And we lived there for awhile. I lived there until i was probably five or six years old. Then we gradually worked our way out of the lower east side. We move north to the bronx, where i grew up mostly. For a while, we lived in a Community CalledBrighton Beach in brooklyn, which is a beautiful place right on the beach in Long Island Sound that many poor russians lived in those days. I would say we were very poor. My father worked as a restaurant worker all his life. My mother worked in the garment industry, so she will take the subway downtown from the bronx every morning to work. My father worked in a cafeterias. My sister roselyn and i were left more or less alone most of our lives. I was pretty much left alone most of the time i was growing. Up that was fine, i loved it because in the bronx, we live right next to bronx park which is a wonderful place for kids to grow up. Theres the bronx zoo and the botanical gardens. I used to go there all the time. I used to sneak into the bronx and night sometimes to see the animals. I had no complaints at all about being poor. We had a great time. Brighton beach was even better because it was right on the water. It was right next to coney island. I could go to to coney island ride on the cyclone, get hot dogs at nathans. I was a pretty lucky kid. Even though i didnt have to nickels to rub. What was school like even though we are in the bronx . I went to seven Public Schools. [laughter] because my father moved around. Every time we get a new job we had to move. Sometimes we got evicted cause we couldnt pay the rent. Once we got evicted because we had a rent strike. We got thrown out of our apartment. I went to a lot of schools. Several in brooklyn, most of them in the bronx. Does that make it kind of harder to maintain friends . Youre bouncing from place to place. Ben i had a focus. I have to tell you this is important. I had a community which i considered my home. My longterm friends were in the bronx. It was a neighborhood called allerton avenue. I grew up effectively in a communist neighborhood. There were a series of apartment houses which were coops that were organized by the workers themselves. Very low for rent, you bought the apartment but the apartments didnt cost much. It was basically, it was jewish and mostly russian and exclusively radical and partly communist, partly leftist. You might say pink or red. Pick your color. When you say communist, is a communist inability for it communist in cre or communist in practice . Ben communist in practice. My father was a member of the communist party. Many people there were members of the communist party. It was not considered to be particularly a horrible thing at that time. Everybody knew practically had the same kind of radical background. Many of them were russian jews who had fled russia because of the persecution by the tsar. They were naturally gravitated towards the revolution because they thought that the revolution would change russia and not be so antisemitic. Turned out boy they were they wrong. Because eventually stalin became even more antisemitic then before then the tsar. Thats another story. But i did have a kind of strange background. We had very Close Friends. I belonged to the Young Pioneers of america, the communist equivalent of the boy scouts. In the bugle and drum corps. I became a bugler. Bugler. Own as benny the [laughter] we marched in many parades. So i grew up in the bronx in a radical neighborhood the basically happy kid and i enjoyed lots of hobbies. I did stamps, model airplanes, just like every other kid practically. I was normal in most respects except for the politics which i guess was somewhat abnormal. You mentioned you were poor growing up but did you family did your family notice a difference when the Great Depression started to come true in the thirties or was it the same thing for you . Ben no the Great Depression , affected us very badly. That was the time when my father could not find any work. In 1931 and 1932 he was unemployed. We lived on relief. That brings me to my next adventure you might say. He heard of a group of restaurant workers who had been recruited to go to moscow, russia, to construct a restaurant, for a huge factory, a ball bearing factory moscow. It was to use American Equipment and american know how to produce a huge kitchen of the big ball bearing factory. My father signed up for this. And believe it or not, in 1932 at the very depths of the depression, we went to moscow to live. My suspicion was they expected to stay there. Didnt quite work out that way. [laughter] stayed, we virtually lived in the hotel moskva, which even to this day is a fancy hotel in the middle of moscow. We didnt stay there long. We got put up in a brandnew apartment house by the ball bearing factory, which is on the outskirts. It was a very luxurious apartment. And had two bedrooms for me and my sister and my parents but it should come as no surprise to experts on the soviet union, we shared the entire apartment with an entire family of same size. So there were two families living in a two bedroom apartment. [laughter] we stayed there probably about six months in the hotel and six months at the apartment from the ball bearing factory. My sister and i commuted into moscow to the Angle American school and. Thats where i went to school while i was in moscow. There was an English Speaking school run by couple of communists, naturally. We didnt learn very much. [laughter] but, the big advantage of the school was they served free lunches. At least we had a good meal so every day. , what was the food difference like . Two Different Countries i mean thats gotta be. Ben food in russia is not what i would call very good. This is an understatement. [laughter] at the school where i had my lunches, which i looked forward to, we mostly had fish. My parents had been told when we went from america to russia to take along some valuta. Valuta is foreign money. My parents took along a