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Twentieth Century Radicalism in Minnesota Oral History Project

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Twentieth Century Radicalism in Minnesota Oral History Project Max Geldman and Shevi Geldman Narrators Steven Trimble Interviewer 1977? Los Angeles, California? [Note: There frequently is a loud machine running in the background in the first part of the interview that makes it hard to hear the speaker so an accurate transcription here is difficult to assure.] Minnesota ST: ...and stuff like that [unclear]... in MG: [Unclear] if my memory slips, you can kind of interject. SG: Okay. Society MG: Well I was born in Poland, there was a kind of a humorProject about it, [unclear] middle class put on, most people of Jewish origin that were born in Poland and who are either first generation always said that you were born in WarsawRadicalism or near Warsaw, that's kind of a status [unclear], cause if you're born in some godforsaken little town there's no status. So anyways, my, I was born on May 8th, 1905, which means this coming May 8thHistory I will be 72. We arrived here in 1914 in New York City. On my father's side of the family there were let'sHistorical see, one, there were four males, and I don't know how many females. ThreeCentury of the males migrated to the United States, America as they called it, the other one was an [unclear] whatOral happened to him I do not know. All I know right now is that the, my father's younger sister lived through the Nazi Holocaust, she was, she went from a small town near Lovling, Poland to Paris, she was either, how she did it I do not know except that [unclear] Christian people considered it their moral obligation to hide her out and she was hid out during the period of the Nazi occupationMinnesota of Paris. SG: [Unclear]Twentieth she was hidden out on farm, she was out in the French countryside, she and her children. MG: Yeah, so we're planning a trip to, of which Paris will be included and we plan to look them up, to, I think she's still, believe she's still alive, and her children, they live somewhere in the environs of Paris. My education, interrupt if you want further information, you can compare it also with the biography that's in the Farrell book. ST: Do you remember much about the trip coming over. MG: Except we were immigrants, we travelled steerage. In those days under the Czar, nobody ever got papers to leave as far as I know. Everybody stole across the border, I vaguely remember that we were in a [unclear], a wagon and hid out at night and I imagine that we, the first point that we got to was somewhere in Germany, it was like night and day. Of course the stealing across the border was a sort of how shall I call it, it was fixed, you paid so much, you bought a ticket for a steamship line and they had all connected so that the Czar, everybody was paid off, and I'm sure it was well known, otherwise how could the flood of immigrants every got down across the border in such numbers. SG: Wasn't there [unclear] organization? MG: Well, yes there was... SG: There was, I don't remember the name of it but there was an organization and it [unclear] for many years. My mother came in 1904 [unclear] MG: Well, it could have been 1913, it was long time... SG: But I'm saying [unclear] they managed to get, they were [unclear]Minnesota organized and they papers for them after they got [unclear] in MG: The only organization that I know of was the, I think it was called the [unclear] Organization Society or something like that. Anyways, we took ship in Antwerp, Belgium, there were various points depending on whom the agent had connections and all I can rememberSociety of the trip was that everybody was sick. It wasn't the most pleasant place to Projectbe, we were herded [unclear] hull of the ship and we didn't eat too much nor did we want to too much. There was, my father was already here and the usual custom was that you broughtRadicalism over what we call lanslike, that is people from your town so forth they usually found a job for you in the trade in which they were following and my father became a sewing machine operator, even though in the old country my grandfather was, we call a lord's duke [lordsdu?], one of the last Historyof the, inHistorical the feudal period. Now the activity of the lord's duke [lordsdue?] was he took care of his affairs, he had lumber, lumbering, forest, crops and so forth, but it was coming Centuryto an end and because it was coming to an end, his sons had emigrated. He [unclear] became a sewing machineOral operator and first in that time in ladies waists and then in dresses. He wasn't accustomed to machinery so like many immigrants who were thrown into the labor force so to speak, he ran a needle through his thumb and the thumb had to be amputated. The, so getting back as far as the days on the ship are concerned, as I said all memories is that we were sick until we landed on Ellis Island,Minnesota it was called Castle Garden, I may have things mixed up a little bit and weTwentieth were three boys that were there with my mother and my next in years my brother Nat who died about a year ago, we were about three years apart and hurt his foot and to this day I remember that we were very fearful [unclear] that we were going to be medically examined and [unclear] reject [unclear] have a bandage on his foot and [unclear], every time he gave a shriek of pain my mother would go into hysterics, [unclear] certainly was, we were, our being, not being able to land. Anyway we finally got there, our father took an apartment, first apartment [unclear] and it was on Houstus Street. The, they didn't have inside toilets, I don't remember, many of the apartments didn't. [Unclear] my wife and I were in New York, that was while there was a six week [unclear]... SG: '56 [unclear] MG: '56 we were still on the lower east side those terrible apartments with [unclear] in the hall, were used by all the people. SG: I'm sure [unclear] MG: [Unclear] lived there and now they're being occupied now by Blacks and Puerto Ricans. We lived in the lower eastside first on Houstus Street and then on East 8th Street, near Tompkins Square [unclear] ST: Yeah, I'd like to get as much as you remember because it's good background. MG: 8th Street was a sort of border street, New York City is a melting pot, all [unclear] national origins more or less settled in the same area and the lower eastside was [unclear] for Jews, Polish people were there. 9th Street, 10th Street was already off limits to Jewish kids because 9th and 10th Street and then from there on in were Poles and Italians and there would be raids, what the reasons, or what purpose, [unclear] because one is Jewish and the otherMinnesota is Polish and the other is Italian so everybody knows they have to [unclear] because that's the way it is. The, I went, my education, I finished 8th grade in what we would call an elementaryin school. It is the custom, it was the custom in Jewish families for the oldest to go to work so that the younger ones could have the benefit of education. So we moved from 8th Street to Brooklyn, an area called Brownsville, all I know [dog yelps]... Quiet. We will note that this is not part of the reminiscences. So I graduated from public school 174 in Brownsville, Already beginning to read, I triedSociety going to night school, high school, but [unclear] really involved in reading, [unclear]Project [dog yelps, machine in background and sounds like a plane overhead]...the English, French, German [unclear], Russian [unclear] the Yiddish, so high school was like [unclear],Radicalism I wasn't too interested [unclear] it was much more exciting to be around circles, ideas were being [unclear]. My cousin, the older cousin was a member of the Communist Party underground and we would get hold of some of the literature and so [unclear] my younger cousin, [unclear] andHistory he, throughHistorical my older cousin [unclear] radical circles in that period, [unclear] right away [unclear] at least prospered. Century SG: [Unclear] Oral MG: [Unclear], and I remember meeting him, it was somewhere out in the country and...what were we talking about I don't remember, but [unclear] that in those years, we're talking about the '20s, there was a very strong current amongstMinnesota Jewish intellectuals, people who were influenced by ideas [unclear]Twentieth the radical ideas, revolutionary ideas, [unclear] started reading [unclear] or Engels, Lenin was unknown, no I wouldn't say that, my first real contact with the Communist movement... [tape clicks. After this machine noise gone] ST: Okay. MG: Okay. ST: Yeah. MG: My first contact with the Communist movement so to speak was the Lenin Memorial meeting in 1924. I'd been to I think probably previous [unclear], this was at Madison Square Garden, it was I guess every radical from miles around came and all the luminaries of the Communist Party spoke in various languages. You must keep in mind that the Communist movement in 1924 was only, was still only semi-legal, a struggle was going down within the Communist Party for legality.
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