MINNA BARRETT ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is April 9th, 2016. I'm here in New York City at the Museum of the City of New York with Minna Barrett. 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?

MINNA BARRETT:Yes.

CW:Thanks. So, I'd like to start with what you know about your family background in Europe. Do you know where your family came from?

MB:I know that my grandfather, who we're going to talk about today, came from Iași, Romania. I don't know where my grandma came from. I remember it as being from Hungary, but I don't know where. Maybe it was Budapest, but I'm not sure where. They must have met somewhere in Europe when he was on the road acting, 1:00because in his biography it talks about him coming from Iași, Romania, and then it talks about while he was in Europe, he got married. And I know who he married (laughs) because it was my grandmother. And, I'm almost positive she was born in Hungary. So, somewhere in his acting travels, he must have met her and been smitten by her and married her.

CW:And what was your grandfather's name?

MB:My grandfather, his actual name was David. I don't know what it was in Yiddish. I imagine it was "Dov," or "David," or "Davoud" some sort. Baratz. B-A-R-A-T-Z.

CW:And what do you know about his early life?

MB:I know that he was at the -- his father was a tinsmith. His grandfather sent his older sisters to the United States. I don't know how old they were when they came, but they were already here when David was either very young or just before 2:00he was born. When he was ten, his father sent him to the United States to be with his sisters. But I think the motivation was probably to put him in American public school, because here he came and he went to elementary school. I don't know if he went further than that. He was schooled in a yeshiva, of course, I think from a very young age, actually. And he was -- I know that I was told about him, but he was fluent in so many languages because, of course, he was an actor and he traveled around. So, he would have to be. He traveled all over the world. So, I think it must be the case that my tinsmith great-grandfather cared a lot that David was educated, both in the traditional -- they were Orthodox, that I know -- both in the traditional orthodoxy, heavily in the Yiddish culture, obviously, and in English, in American English. I think he obviously 3:00wanted his kids to be Americanized, or he would never have sent the girls over. I mean, my grandpa was born in 19-- in 1879. That's early. The women were sent over either right after that or at about that time. So, that's pretty incredible. And they came alone.

CW:Do you have a sense of what life was like in his hometown?

MB:Well, I only do in the sense that it was a shteytl [small Eastern European town with a Jewish community]. It was poor. Clearly, my great-grandfather must have had some money if he -- I don't know if he was a handeler or a good businessman, but he couldn't -- clearly not have sent his children over if he didn't have something to send them over with. There must have been family here. That, I don't know. I don't know too much about that side of the family in terms of who was invested here already, because that's traditionally how it worked. 4:00You didn't really send your kids over completely alone. There was family, there were brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and people came over to be with them. But I don't know too much about that side of the family. They didn't talk about that a whole lot. But I do know that Iași, Romania had to be poor, that my grandfather had to come from humble beginnings. As with all Eastern European Jews -- or most, let's say, I won't say all, but most -- people were struggling, and they were kept out of the traditional cultures and the traditional economies. So, they were handling with each other. I do know that my father's side of the family, as I grew up, was not as well-to-do originally as my mom's side. Eventually, they came and they made it and they did very well. But I do remember that, that when my mother met my father, my mother's father and mother were a bit concerned, because my -- by that time, my grandfather had died and my father was essentially being raised by his mom and his two older brothers, who 5:00I'll talk about later. And, they didn't have a lot of money. They were really struggling. And I think that was of concern to my grandfather, not because he didn't love my father, but because he didn't want my mom to have to struggle.

CW:So, do you know how he got into the theater, into acting?

MB:He must have had an interest in it because his father sent him here to be with his sisters. And, his sister's family -- so, their extended family -- I would imagine through one of the husbands, but I don't know if this is true or not -- they introduced him to the theater, and I guess he liked it and he wanted to go into it. Maybe he saw it as something that was exciting, or maybe he was literate in that way. I mean, clearly education and culture was really important to them. And that I do remember, because that side of the family -- my mom's side, too, but that side of the family was heavily invested in Yiddish culture. Not just the music, but the literature, that I remember really well growing up 6:00with my aunt and my uncle and my grandmother. So, there must have been some kind of influence on my grandfather to be highly literate and conscious of the culture, not just of the religion and the religious traditions. And maybe he really liked it. I didn't meet him. He died in 1931 and I was born in 1948. So, everything for me is hearsay. It's only how I remember things being told to me.

CW:So, then he went back to Europe after a while?

MB:Then he went back to Europe. Perhaps the acting bug or perhaps something happened in the family and he went back, probably as a -- looking at the history, it looks to me like about nineteen, he went back and he was already connected here, though, to the Yiddish theater. He had already been involved in small parts and moving around the United States with various -- with Thomashefsky and various people. I don't know if Adler, but -- yes, Celia Adler. 7:00So, clearly, he had already been connected in some way and either he went back to act, 'cause they sent him back to do something back there with the landsmen [fellow countrymen], or he -- maybe his dad needed him. I don't know the answer to that.

