came to America 32:00and started writing. He wrote for the "Freiheit," which was the communist Yiddish newspaper, and then went completely to the opposite side, became very conservative, totally against communism and was actually beaten up very badly by the Communist Party, members of the Communist Party, which -- I think my brother will probably be able to tell you more about that -- because he turned against them. Were we the kind of people that would go to parades or stuff like that? Not to my knowledge. I don't ever remember doing that. But I know my father wrote a great deal against communism. He exposed a lot about it that he knew from having been part of the Party and whatever and became a great supporter of 33:00Boris Pasternak, who he did communicate with in support of Pasternak's views. There was politics, but as young children, we didn't speak that much -- it was only what I heard as opposed to what I really had firsthand knowledge of.

CW:Yeah. So, you've mentioned that you went to summer camp?

HB:Yes. We went to -- when I was very little -- and this, I don't remember at all -- we went to Camp Kinder Ring, which was the summer home of the Workmen's Circle. And I remember that we -- my mother told us that we went there for a couple of summers. My most vivid recollection was going to the summer home of the Farband, which was the Labor Zionist organization. We went there every year from about the time I was maybe five until it closed. It closed down in the 34:00'70s. It was a home away from home for us. My mother would take four of her children. I don't think my older brother went at that point. Four of her children -- every summer, we went. A taxi driver from our apartment building loaded us up in his taxi and we went up there for about five or six weeks. And it was heaven. It was some of the happiest times of my life. We went up there, there was an adult side and a children's camp. The children's cap was Kinderwelt and that was about five or six hundred children. And the adult side, where we stayed as a family, was called Unser Camp. And we just loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And my dad didn't come up with us. Occasionally, he would come up for a weekend or something 'cause he was working full time. So, he -- it was 35:00just my mother and four of her children, like mother hen and her little chickadees. And it was a very happy time for us. My last summer there was -- I worked as a counselor. I finally went there as a counselor, to Kinderwelt, and I enjoyed it immensely. I just -- it was truly a home away from home. It was very warm, nurturing, and loving.

CW:And what did you do there? What were --

HB:You mean in Unser Camp?

CW:Yeah.

HB:Well, there were activities all day long. I mean, they had all the sports that you would want. They had tennis and shuffleboard and swimming and rowing and all sorts of things like that. And the evening, they would have people performing. One night, there was movie night and one night there was -- on the weekends, mostly, they had people like Mina Bern and Ben Bonus -- were very well-known in the Yiddish theater and they spent a number of summers up there. 36:00Zvee Scooler was up there, another man from the Yiddish theater. And it was just a very happy place. I mean, I can't think of negative things to say. Sometimes, we would join in some of the activities of the campers if they allowed us to come over for it. Friday night was wonderful, 'cause the kids used to walk into the dining hall, all dressed in white and singing. And so, you had four or five hundred children marching in. And it was just such a happy time in my life. It was -- I looked forward to it. I couldn't wait for every summer to come. And let me tell you, at the end of the summer, when we came up our street in the same cab that had driven us up there, I was so sad for days on end. It was like there, everything was wide open and beautiful. And then, I would come back to this street, a narrow street where we lived and it took me a long time to 37:00reacclimate myself. It was very happy and I still have friends who I met at camp who I still correspond with. So, it was a very happy time.

CW:So, I'm wondering if there were -- obviously important historical events during your father's career and if he talked about those?

