Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project STANLEY UCKERMAN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: July 26, 2004 Copyright 2010 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York University of Wisconsin- Journalism-Political Science BA University of Wisconsin- Political Science, MA Johns Hopkins School of International Studies + Special Studies US Army, ,ermany Entered the Foreign Service in 1.60 Newspaper 1areer 1.02-1.63 Reporter, the 1olumbus En6uirer 7,eorgia8 Milwaukee Journal The 9ennedys Politics Madison, Wisconsin: Executive Secretary to ,overnor Reynolds 1.63-1.60 ,overnor John Reynolds Wisconsin issues Presidential election Politics Elizabethville, 1ongo: Information Officer/Branch PAO 1.60-1.62 Environment American 1ultural 1enter Europeans University 1ongo becomes Zaire Belgians Rhodesia?s Unilateral Declaration of Independence Security Local media Johns Hopkins University, SAIS: International Economics study 1.62-1.6A 1 Brussels, Belgium: Information Officer 1.6A-1.21 President Nixon?s visits to Belgium and Ireland Relations with Belgians Cietnam protests Universities Flemish and Walloons Family Seoul, 9orea: Press Officer 1.21-1.23 Local media American press US Ambassadors 9orean military ixon?s 1hina visit 1hina influence Washington, D1, USIA, 9orea D Japan Program Monitor 1.23-1.2E Coice of America Program analysis Alan 1arter Television Field inspections Washington, D1, USIA, Policy Officer, Films and Television 1.2E-1.26 Film biographies FReflectionsG Bicentennial programs U.S. Delegation to the United Nations ,eneral Assembly 1.26-1.22 Elliot Richardson American Foreign Service Association USIA-State amalgamation Relations with US press Law of the Sea 1onference Senior Seminar 1.22-1.2A Mexico 1ity, Mexico: 1ounselor, Public Affairs 1.2A-1.A3 Environment President 1arter visit Universities Artistic community Local politics Publications Programs Oil price collapse 2 US Ambassadors and wives Migrant workers US press criticism President 1arter US-Mexican relations US media influence Olympics Energy policy Exchange Programs US/Mexico mutual misconceptions 1uba 1orruption President Reagan?s 1ancun visit Anti-US demonstrations Ottawa, 1anada: 1ounselor for Public Affairs 1.A3-1.A6 Environment icaragua US Cietnam draft dodgers Iuebec nationalists Political Parties orth American Free Trade Agreement 7 AFTA8 American films and literature 1uba Local media US Ambassadors Economic issues Border issues Brasilia, Brazil: Minister 1ounselor for Public Affairs 1.A6-1.A. Environment Economic issues Brazilian media Universities Agriculture Amazon rainforest Environmental movement Brazilian Foreign Service Racial makeup 1ultural exchange Washington, D1: USIA, Director, Latin American and 1.A.-1..2 1aribbean Affairs, 1areer Minister Posts and personnel Technology innovations World et 3 icaragua Relations with State Department Post reductions 1uba Florida 1uban community Radio/TC Marti 1astro influence Panama arcotics Director 1harlie Wick Argentina State Department: 1oordinator for Foreign Information Policy 1..2-1..3 Belgrade television COA/Radio Free Europe?s Israel station plan Projects Retirement 1..3 Institute for the Study of Diplomacy ,eorgetown University INTERVIEW Q: Today is 26 July, 2004. This is an interview with Stanley Zuckerman. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. You do go by Stan? ZU19ERMA : Yes. Q: ,kay, to begin with, when and where were you born? ZU19ERMA : I was born in Brooklyn, New York September 2, 1.33. Q: Right in time for the depression. ZU19ERMA : I arrived with the depression and Hitler?s rise to power. And Roosevelt?s as well, and only a couple of months before the end of prohibition, an event my father used to say was the real secret to Roosevelt?s popularity. Q: .ell, Stan, let/s get a little bit about your background. Starting first on your father/s side. .here do the Zuckermans come from and what do you know about them? ZU19ERMA : I don?t know a great deal about my forebears on either side. My father?s father and mother came from Hungary in about 1AA0. My grandfather came first, and she arrived later. He was poor and ill and died young of lung disease. His birth certificate E indicates that his parents, Herman Zuckerman and Tillie Richards, were also from Hungary. Unfortunately the census doesn?t indicate what city people are from. One of the things on my list to do is discover more about my family history. On my mother?s side, her parents on both sides came from somewhere in Russia to New