CW:And so, what do you know about his career? Where, who --

MB:I know that his career was -- first of all, we were told when we were kids that he was illustrious. I don't see him here, so I don't know (laughs) how illustrious he really was. Makes me think, Was he really that illustrious? I know that he was trained by Boris Thomashefsky and he worked with him, 'cause all of the literature about him that's printed says that he did and says that he was with Celia Adler. So, he must have had some connection in some way and he was -- when he died, he died in the theater in New York. I don't know if it was the Second Avenue or the National Theatre or the Public Theatre. We could look that up. He died in a death scene while reciting the Hunchback. And it was 8:00apparently so well-received -- it was 1931 -- it was so well-received, everyone gave him a standing ovation and he never got up. And the sad part of that, the historical part for me as a family member, as a child, later as a grandchild, was that my father happened to be there witnessing it and he was twelve years old. It was right before his bar mitzvah. And in some ways, I don't think my father ever recovered emotionally. I think now I understand, as a psychologist, that must have been post-traumatic stress disorder for him. And the legacy of that was quite a problem for us as children. I don't think that my grandfather would have been too happy about the way that the post-traumatic stress disorder played out with my father, because he really became unraveled in many ways. You wouldn't know -- maybe looking at it on the outside, he looked like a jovial, happy, great guy. But he was a really sad, overwhelmed man who came into 9:00parenthood without -- really not armed. But, the question that you asked is --

CW:About his career.

MB:About his career. What my aunts and uncles used to tell us and what you can read when you read the literature, what it says is he traveled all over the world. He was a guest -- there must have -- and this makes me realize how broad-spread the Jewish community must have been all over the world, way before the Nazi diaspora. Way before the Nazi diaspora. I didn't know that. If you look around, you see, in 1923, he was in Argentina and then he was in Brazil. In Brazil! In Brasilia, before it even really existed. So, there must have been a core of people there who were demanding that culture and that -- he traveled all over Europe. He went to Germany. He was there when World War I broke out, and that sent him back to the United States. And then, he was there afterwards. And 10:00he was in Philadelphia a lot. There was a National Theatre or some wing of the National Theatre in Philadelphia, as I understand it. And that's interesting for me, because my dad was born in Pennsy Hospital in Philadelphia. Many, many, many, many, many years later, my grandson was born in Pennsy in Philadelphia, and I had that sense of -- and Pennsy's still very old, and my grandson was born in the old wing. It's the first women's hospital in America. It was founded by Ben Franklin. And there I was, waiting for my grandson to be put into my arms, thinking about how my dad had been born in Philadelphia, because that tradition in Philadelphia -- is a very large Jewish community in Philadelphia and it must also have been very tied to the Eastern European tradition. And so, Philadelphia is a city that's in my heart because of my dad's connection to it through my grandfather. So, that's what I know, that he traveled a lot and he was in high 11:00demand to travel or he wouldn't have. I mean, if he didn't think that he was going to make a living and if there wasn't going to be an audience, I can't imagine why he would have gone. But I do remember that, and I remember my father talking about traveling because my grandmother would send my dad with my grandfather when he was very little. And my father remembers being in hotel rooms by himself. Can you imagine this today? My grandfather would have to go off and do an evening performance. What was he going to do with the little boy? Left him in the hotel by himself. And my father had -- he said it was a corkscrew -- I don't know if his memory is accurate -- with a piece of string and he would pull the corkscrew around the bed ticking like a train track kind of thing until -- waiting for his father to come back. Now, I don't know how accurate that is, but I do know that that is something my father told me when I was young. And now, I think he was talking to me -- actually, I was probably 12:00complaining about not having a toy and he said, "Let me tell you about not having toys." (laughs) And that was the story that came out, that his memory of being with his father, traveling with his dad -- and I'm thinking, Was that exciting for my father? Or was that a hardship for him? I don't know. Was that a problem for my grandfather? He has this -- going to do his work, and he's got his little son he's got to take care of. I don't know the answer to that, and I don't know if it's accurate that there wasn't someone else with him.

CW:And this was to South America, this travel?

MB:This was in the American cities and it was probably around 19-- my dad was born in 1918, so I'm thinking it was between 1922, maybe, and '24 or '25, because I don't think my grandmother would have pulled him out of school all that much, but maybe she did. Maybe she did.

CW:Do you know what kind of roles he was known for?