HB:Yeah. One of the worst was the day that Kennedy was shot. And I used to teach, before I was -- well, I taught a long time after I was married. But when I first started teaching was in 1963, the year that Kennedy was shot. And I remember exactly where I was. I had gone home for lunch because I taught about seven blocks from where I lived. And my dad was sitting watching something on 38:00TV. The news used to be on from twelve to twelve-thirty and he was sitting and watching the news. And I came in and had my lunch and I went back to school and not a half an hour later was when he was shot. And I remember saying, "But I was just watching him on television and my daddy was sitting there!" And, I mean, I couldn't believe it. It was a very, very, very difficult time. And I remember coming home from school and just crying with my father and mother and saying, "What happened to our world?" I mean, that was the worst thing that had happened in my life at that time. I mean, World War II was very bad, but I was a very little girl. I don't remember -- I do remember D-Day 'cause I was a little bit older and I remember -- not D-Day. V-J Day, I think it was, the end of the war in Japan. And I remember being with my family then. But I think that was one of 39:00the worst things, the day Kennedy was shot. And also, when -- the Cuban Missile Crisis was also a very difficult time. And I remember running to my father and saying, "Daddy, are we going to die?" 'cause I was so frightened. Khrushchev was sending all these bombs or whatever to Cuba, which was so close to us. And so, I looked to my father, 'cause I felt that if anybody knew anything it was him, it's -- you look to people for guidance and you look to them for protection and I -- who else to go to but my father? And so, those historical events were very, very important in our -- in my life and certainly with my father. I'm trying to think if there was anything else that I remember. Not that I can think of. Those 40:00were the two main historical --

CW:Do you remember how they talked about World War II afterwards?

HB:That it was a very, very, very hard time and that people were just -- well, they were mortified by what happened. My father's sister remained in Russia. She never came to America. And I think that she lost one or both of her children in World War II, and I know that my father corresponded with my aunt afterwards and he would tell us what she wrote about what Russia was like then and what had happened to her own children. But I don't remember my parents really sitting down and talking about World War II, other than to say that it was a very grave, very bad time. Most -- my mother's whole family was in America. So, it wasn't 41:00that they lost anyone there. And most of my father's family was here, except for this one sister. But yeah, it was a very bad time.

CW:So, what was it like going through school, your educational journey?

HB:I loved school. I thrived on school. I mean, I loved going, I loved doing my homework, which I know most kids do not. But I loved it. I mean, it was -- I loved learning. And my parents never put pressure on us. And it's funny, 'cause I was discussing this just the other day with someone about how parents nowadays, they want to be so involved in the school system now. And my parents were not. They really were not. Of course, they wanted us to go to school and 42:00they definitely were proud of us. But I remember that when my mother used to go in to see the teachers on open school night -- my dad, I don't think, ever went, but my mother did. And when she walked in, the teachers would say, Why are you here? You know how your children -- and that's what -- the way they did -- and my mother said, "That doesn't matter. I still want to see and know that they're doing" -- whatever, and they said, Well, look at their report card. But I do remember that education was very important to my parents. And at one point, when I graduated from high school, very few of my friends went away to school. That was the early -- the late '50s, early '60s. And girls didn't really go, although my older sister did. My older sister started at Barnard and in those days, if you lived in New York, you could not live at the college. They were very -- they 43:00only wanted out-of-towners to live -- they probably didn't have the room, excuse me, for New Yorkers to live there. So, after her second year, she said, "I'm not going there anymore." She used to ride her bicycle from where we lived down to Barnard. And my older brother had gone to Columbia for all his studies. So, that school was sort of ingrained in us, but -- so, my older sister went out to the University of Chicago and got all her degrees out there and stayed there. She's still there. She's there about sixty years or close to it, maybe fifty-five. But anyway, she's been out there. But I remember I talked about maybe going away to school. And they didn't say I couldn't go, but I knew that they really didn't want me to go far away. So, I had sort of delusions of grandeur of going out to the University of Wisconsin or to even Berkeley and I knew that I would never do 44:00that. I mean, I was a homebody and I knew that it would be very hard for me to go that far away. So, I did stay in New York and went to CCNY for my degrees. And, in retrospect, I was very happy that I went there because I felt that I got a really outstanding education. And I don't know if my parents at that point could have afforded to send me away to school. Money was not easily come by, and even though it was certainly a lot less expensive than it is today, it still costs money to go to a school, even -- Wisconsin was a state -- I think it was a state school. But if you lived out of state, you had to pay. So, I stayed in New York and I went to CCNY and I was very happy there. And I think my parents were pleased with the education that I got. I know that they really didn't want their children to go too far from home. My older brother graduated from high school 45:00when he was fifteen and he got into Harvard. And they would not let him go, 'cause he was too young. So, he stayed in New York and started Columbia when he was sixteen. They had that kind of influence on us. It wasn't that they said, No, you can't go, but they made you feel (laughs) that maybe it wasn't such a great idea. They were very, very caring parents. Very caring parents. That -- I think besides my father's writing, that was the most important thing in his life, were his children. And certainly for my mother. I mean, she just doted on her children until the very end.

