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Interview with Emanuel Mandel July 7, 2003 Beginning Tape One, Side A

Q: Okay. This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jeff and Toby Herr collection. This is an interview with Emanuel Mandel, conducted by Nina Ellis, on July 7", 2003, in Silver Spring, Maryland. This interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's post-Holocaust interview project, and is a follow-up interview to a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum videotaped interview, conducted with Emanuel Mandel in 1989. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gratefully acknowledges Jeff and Toby Herr for making this interview possible.

This is tape number one, side A. I'd -- in order to begin, I'd like to ask you if -- if you, in the last 14 years since the interview that I saw took place, is there anything about your experience during the war that you've learned since then, that you'd like to go back and talk about it? Know -- how much you remember, exactly, about your interview, but I'm assuming that you -- it was clear to me that you've been doing research, and finding out more and more about what happened to you, since you were so young. Is there anything that you might want to add to what you already did?

A: Let me get to that in one moment, but let me also make a -- not a disclaimer, but a commercial statement in a sense --

Q: Okay.

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A: -- in that I just want to acknowledge the importance, and I want to say thank you to the museum for doing this, because I have believed for some time that the archiving of this information is extremely important. And I've said publicly, privately, that even though every interviewee's information, including mine, may not be earth-shaking, or startling, the fact that it's archived, and the technology is available to do it, is terribly important.

How interesting it would be if I go to the -- whatever museum, take out a tape of a Civil War soldier, talking from the Civil War, not a mere reenactment, and we could learn so much. So I just want to acknowledge, and extend my appreciation for whoever sponsors this, and for the museum for doing it. I do understand now this has been now going on for maybe 10 years, these second interviews. I really thought it was a brand new idea. But I'm delighted to do it. Let me get to the question that you asked. I don't know if P've learned anything specific. Much of what I know about the Holocaust, I know from -- from memory, and I've said before now, and I'll repeat -- Ill try not to repeat myself too frequently, to say that I was old enough to remember, because my memory apparently works well, and much too young to understand. Which makes yo -- me a survivor whose emotional scars are quite different than people my age, and two, three, four years older, who in fact understood. I thought I was being a little pint sized hero for wearing a yellow star. I didn't think it was a stigma. I couldn't understand the concept of stigma. I mean, I too have, like an adult, that's a good thing. All six year olds want to be like big people.

So it isn't so much that I've learned a lot, although I'm sure I've learned certain things about myself, my father, my mother, and others, what I've done the last 14 years different

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 4 than before, and it's not because of the interview, was I be -- have become very much more involved in Holocaust kinds of things, in order to make use of the survivors, because we are a dying population, and I can identify for you -- and again, I don't think I did before, that the night that Steven Spielberg -- that's a matter of just a coincidence, received the Academy Award for Schindler, he said that there are, at that time, as I think he said, 350,000 survivors, I guess, in the United States. And I was flabbergasted because in relative terms, it's a very small number. I mean, 350,000 people, and that's a dozen years ago, whenever that was. So there are less today. And I said maybe I need to, in some way be involved, because I'm one of the younger survivors you'll meet -- I'm only 67 years old, do something to archive, to use, to teach, because if we don't, this is an -- this is an irreplaceable commodity. If we don't do what we need to do, after we're gone, it can be done, but differently. A second generation experience is different than the initial experience that those of us who were there, in all the places, can tell. So I've become involved in a number of things, but I think that's the major change, since that time. Not so much what I've learned, but what I've done with it.

Q: Uh-huh. Do you want to talk about some of things you've done?

A: Well, I have probably spoken in a -- in a gazillion places. I've been involved locally with the Jewish [indecipherable] Council, which sponsors an annual Yom HaShoah commemoration that's six, seven, 800 people, attendance thing, and all the largest synagogues in the community, I've chaired it for the last five years. And I did -- I've been a member of that commission for 15 or 18 years, but I thought maybe I'd like to

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg become more involved. And that involves with some other elements of the Holocaust thing. Serve the museum, museum visits, museum volunteering, some other things. I have some connection with the legislature, as a consequence I've tried to help the council, and the museum be involved with legislators to come to the museum, or to meet them there, or to speak with them there. These are things I've done, I've -- anecdotally, one of the things I've done is our organizations that have silent auctions, I've been a silent auction museum tour giver in any number of organizations. If you bid on my particular offer, and it's a winning offer, whatever the organization decides, I will in fact take a half a day, and take you and four other people to the museum, and the most interesting group I had once, was a -- a woman, I forget what her organization was, she called, and we arranged, and there were four women, and I, all veterinarians. I don't think they were Jewish, but they were involved in some organization, and they wanted to see the museum, and I was there with four veterinarians. I had never been with that many veterinarians in my life, women or otherwise. Just an interesting combination of people.

Q: Yeah.

A: [ve done that, I have probably been involved in the -- in a -- to a greater degree in the three organizations that are Holocaust organizations in the community. There is the Washington fre -- th-the survivors and friends organization, with which you may be familiar. There is a child survivors organization, which covers more Baltimore/ Washington, and there's a second generation. And now there is a third generation

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg organization, and I have gotten to know some of the people, I've been involved in some of the meetings, some of the planning, some of the conferences.

Q: Uh-huh. That's quite a lot, yeah. And do you talk with the schoolchildren? Have you done any of that?

A: Well, for example, recently there was a cooperative program within the council and Comcast, and the [indecipherable] Olney theater, here in Olney. And several high school classes were brought -- several high schools, and they [indecipherable] 11" grade class, were brought together for a -- an orientation, a talk, a -- a video, and after that they even did projects expressing the Holocaust in art, music and design. And we spoke to those four schools. The next year, there were four other schools. These have been things that I've done. There was a training program, for example, for the Jewish Social Service Agency, JESSA, and five years ago, I think it was, when we spent four days, one day a week in four weeks, in a very comprehensive training program for their staff, including a visit to the museum, which I, as a volunteer put together for them, with a director of the agency, and it was a pretty successful thing involving all of their people, on the assumption that if they deal with Holocaust survivors, they ou-ought to know something about the Holocaust.

Q: Is it possible for you to summarize what -- how people react to your presentations when you meet with them? People who may not know a lot about the Holocaust? I'm talking about groups aside from survivor groups.

A: React in what way?

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Q: How do they react? I mean, what do they want to know, what -- what do they not know? What does it --

A: Well -- there are probably at least two major kinds of presentation, and I do one because I'm unable, or whatever to do the other. The -- those presentations which are based in the emotional experience, but as I said to you, my emotional experience at the time was very limited, I didn't understand. So what I do is I do a much more -- not objective, but I guess it's an objective approach to describing what happened, from the eyes of a six, seven, eight, nine, 10 year old kid. The reaction to that often is amazement, to the point, and this is again anecdotal, but I spoke to whatever, the fifth grade Hebrew school class of my synagogue. And the fifth grade Hebrew school class, one of them, included my grandson at the time. And he asked a question at the end. And he became so kind of involved in the description, he said, "Did you survive?" I'm his grandfather, I mean, he was like trying to ask, how did people survive, so he said to me, "Did you survive?" He's forgotten, I mean, this could have been a movie that I was describing. So the reaction tends to be less visceral in some sense, and more factual, because I tend to present factually, rather than emotionally, for many reasons, including the kind of person I am, and the nature of my experience, of people that I know in the community who are one, two, three, four, five years older than I, whose experience was different as a consequence, they present differently.

Q: Mm-hm. That's interesting. Let's g -- let's go back to your chronology, if you will. It was 1949 when you came to this country with your mother and father.

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A: Mm, well, my father came in 1948.

Q: Oh, okay.

A: My father -- we were all in, at that time, Palestine. Israel happened a few months after my father left. My father came to this country for two reasons. One stated, and one kind of unstated. The stated reason was, of the seven children, six siblings and my father, two had died in 1930 of causes other than Holocaust, two women, one married, one unmarried. Two brothers were killed during the war. One brother was in Israel, my father, and the seventh child, the oldest, was in Philadelphia. My aunt had come here in 1914, in some ways to be with some cousins, to reduce the burden, which was difficult. My grandparents -- my grandfather, I am told -- I never met him, he died before I was born, again for non-Holocaust related reasons, he died 1930. He was not a successful businessman, and they had some very difficult times. He became a -- kind of a county clerk of some sort, because he could read and write, and he knew Hungarian well, besides Yiddish and Jewish things, and it was difficult to make a living. So my aunt came out here. My father wanted to see his surviving sister, whom he had not seen since 1914 when he was eight -- no, he was 10, and she was 14 or 15, or something like that. The other reason was that my father, being a professional cantor all his life, trained as a cantor, not just something he did part time, found that it was very difficult to make a living, because that's one of the things Israel did not need too many of at the time. And he chose to -- he found a way to legally stay, he did, and then in 49, my mother and I came. Now we're in New York.

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A: Yeah. What do you remember getting off -- you were at Idlewild Airport. What do you remember when you came in, and what were your expectations of the U.S.?

A: [had no idea. I honestly had no idea. Remember that being of that age, and at that time, the number of movies that people saw -- I mean, movies were a -- a treat number one, and they were infrequent. And when I lived in Israel, went to the movie, and I can tell you the names of the movie theaters. But they were movies from various places, and I didn't -- I didn't have an understanding of what the size of this country, the dimensions of this country, the opportunities of this country were, and I'm not sure that's something that a ni -- nine year old would -- well, by that time I'm 13, but even a 13 year old wouldn't know that. My orientation was much more in terms of European recollections of things, and certainly this country did not appear to be the same way. I was fascinating by -- first I came by plane. Now, I got on the plane in a -- what had been a military airport outside of Haifa, two engine plane, flew to -- for refueling in Egypt, for refueling in Tunis, from Tunis to Nice, from Nice to Brussels. Spent overnight in Brussels, and from Brussels took the big bird to Shannon, to Gander, in Newfoundland, and then to New York. That was the typical way, but it was by plane. My father had come the year before, it took him three weeks, I think, by boat. But it was just a question of how people traveled. So you arrive at this place, and I remember waking up in the morning after an overnight flight, and my first inclination was, as I looked out the window, was to get out and walk, because the clouds looked like sheep. They looked s -- as solid as rocks. Now I knew that that's not a good idea, and I didn't do it. But it was uneventful flight of --

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 "0 probably the hop from Shannon to Gander must have been 10 hours. And then from Gander down, another six. We traveled probably 30 hours all together. But we arrived in New York. Now, you have to remember that Idlewild, which we now know as JFK didn't look the same. It was kind of a little airport, because international flights had not been too common, one because the war had just ended, and two, that was not the kind of aircraft, the jets hadn't come in, not for another 10 years.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And the prop-driven four engine planes had to make hop, to hop, to hop, to hop. It was still quicker than ship, but -- so we arrived. Now, at the airport, my father and my aunt, his sister, were waiting for us, and in a matter of minutes, it seemed, we were kind of hustled by taxi -- that was not unusual, taxis I knew, to Pennsylvania station, in the city, on a train, to Philadelphia, where we spent some time kind of getting acquainted. And I remember seeing a sign on the bridge between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, in Trenton, which I couldn't read then, but I had taken that train ride subsequently many, many times, and it says Trenton makes, the world takes. Took me years to figure out what that meant.

But it was one of the initial things. In those days when you went by train, or you went by subway, you had these various dispensing machines, much less sophisticated than what we have now. I was absolutely fascinated by the gum machine, where you could put ina nickel or whatever, couple pennies, and get Chiclets. And I wanted to kind of do it all the time. I was fascinated by Venetian blinds. I was fascinated -- certainly by television set, which my aunt had, as I remember, but we didn't for awhile. Now, radios were not

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 u unusual, radios were common. Cars were not unusual, although the number were common. So that the impressions you had -- what I had is twofold, what I'll leave you with. One, the impressions of a 13 year old in a new place. And the impressions of a 13 year old in a new place called the United States. I knew very little about the States yet, at the time. I didn't begin to know about until we moved back to New York, after about two weeks of staying here, and my parents took a sublet apartment, and I began to go to school. And I's -- we spent a year and a half in New York, I was in school for about a year. I came here in what would be equivalent to seventh grade. So I finished seven B in New York, in those days with A's and B's. Did eight A in New York, same school. I can tell you about that, too, because it had impact, a significant impact. And then we moved to Philadelphia where my father lived the rest of his life. My mother died in Philadelphia, and I was in Philadelphia until 1961, till I finished graduate school, and then my wife and I, and daughter at the time, left town.

Q: Tell me about going to school.

A: Well, the point of school was that -- people think this is just words, but schools are the Mixmasters of society, particularly in a place like New York. Now, my father found a sublet apartment in the village.