MB:I vaguely remember King Lear. And he certainly was the Hunchback. I remember them talking about something called the "Dubdzhik." And the "Dubdzhik" is about a spirit that comes. It's a bad and evil spirit that comes to visit a family. And, the father of that family is told that something terrible's going to happen. And I can't remember whether it does happen or it doesn't happen. But I remember that that's a play that was attached to him. And other than that, I mean, I remember that I was told that Shakespeare was done in Yiddish, and he played those parts, and that Sholem Aleiechem -- that's what comes to mind for me. But because I really wasn't there, I wasn't alive, and the stories were transferred to me when I was young, I don't have a lot of memory of all the 14:00nuances about his life and what he did. I just know that he was presented to us as larger than life, and that the cultural influence on that side of the family was strongly the Yiddish culture, whereas on my mom's side of the family -- yes, and we did the religious ceremonies, but it was very agnostic, highly assimilated and Americanized on my mom's side. I mean, we knew we were Jewish. We knew that we had come from Eastern Europe. We knew that my grandparents had come from Trembowla, Ukraine, Poland-Ukraine at the time. I knew that about my grandmother and grandfather, on that side. But, when we were with my dad's side of the family, the universal conversation was about entertainment. It was about transitioning and crossing over and who did and who didn't. I can't remember if I met Paul Muni. I don't know if I met Paul Muni, but every actor in the second 15:00generation, all of the Jewish comedians who became American comedians, I met every one of them as a kid. Every one of them. Billy Sands and Phil Silvers. And Phil Silvers was like an uncle to me, because my Uncle Marty, the son of David Baratz, he went into acting and he was in the Yiddish theater, as well. He was a member of the Hebrew Union, the acting union. He also died onstage, acting, from a heart attack when he was forty-five, in 1950. But those stories are very close to me and the people around that culture who also grew out of the Yiddish theater, their aunts, their uncles, their cousins, their brothers were in the business, they all came to my aunt and uncle's house. My aunt and uncle lived at Seventy-Second and Central Park West. They lived right next to the Olcott in a small apartment building, a beautiful apartment, with my grandmother, the wife 16:00of David Baratz. So, my grandmother Bertha. And she was a magnificent human. She did all of this Hungarian cooking and baking and she bought --

CW:Like what?

MB:She made lung stew and ptcha [dish made from jellied calves' feet] and gefilte fish with the fish in the tub, and she was just -- and cookies, and she was constantly -- and because she cooked for that grandfather, we grew up in Romanian food culture. Many years later, my husband and I -- my husband passed, too, but he was a chemist, a professor of chemistry, and we -- he would take sabbatical in France, and one year we were in France, on sabbatical, and we decided we would travel through Eastern Europe to see if we could find out where all of our parents had come from. And we stopped in Romania, in Timișoara, which is near Iași, and we went into a workers' cafeteria, and there, Christianized, taken out of its Orthodox kosher format was all the food my 17:00grandmother made. It was on the line, the pickles and the sour milk and the ptcha and the this and the that. And it was so familiar to me and I looked at my husband's head and I said to him, "Ted, this is really weird. Do you realize that all that food that we were raised with that we thought was Jewish is actually shteytl food that got converted from this culture into their culture? It was made kosher." And we kind of laughed about it, because, okay, this was made of pork but, no, when your grandmother made it, it was made of beef. But it was the same food. It was all this pickled stuff and shtshav [cold sorrel soup] and I just remember thinking to myself, Boy, my grandmother must have mastered Romanian culture from my grandfather. And I like this food -- is so familiar to me 'cause my grandmother made it. So, that transitional -- as you become 18:00assimilated into the United States, even though you hold onto that culture that you have, your grandparents pass it down to you, your parents pass it down to you, of course it gets converted and transferred and transmitted. You don't think of that happening in Europe. But it happens, because we're human. Humans all do the same thing. And it was such a high-profile thing. I remember thinking of it so much, that there was pastrami. I was thinking, Oh, pastrami, we used to eat that every week. But that's Jewish! (laughs)

CW:Can you tell me a little bit about that trip? Why did you want to go?

MB:Well, he and I, we were, at the time, fairly ardent socialists. It was the '60s and '70s in the United States. We lived in New York. He was a professor in the State University of New York and I was getting a PhD in psychology. So, we were radical. We wanted to see what socialist Europe was like, so we wanted to travel through Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And actually, in the year after we 19:00had come, one or two years after we had come, there was a massive crackdown by the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia, because Czechoslovakia was a progressive socialist country because it had its own culture and it wanted to have its own culture. And we were really interested in going into Czechoslovakia and seeing if the people would talk to us. My husband could speak German fluently because he was a chemist. So, he had to speak German and French, and he was fluent in both. And we went into Czechoslovakia and just hung out on the streets talking to people. Of course, they were anxious because there was secret police. We went out to Romania to talk to people. It was much harder in Romania 'cause of Ceaușescu. But we got to see that the Czechs were not happy with Soviet -- they weren't unhappy with the idea that they were socializing their economies and that they were sharing what they had and there was universal medicine. That wasn't the issue for them. It was the oppression of the political control. So, 20:00it was really interesting. So, we went for that reason, too. But we also wanted to go into Prague to see the -- there was a display in a Jewish temple in Prague of the art of the children of Theresienstadt in that -- I don't know whether it's still there, if it's a permanent -- is it, do you know? Yeah. So, we went in to go see that 'cause we hadn't seen it. So, we were sort of traveling along the Holocaust, socialist, Eastern European Iron Curtain countries to sort of see -- could we feel what it was like for our grandparents?