CW:So, how did that continue into your young adulthood, your relationship with your parents?

HB:Well, I lived at home until the day I got married. I would not leave home, even when all my friends were moving to their own apartments. I said, "There's no reason for me to. I'm happy at home. My parents don't stand over me with a 46:00whip and say, 'You have to be home at this time,'" or -- they knew me. They knew that they could trust me and that I was a -- more or less of a sensible young woman and I could do that. So, I stayed at home until I got married and I was -- in retrospect, again, I'll say this. I was very happy because my dad died shortly after I got married. And so, at least I had those extra years of living in the house with him and knowing that I was there. At that time, only my brother and I were home and the rest were out. They were married and away. But I had a very, very close relationship with both of them. My dad, I wrote to him when I was living in Paris. I would call them on the phone and speak to them. My father was the president, I think, of the Penn Center of New York. And I know 47:00that at times, he would take me to some of the events -- again, maybe to show me off or maybe because I spoke Yiddish enough to understand who I was talking to. He wanted to show me off and he knew that I would enjoy that. He was a very special man, it's -- I know I keep saying this over and over. I don't have any negative feelings about my father or my mother. I just felt that they would -- they did the very best and more that parents could do given the circumstances they lived in. I mean, raising five children the way they did, giving us piano lessons, giving us summers away, giving us really nice clothing, whatever, they -- everything was really for their children and they did everything possible to 48:00make our lives very happy. And I think if you spoke to any of my siblings, they would have said the same thing.

CW:When you were married, how did that sort of translate your -- what you learned from your parents into your own experience?

HB:Well, my parents loved my husband. They loved him, I think, long before I did. They loved him. They really wanted me to marry him. And my husband was a journalist, as well. And I think what I tried to do in my life was to try to carry over the foundation of what my parents taught me. I tried to give my children the kind of education that I had. I tried to be very much involved in their lives. Unfortunately, my husband died when my children were very small, so 49:00that they didn't have the benefit of having their father with them into their twenties. But I think that we always kept the memory of my father alive, and my mother died many years after my father. And I think that's what I've tried to do with my own husband. I've kept pictures of him around, 'cause my son was only a year and a half old when my husband died. And so, he really doesn't have very specific memories of him. And yet, if you talk to him, he's very much involved and knows exactly where my husband was, what he did, and we kept his memory very much alive. And I'm very happy that we did. And I think that was instilled in me by both my parents because they always talked -- well, my father more so because I didn't know his family very well. As I said, my grandparents died when I was 50:00very small. My mother's mother lived into her nineties and I was very close with her. She lived across the street from us, so I would come home from school, go into my house, then go right up to my grandmother. But my father, no, not his family, 'cause I didn't know them that well. But I think that the foundations of family and caring and education and culture were very much instilled in us. And I tried to do the same thing to my children -- for my children. Sometimes you're lucky and it takes and sometimes it doesn't. They go off into their own world and whatever. But I think eventually, they do come back. I think that they know that it's there, and if they want it they can pick up on it, and if it's not there, if they don't want to pick up on it, they won't.

CW:So, how did you try to pass on these values?