Q: Manhattan.

A: Yes. Remember, my father's congregation was on the east side of Rivington Street, had to be walking distance. Even though he performed in that congregation only once a month, it's that kind of job. Still had to be walking distance. During -- on other Sabbaths,

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 0% we went to some local synagogue, a small one, whatever, in the neighborhood. But we are on -- on the village in the west side. We are in the heart of the famous part of the village, Bleeker Street, McDougall Street, and we were on Barrow Street, 72 Barrow. An apartment building where people were away, and we sublet their apartment. School became an important thing, obviously, and my father made some inquiries, I suppose, he was not familiar, for me to go to one of the Jewish-type day schools. And there were many of them in the general community, subway rides. And I remember going to them, and I remember that one of them, I forget the name, insignificant, said, "We will be glad to have the young man," -- I mean, I was fluent in Hebrew -- "we'll put him in third grade." "Why?" "Well, he doesn't speak English." Which is true. I had some knowledge of English, but very spotty, and very unreliable.

Q: And either of your parents speak English?

A: Well, my father had been here for a year, and he spoke some. Again, street English, learned. My mother didn't, she knew less that I did. My mother, by that time, spoke Hungarian, Serb, passable German. Not passable, but somewhat street French from school. But she had studied knowing that sh -- English was not taught in Europe when they were in school. I knew very little. 1 mean, Trenton makes, the world takes, I could not read, then. I was 13, I was not, you know, an infant. But there was something about the notion of third grade that didn't make any sense for many reasons, not only the fact that I'd lose four years, I could probably make them up, but a 13 year old is not going to have anything in common with a nine year old, or a 10 year old. There's a difference, I

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8 mean, raging puberty was probably taking place, and all those other things that happen in early teens were taking place, and that did not put me into any kind of a connection with the younger kids. So my parents, somehow, and I don't recall -- I don't -- I can't remember how they discovered that the public school happened to be exactly a block from the apartment. P.S. number three, on Hudson Street. The principal was a Jew. I'm not sure that's terribly significant, but there may have been some -- I had with me a letter from Haifa, saying that I had completed so much of seventh grade, but the curriculums are different. The principal said the following, he said, "We'll put him in seventh grade.

We'll give him an allowance, he will not have to take classes in Spanish." Which was already being taught. "If he makes it, he'1l go to eighth grade, and if he doesn't, he" ll repeat seventh grade, it's pretty simple." Which made an awful lot of sense. And obviously I was able to pick up enough to begin to go on, and kids, first of all, are spongelike, and you pick up. And one of the differences between me and people who are three or four years older, who came here maybe after high school, or at the end of high school, you have different language pattern, you have a different knowledge of English, and people after 50 years, still speak like they got off the boat. I never did a thing in my life to try to deal with the way I spoke, but I tried to learn the language as well as I could, so I have command of it. In P.S. number three, I could do that. And that had significant impact in that I continued, at least age appropriately, as opposed to continuing in a way that was, you know, kind of as a sore thumb sticking out, a kid two feet taller than everybody else in the class, cause I was 13. So that had very significant impact. Then I ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 "4 continued through public school in Philadelphia, and that's -- we'll get to that at some point if you wish, but that had an important element. My father then decided that although he could have stayed at that congregation in New York, I guess indefinitely -- well not indefinitely, but certainly for awhile, cause community had begun to change in some ways. He thought that he would like to live in a community, so his wife and son could have a life in a community, and New York is not a community in that sense, not when you're there once a month, and you have nothing else to do. We moved to Philadelphia in 1950, and I spent the next 11 years in Philadelphia with my parents, and well, eventually with my wife.

Q: What was it like for you to be in school there, not speaking English at first, and -- did you feel like an outsider, did they --

A: No, because the kid next to me was from China, and the kid next to him was from Italy, and the kid next to him was from some Spanish speaking -- and I remember vaguely these two kids, the Italian and the -- I don't even know if it was a Chinese youngster, but he's certainly an Oriental kid, he could have been Korean, I don't know.

But he came -- he wasn't in school one day. Next day he comes in, and I say to him, "Where were you yesterday?" He says, "I played hooky." "Oh," I says, "with a stick?" I didn't know the word hooky, but I learned the word hooky from my Chinese friend, who was playing hooky, okay?

Q: Hello.

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A: Oh, you want a -- maybe mink or something, but you're asking about -- you asked about the reaction of the other kids, my reaction to them. New York was probably the best -- in one way it's the best place to break in. I suppose Iowa would have been just as good in the differences. That would have been incredibly consistent. I would have learned Iowa. In New York you had a conglomeration of every kind of person, even in those days. Maybe not the proportions as today, but certainly in the village, and this was in the village. It's -- the village was the village, it may not have been what it has become since -- we're talking for over -- over 50 years ago. So I learned a lot. I -- my parents bought me a bicycle. You recall a bicycle story from a different [indecipherable] tape that you had seen, and I rode around downtown Manhattan, all over God's creation without any concerns, I mean, as long as I didn't run into buses. And I learned about the community. I learned about the wharf, and I learned about the this and the that. And I was a curious George. I made friends with the man who ran the little hardware store across the street on -- on Hudson Street, because I was in there probably five times a week for things having to do with my bicycle, which needed to be polished, oiled, lubed, plugs changed daily. Slight exaggeration, but it was a very busy, and --

Q: You loved that bike.

A: I did.

Q: Yeah.

A: It -- it was -- it was my some sense of freedom, and I could do anything I pleased. I didn't have a large number of friends at that point. Little later on, when we moved to the

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 6 East Side, because we went into an apartment where we stayed for the rest of our time in New York, which was an old brownstone on 11" Street. I had two or three friends that I had some contact with, but we went to different schools. And life tends to be mostly going to school, and coming home, and having a little bit of time. And again, 50 years ago, the kind of freedom, I mean, none of the kids went for vacations in Fort Lauderdale, at least not then, and I was too young to do that on my own anyhow. But we went -- 14" Street in New York was still a major demarcation line between the lower East Side, and lower Manhattan, on -- further up. And we went to all the places. I remember taking -- taking -- I asked my parents to go to the movies with me, which they did. And we saw two and a half hours of cartoons. And I still don't know how they survived that.

Q: Can you describe how the transition was for your parents? Do you have much sense of that, of -- you said your father, within a year wanted to go to Philadelphia because he felt he would have more of a community. Was he having a hard time adjusting there, or was it just a function of the work wasn't exactly what he wanted it to be?

A: No, it's not the work, the work was very much what he wanted. Community in that sense meant having friends that you could live in a neighborhood with, shopping that you did in a neighborhood when you knew the place, organizations where you got involved.

New York is not that kind of a community. In a peculiar way, neither is Washington. But the cities of Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and so forth, have histories as -- Baltimore -- are communities. There are certain rules about them, there's certain elements, and certain ebb and flow to them. And that's what I meant he wanted a

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " community. The position in New York, the job in New York, was a star position. I mean, this was the -- not quite, but it was the Metropolitan Opera version of the cantor at the -- the time. I mean, you appear once a month, and the rest of the time you can do anything you damn please. But he wanted to be based in someplace where he has some bricks, and some mortar, and some other kinds of roots that he can sink -- having now started his career for the third time.

Q: Do you know how he --

A: Once in Europe, once in Israel, and once here. Yes?

Q: How did he get that job? Do you know?

A: Yes, he came on a -- he came not as a landed immigrant, he came with a visitor's visa.

How much detail do you want about how he stayed? If you're interested, I'll tell it to you briefly.

Q: Tell me briefly, and then we can go.

A: For whatever it's worth, the cantor of the day was not a recognized minister of religion, the rabbi was. Rabbis had non-quota entry possibilities in terms of the Walter Maccaren Immigration act. A rabbi could come here, non-quota, bring his family, a cantor could not. My father had been ordained as a rabbi twice in Europe, at very respected ye -- Yeshivas, one of them in Bratislava, well known. It was never done for professional reasons. It was not at all unusual to have somebody become a ordained lawyer, physician, businessman, accountant, bookkeeper or chemist. In his field it wasn't a bad idea to have that kind of background. My cousin -- my aunt's son, who was a

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 6 Philadelphia lawyer, with all the terms that that means, was able to research the law, and was able to find that as a ordained rabbi, no matter what he does for a living, he could enter non-quota. The rabbi of the congregation in New York, eventually gave him a position of being the associate rabbi so he could come. So I'm saying that that's how he could stay in New York, and this happened before we arrived. How he got the job originally was that on a recommendation, he was asked to do a particular piece of -- of the liturgy, which happens once a month. It is called the Yom Kippur cattan. It is a -- every month there is a Yom Kippur that's done -- not any more, but it used to be, and he performed that. He performed it as a volunteer, he performed it because somebody said, "Hey, you ought to listen to him." And on that basis they decided to offer him position. I think he performed in other places as well, but he was able to get that without much difficulty, and as far as the job was concerned, and the income, that was fine. It was the community that was missing, and that was se -- that was given, or that was made available by the existence of Philadelphia -- remember, I had an aunt, an uncle, three cousins, and their families. So that came with an instant kind of a set of roots.

Q: Mm-hm. So the transition to Philadelphia was not difficult.

A: No. For me the transition to Philadelphia was not difficult. Certainly it was an easier transition than the previous several. You know, from Switzerland to a kibbutz, from a kibbutz to a city, from a city to New York. That was much more difficult. But no, I met sa --

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " End of Tape One, Side A Beginning Tape One, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Emanuel Mandel. This is tape number one , side B. You were saying when the tape cut off that you went to junior high school --

A: That I met some friends in Philadelphia, in s -- in eighth grade, and one of them -- a couple of them, but really one of them is still my very best friend. Unfortunately he lives on the west coast. He's a retarded pe -- a re -- retarded -- he's a retired pediatrician. And Bill and I keep in close contact, and we expect to see him later this month, we're going to be in San Francisco, and they were here last month. So, that's a friendship that's 50 years old, and we maintain it as well as we possibly can. And there were others, the other -- typically in 50 years, you're not going to maintain your whole high school class. But the transition to Philly, to the best of my recollection, from that point of view, was easy.

There were some other things that were difficult, probably with my educational background, and in some ways the lack of it, and what I saw probably subconsciously as my -- as my targets in life. Want me to continue on that direction?

Q: Yeah, tell me about that.

A: Came to New York -- came from New York to Philadelphia, did okay in school, nothing unusual, however, interestingly, the neighborhood in which I lived, and for Philadelphians, all I have to say, I lived in Logan, and I eventually went to Central High School. Now, that's a whole thing by itself, and that's a keyword to anybody who knows

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 0 Philadelphia. If you don't, it doesn't matter, and if you do, that's a -- it's the origin of the magnet school idea. It's a city-wide school [indecipherable]. That high school was equidistant to my house to the zoned high school that everybody from the neighborhood went to. My friends went to Central. They left junior high school -- in those days junior high school ended in ninth grade, I went to -- or eighth grade, but you could stay for ninth. You could start high school ninth or tenth. That's significant, as I recall -- as I think back, that my friends went -- the two or three friends that I maintain contact with, went from Jaku Junior High School to Central in ninth grade. The counselor at that junior high school, Mr. Cotler by name, in his attempt to be kind and to be nice, said to us, "I would recommend that he go to Central High School, but next year. Ninth grade would be good for him in junior high school, because let's face it, his English is not as perfect, his writing is not as perfect, I mean the kid has been here for a year." It was one of the largest mistakes I ever made.

Q: Why?

A: Because the whole style of the school was formed in ninth grade. When I arrived as one of maybe two or three newcomers to that class, to the 10" grade class, I was one of two, or three, or four kids who joined in 10" grade, everybody else was in ninth grade.

And the adjustment, and the academics -- strictly academic high school. We had no non- academic course, it was the original high school wi -- where the Ford program, which later became the accelerated program, was introduced. I had major difficulties for two reasons. I think it took me awhile to catch up, and I spent summer schools in summer

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 71 school because I had to make up one course or two. And secondly, I was very concerned -- not in a conscious way, of fitting in. As a consequence, the social and the -- not just social in terms of social with -- it's a all boy's high school, none of us minded that. Public school, all boys. It's a whole other story. But the point is that I -- none of us missed the girls, so it wasn't just a social with girls that we were trying to deal with at 14 and 15, which is the appropriate time to do that, but the other social things that take place among boys, [indecipherable] concerning sports, concerning various kinds of things that boys begin to become involved with, quite appropriately, was important for me to be part of.