CW:And could you?

MB:I think to some extent. I think in Czechoslovakia and Hungary it was harder. In Romania, it was somewhat easier because Romania was much poorer and the living conditions of the average person were still very shteytl-like. Housing 21:00was really rustic and rugged. And so, you could get a real good feeling -- and now you're moving that forward, post-World War II, and realizing this is after development. This is essentially after people are out from under the influence of tsarist and German oppression, but they're still oppressed. And so, you could. And in Hungary, we saw something kind of interesting, too. You could get the feeling of the fascist police. In Hungary, the police were all too happy to pull you over and ticket you and intimidate you. So, you could feel that kind of feeling. But Czechoslovakia, you could see the coming of the liberation in Czechoslovakia and the desire of the people to be free within their own cultural quality, 'cause they were open and they were talking about all the stuff that they wanted to do. And you can see as it's played out that Czechoslovakia has, 22:00Czech Republic has this very rich quality about it. So, you could see -- and we went to Yugoslavia, too. That was also really interesting. And Yugoslavia, we ran into something fascinating. We were in, I believe, it was Dubrovnik. I don't think it was Split. We were in Dubrovnik and we were going to a national theater and -- the National Dance and Singing Theatre, and each little state, this state and that state came up and they gave their national dress thing and their singing. And in the middle of the performance, I want to say that it was when the people from -- trying to think. What province is Dubrovnik, what state? Wherever Split is -- no, it wasn't Split. Oh, it's killing me. There's Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia -- when the people from Croatia got up to dance, 23:00people pulled out machine guns. People in the audience pulled out guns and started shooting at the dancers, (laughs) the stage, and we all ducked under the stadium seats. And the national police came in and broke it all up and dispersed everybody. And, I remember Ted and I looking and going, Well, there goes Tito's Yugoslav-- well, that's over. And sure enough, the minute they got a chance not to have to be together, (imitates ripping sound)! They de-unified and became siloes. And that was fascinating. That was 1973, it the summer of 1973. We just looked at each other, sort of went, Hm. Tito's gone. The strongman is gone and Soviet influence in unifying anything is over. So, that was kind of fascinating. And I was all of twenty-four years old at the time, too. So, I wasn't all that 24:00conscious and developed in my thinking. But I remember the physical and emotional experiences of all these different places. Nonetheless, I want to say this 'cause it's important. People might actually see this at some point. Of course, when you're dealing with individual humans and you're connecting with individual people in countries, everyone's beautiful. I mean, you meet these great people wherever you go. These are national profiles. But on the individual level, you just meet incredible humans who are -- they're dying for openness and connectedness. I could not get the feeling of the pogrom, 'cause I'm thinking that my grandfather, my great-grandfather, David Baratz's father, may have sent him out in 1889 because pogroms. He might have been worried that his child was going to be -- his head was going to be split in the streets. That grandmother, Bertha Baratz, once -- she used to sleep over in our -- we were the only family 25:00members to have a suburban house. We moved out to suburbia, to east -- southern Long Island, to the south part of Long Island, south shore, in western Long Island, western Nassau County. And, she slept in my bedroom. Had a big bedroom, two beds. When she came to visit, she would stay for a week and she slept over. So, we were close. So, one day, we're sitting out on the porch overlooking the water. We lived across the street from a canal and we're looking at the water and sipping tea, a glezl [glass of] tea. "Minya," she used to say to me, call me Minya. "Minya, how 'bout a a glezl tea mit [with] sugar?" And she would put in the tea and sip it through with the lemon. And one day, she was sitting, she started to cry. And I said, "Well, why are you crying?" She said, "I'm having a memory of" -- I don't know if it was a cousin or an uncle or -- but it was a male member of the family, and she was having a memory of being outside the 26:00house and the Cossacks or whatever -- the tsar's army. It wasn't the Cossacks. It was the tsar's army -- came and cut the head off of the in-law, in the street. And she told me that story and, yeah, I was ten, nine. And I shook my head and it went in. But it didn't have any real referent to me 'cause I was living in the United States and -- Oceanside, Long Island. I mean, I knew about anti-Semitism. I had been beaten up as a child over it. I knew about anti-Semitism. But that was pretty graphic. And I remember how very upset she was. And then, she sort of calmed down and went back to whatever she was doing. And that really stayed with me and I think it made me a freedom fighter, those 27:00kinds of stories about the experiences that they had, that they kept to themselves, but then they popped out every once in a while. That made me heavily involved in justice in the United States, 'cause I identified so much with it, that you could just be a person out on the street, minding your own business, in your own little town, suffering from poverty, and then somebody comes along and decides they don't like the way you look, and they take your head off. And there's no justice after it. They just hang you from a tree. So, when I saw that in the South, when I grew up and that became part of our referent in the news, in the South of the United States, that really stuck with me.

CW:And you were saying when you were in Europe, you were trying to connect that to what you were seeing?