HB:Well, I think that my children knew how important family was to me. And I think in the case of my daughter, she's very attached to our little immediate family: my son, my daughter, and myself. And I think that she values family very, very much. My son lives very far away in California. But in his own way, he's still very, very attached. I didn't even know this: this would have been the seventieth birthday of my husband, on Monday, this past Monday. And my son put on Facebook -- so, I'm not computer literate, so I don't do any of that. But my daughter told me this: she said he put on Facebook, "Happy seventieth birthday, dad. I'm sorry you're not here with us. We would've loved to see you," or something to that effect, which means that after all these years, it's still 52:00very deep in his feeling. My daughter, without a doubt. I mean, she's -- you mention her father and she starts crying. And, I mean, there were certain things -- we always went to the cemetery. I always lit candles for him, even though I'm not religious. But this is what I saw that my mother did. My mother lit candles for yortsayts [anniversaries of death]. I still do. I do it for my mother-in-law, I do it for my father-in-law, who I never knew. These are things that I learned as a child that were very important to me. I hope they're important to my children. My son, I doubt if he'll light yortsayt candles for anyone. But he said something yesterday. He said, "Mom, when is Hanukkah?" And I looked it up on my calendar and I told him. And he said, "I'm going out to buy a menorah." And I was very pleased. You cannot push him. He will do it if he wants to. When I went out there this -- I was out there about four or five weeks ago 53:00and he said to me, "I would like you to make potato pancakes for me." Both my mother and my mother-in-law made outstanding potato latkes and that was a tradition. When my mother was no longer alive, my mother-in-law was always making them for us. When I came out there, he said, "Mom, don't forget to bring your recipe. I want it." So, I wrote it down. I took a little bit of what my mother-in-law did, I took a little bit of what my mother did, and I put it together and I made them potato pancakes. Now, his girlfriend's not Jewish and I did not know how she would react. They loved it. (laughs) He said, "I can't wait to make them again." So, there is this core feeling for Jewish culture and Jewish tradition. Is he religious? Does he go to temple? No. He did fast on Yom Kippur, which I respect, I -- coming from a home that did not act that way -- I 54:00mean, as I said, I don't ever remember my father going to temple. My mother went to say Yizkor. My mother went on holidays. I go on holidays. I go to all the holidays because I feel good being there. My siblings, not very much. Not very much. My older brother was an atheist. As a scientist, he was an atheist. And yet, he came to every bar mitzvah, every bat mitzvah. He never looked away from what he was brought up with. His own children, even though he was married to a Jewish woman, his two sons were not bar mitzvahed. But that's what he believed and that's what his wife believed. But the foundation was there. It wasn't that it was there and then we all cut it off. Never, never. And I would hope my children wouldn't, either. If my son will light a menorah and make potato 55:00pancakes and fast on Yom Kippur, I feel that I've done something, that he wants to keep up with his history, with his ancestors, and I can't fault him for that. My daughter does go to services with me and she'll stay for about an hour and then she's out the door. But that's her way of doing it. And you can't fault someone. Religion is a very personal thing. I would never tell someone that they have to or not have to because I know how I feel. The one thing that I'm not happy about is that my son's girlfriend is not Jewish and I'm upset about it becau-- not so much for the two of them, but for the children that are born. And then, they have to make a decision -- which one do you want to follow? And I don't think -- I think with all the other problems in the world today, that's hard enough. But you know what? There's nothing I can do about it if he chooses 56:00to marry her. And he said that they -- neither of them believe in any God. They believe there is a God, but they don't believe that there's a Christ or whatever else they -- so, I said, "Okay, we'll see." But that's the way it was. My older sister married out of her religion. My parents did not object. They happened to be very fond of who she married and that wound up in a divorce. So, they didn't say anything. They just -- maybe they would have liked her to marry someone Jewish. But if she didn't, she didn't. So, religion was not that strong in our family, in following the rules. We had seders every year. We, as I said, we celebrated Hanukkah. Those were the two basic holidays. The other ones, not that important.

CW:And were there special ways that your family celebrated these holidays?

HB:Well, the seders, yes. We had two big seders at our house and my father always had some friends there or some people who may not have had a place to go, and they came. And we -- this is very interesting: everyone else did the Hebrew Haggadah and we did a Yiddish Haggadah, which was compliments of the Workmen's Circle. And I went to a third seder every year at the Waldorf-Astoria run by the Workmen's Circle, and I appeared in it many times when I was in mitlshul [high school], their high school, because we were the ones who did the seder for the people who were there. And those were some of the very happy memories of my middle years, because I could say that I did three seders and you only do two. And it's funny now when I go to a seder, one of the seders I go to is to my 58:00husband's relative who is a rabbi, a Conservative rabbi, and I sort of brought some of the Yiddishkayt to that. And now, they ask the questions -- I mean, most of it is done in Hebrew, reading and everything, but they now ask the questions in about five or six languages, one of which is Yiddish. Steve, the rabbi, always has me talk about what it was like going to a seder that was done in Yiddish and everything. And so, I feel that it's sort of like a cycle, that I'm still carrying on what I was taught as a child. But our seder was definitely in Yiddish. Very little of it was done in Hebrew, if at all.