Well, you could only do so many things in 24 hours. As a consequence, I think that I would have had a -- an easier high school career had I gone during ninth grade, and if I wasn't so conscious, at least subconsciously on adjusting to become one of the gang, where I didn't do anything to become one, but it was certainly a drive, because I had recently been elsewhere, and I'd recently been different, quite different. And I -- I want to be sure that I say that in terms of my own experience, I wasn't concerned about doing this in any conscious way, but I'm absolutely convinced in retrospect that in some way, I had a certain amount of catching up to do, which then slowed down some other things.

Q: Right. How did your difficulties manifest itself? Just -- were you unhappy, were you --

A: No, no. I don't think -- no.

Q: Did you have trouble in -- in class?

A: I think that I did not do -- well, I know I -- I -- I think -- I didn't do very well in high school, I was no scholarship student. I don't think I was the smartest kid in class, nor the

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " dumbest kid. I was an average kid. I understood. But somehow, when it came time to spend time on this or that, in terms of homework and other things, I spent less than I should have. Not at -- all the time, and not all -- every year. I had a marvelous high school experience. My three years in Central High School -- and I graduated from Central High School, were as important to me as any schooling, and that's the only school I have any feelings about, in terms of wanting to have any kind of connection. I mean, I would consider going to next year's 50" reunion. I certainly would not consider going to the reunion of Temple University, Penn State University, or the University of Pennsylvania, all of which I attended, and some of which even gave me a piece of sheepskin. I have no particular connection with them, or with it's -- or with classmates. So Central is very important, it was a formative -- as it should be, but also a transformative time for me, because of where I came from, where I had been, and what I was. I remember only one kid that I can recall, who had an experience similar to mine, but I don't know all the details of it, who also had been born overseas. Only one kid I can remember, in a school that because it was a city-wide school was quite eclectic in it's combination of whites, blacks, Jews. Not -- I can't recall any Hispanic kids, because there just weren't any in Philly at the time, and not too many Oriental -- or Asian, or whatever you want to call, youngsters at the time, because there weren't any. There were some, but not enormous numbers. It was a white, middle class school.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8

Q: How -- what was your -- what was your family life like during those years, and your parents, di -- did they become part of the community, the way your father wanted to do, and was that a significant thing for you at that age?

A: Yes and no. Yes, in that I think my father in fact, was able to achieve what he wanted, and my mother with him, a sense of community involvement, and the -- all the various social and other kinds of organizations and things that -- and I'm not going to enumerate what it takes to be a member of a community, but we were not housebound, and we were active in this, that, and the other thing. And they -- my parents became involved in a association of survivors there, and all kinds of Jewish kinds of things. My father became very active in the cantor's organizations, chairing the local group, eventually becoming the national president of the cantor's assembly. This is after I left home, but he was very active, and very involved, and if you talk to any cantor today who is over the age of 50 -- cause the younger ones don't know him, but the -- would know Yehudah Mandel. He was very well known, and very well respected, and did fine. The community, the synagogue was a major synagogue. Not a major synagogue, but a significant synagogue in town.

Q: How so?

A: Because it had been there for 50 years, and it had a tradition that people came back to it even after they moved away. It was not one of the most prestigious, or one of the wealthiest synagogues, cause it was not in the wealthy part of town. Interestingly, it did not choose to rebuild in the suburbs. When it came time for the synagogue to essentially die, it was sold, and it's holdings were transferred to another synagogue, so there was no

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 -4 second generation of that synagogue anywhere. It was built in "24, I think, 1924. And in 1970-something, 50 years later, it just out -- ran out of it's usefulness in that community, and it's holdings were transferred to another synagogue in the city, not in the suburbs, actually. Philadelphia's a very large, physical, geographic place. But it ceased to exist as a synagogue, but for the years my father was there, 35 years, it was. So that was very much so -- one of my limitations was that being from a observant family, there were many things I didn't do. I didn't go to the restaurants -- as little as people did, but I didn't go to the hotdog stands, and I didn't do this, and I didn't do that, and I wasn't available Friday night, and Saturday morning | didn't go to the ballgame. There were things that I did not do, because they did, and I didn't. Eventually that changed to some degree, but there was always a little bit of an overtone, not a stigma --

Q: Did you chafe against that in any way?

A: Chafe, no, resent to some small degree, or found some restriction, yes. But then again, one of my f -- good friends lived across the street, was six foot three at the time. He chafed against being so tall, because that was unusual. The center of the basketball team was six the -- three, and today six foot three is a midget. So the question is how one chafes against things. I wouldn't say I chafed against it, I think that I recognize it, and most of my buddies recognize it as well, and say, "Well, where are you going to be Friday? Oh, I -- I know you, Friday you have to be in synagogue, right?" "That's right." You know, you're singing in the choir, your father's choir, I did that for awhile, those kinds of things. So people understood. My circle of acquaintances, and the circle of

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 >>deg acquaintances of my friends were in the Jewish community, 99 percent. I cannot remember being in the home of a non-Jewish kid in high school. And it was not a religious -- you know, it was not an observant th-thing, nor was there any kind of an injunction against. It's just they weren't part of our friendship groups. I didn't have any black friends, lots of acquaintances, played on the teams with them, but I had no contact with them, they lived over there, and I didn't. Wherever that was, the over there. And the other differences were limited. I certainly had no church connection, which is where a -- my non-Jewish friends gathered, and various organizational things, and I didn't go to Catholicism class, and I didn't go to, you know, to mass.

Q: Did you -- how did you identify yourself at that time? Did you think of yourself as an American right away, or did you -- did it take awhile for that to happen?

A: In some ways -- and again, I thought about this in terms of today's conversation, in some ways I'm not sure I've ever consider myself labeled. There's no question in my mind that everybody sees me, and I am in fact, and have been for the last 50 some years, an American, more so than anything else. But every once in awhile my good friend on the west coast will call me that crazy Hungarian kid. So there are some glitches in that perfect -- I mean, they"!I call my wife something, too, but they call her crazy New Jersey kid. At least that's in this country. But there are some things that I've probably maintained -- retained, that I'm not even conscious of. I never -- and I repeat because it's important for me to repeat to myself, I never consciously tried to acculturate, or to assimilate in anything that I did, by speech, or by dress, or by manner, or by behavior.

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg That just happened. But I think underneath it there was always an element, and still is, of the first 10 years of my life, and the first eight years in Europe, the first 13 years overseas, and the subsequent years here. You want to remember also, that developmentally, a kid changes more in the first 15 years of his life. Once he gets to be kind of an adult, he tends to be the same for al -- as long as he lives. But the changes, the developmental tasks of infancy, childhood, and later of adolescence, and there are such things, kind of need to take place by the time you're 18 - 19, or 20. And from that point on, you either are or you aren't. And I hope I am.

Q: When you were approaching the end of high school, how did you think about your future?

A: Well, I was going to be an engineer. No question. If you look at my high school yearbook, it says, career path, engineer. Only problem was I had an --

Q: What did that mean to you, engineer, what kind of engineer?

A: Well, he tinkers. An engineer tinkers. I had no idea that an engineer sits behind a drafting board for two, or three, or four, or five years, in an engineering firm, going absolutely bonkers. When I began to become somewhat familiar with that, I said I don't think I want to be an engineer. Aptitude-wise, apparently -- I mean, I don't recall the particular scores, and cuda preference tests, and strong vocational tests and things of that nature. Tests with which I'm familiar for other reasons. I think I scored okay on math, and physics, and other kinds of things like that. But I really -- and I am sure that subconsciously again, by formative previous years, had something to do with, I thi -- I

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 27 thought I wanted to go onto some kind of human services, not engineering services. And I thought I wanted to, in some way work with people, and not with things, which I did.

And I transferred into a liberal arts program.

Q: In college?

A: Yes.

Q: Mm-hm, you started in an engineering program?

A: Well, the first year of any college, engineering or anything else, is the same thing, you take English 101, math 101, everything else 101, but in the first year. Now, what I did, I wanted to be very much independent in a sense of paying for school.

Q: Right.

A: Now, one of the advantages I had, having come from Israel, and the background that I had, I was a Hebrew school teacher. Full time, which [indecipherable] 10 hours a week.

Four to six four days a week, and 10 to 12 on Sunday. In that amount of 10 hours of work, I was able to make as much as some of my buddies who worked 20 or 30 hours in grocery stores, and after school jobs, because the rate was higher. I mean, I probably have earned as much as 900 dollars a year, but 900 dollars a year was two years worth of college, because my first year at Penn State, was 410 dollars, 205 dollars a semester. So I'm saying I was able to do what I wanted, namely pay for it myself. My parents, though they were getting to be a little bit more comfortable as time went on -- this is 1955, my father had been here five years, his salary was acceptable, he was teaching in the school, he did concerts, he did this, and appearances, and what. And I think that they were,

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8 economically, certainly comfortable, and remember, they didn't spend a great deal of money eating out, because restaurants weren't kosher, and it wasn't the tradition. I mean, this is before the fast food avalanche, and everybody didn't go out to fe -- Chinese food, you know, three times a week. I'm not sure they do it today either, but still. Anyhow, I was able to fund a certain amount of school, and I was able to then go to a school that was as Close to being away from home as I could think of. Penn State University had campuses throughout the state, including one in oga -- at the Ogontz campus in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, commuting distance from my house. I had one in Eerie, and in Dubois. Several centers were you could go for two years, and then you have to transfer to the main campus at state college, or transfer to some other university. So for two years I had this idyllic life, from whatever in the morning, until three o'clock in the afternoon. At four o'clock I had to go teach. And I was out of school [indecipherable] that I would either drive up there, or my father would pick me up or something. It was arranged, and not a problem. But I had this idyllic life on this tiny little campus of maybe 300 kids. It had been the Ogontz School for Girls. And miss --

A: O--O-g-o-n-t-z, Ogontz, Indian name. It's a section of Philadelphia. And Mrs.

Sutherland, or Miss Sutherland, who had been the headmistress of the Ogontz school, lived on the property, in this little castle-like building, and she had rights to live there for the rest of her life. When she died, I don't know what happened to the place. But this was -- and we had a gazebo, and a lake, and ducks. It was the most idyllic kind of life that you could think of, for a couple of years. Then reality kicked in, I was not going to go up to

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " the campus, because I would have had to lose my teaching job. It was important to me. I transferred to Temple University when I finished the undergraduate work that I did. And Temple University in those days was 475 dollars a year. So again, I could afford that. But you ask about what I did in my first year. At Ogontz, at Penn State, I transferred -- I can't remember now whether it was in the first semester, or the second semester. As I made out programs for my second year, I moved into -- more into the humanities, and into sociology, psychology and things. But even in your second year, things are pretty well -- re-requirements, you don't have -- and this is 1955, this is not 1995, or 2005, where, you know, kids go to school and take one class a year, and then go back for basket weaving two. I mean, there are many jo -- they do this the high school, and in el -- in -- literally in the mel -- elementary school, the choices of curricula. Well, there were less choices, and in my second year, I don't recall exactly, but I do remember that I moved away from the physical science, into the social science.

Q: And living at home?

A: Living at home.

Q: The whole time?

A: Living at home, the whole time. Never a thought of living away from home. And I've often thought whether that was an issue of my choice, or I just couldn't conceive -- I can tell you this much, that I certainly didn't think of living away from home as an expression of independence. I was very independent at home, and I guess I had lived in enough different situations, that I didn't have to prove the fact that I in fact could find my

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 % way on my own, by living away. And I think economically it was not a good idea. I mean, where was it going to go? There are some people in Philadelphia who lived at Penn -- University of Pennsylvania, who are city residents, you know, who lived a half an hour from the -- as people here live at college park. If I was in college these days, I never would commute. I'm sorry -- I would always commute, I would never be a resident student at college park. My kids were resident students at the universities, but they at least were outside of commuting distance. So my wife, interestingly, I mean just as a contrast, although this -- it's no impact on me, I hardly knew her then, commuted to school, although she had a scholarship to attend any university -- any state university in New Jersey. She was [indecipherable] she had a Regent's scholarship. She could have gone to New Brunswick, from the Newark area where she was raised, and been a resident student. Because of a number of things, she chose to live at home. So interesting, we were both commuting students as undergraduates.

Q: Mm-hm. During these years -- first couple years of college, and you're still working every day, teaching?

A: Mm-hm.

Q: You're still thinking about what it is you're going to do, you haven't completely -- that idea hasn't really formed in your mind?