MB:When I was in Europe, I think we were just trying to see what was remaining of what we were told as children about the culture that our grandparents came from. Was there something that we could identify as the cultural experience that was passed down to us as the children of these immigrants? And to some extent, 28:00of course, there was. There were elements of it that were there, because the food was so -- you go into Budapest and you see all these cream puffs and stuff. And I remember my grandmother telling me about it, or talking about that kind of thing. And there you are, looking at it. It's hard not to have that connection to it, because there it is. You are so far remov-- I don't know how many generations away you are from the experience that your parents and their lineage came from, but we weren't that far away, you know what I mean? Our parents were the first generation. So, we were very close to it.

CW:Did you hear Yiddish growing up?

MB:I did.

CW:From who?

MB:I heard it -- well, my father was fluent. I think that my father told us that he had acted in the Jewish theater himself. He was little, he was really cute. Very fluent with language, my father. Probably like his dad. And I did -- my mom was fairly fluent. My mother spoke German and read German. She was very 29:00well-educated. She had a college education. She was a biology, phys. ed., health education major at NYU. Graduated and eventually got a master's degree in counseling psychology. So, my mother was very well-educated. When my grandfather died on the stage, my father was taken out of public school in the eighth grade. I think he graduated from the eighth grade, never went back to school. But he was inquisitive and curious and was well-read and wrote beautifully and spoke well. But he was fluent -- Yiddish, wrote, read Hebrew. I mean, the "Forwards" was in the house. And I'll show you that we have things from my uncle -- my uncle died in 1950, also on stage. The "Forwards" ran the obit because my grandfather was the -- I mean, my uncle, Marty, was the son of the great David Barrett, David Baratz. The other thing I do remember that's also important 30:00about, I think, Eastern European Jewish culture is the way in which they ran from their names because of the war. So --

CW:Yeah, explain that a little.

MB:-- I do remember that I'm a Barrett, but I'm not really. So, every time I see that name -- I have a really easy name in American culture: Minna Sara Barrett. It's like a movie star's name. Minna Sara -- it's very lyrical, right? But it really isn't Barrett. It's Baratz, and that means that it really has an identity that's not WASP culture, right? And I always had a double feeling about it. On the one hand, I liked it 'cause it was easy, although no one ever gets Barrett right, either. Barnett, Barrette. (laughter) No, it's Barrett. But I always felt it would have been harder for me if it was Baratz, because that's an odd Jewish name.

CW:So, was it your dad who changed it?

MB:It was my uncles who changed it during the war, 'cause they couldn't get work. And on my mother's side, all my uncles changed their names to -- they went from very Eastern European Jewish names, culturally Jewish names, all to Anglo names, everything Anglicized. My father's name went from Lazarus -- I don't know what his middle name was. Lazarus Rafael Baratz to Leslie Raymond Barrett. And that stayed with me because I thought to myself, They're ashamed of their names. It didn't translate to me as, oh, we got to do it because we'd get the kick, we'd get tarred and feathered. It came out to me as, there's something about that name I'm not supposed to like. Being Eastern European or Jewish, that's not good.

CW:Can you tell me a little bit about your uncle?

