Shostal, Pierre.Toc.Pdf
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project PIERRE SHOSTAL Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: June 16, 1997 Copyright 2000 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Paris, France; raised in Vienna, Austria Emigrated to U.S. (Iowa and New York) - 1941 Yale University (“Fordies”); Fletcher Entered Foreign Service - 1959 New York, New York - Passport Office 1959 Frances Knight State Department - Bureau of Economic Affairs 1959-1961 Tom Mann Ed Martin GATT Air National Guard 1961-1962 Leopoldville and Kinshasa, Zaire - Political Officer 1962-1963 Ambassador Ed Gullion Prime Minister Cyril Adoula Political parties Frank Carlucci Belgian legacy Government Katanga secession Mobutu UN presence Brussels, Belgium - General Officer 1963-1965 The MacArthurs Congo Decolonialization issue Walloon-Flemish issue 1 State Department - Secretariat - Line Officer 1965-1967 Duties Bureau rivalries Vietnam Six Day War Dulles’ Israeli guarantee Domino theory Lilongwe, Malawi - Political Officer 1967-1969 Isolation Hastings Kamuzu Banda Malawi-U.S. relations U.S. aid Mozambique Tanzania Peace Corps Tribes Foreign Service Institute - Russian Language Training 1969-1970 Kissinger and Soviets Moscow, USSR - Political Officer 1970-1972 Duties Foreign students Latin America Allende Cuba Economy “Blue Ocean” Navy Middle East Environment Jordan’s Black September U.S.-Soviet relations Nixon’s China and Moscow visits Kissinger-State relations “Peaceful coexistence” Brezhnev Contacts Travel KBG Kigali, Rwanda - Deputy Chief of Mission 1972-1974 Hutu-Tutsi conflict Burundi conflict President Habyarimana assassination U.S. interests 2 Communists Peace Corps Economy Gorilla habitat Brussels, Belgium - North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] 1974-1977 Cyprus Spain Portugal Kissinger Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe [CSCE] Soviet military Schmidt and Carter Germany The French Environmental Protection Agency 1977-1978 U.S.-Soviet Environmental Protection Agency Soviet capabilities State Department - Oceans and Environmental Science Bureau 1978-1980 Bilateral agreements Frank Press Soviet technology Afghanistan invasion State Department - Foreign Service Institute - Language School - Dean 1980-1983 Goals Teaching process Problems Foreign Service Act of 1981 State Department - Bureau of African Affairs - Central African Affairs - Office Director 1983-1985 Chad Zaire Qadhafi France Mobutu Chet Crocker Tshisekedi Soviet threat U.S. policy Hamburg, Germany - Consul General 1985-1987 Missiles to Germany 3 Gorbachev-Reagan meeting Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI] View of U.S. Leftists Commercial relations NATO East German relations State Department - Central European Affairs - Director 1987-1990 East German-Gorbachev relations Ambassador Roz Ridgway East German-U.S. relations Honecker Berlin East-West Germany relations Poland German use of force German reunification Freedom trains Berlin Wall Nuclear weapons modernization “Two plus four” negotiation U.S. policy formation French policy Austria Switzerland Kurt Waldheim UN in Vienna Joerg Haider Austrian minorities Frankfurt, Germany - Consul General 1990-1993 U.S. agencies Gulf War Political elements U.S. relations Politics Economic situation Students Democracy Leftists Daniel Cohn-Bendit German citizenship U.S. influence U.S. military presence Treasury attaché 4 Unification European Union enlargement NATO State Department - Personnel 1993 Joint Military Intelligence College (Bolling Air Base) 1993-1995 Students Course of study Retirement - State Department Contracts 1995 State Department contract officer Bosnia German army Foreign Service personnel INTERVIEW Q: Will you start at the beginning? Could you tell me when and where you were born and a bit about your family? SHOSTAL: I was born in 1937 in Paris, France. My father had been born in Vienna, Austria. My mother was born in Hungary, but moved to Vienna as a very small child, so she also grew up a Viennese. They married in 1933, which was at the time of the collapse of the main bank of the country, so they didn't see much economic future for themselves in Austria and they moved to Paris to start a branch of a business that my father had already started with his brother in Vienna. Q: What type of business? SHOSTAL: This was a photography agency, selling, being an agency for photographers who wanted to sell their photographs to magazines, advertising agencies, etc. and it was at that time still quite a new field. They thought that there would be a market for this kind of thing in France, so my father with his bride went to Paris at that time and they got started. It