A: I wish I could identify for you at what point I began to make more of a concerted direction decision. Probably when I wo -- when I transferred -- when I finished two years at Penn State, and as I said, I couldn't stay there any longer, I had to either transfer to the

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 * main campus at college park, or transfer to any place else that would accept me, and I was [indecipherable] acceptable things. I transferred to Temple University, which is the commuting school in Philadelphia. And I'm trying to think of whether it was a particular teacher, or particular curriculum that got me involved in what was another Ford Foundation trial program. I am currently, and have for the last 45 years been a professional social worker. I've been in private practice now for 20 years. I say that because that's where I got to because of what I decided then. There was some kind of a program in the school of education department of secondary education, which combined majors in sociology, psychology, political science, history and economics. That attracted me, as a -- this kind of a [indecipherable] thing. Now, at the end of that completion, you could practice teaching, become a teacher, which I did not do. My undergraduate degree is as a bachelor of science in education. I was a qualified, but not certified teacher in Pennsylvania. Had I practiced ott, I would have become certified, I think, in history or something. So that attracted me, the choice was to do that, and the other choice was to go to school of social work in graduate programs. And at the time there was really only one school in Philadelphia, that was the University of Pennsylvania. As this is going on, and I think back to a couple of people at the university, who were instrumental in talking with me about these things, and these are programs that some of the courses had practicums attached, in the field of social service, in the field of social welfare, in the field of social work. I began to think more and more in relation to maybe doing that. I knew I'd have to go to graduate school, which didn't bother me conceptually. I was a little worried about

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 >> the fact that the United States army might interfere. And I was very concerned if my career in school is interrupted, will I go back to school afterwards, and there's no way to guarantee that, I took the deferment exam, I did everything I could. I wouldn't say that I had a daughter for that purpose, but that didn't hurt, because here I was 23 years old or something, or whatever, and with a wife and a family, and I had to sign a commitment up to the age of 35, but I wasn't drafted. There was a reason why I wasn't drafted, which is nothing to do with my choices. Informationally, as another one of the homogenizing elements in my life, at Penn State, it being a land grant institution, it required all freshmen, and sophomore men to participate in reserve officers training program, ROTC, in World War two uniforms. So Wednesdays, I was Lieutenant Mandel of the horse cadets. As a consequence, because I was in a military program, quote unquote, I was skipped when my draft number came up -- not the lottery, this precedes the lottery. This is right after Korea, and the calls were limited. You know, two or three people per draft board. So they never called me, and by the time I got done with this, two years later, all the 18 and 19 year olds were ahead of me on the list, so I was never called, I was never ca -- Iw -- took an army physical, I was a one-A, and I did all the things in those days that all of us did. Some of my friends signed up on various pr-plans, they would postpone induction until they finished school and then go in. Some took a six month program to get done with the active service, and then go to reserve meetings for seven years. I did neither, and lucked out.

Q: At what age did you become a citizen?

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 %

A: 18.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: The rules stated that you could become a citizen at 18 on your own if you had been here for five years. If you were here for five years before you were 18, you could become a citizen on your parent's papers. But I was sworn in to this da -- the federal court in Philadelphia in December of 1954 -- "54, yes.

Q: Was that a significant, memorable moment for you?

A: I gotta tell you that I have to think about it, because I haven't thought about it daily.

I'll tell you two things about the day. One, I certainly felt more American that day, not because of the swearing in, but because who else was being sworn in. I was, as I remember, the only recently graduated high school kid being sworn, everybody else was older. There were two guys who were in Air Force uniforms, who had to renounce their titles in the Czech royalty. They couldn't be Count PFC, they had to be Mr. PFC. There was a rule, you cannot hold a title in the States, but they were already in the Air Force, or maybe the army -- I think in the Air Force. I -- but there were other people were there, they were all older now, and older probably by three, four, five years, or 30 years, but not anybody my age, and I was an American kid for whom this was a right of passage, no problem. I didn't have any difficulties with the three questions they asked me, which may have been what's the highest court in the country, and what are the highest legislative bodies in Washington? Remember, I was living in Philly, not in Washington. It was an easy th -- it was a non -- i -- it was a non -- how do -- it was not, as I remember it, an

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 a emotionally important kind of thing. I didn't have my parents with me. I didn't go to their swearing in. It was a routine that you had to do, like renew your driver's license. It was equally emotional, because I felt so very comfortable with where I was, and how I went, and who I was, and what I knew in terms of the American life. It wasn't a sheltered existence in my own self-made ghetto, whatever ghetto that is, as many people do. I'd been involved in the swearing in ceremonies here, because of a commission I served on at one time. And it's interesting to see the people now, that's a very different world, but still you see the ghettos that come. The Thai community comes to the swearing in of it's Thai people, and the Cambodians to the Cambodians, and to the Salvadorians to the Salvadorians. I didn't feel that I was a member of any of those communities.

Q: That's interesting, yeah.

A: But I really -- I have to tell you I've not thought about -- I know it was December 1954, and I re-remember the -- the -- the U.S. court, but I don't remember anything about it that would have been remarkable. Maybe the word is unremarkable, to me. But again, I was the only kid that I can remember, there was a high school -- just recently graduated high school kid, I guess I was at Penn State, I don't reca -- call what day it was.

Obviously took the day, and I took care of it. But I didn't make any kind of a thing about it. As I said, my parents didn't come with me, not because they had to take me, but because it wasn't that -- important yes, significant, no.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 %

Q: Right. During these years, were your parents weighing in with thoughts about what you should do in college, or were those decisions left pretty much up to you? Did you discuss those kinds of things with your parents very much?

A: I'm sure I did, and I'm sure that it was a non-significant discussion. I know that my father said to me when I was at graduate school, he says, "I don't know what social workers do, but I have a feeling that it may not be the most lucrative thing for anybody to do. So I have a recommendation. Start on your second million. Takes all the pressure off making the first." Right? I took up his advice, and I've done exactly what he told me. But I have no -- social services, human kind of work, that kind of stuff was understood. In those days the interest in working was for some agency type occupation, not the private practice that I do now, or the independent practice, where I see independent patients on my own office. And that was understood, because lots of folks, and lots of community positions had that kind of background. And the difference was this job was different than that job, but that kind of training was similar. And look, my father had been in communal kind of involvement for a long time, he was very active in the chaplaincy. Bumped into social workers all over the place, and all the veterans in all the regular hospitals. He was the chaplaincy's chaplain. My mother was involved -- grew up in a home that was community based. Her father was the rabbi of the community. The one rabbi in the community of 3000 Jews in Novisad. So this was not something that was on Mars. But I have no recollection really. I think my parents were very interested in my finishing school. I think they were very concerned that would I finish on what terms, because they

36

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072

obviously were aware that my high school career was not brilliant. It was not the kind that schools were chasing me with scholarship offers. I mean, I finished --

End of Tape One, Side B USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " Beginning Tape Two, Side A

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Emanuel Mandel. This is tape number two, side A. Your parents didn't really pressure you in any specific direction as you were deciding what you would do, as you were in college. Was there ever any thought that you would move in a -- in a more religious direction, that you would go become a rabbi, or a cantor? Was there -- did your father --

A: That's a terrific question.

Q: -- want you to do that?

A: They did not push me vocationally in any direction. They did push me educationally, because they thought it was important to attain a certain status of having earned a degree, that was important. As far as specifically, I think that they would have been -- my father particularly would have been happy if I had been more involved in some religious life avocationally, although I don't think he would have necessarily recommended the rabbinate, and don't misunderstand, and the listener shouldn't misunderstand, that he had some feeling that that's a lousy job for a nice Jewish kid, in some ways. It ha -- this -- th- the politics of the rabbinate is not -- no, the rabbinate is not without politics, okay? The cantor has a different element. The cantor requires, at least by his judgment and mine, a certain talent which I did not possess. I was not blessed with a voice, as he and many others. He could learn everything. But the performance piece requires the talent, and I didn't score well on that. I sang in his choir until my voice changed kind of, and -- and I'm still, at this point, very interested in the cantorate, and varying s -- music, and the

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 38 only thing I play is the radio. So, no I -- th-the question is good, and they would have been pleased, but I don't think that he'd -- they really thought that if I am involved in some kind of communal service of a Jewish nature, that's close, that's close, and it was.

Q: And that was the assumption, that it would be 1-in the Jewish community?

A: I think so, I think so. And it was, in fact. I don't know if that was because it was so directed, or because I saw no cha -- no choice anywhere else, it was not that I didn't see choices anywhere else. If I hadn't been involved in a scholarship program, in Jewish communal service, given by the B'nai Brith, which funded my graduate school, and then I owed them some time, I would have been very interested in going into a different element of human services. In fact, in the -- in -- as a social worker, yes, but in the rehabilitation. In that -- and I did an internship, or an externship at the wa -- hospital in Philadelphia, and I was very interested in being involved in the elements of helping people adjust to the dite -- activities of daily life, now without a hand, or now with a major disability. Because the point is you don't put them into -- onto -- put them on a shelf, and make them not participate. Now, there's got to be some acknowledgement for the fact that they may not be the same. I mean, blind folks are not going to be pilots, rights or no rights. But, that doesn't mean there's nothing else they can do. And that whole element of that kind of retraining, and re-understanding of the psychological dynamics of being disabled, fascinated me, included the physical elements of it. And I would have gone into that element of things, as many others that I had thought about, if I hadn't had a Jewish commitment. And in fact, a guarantee that I have to take a job for

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " two years, because I have to repay them for their having given me a scholarship to University of Pennsylvania. So yes, the Jewish element was there, the Jewish vocation element specifically, in terms of rabbinate or cantor, it was not.

Q: You said that your parents joined a survivor's group early on, I -- I can't remember if it was in New York, or when they first got --

A: Philly.

Q: In Philly. You must have known about those meetings, did you take --

A: Sure.

Q: -- take part in them?

A: Well, not that much. What happened is that there is a World Federation of Hungarian Jury, I think is it's name, in New York. My father knew some of the people there. My father knew lots of people, and lots of places, and he used those contacts for appropriate things. And my father tells me again I'm digressing on him, but it's interesting that he went to call on a person as a matter of courtesy, not because he was a supporter, but because of what he stood, what -- what he represented, who at that time lived in Brooklyn, and was one of the major enemies of Israel. This was the Sotmire rabbe from Sotmire, Hungary, Rabbi Oyle Titlebaum, who my father knew in Sotmire, which is in the general area of Ruthinia where my father was raised. And he called on the rabbe, as an acknowledgement of the rabbe's achievement in the ra -- in the rabbe business, as a scholar, not as a political entity. But he is the leader of the Sotmire Hassidim, and he's not gone, but when he went to Israel, they changed the ne -- the notation on the trains

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 * from the state of Israel to cover it up, because after all, since this was not created by the Messiah, it did not exist. And Titlebaum would have given Israel to Abdullah, and wait for the Messiah to come to create the state. So, clearly there was no agreement on the politics, but my father call on -- now why did he call on him? He knew him from there, and Titlebaum was with us in Bergen-Belsen. He was one of the 1600. So there are many people that you tend to know, but to get back to -- to the issue that's closer to home --

Q: Did you participate in those activities?

A: Right. The World Federation hungar -- of Hungarian -- of -- Association of Hungarian [indecipherable] was in New York, and knew some people from before. They, my father and some others, started an organization called the Hungarian Hebrew Association of Philadelphia. It was not necessarily of survivors, or a survivor organization, but by definition 98 percent of them were survivors. And they had the fundraisers, and they had programs, and they had concerts, and they sponsored Israel bonds, and they sponsored Jewish National Fund, they sponsored the forest in Israel, and other kinds of things. So this was an element of not a survivor organization, but an organization of Hungarian Jews, who by definition were -- I don't know about 98 percent, but substantially either survivors, or people with survivor families who may have come here before the war, so they were not survivors, quote unquote, but they were in fact part of the same community. And he was very active in that, and I was involved in -- in my way, I mean the picking up and the dropping off of packages, the rummage sales. I'm not sure I attended too many of the meetings, I certainly went to their programs. They would get

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " together and they would cook potluck dinners, enormous ones for the community, and my mother was again involved in the cooking for large numbers, cause she knew something about how do you do whatever Hungarian cooking type things for 200, not for three. And whatever they were, whether it was sour cabbage or some other things, and again this was usually done at the synagogue, where my father had certain privileges. He could rent easily enough, and make arrangements for making it available, and he would pay arent, and they would have programs, and that was something they did. My involvement in that was limited, but clearly I was involved in it.

Q: Your father then -- and y -- both of your parents, their professional and social lives were very much bound up in the community, as he --

A: Absolutely.

Q: -- as he wa -- as he had wanted.

A: His, my mother had no professional life any more, she didn't have any professional life since she -- really since the time she was married, although she had a little bit afterwards. She'd been an enent -- elementary school teacher for kiddies in southern Hungary, and she taught in Temerin, which is a city not far from Novisad. I don't know if she taught for three, or four years, maybe five, I don't recall the exact numbers. They were married in 1930. My mother was 24 year -- 22 years old, so she couldn't have taught -- well, she taught some years after that until left Novisad -- maybe four years.