MB:Yes. My Uncle Marty was a vaudevillian and an actor. As a young child, he 32:00acted in the Jewish theater and his biography also talks about that, where he was and when he was there. He was in the Public Theatre and the National Theatre, Second Avenue Theatre. But what I remember most about him -- and again, he died when I was very young, so a lot of this is something that was imposed in my memory. I vaguely remember him. But how that is the case, I'm not sure 'cause I was two-and-a-half. (laughter) My memory told me that I was four. And then, when I look back, I see, no, I was two-and-a-half. But I vaguely remember seeing him dressed -- my uncle toured for the USO forever. My memory of him was always in a uniform, always in a US uniform. The khaki uniform. He married my aunt, Goldie Eisman, who was also a vaudevillian. They acted in regular American 33:00theater and vaudeville and traveled all around the country. They acted a lot in the Jewish theaters, the -- not the theaters, the summer stock, Yiddish stock upstate, the Concord, and Brown's, and those -- there were entertainers in those places. And he died. He also acted in the Chicago Theatre version of "High Button Shoes," which was a big play on Broadway. And he was Phil Silvers's understudy and took over for Phil Silvers for a week when Phil was sick. He played the part -- I have a picture of him all dressed up in the "High Button Shoes" thing, playing the part on Broadway. And so, he was also kind of larger-than-life in that way, because you have an aunt and uncle and they're touring around with Bob Hope and all these people. So, that's my memory of Uncle Marty, that he was very jovial and fun-loving. They didn't have kids. That was a big issue for them. That was a sadness for them. They didn't have children. But 34:00we were therefore very important to them. I have stuff that they brought us from all over the world. They toured and so they would bring things back. They didn't have kids, so they brought it back for their three -- two nephews and one niece. I was the only girl on that side and I was the youngest. So, I got a lot of cheek pinching. I was very important to my grandmother because I was the only girl and the baby. She loved us all, don't misunderstand me. She was incredible that way. So, her children traveled all over the world to do these things, her husband and her child, Marty. My uncle Irving was somehow connected -- the oldest child in that family, David's oldest child -- he was somehow connected to Borscht Belt comedians. I don't know if he was their agent or he got them hotel rooms, but somehow he knew all of them, like Joey Adams was always up in my grandmother's house and Cindy Adams, we knew the -- and I remember them being around. I remember this really interesting time. We were also taught we -- each 35:00kid, each one of those three children have a little routine or act. So, David played the piano. My brother dressed up in the uniform that my uncle gave him, which I vaguely remember as an army military uniform. And I had to do a tap-dance with a little navy hat. I had a little tap dance to a military thing and they would always say, Okay, Minna, take your stage. And then, I would do my little act. And then, the family would -- Take your bow, and they taught you how to bow and take a -- so, it was translated, the vaudeville thing was translated down into the grandchildren, and I -- that was always the thing at that house, when you went to that apartment, you met all these people. And then, we sat around the table one day, I remember this, and my uncle -- and I don't know if it was one day or always, they would go around the table and tell jokes. You had to have a quick joke with a quick one-liner. So, if Joey Adams was there, he 36:00would lead off. It was Morey Amsterdam, if it was this one, it was that one. Billy Sands, blah-blah-blah, Joey Bishop. And you go around the table and they start telling jokes. And the joke would increase, increase, increase, and the speed would get faster and faster. (laughs) And then, they would ask me and I was five years old, and always had the same joke because I couldn't make anything -- but I remember that tradition and the influence it had on me to be funny in public. You get attention by being funny, right? So, to be funny, to be quick on your feet, always have a little performance to distract people, that kind of thing. You asked me to talk about what the influence is like for me. Of course, I was very proud of being the child of these people, because my father was more ashamed of it or more remote about it. He had more emotional problems, and I won't go into that, but it was difficult to be his child. But my aunt and uncle, the one who remained living -- my Uncle Irving and my Aunt Roy, they were 37:00very proud of who they were. And so, there was a lot of positive quality about being the child of the Baratz, and that my grandfather had been very famous. And they knew Paul Muni, they know Molly Picon. I mean, every time they were in American things, we'd be up with my aunt and uncle and they'd say, "Did you see what Muni was doing?" Everyone was called by the last name, by the way. No one had a first name. If you see in the biographies, it's all B -- "B said and B" -- it was all initials and -- so, I remember that. But it made me -- I teach, I'm a college professor. I teach in the State University of New York at Old Westbury where I've been for forty-one years, and I trained to be an academic, to be a professor. And I know that part of my comfort in front of a classroom is coming from that tradition. But it's never difficult for me to get up in front -- even if I'm nervous, even if I have to go up in front of my colleagues and -- it's 38:00not hard to cover it over and to do a song and dance because (laughs) that's who I am. Half of who I am is the Jewish theater. Even though it doesn't live with me directly and I don't follow it and -- when it comes up, it's always part of the seed of who I am, like David lives in me, Uncle Marty lives in me because it's part of how we grew up. And being funny and being goofy and being connected to making faces when you talk -- Morey Amsterdam. Not Morey Amsterdam. Buddy Hackett. (laughs) He was in front of me when I was six, eating gefilte fish from my grandmother's kitchen, doing this. It becomes part of who you are. You're around it, you're surrounded by it, you breathe it in. And you remember it. So, I think the influence on me is that I feel like when I'm teaching, even though 39:00the content is very specific and precise because it's science, there's still that element of entertainment when I deliver it.

CW:So, at what points would you hear these stories?

MB:They just rolled out. It wasn't anything where -- it was continuous, of course, from the time that I can remember all the way through until the family broke apart. It was a point at which the family no longer stayed connected because my father's behavior was very difficult for people to manage. Probably when my grandmother died. So, my grandmother died when she was about ninety-something. So, maybe that was 19-- let's say '75, something like that. I was in college, so it -- yeah, 1970, let's say. So, I was now twenty-two years 40:00old. So, about that time, my grandmother died and the family stopped communicating with each other. So, the stories ended. That was the end of that. My father got sick, he got weak, he got older than his age. He got disconnected from us, and that stopped. But, it was so intense while we were young. It was every time we were with that side of the family. And because, on both sides of the family, we believed in keeping the clans together -- we still had the old country kind of thing where you keep the family together. The two families, both sides of the families, were close. I don't remember ever having a birthday party that was held in my house for me or my brother where both sides of the family didn't show. So, everyone knew everyone and that -- it would always just come up. I mean, I can't even tell you how -- Sunday mornings in my house when I was 41:00young until I was about eighteen were inviolate 'cause my dad ran a bar. He ran a bar in the Village, so that connected us to the world of entertainment and the world of the Yiddish theater, too, because my father ran a bar in Greenwich Village. It was well known for being very open to the gay community.

CW:What was it called?