CW:So, what role does Yiddish play in your life?

HB:Now?

CW:Now.

HB:Not as much as it should. I have gone -- I still go to performances, if they're around, that interest me. There was a cantor at the Reform temple where 59:00I live, which I don't belong to, but that was a Reform temple that had a cantor who introduced Yiddish and Yiddish classes there. And I went to several of the things that he -- events that he had. Unfortunately, he passed away not too long ago. And so, they don't carry through. But they have Yiddish performances up in Westchester and I try to go to them. Or if the Folksbiene is doing something that I would like to see -- I've seen Mandy Patinkin in person doing his whole mame-loshn [mother tongue, i.e. Yiddish] and everything. I was at the Jewish Museum yesterday, in New York. That wasn't really Yiddish, although there was one article -- I went to a Harry Houdini exhibition, and one of the things that they had was an article in the "Forwards" from 19-- it must have been 1917 or 1920 of him doing one of his tricks. And I was able to read some of it, because 60:00a lot of it was very ripped -- not ripped, but sort of eroded. You couldn't see very much. And I tried to do things about -- maybe five or six years ago. It was the -- one of the anniversaries of my father's death. So, he's -- it might have been two years ago, because it will be forty-two years in January that he's gone. And Chana Mlotek did an article about my father in -- I think it was in "The Jewish Week." No, let me see. Or maybe it was translated into "The Jewish Week." She probably did it in the "Forwards" and someone told me about it. And I got it and I read it and I was very touched by it. I've also gone to 61:00performances of her son, who is wonderf-- I mean, and her husband, Yosef Mlotek was my teacher in mitlshul. I remember him. And I told that to Zalmen, the famous -- I went over to him after one of his performances at our temple and I said, "I really enjoyed it." And I said, "I just want to tell you that when your father came to America" -- because he came here not long after the war, his father. Zalmen must have been a little boy or maybe -- it was in the late '50s, I don't even know if he was born. I said, "Your father was one of my teachers in mitlshul," and he was so excite-- you could see his face lit up and he said, "Really?" I said, "Yeah, he was one of my favorites." And he's -- very humble man, very soft-spoken, and just a very pleasant teacher. So, I try to keep up with it that way. Doing this -- I mean, what better way to do it? I mean, I 62:00cannot tell you what seeing that this summer did for me. I mean, I could not stop talking about finding the Center and seeing my father's works here and just feeling that it will not go -- it will not disappear, that -- you know, everyone says, Oh, Yiddish is a dying language. And I say, "Don't say that." I say, "When I saw some of the young people coming out of Yiddish classes and I realized that, you know what? They're teaching Yiddish at some of the best universities in the world." I said, "It's not going to die. It's lasted a thousand years. It's not going to die." I studied Yiddish when I went to CCNY, my first year there. I took an advanced Yiddish class with Max Weinreich, who was the father of YIVO, actually. What a wonderful man. He was such a kindly, decent person. 63:00And I was thrilled that I was able to take a class with him. So, in my own way, Yiddish is very, very much a part of my life. I feel that I was blessed by having a wonderful father who was so immersed in Yiddish and Yiddish poetry and language, that I met some very, very wonderful people, and that I still have a very strong feeling for it. I mean, I may not practice it, I may not sit down and read the Yiddish paper every day. But I still feel it inside. It's a part of me. And I'm very -- I feel very blessed, having grown up in that home.

CW:Well, are there any stories that you specifically want to tell about your father?