Q: And was there involvement more to sort of be part of that community, and maintain the ki -- the welfare of that community, or -- how political was it at that time?

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 2

A: In Philadelphia?

Q: Yeah.

A: Political in the sense of the politics in terms of American politics, in terms of wa -- the republicans and the democrats, zilch and zip, none.

Q: Right.

A: I would suspect they may have known. I certainly could not tell you who represented me in the state house in Pennsylvania. I recall vaguely who the congressman may have been, and the senators, and the mayor, and the governor. But only vaguely, I mean, I can remember. Have to think about the era. The involvement, or the household involvement of the organization, and the involvement of my parents with these, was at best cursory. I don't remember -- the only place I remember going to a political meeting was in New Jersey where wif -- my wife is from, we went to -- he's of the past, he's not gone, he became a senator, he lost his senatorial position as part of ABSCAM, Harrison Williams, known as Pete Williams, who was a congressman from New Jers -- was running initially in 1950 something or other, and we went to a rally in Hillside, New Jersey, where my wife is from. I -- I'm sure that was the first political event I went to in my life of that kind. But I had no involvement in politics, and neither did my parents, and neither did anybody else that I knew, in those days. As I say, I could not tell you who represented us in Harrisburg, no way.

Q: So no, like pro-Israel kind of involvement?

A: No, no, but that's not the me -- you're talking -- I'm talking about American politics.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8

Q: Right.

A: The Israel issue is not a political one. That's an emotional one. It is alway -- there's a familial -- I mean, we send packages, we had communication, we had some visits. I mean, I went back to Israel for the first time since I came in 1957, as did my parents. We went separately, but we met there. I then again went in -- in deg57 -- in "60, I went, I don't know, half a dozen times, or a dozen times since. But the connection is -- was very clear, but it was not a political one. It was not a support of labor, or a support of hashomir atsyere, or a support later of Leecould. It was not a political involvement on their part. I would think -- since Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had an open primary system, you could vote for any party you wished, I would suspect that they registered democrats. I certainly was, and I think that had to do with who was, in fact, representing. I mean, this was the era when Truman had been an important guy, and then came Eisenhower, and then came Stevenson as a candidate, and then came Kennedy. In that milieu -- Kennedy's the first president I voted for -- in that milieu, democratic party seemed like the thing I wanted to be involved with, because I couldn't find any kind of connection with the republicans, though the Philadelphia, the -- the -- the -- the governor of Pennsylvania was a republican, and Philadelphia had a long, long -- a republican mayor, until 50 something or other.

Q: Mm-hm. Let's go back to we're about to graduate from college.

A: Okay.

Q: And you've met your w -- wife-to-be -- in college, is that where you met?

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 "

A: No.

Q: No.

A: Nope, nope, nope. Nothing to do with college.

Q: Okay. Did you graduate then, and --

A: Well, I did, but do you want to go on the -- on the -- on college, you want to tell -- me to tell you about how I met my wife?

Q: Well, wha -- how -- tell me about your wife.

A: Then the-there's no connection there.

Q: Okay, tell me about how you met your wife.

A: I became active with some of my buddies in the B'nai Brith youth organization, a program called AZA, Aleph Zadik Aleph. It was a -- you don't even know about it?

Q: No, I'm not Jewish.

A: Well, but I thought you might have known from these --

Q: I'm thinking that -- no --

A: -- descriptions.

Q: -- no, no, I don't.

A: You are familiar with the B'nai Brith --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- as an organization? It sponsored a youth organization for boys, and one for girls. It was the largest organization of it's type in the country. I went to work for them, eventually, in terms of my Jewish commitment. She was a member of it -- of the girl's

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 * organization in New Jersey. Philadelphia, ne -- Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia and Delaware were in the same district. We had conventions, we had get-togethers, we had various things. And s -- in December of 53, I think, there was a program of -- a weekend program in Philadelphia during Christmas break, and the presidents of the district honored us with their presence. The boy's president was a young man by the name of Eliot Rothman, who was an architect in Boston, with whom we're still in close contact, and guess who the girl's president was? The woman whom you met this morning, my wife. And Adrienne and Eliot came to give out diplomas for this university weekend that we had attended. It was not university, it was still high school at the time, but there was a program called the university. And actually I met her. I met her and many others, and we communicated, and corresponded, and occasionally visited. We had no social contact. She went her way, I went my way. In 1956, after we'd known each other as friends for a couple of years -- as I say in those days you didn't make phone calls every day, you -- occasionally a phone call, sometimes a visit, and some letters -- we met up again at the camp in the summertime, we both went there as adults, we were 20, to supervise a convention -- well, part of a convention. And I think we had some kind of thoughts about each other throughout all this time, but we had never had a date, or a connection. I don't think that she and I were ever alone for an hour at the time. With lots of other kids, yes. She was involved with some kid from college, and I was involved with some girl from someplace else, and we had active social lives. In 56 we decided that maybe there's something we ought to think about more seriously, and we did. In "57, we

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 "6 both went to Europe, separately, and the place where we rendezvoused by schedule, was in Venice, which is not a place in which to rendezvous, both socially or romantically.

And in "58 we were married. But we met unrelated to school, she went to Rutgers University in Newark, I went to Temple University in Philadelphia. Schools had nothing to do with our connection at any point. And she moved to Philadelphia with me while I was in graduate school.

Q: She have survivors in her family?

A: None.

Q: No.

A: Her parents were born here, her grandparents -- her grandparents came from the other side, from Europe, three out of the four, but they came as young people, before the first World War. So survivors -- she had some aunts. But -- and she had a cousin, her mother's cousin, Alex. But no, no real survivor connection. I may have been the first one that she really met. Was a kid in school she talks about who arrived at her, maybe junior high school, who came from Europe, and everybody was nice to her, and they gave her special help, and taught her English and things. But limited. You also have to have some understanding of the nature of the community. Hillside, New Jersey was kind of an enclave outside of Newark, between Newark and Elizabeth. But no, I would say that her involvement with survivors, even though she may disagree to some degree, was at best limited.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 "

Q: And did that cause any difficulty between you? Was there any bridge to gap? Any gap to bridge?

A: I don't think the survivor thing has -- was the gap. I think the difference in some upbringing, the religious difference -- she comes from a essentially sectarian home, Jewish but sectarian, and I didn't. I think that the differences in where we spent the first 12 - 15 years of our lives -- I mean, her notion of the war was that they had air raid alerts in school, and they crawled under the desk. My notion of the same time was air raids.

There's a difference. And that difference, I think, has -- had been there -- ha -- has been there, is there, and will be there. And we've been together for a very long time. I mean, we're -- 1958 is now what, 47 years ago?

Q: There's so many stories you hear about people who came to this country, and me- meeting American Jews, who have no understanding of what they've been through, and how that sometimes caused friction and difficulties.

A: Oh.

Q: Was that a problem for you before you met your wife, and -- and -- or were there any kind of incidents that you remember along those lines, about, you know, American Jews not understanding what you'd been through?

A: I don't think so --

Q: Or you thinking that they should, or --

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8

A: I don't think so at the time, because of the difference between myself and the adult community. I think my parents experienced that much more so than the kid community, who kind of went with the flow.

Q: Right.

A: Imean, my buddies knew this, that, and the other thing, and didn't care about the rest, and didn't -- I didn't accuse them of not having been in concentration camp, and they didn't hold me accountable for having been there. Not among kids, and I'm talking about kids now up to the age of, you know, college age. Adults, something else, their sense of establishment when they came, what they did, why they didn't help, the whole issue about Roosevelt and various emissaries, and the interest that the national government had, and what they had to do, and [indecipherable] the first to recognize that the first interest had to be the protection of this country. But that doesn't mean they couldn't have had something to do with other things as well. But there's a whole issue involved with who they were, what they were, what thi -- their upbringing was. But I'm saying -- the question that you ask I think relates with my parent's generation, not to me.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I can't recall anything that will be significant that I can tell you, where this -- this rub, this -- this chafing, as you said earlier, was of issue.

Q: Min-hm, for you. Do you know of specific incidents about your parents experience along those lines? I mean, was there --

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 *

A: No. No, well, specific, no. I think that there were issues having to do with the fact that anybody who didn't come here on the Mayflower, and nobody I knew came on the Mayflower, was seen as -- the reference being a greener, a newcomer. And that came up once in awhile. Certainly my father had that because the kind of life that he had to start all over with for the third time, was not the kind of life that he had in th-the first time.

And in some ways he resented that, and to some degree he expected things of people in terms of performance, in terms of responsibility, that he thought was appropriate to expect.

Q: I don't -- can you be more specific about what you mean? He expected what kinds of things from people?

A: He expected -- well, you have to know something about him as well, which I'm not going to detail for you, but the point is he expected certain behavior norms, and cert -- if somebody said I'm going to do this, he should do it, not forget it. This has nothing to do with being an immigrant, but it has to do with the fact that when he was in Europe, and was the chief cantor of Budapest, essentially if he barked, somebody said yes. And here he was not that, but the expectation may have been the same. If some of his colleagues said they will do this or that, or the other thing, and bring this piece of music to that rehearsal, he expected that. And if they didn't, it had something to do with him personally, but also with the fact that he did not -- he did not suffer fools well, cause he never had to. I think that he had some feelings about the fact that when he was looking for a position in Philadelphia, he had occasions to go to various places, and to essentially

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 *deg go for tryouts. And he was resentful of the fact, for example, that one rabbi said to him -- rabbi came from the same neighborhood that he did in Europe, but came 20 years before, he said to him, "Well, you know, cantor, in this congregation, the cantor does the responsive readings in English." To which my father said, you know, I mean, "Is that what you want me to do? I mean, you have now just said the weakest part of my armament is what you want me to feature. I mean, I can speak English, I can read English, but I have reasonably difficult accent, and this is not my -- I mean, I'1l do it in German, I" II do it in Hebrew, I'1l do it in Russian, but I won't do it in English, because again, it'1l embarrass me, and it'll embarrass you." "Well, if you can't do that, we can't give you the job." And he thought that there was an element of saying, uh-uh, I made it, you ain't. And that was a resent thing against the newcomer. It may have also been a resentment against my father's skills and abilities, which may have been threatening to some others. And he was an outstanding cantor, and if that sounds like a chauvinistic statement, it isn't, alright? An enormous voice, was very well trained, and it scared the hell out of folks who weren't. You know? Who were legends only in their own minds, and he was not, but [inaudible]. So there are things like that. We came from central Europe. The majority of the Jewish community in this country came from eastern Europe.

My mother was not Yiddish speaking. I don't know if you know, but Yiddish was not spoken everywhere in Europe. My grandfather knew Yiddish very well. My father knew Yiddish very well, because when they went to Yeshiva, which is the original schooling thing, you learned in Yiddish, you learned -- you learned Bible, which is written in

ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 I Hebrew, discussing it in Yiddish, not in Hebrew, because you didn't use the Hebrew language for secular conversation. It's a holy language, it's only for study. And you discussed it in Yiddish. So they knew Yiddish, they spoke Yiddish at home. Much of the community that you see here, that came from Poland and Russia had Yiddish in their homes. In New York my mother was told any number -- she wasn't told, it was told about her that she doesn't even speak a proper language. How can the cantor's wife not speak a proper language? What's the proper language? Yiddish. So those were things that they had to do with the fact that she didn't speak a proper language, she didn't come from the right place, and she didn't come when we came. These kinds of things. Are they serious?

No. Are they significant? Somewhat. Impact? Some. Critical? No. That's the valuation I can give you about the impact of the Jewish community.

Q: You finished school, you had this two year commitment, and what -- where did you go, what -- what kind of work did you do when you finished school?

A: [had a choice to -- well, I had to take a position with the B'nai Brith youth organization as a professional member of the staff. Okay?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I had a choice -- if not a choice, a 55 - 45 choice, so it was not a total choice, but a choice still, of taking a position in the Philadelphia office, or taking a position in the Cleveland office. I went to Cleveland. I really thought that I wanted to have a career start not in my hometown, for all the blessings of the hometown, and all the negatives of the hometown. I went to Cleveland for two years. While in Cleveland, a position opened up

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 "?

in Detroit, which is no more attractive than Cleveland, but it was in a different district, with a different staff, with a different supervisor, with a different boss than Chicago, and it would -- and it was the top job in the state of Michigan, and I was interested in that, to see if I could do that. And I got that job, and as a consequence, I stayed well beyond my two year commitment, and I stayed with them for 15 years. And I was with the agency totally for 15 years, Cleveland and Michigan -- well, even before, I was even in New Jersey for a little time. But I stayed with the B'nai Brith organization as a professional social worker. They used to hire group workers in those days, which I was, and I ran a program for healthy, well-adjusted middle class Jewish kids in the state of Michigan.

