Born in Brooklyn NY in 1927
Volunteered for US Navy as Electrical Engineer
(did not serve overseas as he was in bootcamp when the bomb was dropped on Japan – both of his brothers, now deceased, were paratroopers during the war overseas)
Father –Max
Mother- Lillian
1:38- 14 When the war started I was very interested in politics and economics and things.
In the beginning I was an FDR solid democrat and as I got older I became a solid Republican. The thing I remember the most was how united the country was at that time, everybody was sort of like one behind winning the war.
Older brother in Army before Pearl Harbor- second lieutenant –paratrooper.
Younger brother Archie Marine paratrooper wounded in Saipan.
Graduated college 18 joined the Navy
4:32 I was in boot camp when they dropped the J bomb so my WWII experience is very limited.
It just was in the air and all about us that we had to win the war- there were various drives for aluminum pots and pans and everybody would be gathering them up – they had to make ammunitions and metal was short I assume and aluminum was very important for the war effort.
5:57- Only indirectl – I would hear stories of relatives who were no longer heard from.
6:03- I was in the Navy for a year – got into the Navy because they weren’t allowing anybody in and I wasn’t 18 yet. They weren’t accepting anybody unless there was a special reason. So they had an electronic test, an IQ test called the Eddy Test. I took it and passed, so they took me in three days before my 18th birthday when I no longer would be able to get in. So even though the war ended, they sent me to various electronic schools. I went to college after called Cooper Union and I graduated as an electrical engineer-mostly related to aircraft electrical engineering.
In those days you would go to Hebrew school and you would learn to read Hebrew but it wasn’t necessary for you to understand what you were reading and all the teachers would give you good grades if you could rattle it off fast.
8:27- Mulhammed Hebrew teacher story
10:02 When we came here the temple was in small quarters.
11:12- Won the election for the president of the Jewish committee 1960-1961.
12:36 (to future generations)“tell the truth, try always to tell the truth”
13:48 Winning the war was extremely important because if you think of the alternative, they joke and say we’d be speaking German and Japanese and we Jews probably wouldn’t even be here.
Most of the younger generation and even the middle generation don’t remember those times and don’t have a feeling for how important it was to win that war now. And, this is my opinion even more sadly than that, I find that when I talk to them they don’t even know the history of the formation of the country which is very sad.
I was fortunate in that the war ended so I didn’t have to experience the same things that they did.