HB:(pause) Other than the ones that I've told, I don't think -- I think my brother has 64:00-- (laughs) he has the list. And the reason that I wanted him, really, to come was because even though I have these memories -- and as I'm talking, I remember more things -- my brother remembers such specifics. And the time and the -- almost the minute that they happen. And when he tells me, I remember them. But if he didn't tell it to me, I didn't remember those at that time. So, that's what -- I thought the two of us together would really be able to present such a clear picture of a man that -- I'm sure people who knew him knew one side of him, his works and his talent. But we knew him on all sides. And I think it's 65:00very important to know someone, not only in their professional lives but to know what kind of a person they were to make them that way in their lives. Writing was a very major part of my father's life. I mean, he used to write until two, three, four o'clock in the morning. He had his own little study and he would sit at his typewriter. I still remember that, his Yiddish typewriter -- and type away with his cigarette holder out of his mouth. And we were almost getting up when he was going to sleep. And, as I said before, we always had to be quiet until he got up. And if the phone rang or something, we would almost shudder because we were afraid that it was going to wake him up. But they were happy memories. And I remember them and I laugh. "Oh, do you remember when daddy was sleeping and somebody would call?" Our house was a very rich house in many ways. 66:00We wanted for nothing. Money-wise, I'm sure we wanted more than we had. But we never felt that we wanted more because there was so much else that we had that other people did not have. So, it was a very happy time in my life. I wish I was still there. (laughs) But time marches on. It waits for no one.

CW:Yeah. What do you think he really taught you?

HB:He taught me to appreciate a lot of culture. He taught me to appreciate art. He taught me to appreciate literature. I think one of the reasons is he would make everything so alive because he knew so many of the people. And he would tell a story -- he, as my brother will tell you about Marc Chagall, I felt that 67:00he was in my house, that I knew him well. He would talk about his trips, when he went to Israel, I think the first time. And he was sitting with David Ben-Gurion. And here he's telling me and I'm saying, "David Ben-Gurion? The president of Israel?" These are things that you read about that you wish -- oh, my God! My father was with him and through him, I felt that I knew him. And I think that this kind of background and experience -- you cannot buy. People may have a lot of money, but they can't buy this kind of thing happening. And I lived it through my father. I mean, he would tell us these stories like they were everyday occurrences. And yet, to me, they were history, like the night at the Winter Palace. How many people could say that their fathers were there the 68:00night of the Winter Palace. I wasn't even sure that I knew the Winter Palace existed at that time. But once he told me and I studied more history, I learned the importance of it. I think my father was very happy to have come to America. I think that even though he started out being in the Communist Party and whatever, which so many people at that time did, I think he learned very, very early how dangerous it was and that he wrote so much against it for the rest of his life. He really became a staunch anti-communist. And I remember having discussions with him, him telling me that it was the hope of the world and Marxism and Leninism and that -- how it all turned out to be for naught and that what they did to the people and how so many millions were killed. And it was a 69:00very difficult time for -- certainly for Jewish people, and it's -- for many other people who died needlessly. But I really felt that my father made everything come to life for us because he loved telling the stories. He loved our questioning him. It wasn't just a one-sided thing. I mean, he would tell the story and then we would ask him things and then he would go on and tell us other things, which led into other things. And, I mean, to me, I was getting a history lesson almost every time I sat and spoke with my father. No matter how old I was, I always felt that I was learning something new. And those are the memories that I will keep with me until I die because they were so wonderful.

CW:Well, I guess I was wondering if he kept in touch with history, with what was 70:00going on in the Soviet Union?