Q: What kind of program?

A: It's a social, educational, religious, athletic program after school. They meet in groups called chapters, very much like I was involved as a kid in a chapter in Philadelphia, my wife in a chapter in New Jersey. And we would have gatherings, and -- where we met, and others met, and I had not the same, but similar programs, in Michigan, and programs in the district, which was the larger area of the Midwest, and programs which were national, which was in the national encampment, which happens to be in Pennsylvania.

You know, it's a home turf for me again, but that's a -- it could have been in -- went to conventions the University of Illinois, where we in fact, took the university at Champagne, for a convention of several hundred kids from that district. That was a large program divided throughout the country into seven different districts, and the details of that are not important. No longer that.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 *8

Q: And you're -- you were married by that time?

A: We were married -- yeah sure, we were married "58, went to -- I was married all through graduate school. My daughter was born in "60, we went to Cleveland in 61, went to Detroit in "63, came here in "73 --

Q: Oh, so that's [indecipherable]

A: -- to Washington, right. With the same organization to be the third man in the national office, which was terrific in terms of my having come to Washington, I've never regretted that. But after three years here, or two years, the national office, for many, many reasons I thought that's not what I want to do. Continue in there sometimes needs to be a -- not so much a vocational change, but maybe an employment change. And we came to a mutual meeting of separation.

Q: And you became a private --

A: Nots -- not quite --

Q: No.

A: -- I went to work for the -- I mean, the largest employer in this community is the federal government. I went to work at a private agency in southeast Washington for two years with a friend of mine, which was totally funded by government contract, and that kind of petered out because of a number of things that happened, including a change in administration. I went to work for the Peace Corps, here in town, as a trainer, particularly in areas of psychological kinds of issues, and counseling kinds of services to be given -- this is only to the staff of the Peace Corps, I never had anything with volunteers, but they

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 - would work with volunteers. I'd -- rec -recognition of cultural difference, I mean you have a Peace Corps vol -- Peace Corps staff member is going to be the agricultural staff member in west Africa. He knows the agricultural business, but if you ask him about cultural differences, you have to first define the word culture, cause he never seen anything, besides Montana. Whatever, I'm not maligning Montana. Culture in this country, I mean remember, this is a country where you can go for 3,000 miles with one language, with great success. You can not do that anywhere in the world. You can't do it India, China, or Russia, which are the same size. You can do it in Australia, but for most of it there's no people, so [indecipherable] talk with some kangaroo.

Q: Sheep, too.

A: Sheep. So, it's not a fair [indecipherable] to go from Perth to Kearns is probably same distance as it is from Boston, San Francisco, but there're no people there to talk to. And English, obviously, will get you by. Their version of it anyhow. So, those cultural things, and other kinds of counseling things, and other -- understanding of certain kind of -- psychological kind of issues that might be difficult, was what I did for the Peace Corps, and actually not just for the Peace Corps, but at the time, the administ -- president's administration thought that they ought to put the Peace Corps together with the domestic Peace Corps called Vista.

Q: Right.

A: In an agency called Action, which never worked that well, but it did, so I was involved in both.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 degdeg

Q: Let me stop here while --

A: Mm-hm.

Q: -- while -- so we don't run -- End of Tape Two, Side A Beginning Tape Two, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Emanuel Mandel. This is tape number two, side B. Did I just lose my microphone?

A: You lost your microphone. So, all I'm saying is that I was involved in both the domestic element of action, which was Vista, and the overseas element of action called Peace Corps. But I never served overseas, I never served [indecipherable] I was with them for eight years. After that I began to develop a private psychotherapy program, and practice, and I have done that in a couple of different locations for the last, gee, 20 years.

Q: What kind of issues do you deal with [indecipherable]

A: Deal with adolescents and adults in issues that are -- many of them are similar no matter what age you are in. Depression is depression at any age, almost. The separation issues for younger people are the same no matter where you are, many of them having to do with the need to strike some kind of understanding and insight that an outsider can strike, that the insider cannot. Example, family comes to see me with a kid who is a high school senior, and this is March of any year. And the kid essentially has, in fact, run away, or left, come back after three or four days, because he feels that he no longer can function with the confines and the restrictions of the parental home. It's devastating for a

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 degdeg family to have this happen. If you can help the parents make some adjustment, the kid make some adjustment, gain some insight, and postpone that runaway for four months.

Four months. Now, the kid is going to go away to school. That's a legitimate runaway.

It's a runaway in either case, if you nee -- know what I'm saying. But in the one is legitimate and not devastating to the family, and one is. And sometimes the outsider can make that happen and observe that and understand it, cause I'm not emotionally involved with the kid nor the parents. And the parents, what they'll do is they" Il do every kind of tough love issue there is, and they'II restrict, and restrict, and the kid will rebel, and rebel.

And the more you push, the more th -- you resist. Well, if you can understand that, and the dynamics of that, you can be very helpful. And once in awhile I am.

Q: It's been a very interesting kind of gradual move for you in that direction, to working with people individually in their very intimate, kind of family problems. It's not -- i-it's not -- i-it was an evolution for you.

A: Sure.

Q: Yeah.

A: I don't think I could have said to you 35 years ago I'm gonna do that, because the number of folks in my field who were doing that, you could count on one hand, and ""m exaggerating again. It was the province of the psychiatrist, who had limited medication to prescribe, because there weren't any. I mean, anybody could prescribe medication, many psychiatrists could, and the medication of choice 50 years ago was various kinds of tranquilizers. If you tranquilize them enough, all mental patients will be docile, and they

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 *7 could be put in institutions, and even into back wards, which no longer exist. The world has become much more complex than it was as recently as 50 years ago. A hundred years ago I can't talk about. But in the last 50 years compli -- complexities have evolved geometrically. As a consequence, the kind of help that's psychotherapeutically appropriate had to evolve into more practitioners. Psychologists began to do some of that, those who became clinical psychologists, not research guys. And today social workers provide more of that than any other profession by the number of hours provided in this community. Now, I didn't think of doing that because I on -- first of all, that was not part of my thinking, secondly, I didn't think that I could -- this may have some to do with what I did as a kid, I didn't think that I could take the risk of economically subjecting my family to a -- to a horserace while my kids were still in school. I didn't start this until after they were out of school. I figured the worst can happen, we'll skip a meal. My wife and I will make it. And thirdly, I really thought that one cannot do this, no matter what training they have, until they have practiced in a variety of ways. I've always had individual attention to things. I mean, I remember when licensure became mandatory in the state of Maryland in 1970 - something or other. And obviously I was well off that I was -- I was out of school 15 years. And I had to put together the pieces of hours that I provided an individual psychotherapy, or individual counseling in the previous 15 years, an hour here, two hours there, three hours there, because I wasn't doing this 40 hours a week. You had to come up with some 2,000 hours or something, and I don't recall exactly how, but I think, you know, a percentage of every year was spent in this, in

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8 families. I mean, I had to, in my job in Michigan, I had to get a kid out of jail once in awhile, and I had to have a suicide attempt, and I had to have a runaway, and I had to have a something else. I mean, again, these things add up, but I did this on a very limited basis, and then of course it became something I did full time. But I didn't think I could it full time, until I had amassed the body of experience. So you talked before about gapping bridges, or bridging gaps, I had to have bridges to things. And you don't have a bridge to various things until you've had some experience, not so much in life, but life and applied practice.

Q: I'm leaping ahead to the big kind of question, but --

A: You're gonna bridge the gap, or gap the bridge?

Q: I'm always trying to do that. What is it about your experience, your -- a fact of your being a survivor? What does that -- what -- what -- from that experience, what do you bring to what you do with people in -- in this setting?

A: You'd be so -- you'd be so easy, and I -- and I have to tell you, I've thought about this a great deal, specifically because of this interview. It'd be so easy to say, well obviously I saw atrocities, I saw terrible things, I saw things that shouldn't happen to humans, and the job that I now have helps humans, therefore -- that's too glib, and too easy, and it's not true. Now, does that impact? Of course. But I think the impact is an on -- is on -- on the -- on the understanding of behavior, of motivation, of choices, of why do people sometimes go like sheep, and sometimes don't go like sheep, and it's the same people in different settings? I can't tell you the answer to that, but those kinds of behaviors does in some

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " way have some additional armament, or some additional bridge to human behavior. But as I say, I cannot say, nor will I say to you that because, therefore -- it's an obvious. I saw bad, I can do good, that's a good thing. That's glib.

Q: But you were in a position as a child to perhaps focus on cause and effect of people's behaviors because there was -- you were in some danger --

A: Oh, absolutely.

Q: -- and you knew that, so you were -- you were --

A: Well, I don't know how I knew it, I don't know --

Q: Well, you -- you said before, in the other interview, that maybe you didn't understand the larger situation, but you know when there's a man there with a gun, and there's barbed wire --

A: Right, right, right.

Q: -- and there's a turret, that this is not a normal --

A: Right.

Q: -- that "m under some kind of danger here.

A: Okay, no, I was -- I was probably in more danger specifically in Israel when the independence war was going on, and shots were fired and some hit my house. It didn't hit me, because I wasn't stupid enough to be standing out there, but I'm saying that that kind of danger is a little different, but you're right.

Q: Right.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 degdeg

A: I think that I have a capacity to observe, sharpened by 40 years of practice, by education, or by the eyesight that I was born with. I think I have an ability to in some way amalgamate various kinds of background pieces, and put it together into an approach, so that they become part of that. But I have to say again that maybe it's because I was not old enough to understand, and maybe I would have understood at 15, the fact that I'm undamaged by it, at least substantially so, I recall, I understand, I can re-retell, I und -- I know what went on, and of course I understood the meaning of it subsequently, but I was not damaged the same way. A siren doesn't frighten me, okay? And a siren is an example that's given by many survivors, they hear a siren today, ambulance, and they freeze on some level, to some degree. A siren does not frighten me. And again, a siren here is only a smallest of examples, because the sirens were very dangerous, because we were bombed in Budapest. We spent days in the bunker, in -- not the bunker, in the cellar, and in the -- in the -- in the shelter. No, not days, we spent parts of days, sometimes four and five times a night. My grandmother, my father's mother who was living with us at the time, went back to her little village, from which she was deported, because the elevator -- and I said this on the other tape -- the elevator was invariably out of commission, cause they couldn't get parts to repair them, and to go down five stories, three and four times a night, was too much for her to do. Choice two was send her back where she didn't have to go to the air raid shelter. And she was deported. Ah, she would have been deported perhaps, elsewhere as well. But I'm saying it's because I under -- because I recalled, and can now, and have for some time been able to assimilate that. But I wasn't -- you know,

ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 I if you looked at my guts, they don't have black and blue marks, they're clear. Or my brain doesn't have it.

Q: Mm-hm. What about your parents? Your father lived to -- into his 90's.

A: He was -- he would have been 90 in mar -- he would have been 90 in March, he died in January of the same year, it's close enough.

Q: Oh, uh-huh, yeah. So you -- you knew them for quite a -- your mother died quite young, I think --

A: My mother died at the age of 59 --

Q: My goodness.

A: -- for entirely different reasons, and I don't think the Holocaust connected. One day they thought she had a stroke, cause she was dragging a leg. Literally days after the war in Israel in 1967, they went to Israel to visit family, after the six day war. And they came back in August, I know I picked them up, I was in the east, I was living in Michigan, and my mother was not well. Well, this is in August, by December they discovered she had a massive growth in her head, and that killed her. I mean, they radiate it, but in those days this was a caveman oncology. I mean, this was the kind of thing that today two pills, and something would cure it. And I don't mean that literally, but --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- it's -- we have gone thousands of miles beyond that. She -- this killed her. There was a choice of operating or radiating. And we were told that operating would invariably -- invariably produce a vegetable. My father and I agreed that that's of no value if she

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg lives to be a hundred, in a bed as a vegetable. We radiated, it metastasized, she died, 1967. So the impact of my parents was significant, and in my father's case lengthy, but very different in my mother's. You remember that I was with my mother all of my life. I mean, I left both of them 1958 - deg59. As a matter of fact, interestingly, we even lived with my parents for a very short time. When I was looking for graduate school, one was in Pennsylvania, one was in New Jersey, one was in New York. And I couldn't find a rental for my wife and I for three months, or maybe four months, for a very short time, I -- in those days, Philadelphia did not offer very short rentals, and I guess a hotel was not an idea. So we moved to my parent's house until the decision was made where I would goi - - go to school. And when it was made that I'm going to be in Philly, we took an apartment immediately, which was our first apartment, which was very nice. But we lived with them. But it was with my mother throughout. When I was born, in Riga, two months after I was, my father went to Budapest to begin his rehearsals for the holidays in the fall.