was not easy in the early years, because that was in the 1930s and the economic depression was pretty general. They managed finally to get a foothold. Then came the war in 1939. My father, being of Jewish background and not a French national, was especially vulnerable during that period. He was called up into the French armed forces, but fortunately for him, not in the regular army. He served in the Foreign Legion and was sent to North Africa. When the French were defeated in 1940, he was not in war zone, but rather in North Africa. At that point too, my parents had a second child, my younger brother, who was born in January, 1940 and the problem then became, once the Germans were in Paris how we were going to get out and get to the unoccupied zone in the south. My mother had tried with me, already during the fighting to get out, but like many other people were trapped on the roads 5 and didn't make it. Finally, thanks to help from some friends she got false papers for her and for me and we went to the unoccupied zone with quite a little difficulty. Q: This would be Vichy, France? SHOSTAL: This would have been in to Vichy, France. Our destination was Marseille, where we hoped to join my father who was then to be released from the Foreign Legion. All that finally worked out. My mother managed with courage and good luck, to have my younger brother, who was six months old at that time, smuggled into the unoccupied zone. We finally all joined up with my father. We were extremely lucky. He had a cousin who was married to a Harvard professor and they sponsored us for a U.S. visa. It was very difficult to get visas, but we were among the lucky ones. From Marseille, after I think a stay of six or nine months, we got to Spain. By this time it was the summer of 1941. In late summer we got on a Spanish freighter which took us to New York. Again, we were extraordinarily lucky, because that same freighter on its return voyage was sunk by a German submarine, even though Spain was technically neutral at the time. We at first settled in New York, and then spent several months in Iowa at a Quaker home for refugees from Europe. Q: Had your father joined you by this time? SHOSTAL: Yes, he'd joined us in Marseille. I think it was late 1940, early '41. Q: Your family being Jewish, were they beginning to feel a hot breath of Vichy government beginning to cooperate on what eventually ended up with the Holocaust? SHOSTAL: Well, yes and no. Before we left Paris, my mother and I, it wasn't a problem because my mother was not Jewish. So, she was left pretty much alone. In Marseille, that phase of things hadn't begun as yet. There was still an awful lot of disorder, chaos at the time. The Vichy government, I think, had not organized itself in its efforts to help the Nazis round up Jews at that time. We were extremely lucky that we got out before things really got bad. Q: Your family settled in New York? SHOSTAL: At first in New York we spent several months there. Then we moved to a Quaker settlement house in West Branch, Iowa, which was also the birth place of Herbert Hoover. There's quite a Quaker presence in that area. So, they kind of got us started. My parents learned the language and I did too. We then returned to New York, I think it was early 1943. Q: So you would have been about six years old then? SHOSTAL: I was six then. I went to the local public schools in New York City and settled in Queens. My father, because of his age and family circumstances, wasn't called up for military service, so we were together as a family through the war. In '49 we moved to 6 Peekskill, New York which is about 40 miles north of the city and that's where I spent the next several years. Q: What type of business did your father go into? SHOSTAL: He started again the same kind of business in New York that he'd had in Europe, and I think had the foresight to recognize the potential of color photography at that time. So, he really specialized in color photography, but did very much the same kind of things in New York as he had in Paris. During the war he also worked at some odd jobs, like gas station attendant, working in a button factory, just to keep us going. Q: You were in Peekskill from when to when? SHOSTAL: From '49 until I went to college. I had a stroke of very good luck there and got a scholarship from the Ford Foundation to enter college early. Q: While you were in High School at Peekskill, did you get anything in foreign affairs or were you picking up knowledge of foreign affairs from your family? SHOSTAL: I think it was mostly from my family. They were having me read the New York Times and often discussed what was going on in Europe and had some contacts still with people in Europe.