few hundred american dollars. That saved our lives because there was store in moscow. It was a store devoted entirely to foreign currency. Russians were not allowed to go there and they had no foreign currency anyway. We were allowed to go because we were american citizens. And it was there that we would buy enough food there to keep us going. It was the few dollars that we had that really made it possible for us to survive. It was a very bad time. When you moved there, was it in the summertime or the wintertime . Ben the first thing that roosevelt did when he was elected, the first time, november, 1932, within weeks we got our visas and passports and went to russia. We got there at the beginning of the russian winter. [laughter] and it was a very bad winter. The winter of 1932. We really froze. We had heat inside but outdoors we really froze. So, you come back from russia you come right back to new york . Ben we manage somehow to get export visas from the russians. We had our passports so we did get out. Sometime, i was about june of 1933 that we got out. Thats another story, because we only had enough money to get to berlin. We bought tickets, rail road tickets and we got flat broke by the time we got to berlin. Now you have to think back. What was happening in berlin in june of 1933 . Hitler just come the power. Thats right. Ben we ended up in berlin, for four jews with no money in the middle of nazi germany. [laughter] thats a funny story itself. What saved our lives and to this day i still remember and always manage to give them something a t christmas time. Was a hebrew rescue society. That was established to help jewish refugees. Somehow or other my father sent a cable, a telegraph to one of his brothers who sent us money to get to london. Thats as far as we got. He sent us money to get to london so we stayed in berlin for a little while, a week or two. Speaking i have to say, my , mother spoke yiddish which sounds like german. So my mother would go around berlin in 1933 speaking yiddish thinking that she was speaking german. That was pretty funny. [laughter] somehow we survived. We were american so they didnt bother us. We got to leningrad, stone broke again. At the railroad station and they thought we were refugees from germany. So they pick this up and put us in a hotel and pay for our stay while we were in london. They first thought they were german russian refugees but they then they found that we are coming from russia. Somehow we managed to get the fare to new york. America. On the s. S. America,ck on thes. S. A small u. S. Ship. I was seasick the whole time getting back. And we got back to new york. Again we were flat broke. One of my fathers brothers put us up in the coops in their apartment for a while. So we live with them for a while for free what my father found a job. Found a job in a restaurant. Thats when we started to get our feet back and we eventually ended up with a small apartment. We always lived in one bedroom apartments, family of four. Kitchenette living room where my , parents lived and a bedroom that i share with my sister. We, at that point in 1933, we had a rent strike. The landlord raised the rent and and when we refuse to pay they , threw us out with our furniture on the street. We move back into the coops. They took us back for a while. Eventually, we got all that squared away. My father finally got a halfway decent job in the cafeteria. He worked for a while in the bronx then he got a job at the Brighton Beach cafeteria. We moved close to coney island, and i had a great time there. And then we move back to the bronx again. But then the most important thing of my life i think happened at that point. This is really important. I want everybody in america to know this. I got a Free Education at city college. Thats what happened. See, new york city had ccny. At brooklyn college, queens college. They gave students with decent marks Free Education. By free i mean really free. The only thing they charged was lab fees. I think in my first year was five dollars which i didnt even have. They waved the lab fee of five dollars. Can you imagine that . That but they gave me a Free Education and a good education. City college was a good education. New so i went back got into city college. I went there for two and a half years. Then the war started. The war started. And in the middle of my education, about two and a half years after i started, i quit city college and took a defense job. I got a nice defense job working for the u. S. Signal corps in philadelphia, doing expediting of war goods to requisition army organizations. So i worked for the signal corps for a while and i got drafted. , that took us, took me too late in 1942. So i got into the army around 1942. Late 1942. That starts my army career. That takes care of my childhood. [laughter] that covered a lot. You went everywhere. You did more Public Schools in more countries than most people do ben i am well aware. I want to seven Public Schools,. Lived in two countries but, the defining thing was going to city college. I have to, Free Education. Ben the Free Education is what did it. Up to that point, i had just standard education, i knew i was going to be a scientist all along. I thought i was going to be an astronomer when i was five. I had already decided i was going to be an astronomer when i was five i had seen some Science Fiction movie and i came home and i told my parents that i was going to be an astronomer when i was five or six. And i didnt change much, from astronomy i came to physics, which is not that different. But i always, throughout my childhood, i kept diaries of science, i read science books, i read Science Fiction lot. So i was oriented toward science all my life, thats what got me away from politics. I lost my interest in politics when i was late high school, when entering city college. My politics eventually disappeared, because i was much more interested in science. So now that youre in , college, youre 20 years old when pearl harbor gets bombed. Do you remember where you were, when you found out . Ben yes. I was walking home and i walked into the the entrance to my apartment house and somebody said that the japanese bond bombed pearl harbor. Thats how i remember that. We knew that everything is going to change that time. What was your first reaction . Were you angry . Ben no, i wasnt angry. I was just impressed by the enormity of it. I knew it was going to happen. That is why i enlisted. Im sorry, i didnt enlist. Thats why i quit school and joined the signal corps as a , civilian. By that time, you have to understand, everybody was in favor of the wars. Not like now, the country was entirely united at that time after pearl harbor. Not before pearl harbor, but after pearl harbor, the entire country became united. Everybody was working for the same ends. And so was i. When they drafted you, you dont have a choice. Ben i did have a choice. I worked for the signal corps. They wanted me to ask for a deferment but i said no. , i said i would rather go into the army. Why is that . You had a good job, you are civilian status. Ben yes but i was expediting equipment, that wasnt really fighting the nazis or anything like that. So i decided i would rather go into the real army. Littleslightly, a patriotism in there, says i want to do something. Ben i have to tell you, you know, everybody felt the same way. I felt the same way, i hated the nazis, i knew about what the nazis were doing to jews. I know what they were doing to europe, i knew what the japanese were doing to china. It wasnt very difficult to be in favor of the war and to do everything you could. We did everything. We collect cigarette linings for the aluminum in cigarettes. We raised money with what they called pushkas because, handheld receptacles, to get the money. To help the war. It was pretty unanimous. And of course, in addition to all that, hitler had invaded russia. So we were very pro russia, that did hit our patriotism. Especially, you were in moscow before. It got personal. How dare you . Youve been there. Ben it all fit together pretty well. You get drafted into the army, into the army air corps. Ben no, i started thats another funny story because i got drafted into the army a little secret, i was never sworn into the army. They took me to to an army base on an island outside new york. To get my physical, to get sworn in, but i went to the bathroom by the time i got out of the bathroom they had already sworn everybody else in. So i always felt that i could if i really got mad at everybody i could say, im not in the army because i never was sworn in, but i never had the nerve to do that. [laughter] was it Governors Island that you want to . Ben yes. Thats where i went. Two Governors Island. That was a big post before it shut down a few years ago. Ben Governors Island is where i went. I went for my physical there, and i was not sworn in at Governors Island. I got my orders, after a few weeks, and i went to fort dix in new jersey. Fort dix in new jersey it was a huge army base. Where i was supposed to take my basic training. Another funny part of my military career as i said, you are supposed to do basic training. I did three days worth of basic training. On the third day, they ship me out, because they needed people to go, they needed tailgunners for b 17s. That was before the b29. The b 17s. They needed tailgunners like mad. In 1942. But the tail gunner was also the Radio Operator. So i had to go to first, Radio Operator school. So they sent me to Radio Operator school from fort dix after the third day. At Radio Operator school, i forgot to say, target practice was the fourth day of basic training, that was the fourth day. And i left on the third day. So that is why i missed target practice. [laughter] and i ended up, this is hard to believe, i ended up on Lake Michigan in the Biggest Hotel in the world. The army had taken over the hotel, and that is where they had the radio school, it was in the hotel. So i ended up with a few of lake with a view of Lake Michigan in the middle of chicago. [laughter] going into radio school. So i i did go to radio school, i i learned the morse code. I learned how to operate the equipment. And everybody at the end of the three months, everybody else got shipped out. They got shipped out from tail Gunner School and they kept me there as an instructor. Why did they keep me there is an instructor . I guess because i had already had two and a half years of college and i knew some radio theory from my first courses. I knew a little bit more than most of the other guys did. So they kept me there and i became an instructor. For the radio school. [laughter] so i stayed in chicago, having a great time as a gi in this wonderful town, which was very gi happy. They loved soldiers in chicago. The midwest, leaving new york and learning a little bit more about america by going to chicago, which is in the midwest and which is really midwest friendly and warm, and completely different than new york. I loved it there. [laughter] new york and chicago are different. Ben very, very different. So i became a radio instructor, i went to the various soldier places, like the various places where they have kids eating, and playing, playing pingpong, and things like that. Meeting girls what they called the jewish welfare board, which is a nice place to meet jewish girls. And so i had a wonderful time in chicago. Hey, this is 1942, 1943. Ben this is 1943. Did you ever get a chance to go to a cubs game or any baseball games . 1943, you had the all american girls starring around there. Ben i didnt go to baseball games. I was not a cub fan, i was a dodgers fan. I wasnt interested in the cubs. But i was interested in girls. The jewish welfare board had a really wonderful place where i would go, all the time. After school, after work, i would teach the gis, teach the radio and then i would go off they would go to tail