My mother then packed up, and two uncles came out and helped her, and we trucked to Budapest. My father was away from the house for continuous times in labor camps. We were at home. We went to Bergen-Belsen, he was not with us. He comes after us to Palestine -- to Israel, he leaves before us. So my father's relationship with me as a child up to the age of 15 or so, is very spotty, and I am sure it had impact. I can't tell you precisely, but he wasn't there, through no -- and I never held him accountable for not being there. The fact that he was in his own field, meant that he never played baseball with me, but you can overcome that. But he was not there, through no fault of his own.

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8 His influence was there, his impact was there, his feelings were there. Excuse me. I'm going to back up for a teeny story about language. You asked about English. My mother and my father correspond when he is here, and my mother and J are still in Haifa, and there were some times during the War of Independence in Israel where food was scarce.

Plentiful, but some things were scarce. We had all the dairy and all the veg -- butter was rationed, you know? You could live without that. But all the bread, and all the vegetables, and some meat, and all the fish from Australia was available. But my mother says that things are scarce. My father gets absolutely frightened, and goes to the post office, and I remember to this day, he packs up a package from the grocery store, and ships it by air to Israel, 44 dollars. It was probably a week's salary in those days, 1947. Ships this thing to Israel. And we open up, and we see these little cans, little flat cans, and it says on it, Chicken of the Sea. Well me, with my incredible knowledge of English, decided this is chicken. It's a very funny, oily chicken that these Americans put in cans. Cans were not unusual to us, but what kind of chicken is this, and how do you cook it? I cannot tell you what my mother did with this, I don't remember. But this was my knowledge of English, Chicken of the Sea was chicken, right? Well, we both know that's not exactly what it means. My mother's English was even less than mine. She didn't even know the word chicken. But we had this neat meal. As you know, kosher requires no mixing of the two.

We had this very strange American chicken. It didn't taste like chicken, it was in oil. But it said chicken, and Mandel the English expert said --

Q: Mom --

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A: Mom, it's chicken. Cause he knows. And they also had corn flakes that were introduced, and we didn't know how the hell do you butter corn flakes, like bread or that kind of thing. But again, I -- I couldn't read the English, I mean I could underst -- I didn't -- I might have known the word corn. I am certain I didn't know the word flakes.

Q: Right.

A: Right?

Q: Right.

A: And I knew the word chicken, I knew the word sea, but I never could connect -- course I'm not sure I ever had tuna fish in my life.

Q: Right.

A: Imean, why would I? And if I did, it was a filet of tuna, or a stew of tuna, or something that my mother could recognize as a fish.

Q: Right.

A: The thing in the can doesn't look like a fish. English.

Q: Yeah.

A: But I was with my mother -- I sometimes illustrate it by saying that I always spoke with my father in the language of the land in which we lived. Hungarian in Hungary, Hebrew in Israel, English here. With my mother, Hungarian always. Not because she didn't know any English, but with my mother it was always Hungarian, no matter where we lived. There's a different continuity with her than was with him. So I missed his involvement, which was spotty, and clearly through no effort on his part to do that. I

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 degdeg suppose in some ways he could have been more of a dad only, but only in terms of throwing a ball right handed. That's silliness. Every other way he was. And I had the most consistent part of his life with me when I no longer needed it. When I wanted it, but didn't need it. I mean, I was an adult, with two children, living in Michigan. That's -- it was in those days that I had full availability of my father, and none of my mother. So that my parent's influence on me had these kinds of impacts, both good and both -- I have both bad. They both survived, but I did not spend equal time and equal impact for both of them.

Q: Right. Did you and your mother talk about the day -- about the war, and your experience together in Bergen-Belsen very much?

A: Not much, because we lived it together.

Q: You didn't need to talk about it.

A: No. In my family, conversations about this took place willy-nilly and at the drop of a hat. But nobody had to be told. I mean, my father had to be told about where we were, and we had to be told about where he was. And that we did. But it wasn't a question of my mother and I talking about where we were, because we were there every day. I saw her every day, there was not a day I didn't see her. You recall that when we went out of se -- out of Germany by German troop train, in Switzerland, who is the teacher that is accompanying this group of 20 kids? My mother. Which was good and bad, but again even then, I was not separated from her. I digress, but for historical reasons it's significant. In some communication about the Custner group, I got a letter from a

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 degdeg professor at Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan. I won't mention a name because I'm not sure he wants to be named. And the name rings a bell, and I write him a note, and I said, "Are you, by any chance, that kid," -- and I send him a picture that I have, "with whom I was in Switzerland?" And he says yes. Okay? And then he sends me -- we have been in touch -- he sends me a Xerox of a postcard, written to his mother by my mother, saying that the boy is having some difficulties. He's fine, but he's not with his mother -- I was -- and he starts having some difficulties, but he'll be alright, and she ask when is she going to come visit, whatever. My mother's handwriting, 1945. And I have that. And he sends it to me. So I'm saying that my mother's influence again was -- I had a couple of beatings really, really beatings, because a couple of kids walked off campus, and they were caught, and they were certain that I ratted, cause I'm the teacher's kid. And I didn't. I'm -- I really -- I wouldn't dare. I mean, of -- I -- it's -- it's against the tules. In any case I'm saying my mother and I had this kind of a connection. I probably look like my mother, much more than my father then, and throughout my life, although now people say to me, look at my eyes. My father had a very different kind of a face, but I look like my mother, my mother's family. I was much closer to my mother's family. I spent time with my mother's parents. My mother's sisters, my mother's brothers. I only spent time with my father's one brother, who went to Israel and died since. And here, with my aunt in Philadelphia. But I was much more connected, so with her, these discussions were unnecessary. I have a friend of mine here who -- again I won't name, who talks about he doesn't have to learn about the civil rights struggle, of which he was

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg7 both a victim and a winner, he just has to remember it. Cause he was a law student in the basement, and a dumbwaiter would bring down the lessons at the University of Arkansas, many years ago, and I won't give the names. But he doesn't have to -- to study it, he just has to remember it. Well, in a same sense, I don't have to study elements of the Holocaust that I lived through, I just have to remember it. My mother and I could remember. When she went to [indecipherable] and she bought a -- there's a watch that I wear that she bought in [indecipherable] because in those days there was some thought that if you have a watch or two -- you could always trade a watch for a meal, a good Swiss watch. And then she gave it to me later on, and it's my watch for 50 years, lo -- more, more. But we can remember those things.

Q: What about when you ha -- when your kids got old enough? You -- there -- so often you hear these difficult stories about survivors telling their children, or not telling their children what they went through. Since your experience was not such a traumatic one, you didn't have that inhibition, I would think. So many survivors say I don't want to -- I don't want to tell my kids because it was so horrible, and -- and they don't need to know that. But what was your experience with your kids? How did you tell your kids, when did it come out?

A: The difference in my trauma and others was the fact that mine was a much shorter duration.

Q: Right.

A: And I did not understand it.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 8

Q: Right.

A: I wouldn't want to -- I wouldn't want to weight levels of trauma. However, from day one, whatever that is, I was willing to, I thought that it's important to know, you can't know where you're going if you don't know where you came from. Maybe a cliche.

George Santayana's comment about the fact that if you don't learn history well, you learn to -- you have to repeat it or relive it is another one, there are many of those. And I have involved my kids in either visiting with me, speaking with me, going to the museum with me, coming to programs with me, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, any which way I can, and I think they are quite conversant. I did not believe that since it's traumatic for me, I should not give them the opportunity to learn. That's unfair. It's denying them experience that they should -- they can reject it, they can ignore it, but they have the right to possess it. It is exactly what I said in the beginning of this conversation about archiving this material. I think that many of the people that are recorded -- I mean, that have been, thousands and thousands, may not be interesting, and may be repetitions of some other folks, but if it isn't archived, it can never be retrieved. And I wanted to archive it in my kids, and my grandkids.

Q: Mm-hm, and how did they receive it? It -- is it -- is it som -- do they ask you questions, do they --

A: In many ways, well sure. But it's become -- it is not a -- you know, a holy writ of some sort that needs to be approached gingerly and tenderly, like, I sh -- don't want to upset you too much. It was this year or la -- it was last year I think, there was a book

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg written about the experience of Custner, not the Robert Saint John book, but by Alex Brand. Alex Brand was the partner or colleague of Custner, who in fact was sent under German supervision to go talk to the allies about the original transfer of people versus trucks. It's not on this tape, but it's in the history. He was arrested in Syria, in Aleppo, and jailed in Cairo for the rest of the war. He writes a book after the war called, "Desperate Journey." Some years -- many years ago, a friend of mine who has since gone, asked if I had the book. I said, "No, but I'd like to reread it." And I borrowed it from him, and I gave it back to him. Later on I ask him for the book again, he said, "I can't find it." So I did something which is illegal, but not immoral, and not fattening. I had occasion when I was with the Peace Corps to have the book borrowed from the Library of Congress on interagency loan, and I Xeroxed it. That's illegal, but not immoral, and not fattening.

Q: As long as you didn't sell it.

A: I -- well it's -- Xeroxing it is illegal, but it's out of print. And I gave a copy to my -- each of my kids, and I have one in the house. Couple of years ago -- last year 1 remember, my daughter gets me a present for my birthday. She got it on the internet, she found two copies of the book, bought them both, one for her, one for me. I now have the book on the shelf, right next to Robert Saint Johns slightly fictionalized version. My point being that she thinks about these things. She had this idea, maybe on the internet with whatever, Amazon, oh I don't know where, she was able to find the book, and there were three, I think, that were available, she didn't need three, she got two. My son calls me up the

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " other day and talks about La Spaitsia, cause he saw some pictures with surfing. Now these are all Holocaust connected, history connected to our family, that we were quite free to share, and to -- and to talk about, and to inform, and to update constantly. When i did the Spielberg interview, my kids were here. [phone ringing]

Q: Here we go. Okay, we're recording again.

A: All I was saying is that these are normal activities of daily life that happen without any specific reason, it just happens, and we do it, and my kids are very much involved with it.

My grandchildren, well, my son's daughter is five, let's wait. My daughter's daughter is 10, and she knows a little bit, and the son is 14, and he knows a lot. And again, there are these conversations. One of the things I did for my grandson, the 14 year old, as part of my -- interestingly for a Bar Mitzvah gift, or right of passage, I took him to the Holocaust Museum. I thought at 13, or 14, he was old enough to do that. And he -- I'm not going to say that he enjoyed it, but you know, he at least was exposed to it. Clearly, my taking him is an indication of my willingness, and his willingness to have the two of us have that experience together. I was saying before on the tape that when the Spielberg interview took place in the house, they asked the family be there at the end and they photographed the whole family, and my kids all came. And it's quite an open door issue in this family.

It is not in many others, for many reasons. I don't happen to believe that protecting my kids of the reality of my past is a good thing to do, so I don't.

Q: 20 years ago or so, when the Holocaust sort of became such a public issue in the United States, it was in the 70's, I think when --

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 n

A: Early 80's.

Q: And after this --

A: The first world gathering of the Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem.

Q: Yeah. And there was this documentary on ABC about the Holocaust, a miniseries.

A: With Meryl Streep?

Q: Was that it? I can't remember --

A: That's one.

Q: -- who was in it, but it sounds to me though, like it wasn't a time when the Holocaust sort of came out of the closet, in a sense, for you, because it -- it was never a -- an issue that wasn't discussed. But y -- among your friends and colleagues, did people that you knew suddenly say oh, tell me your story, or how did that awakening, if you will, affect you?

A: As I think back, it didn't. Then. My awakening, if you will, came a little bit later, in that I said to myself, wait a minute. We're running out of people, we're running out of time. I better be more active than I've been. Oh, I had been involved and I was glad to speak here, or speak there. You know, I -- my background includes having been through elements of the Holocaust, and different stories my father had, and then being in Israel afterwards, and being there during the War of Independence, and having been -- you know, I've -- I've a number of pieces, and that has been used in talks, in -- in -- in gatherings, in tell me your story, I've never been to Riga, whatever. But nothing that was either concentrated, or directed. It was kind of ad hoc, and here, there, whatever. I think

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 " that the focus came not out of the awakening of the -- both the documentary or the miniseries Holocaust, and then The Shoah, which was the Polish filmmakers movie of many, many, many hours. Or li -- it came a little bit later to me, and I don't know exactly why. Not that I wasn't -- it was not denial, it was just that I didn't wake up. I can honestly say to you that at that Spielberg Academy Awards thing, was the thing that kind of woke me up most specifically. To say you gotta do more, you gotta do, you gotta involve, you gotta involve yourself. Use whatever you can about connecting pieces, more than you have before.