HB:As I said, with Boris Pasternak, he did write to him when Pasternak was being attacked for his attack on -- what was it? On Marxism, I guess it was, or Leninism, my father did write to Boris Pasternak. And I remember him sitting and waiting for letters to come from Pasternak. And they did not come for many, many years. And I think, towards the end of my father's life -- Pasternak died ten years before my father or nine years before him. Somewhere in that period of time before Pasternak died, he did hear from him, I believe. And I remember talking to my father because I guess he became not bitter, but he felt that he 71:00wanted to hear from him, to hear what he was going to say. And I'm sure that the -- it was that the mail was not coming through. I mean, you had to know then that it wasn't -- and the same thing with his sister. He would wait for letters from her from the Soviet Union and they were few and far between. And I remember talking to him and saying, "Daddy, I'm sure that a lot of it has to do with the fact that the Soviets are not letting the mail go through," and he agreed with me. But I think that he felt that the vision that they had at the time of the revolution was a wonderful vision. But I think he realized very soon that it was only a vision and that it was never going to come to fruition the way people thought it was. Unfortunately, my father didn't live to see the lifting of the 72:00Iron Curtain. He died a number of years before. But I think that would have given him a sense of -- maybe gratitude -- or he would feel that maybe the people finally realized that what they were living under, certainly under Stalin, was as bad as living under Hitler. But what I did get a lot from my father was I was able to see what life was like over there. I mean, don't forget, I grew up in New York. I was born in New York, I grew up here. My life did not resemble my father's early life at all. I mean, if -- it was like two ends of the spectrum. I had all the freedoms that you could ever want and he had very few of them. But he rose to the degree that he wanted to get away from it. That's why, after his father left to come here the first time, he followed suit, 73:00at the age of fourteen. He left Russia and went on -- I think it was a steamer, he told us. I said, "Daddy, you were fourteen and you were going to a new world and you didn't know anybody there?" He didn't. I mean, how many people at fourteen would do that today? I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it at twenty-four. But he had this sense of adventure and he wanted to get away from what was happening there. He was fourteen in 1911. No, it couldn't have been. He was fourteen. Maybe he was seventeen, 'cause -- no, 'cause he went back and he fought in -- my brother would probably remember more than -- the years that -- the age. He just did that. He wanted to see what America was like. He wanted to see his father. His father up and left him and came here for a better life and then was going to 74:00send for them. But that didn't make my father feel a hell of a lot better. So, he pursued what he wanted. He didn't let anything stand in his way. And for that, you have to admire his courage. I certainly do.

CW:Yeah. Well, I'd like to just, as a closing, ask you if you have any -- are there any times in your life that you've really thought of him?

HB:Very often. Every January 22nd, which was the -- his date of death, I become very melancholy. I just -- even if I don't say anything, it's very painful for me inside. I just remember him. I remember going to the hospital and seeing him, practically on his deathbed, and remembering the wonderful years that I had with 75:00him and all the things that we did and all the things he taught me and told me. And I think about him a lot. I can see something and I'll say, "I remember when my father told me about these things." I remember, not too many years ago, in -- years ago, I went to see the play "Golda" in New York with Tovah Feldshuh. And she was talking about the whole thing of the history of how she went to speak to -- I guess it was Ben-Gurion at that time -- and she was talking a lot about the history of the wars and everything. And I remember my father telling me stories of that. So, there are things that will suddenly make me think of him. If I go to something in Yiddish or they play a song in Yiddish, I'll think of my father because I equate the two of them. I mean, my whole Yiddish background was my father. I mean, my mother contributed, but my mother wasn't the one who spoke to 76:00me in Yiddish. My mother wasn't the one who introduced me to Yiddish literature or things like that. That was my father. So, I do think of him very, very often. And when Hanukkah comes around, forget it. I say to my children, certainly when they were younger, I'll say, "We're going to sit down and play dreidel the way I used to play with grandpa." And they -- for many years, they did. Now they're both out of the house, so they don't. But I remember that. They -- I would do it with them every year because that was what I was brought up with. And lighting the Hanukkah candles, I still do that. I do have a lot of memories of -- and he was a great father. He was very loving and devoted to us. Very loving and devoted. So, that's --

CW:Yeah. Do you have any advice for future generations?

HB:To love and honor your parents, and even if you don't think they know anything, they know a lot more than you know. And they have the benefit of experience. And they have the benefit of knowing -- maybe even if you don't think it's right at the time, they know, because they probably lived through something very similar, and maybe they were burned and they don't want you to be burned. I think that the wisdom of our parents and grandparents is something that we should never forget. We may not agree with them but they knew an awful lot. And they didn't get it from the computer and they didn't get it from all the other things today. They got it from here and they got it from experience 78:00and I think that's the most important thing. I know that everybody loves these things like we're doing now and everything and there's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't take away from having personal relationships with people. If you have grandparents or you have parents who may even be elderly, hold onto them. Hold onto their knowledge, hold onto their experience, because one day, you can make very good use of it.

CW:That's wonderful.

HB:Thank you.

CW:Thank you so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]