MB:It was called the Main Street Café and it was way before Stonewall. Way before Stonewall. My father was -- I don't want to say progressive, 'cause I think that being open to gender and to sex role stereotyping shouldn't have to be -- so, I think the whole idea is ridiculous, it has to be (UNCLEAR). But my father was, in that way -- he couldn't understand why they had people who loved each other, that didn't matter, and why that just didn't -- who care? It's culture, it's art, why are we looking at these other things about people that don't matter? And so, he had this incredible bar where people felt really comfortable and they loved to come. And so, of course, all these people in the 42:00acting community were there all the time, hanging out with their friends or bringing people. And so, that kept it alive, too, 'cause he would come home with signatures from people or -- boxing champion Rocky Marciano. I remember once we were going to Barnum and Bailey Circus. I remember this so well. Maybe I was six and we were in Madison Square Garden going up an escalator and down. And on the other side of the escalator was Rocky Graziano or Rocky Marciano, and I don't know which one it was. And my father leaned over and saw him and he went, "Oh, hi, Les!" -- like that. And they leaned over and Graziano, instead of going up, he came back down around, he came down, and he signed our circus books for us. And it was that kind of thing. It was like the -- okay, we were always around it. You're going to visit your father in the bar and grill, in the Village, on Eighth Street and MacDougal, right? And somebody walks in, like Salvador Dali. Once I met Salvador Dali and it was -- but when you're little, you don't know 43:00who these people really are. You're just in the thing and the people have energy and you connect with them. You don't really know. Much later, I realized, Oh my God, these people were surrounded by all these cultural icons. And my father was really sort of down-to-earth about it. Maybe it was natural or normal for him, too, like it wasn't a big deal for him, either, because he -- it was always in his life. But I just remember, when Cindy Adams would come on TV -- you know who she is, you guys? Cindy Adams? Cindy Adams was the wife of Joey Adams, who was a very well-known comic, and he used to have a -- oh, Hirschfeld, yeah, that's another one. Do you know Hirschfeld? The artist, the cartoon-- so, I vaguely remember this. I could be wrong, but I think that my cousin, David, dated his daughter or something like that. There was some connection between the two of them, Nina and David. And I remember my aunt talking about it like, very 44:00casually that the guy who does the graphics for "The New York Times" theater section or the arts -- that David was interested or she was interested in him or -- and it was like that kind of thing, you just -- then I grew up and I realized Hirschfeld, (laughs) I mean, so famous. Was like that.

CW:So, what was it like for you to see this exhibit that's upstairs, the Yiddish theater exhibit?

MB:That was very moving for me. It was moving in that I think people my age -- I'm sixty-eight, so I was born in 1948. I think that people my age who grew up with parents, let's say, who kept their eyes -- one eye on the past and one eye on the future's the way I like to think about the way I grew up. One leg in the past, one leg in the future. My parents wanted us to be rooted in the experience of the past because history's important. You can't forget where you come from. But they also wanted us to be very modern and assimilate and become very Americanized in terms of being able to make it and do what -- to get access, to 45:00be able to do what you wanted to do and develop yourself. But that historical root is very important to me. So, when I come here and I see the elegance of it and the beauty of it and the impact of it on people, I think to myself, my God, my grandfather helped develop that Public Theater. He, in that autobiography, is a developer of that Public Theater. Not the new -- not Papp, but the Jewish Public Theater. And I thought, Wow, that's emotional. The people brought the culture with them. They kept it alive. It had its own quality. They valued the quality of the language, the language had essence to them, it had nuance, and it also represented a kind of Creole -- Yiddish is a kind of Creole. It also keeps 46:00the master off your back, very much the way Gullah and Haitian Creole keeps -- or the language that slaves created so that the master couldn't understand them, the way it keeps the master off your back. And I think about that all the time. So, I see those beautiful pictures of the experiences that my uncles and aunts tried to make alive for us, because we didn't know, 'cause grandpa died so young, we didn't know him. They tried to keep it alive, and then you go up there and you see, Oh, there's somebody keeping it alive. Isn't that incredible? So, that's the impact it has on me. I think the Yiddish Book Center is vital. It's a vital element of the way culture in the United States can be valued and the different ways in which Americans become American, the different routes that 47:00bring people into the United States make the US wealthy. This whole conversation about keeping immigrants out and immigrants and immigrants and immigrants, right, without the recognition that the wealth of the United States is in that diversity, is in the richness of that diversity, because when I think about why I love education so much and why public education only -- I don't really have a lot of interest in private education. I went into the public system and I will not leave that public system, that will always be with me, fighting for it -- comes out of the tradition I come from, as a child. It comes out of the lack of access that created the shteytls, and I don't want to lose that consciousness, 'cause now there are other groups that are being denied access. So, as long as we remember that, that our unique cultures are beautiful -- but they shouldn't isolate us. As long as we remember that, that we need to share them and 48:00understand the richness of them, we'll always be in good shape. And I think the Yiddish Book Center represents that. It represents holding onto a set of principles and values that have to do with a kind of emotional wealth and intellectual wealth that can feed everybody.