End of Tape Two, Side B USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 deg Beginning Tape Three, Side A

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Emanuel Mandel. This is tape number three, side A. It was -- you were saying it was --

A: It was not an issue of denial, it was an issue of inactivity in being involved, and since we're here I'm going to enter another little -- not a commercial, just for the -- for the -- for history, and for legacy. Nobody in this world ever, ever calls me Emanuel.

Q: Oh, okay.

A: Just informationally. If they do, that means only one thing. They never met me.

Q: That's okay.

A: I don't mean you necessarily --

Q: Right.

A: -- but you're on the tape, but Emanuel is the way the phone book is listed, so people can look under M for Manny, they look for E for Emanuel, for what that's worth. [phone ringing]. Stop -- doesn't ring here until about the fourth ring.

Q: Oh, okay.

A: So they gave up.

Q: Okay. I have a couple of other questions that are --

A: Sure.

Q: -- aren't directly related in chronology. Did -- did your experience during the war, or - -i-- in some ways I feel like I have to ask you about your parents at the same time. Was

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 (tm) your religious faith interrupted in any way by what you'd been through, and what you saw in World War Two?

A: In one sense I can say to you that -- "ll give you kind of a chicken answer, chicken meaning that I am unable to give anything else. Let me come back through a back door.

One of the questions that has not been answered by me or anybody else, Einstein included, is where the world ends, and what's beyond it. Well, since that cannot be answered, I don't really bother myself -- I haven't got the intellectual capacity anyhow to understand it, but even if I could -- do worry about it, I don't know what's beyond the end of the world. I don't mean the end of the world, but the end of the, you know, the universe, and what's there. I assume that that's where God picks up, but I can't understand it in my own intellect. In the same sense, I cannot tell you why God permitted this to happen. I cannot understand it. As a consequence, I look at my religious background, and my religion as a historical connection. As a valid contribution to civilization, and in that sense it's not interrupted by what happened, and I'm not one of those who has said, I will now deny and blame God because he permitted this to happen.

I don't know if that's true. In the grand scheme of things, I don't understand the end of the universe, nor why this happened. There are other things I don't understand, but this is the one that you asked me about, so I'll stay with that, okay?

Q: Did you have conversations with your parents about this, or do you have any way of knowing how they felt about it?

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 re

A: I can't -- I've not committed to memory any conversations with them. I'm sure we did, I mean, you know, you are in a house, you are -- the three of us, we talk at dinner, we talk here and there. I'm sure we did. And I can't tell you that I have a clear statement from them. Interestingly, from my mother's sisters, the two -- two sisters who both lost their husbands during the war, remarried, and lived out their lives in Israel. The two sisters -- the daughter of one of the sisters, and their parents, my grandparents, were taken to Auschwitz at the same time, and the same place. The sisters were told to go to the left at Mengele's hut. The daughter and the grandparents were told to go to the right, or vice- a-versa. And you know what happened, the sisters survived. The sisters, particularly the youngest sister, who was the most recent, was the last one to die, had some strong feelings about God, and why did you do this. Didn't blame, didn't held up anything, lived her life, but had. She was the only one in the family, but she was always the -- the doubting Thomas in the family. She was the least impacted by religious upbringing, even though she grew up in the same household as my mother did. So what I'm saying to you is that the family yes, in my parent's home, I cannot give you an example of the discussion being had about their feelings about God. I think that they -- no, Pll g -- go the other way. I would suspect that some of what I said to you about my own thinking is consistent with their thinking, because it's connected to their thinking, and grows out of that.

Q: I want to -- if you don't mind, I'm going to look at my notes, because -- have you been back to Budapest?

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 7

A: Only once. Again, I'm going to go through the back door just a little bit. As the war ends we're in Switzerland, and after some stay at a children's home in Hayden, which is in [indecipherable] province, the German province in Switzerland, we begin our journey south through Italy, to go to Palestine, actually. My mother did not want to go back to Budapest. We are sitting in Taranto, which is a port city in --

Q: I don't know why it did that -- want to go back to Budapest.

A: Right. We are in fact now having by -- gone by train and by truck through Italy to Taranto, which is in the arch of the boot, to board a ship, actually became a British military ship, to transport -- to take us to Haifa. My mother receives a telegram from my father -- not the first time, I mean they had had contact, that says essentially, you know, things are this and that, and come on back. And she says, mm-mm, she does not go back.

Q: Hm. Afraid to go back?

A: No, upset to go back. She said after what happened in Europe, she is not going to go back to live in Europe. And after that they visited in Germany, they visited in Yugoslavia

Q: Careful with that, you can hear it.

A: Sorry, sorry.

Q: Yeah, that's okay.

A: In Yugoslavia and other places, she never went back to Budapest. My father did after my mother passed away. Having said that, we never went back until many years later, as a matter of fact we went back in -- about 15 years ago now, I recall the partic -- 1988, I

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 u had wanted my wife to see Budapest, and 1988 was soon after the Russians, and the Soviets and all that, and Budapest was beginning to reawaken. It was never under the heel. Budapest is one of the cities that is na -- did not have a Russian palace of culture, which is that wedding cake monstrosity that's in the middle of Riga, and Warsaw, and lots of other places. So we did, we went back. We went back to see, and the impact was interesting because all the streets got smaller. Maybe because I got bigger. And the other thing, which had nothing to do with me, there were cars parked on both sides of the street. Well, this is again, 1988, not 1938. There were cars in Budapest 1930 -- my father never owned a car, nobody owned cars. That's what taxis are for. You know, that's what chauffeurs are for. And we used public transportation. But went back, saw our apartment, saw much of the area that I was familiar with, which was quite small -- I was a little kid.

Ice skating rink, and the synagogue, and the location of my father's synagogue, and some other places. I have some non-family family there, in that my father's second wife, my stepmother, who to this day lives strong and healthy at 93 in Philadelphia, has a niece -- two nieces, who are actually related only to her first husband. But I know them, and they welcomed us to wash -- to washingt -- to Budapest, and spent some time, and -- and I'd like to go back, because I'd like to go back to eastern Hungary, where my father was raised, and I was never there in my life, and I would also like to visit the graves of my grandfather, and some others. I'd like to do that, while it's still possible to do it. It is now possible, there was a time when you couldn't do it. My father could not get back there, because it was then in -- under Russian control, and U.S. and Russia, and you know, it

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 7 was a catastrophe, you'd have to go through Moscow, and the [indecipherable] now, you don't. My father was born in Hungary, became a Czech citizen, it is now the Ukraine. It tells you something. But I did go back to Budapest, thought it was very nice, it was very much like I remembered, much of it. Am I familiar with it? Yes, with 35 square blocks, not the city, which is first of all grown and changed. But my Budapest was very warm and fuzzy to me.

Q: Did you by any chance feel the need to go to Bergen-Belsen?

A: Need, no, desire yes. And it just had not been the opportunity. I would very much want to go -- first I want to see -- although there's nothing in Bergen-Belsen except for memorial, and the land. I'd like to have my wife see it. As a matter of fact, I went for the first time in my life to Auschwitz, in 1994 with a program called the March of the Living, I don't know if you're familiar, if the -- the familiarity, but kids go on -- on Yom HaShoah, on the day of the commemoration of the Holocaust, 6,000 young people -- young, up to not so young, convene and march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, which is ver -- which is Auschwitz two, which is what you see where all the huts are. Have you been there?

Q: Mm-mm.

A: Alright. Auschwitz itself is an old prison, an army barrack, and it's brick. That's where you see the sign, Arbeit mac -- macht frei, and two miles away, or thereabouts, maybe three, I don't recall, it's not a very long distance, is Birkenau, which is the enormous -- you see the pictures of -- first of all the train pulls in, in the Shoah

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0072 >> documentary, and that's where you have all these huts, and all these kind of barracks that became -- that's where Mengele had his shop, and things like that. And that's the first time in my life, and maybe the last time I was there, except I'd like to have my wife see it. But I had no other Auschwitz things. I'd like to go to Bergen-Belsen because I'd like to visit where I was as a child. I've seen documentaries, and tapes, and movies, and spoken to people who've gone back, which is perfectly okay, but I'd like to see it. All wants, no need to go. I don't have to go and need to visit graves there, I have no graves there.

Q: Mm-hm. Of the 1600 that were there with you, are you in touch with any of them?

A: Well, I'm in touch with the professor at Lansing, I'm in touch with the professor in Brooklyn, who was in [indecipherable]. I'm in touch with another man who was in Turish. Now, the touch doesn't mean daily touch, but has been --

Q: Right.

A: -- we know each other, we know -- if I were to go to Turish, I would look him up. If1I went to New York, I would look him up, and I went to Michigan [indecipherable] and I would like to believe that if they came to town, and they had a spare two hours, they would do the same thing. Beyond that, the only other people that I knew who were with us was a couple and their daughter who live in Philadelphia. He is gone, the wife is aged and not completely here, although she's alive. And the daughter is a little younger than I, we did not grow up together, she has no recollection. And although we were at the same place at the same time for half a year, that's the only thing that connects us.

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Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm, and you've been back to Israel, because you still had --

A: Oh many times, many times.

Q: -- cousins there.

A: Well, I went back with groups, I went back by myself. I was in Israel two years ago, well, it's gonna be three years now, just days before we left on a -- on a Thursday, and Intifada started the next day. I went to a cousin's kid's wedding. My son and I had a father and son tour. Just the two of us went.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And a [indecipherable] Israel in -- in 49, I went back in 57, went back in "65 - "69 - deg73, then not until "85 - 88 - deg91 - deg94 --

Q: Oh my, you've been there a lot.

A: -- and 2000? Well, anyhow, a dozen times or thereabouts. I'm quite comfortable there, quite familiar, always something new to see, we always do something that we haven't done before, although the bulk of the visits have been for the purpose of s-seeing family, which now is more difficult. The aunts are gone, an uncle is gone, their spouses are gone.

But they died because everybody does.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

A: In their 80's.

Q: What do you want to say that I haven't asked you about? Anything -- I mean, it's a big subject, and you've been interviewed a number of times, but -- ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion

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A: Well, I could also say what would you like to ask that you haven't asked. No. Yeah. I made some notes.

Q: Good.

A: You asked about it, but I don't think I responded. Effects of the Holocaust on me.

Clearly, although I can't prove it, I would not have been an only child if not for the Holocaust. My parents -- well, actually I'm not an only child, my parents had a child before I was born.

Q: Right, a brother, yeah.

A: Who was born perfectly healthy and 10 weeks he died of starvation, and I think I said very clearly, that had nothing to do with the availability of food or medical help, he couldn't absorb. I'd like to see his grave. My brother, as it were. But I would have had -- remember, in 1936 when I was born, my mother was 28, my father was 32, clearly in child-bearing years. So that I think I would have had siblings, or sibling, but my father wasn't home, which made it difficult, and the times were not conducive.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So one of the results of the Holocaust, I think, and ma -- my wife is not Holocaust connected, she has one sister. Why didn't they have seven child -- I don't know. But I would have had a sibling. The other thing I would say to you is that I think -- now, again I can't tell you this is Holocaust connected, or it's because I am what I am and I was made how I was made. But I have thought about, and folks -- some folk -- some folks have said -- sorry, you can hear that, thank you -- some folks have said that I missed

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elements of childhood. I was never a kid, or never a kid for too long in any one place. It's difficult, even with the resiliency of kids. First grade was in Hungary, second grade was in Bergen-Belsen -- if you want to call it that. Third grade was in s -- in Switzerland, fourth grade was in kibbutz -- different language. Fifth grade, sixth grade, part of seventh was in Haifa. Then English in New York, then Philadelphia. So you talk about I don't know how many schools, and certainly three languages. Makes it difficult to spend time being a kid. Now, what would I have done as a kid? I can't tell you. Because I certainly have recollections having birthday parties, and not having a bicycle, and then having a bicycle. I don't remember missing things as a kid. Being with family, and some cousins.

But I still think that there was a requirement of me, maybe because the way I am, to have been an adult much earlier than I would have been, had it not been for the Holocaust.

And I will leave that with an observation, leave it at that. Okay?

Q: Okay? Good. Let me -- have to state the ending. This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with Manny Mandel. I'm Nina Ellis.

End of Tape Three, Side A Conclusion of Interview