York from somewhere in the Russian pale of settlement, I think around Minsk, now capital of Belarus. Q: Both families were Jewish. ZU19ERMA : Jewish on both sides, yes. Q: .hat were your grandparents doing, both sides as far as they all settled in the New York area? ZU19ERMA : My father?s father was described as a tinsmith. I think he was pretty much a door to door peddler on the lower east side who would repair pots and pans. Q: He probably had scissors. ZU19ERMA : 1licking scissors yes. He had some sort of cart. My father describes the family as being very poor. His father died in his early E0?s and my father left school at the age of 10 or 16 to support the family. He described a childhood in which he would fight other kids for lumps of coal that fell off the East River barges when they were being unloaded onto trucks, sort of a Dickensian youth. But somehow he made his way into the textile business. He was never very successful as a salesman. My mother?s side was more substantial. Her father was a tailor who, I am told by uncles, was 6uite good at his trade. They say the son wants to remember what the father wants to forget, and so I never got much out of my parents, but I did get some out of collateral relatives. My mother?s father, Meyer Rosenberg, was drafted into the Russian army, which meant 20 years and very likely death before discharge. If you returned from it you got a special seat in the synagogue near the Eastern wall. Fortunately he was working in some sort of protected position with an officer for whom he served as a batman and tailor. But the officer was transferred, my Uncle Al told me, and my grandfather was sent to a 1ossack regiment where they beat him nightly for exercise. He decided to leave the 1zar?s army. His brother was going to London. He gave him his money, stole a horse and left Russia. This may be apocryphal, I don?t know, but apparently there was a long trail from London to South Africa to Mexico to New York, searching for his brother with his money. He found his brother in New York, but the money was gone, but there he was in New York. He got a position with one of the bouti6ue department stores. I believe it was either Henri Bendel or Bergdorf ,oodman, one of those two. He raised a family of five in some comfort. He then left New York 1ity to go to Florida to open a business in Jacksonville. The closest I have been able to determine as to why he and his wife, my maternal grandmother Ida Blum, went to Jacksonville was that my mother had a cousin named 1elia Safer, and there was a Rabbi Safer in Jacksonville as well as a substantial Safer family. That is probably why he and his wife ended up there, opened a ladies? garment business, and made a living. But he fell ill + he had diabetes -- and wanted my mother, 0 who was the oldest of five children -- two boys and three girls -- to come with my father to run the business. My mother was also in textile sales. But my father didn?t want to leave New York, which to him meant the known world, and so my mother?s sister and brother went down, took over the business, 6uarreled and split into a men?s wear store and a women?s wear store, and both prospered. When my father died in 1.62, my sister and I calculated that he had been outside of the city limits of New York four times in his life of 22 years. He couldn?t imagine why anyone would want to be anywhere else at any time. Q: .here had your mother and father met? ZU19ERMA : In ew York. Q: In the te3tile business essentially? ZU19ERMA : I really don?t know how they met. They both were kids on the lower east side. But as my maternal grandfather prospered, my mother?s family moved first to Harlem and then to the Bronx. A photo I have of her with a family friend makes it look almost rural in those days. She began to teach at the Henry Street Settlement on the lower East Side, teaching immigrant girls how to sew and how to design. My parents must have met somewhere in that period and in that place. Q: .ell then what was it like growing up for you as a kid, growing up in New York? .as it Brooklyn? ZU19ERMA : Yes. In Brooklyn. It was a very nice place to grow up. We lived in the south of the Borough, not far from 1oney Island, in an area called ,ravesend Bay, which was within the Bensonhurst part of Brooklyn. We had an apartment on the fifth floor of a six story building just two blocks from Lower New York Bay, and I loved to watch from my parents? bedroom window the great ships passing through the Bay on their way to Europe + the Iueen Mary, the Normandy, and others.