CW:So, for you personally, what is Yiddish and your Eastern European heritage mean to you?

MB:Well, Yiddish is kind of the root, in a way, of the way in which I think about who my grandparents are, because whether they acted in the Yiddish theater or they were diamond brokers in the diamond exchanges -- I told you my other grandfather was -- they spoke Yiddish, you know what I mean? And they wrote in Yiddish and they read Yiddish. And so, the root of their unity was in the common language. That's what language does. Language is the lingua of the communication 49:00system, right? So, Yiddish is the lingua of that cultural experience, both of the isolation of that experience and the unification of the isolated, right? And so, it represents one of those languages that develops out of the need to survive. So, it has that feeling to me. When I hear it, I think about my mother and father trying to keep us from understanding what they were talking about. That's the real memory I have of it, that they were fluent, so when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about, they would talk in front of us in Yiddish. And then, of course, as we got older, it didn't really work that way, 'cause we really didn't -- like my father would be driving around and someone would cut him off and he would say -- excuse what I'm about to say now. He would go, "God darn it, that yumbo putz, he's out air shopping! What a schmuck," 50:00right? Yeah, when we were little, we didn't know what it meant. Well, then, after a while, my brother and I would be in the back going, Daddy shouldn't say that, it's awful! (laughs) And I had -- that's the experience with all of it.

CW:So, what do you think is sort of the place of Yiddish today and the future for it?

MB:Well, it's kind of sad in a way, isn't it? The place for Yiddish is that it doesn't have as much -- for example, I don't think my children have much connection to it. Maybe my daughter does 'cause I've used some of it. But I don't speak it fluently the way my parents did. I have only an emotional attachment to it. I have friends who can speak a little bit. It's really interesting, it's like a secret passcode language. It's like if you say it to somebody and they can say it back to you, they're landsmen and there's a secret 51:00society, in a way, with a secret handshake. And I think about it often that way, that only the insiders can speak it. All language is like that. Only the insiders get to speak the language, but that keeps it from disseminating out, and for people to understand it, 'cause it's not German. It has some derivative root in German, but it isn't German. It's Yiddish. And so, I do worry about it. I think to myself often, When I retire, what I'm going to do is learn to read Hebrew and learn to speak Yiddish, 'cause I can't do either of those things, even though I went to Hebrew school forever, right? I never learned to read anything in Hebrew. (laughs) I learned tons about Hebrew history, tons, and I loved it. I never learned anything about the language itself. I failed every semester in Hebrew. So, I often think maybe that's what I'll do, and I'll start figuring out what Yiddish is and what it really means. What it really means to 52:00me is -- and I don't really have an intellectualization about it. It's an emotional feeling in my heart about my grandmother, the way she loved us, how she kissed us, literally. How she went out of her way to make us happy. And how, with so little -- she had very little, she was really stripped of everything and lived with my aunt and uncle -- but how she had so little and how she was so loving and giving to us and how we meant the world to her. That's what it means to me.

CW:Are there any Yiddish words or phrases that you --

MB:Oy vey.

CW:-- represent her?

MB:Oy gevalt. Mame-loshn [mother tongue language, i.e. Yiddish]. Let's see. Well, my name, I don't have a Hebrew name. I have my name, Minna Sara. And then, I have a Yiddish name. So, my given Hebrew name is Yiddish. It's Sure-mindy, or Minde, all right? So, it's not Hebrew. So, when she used to say that -- and it's 53:00hard to explain. I didn't really grow up with my English name being prominent in my family. Almost everybody called me "Mindel," both sides. I have an older cousin today and she calls me Mindel-Pindel. That was my nickname. So, my grandmother, she called me Mindeleh. And that's really what stands out for me, the way in which she would say, "My little Mindeleh," or the way in which she -- I'm trying to remember all the things she used to say to me. "A glezele tea. A bisele [A little bit of] ice cream. A shisl [bowl]. Minya, would you like a shisl of chicken soup? (laughs) You want a big shisl, a groyse [big] shisl?" (laughs) You know, were just the words that would pop out. Of course, I always 54:00recognize it when I hear it. I always know, Oh, that's Yiddish. That's not German, that's Yiddish. So, that's very emotional. And my mother, too. My mother always spoke it to us. My father, also, "Sheyne punim, sheyne meydele. That shikse! [Pretty face, pretty girl. That non-Jewish woman!]" (laughs) -- kind of thing. The negative stuff. I didn't hear that too much, really. That was three jokes and silliness with people. My parents were not, did not like discrimination or prejudice of any kind. So, they weren't really going to use that language in that way very much. That was not really -- that was sort of verboten. But it was cute. It was always associated with being cute. The comedians, the Jewish comedians that would come to my grandmother's house, they were always -- the Yiddish language with the shoulders up to the ears and just 55:00saying funny stuff. Slave language.

CW:Well, a sheynem dank [thank you very much].

[END OF INTERVIEW]