The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project LAWRENCE COHEN Interviewed By: Charles
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project LAWRENCE COHEN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: July 12, 2007 Copyright 2008 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in Pennsylvania Dickinson College; Tel Aviv University (Junior Year); University of Pennsylvania; University of Chicago; Northwestern University Entered the Foreign Service in 1980 Monterrey, Mexico; Consular Officer 1981119,2 Environment 3isas Recreation Speleology Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Economic Officer 19,2119,5 US Aid programs US commercial interests 6overnment Area problems Environment Economy Archaeological finds Peace orps .arriage Trade agreements US military State Department; Staff Assistant, Economic Bureau 19,5119,8 Personnel Duties 1 State Department; Office of Development Finance (ODF) 19,,119,9 .ultinational institutions African debts Inter1American Development Bank African Development bank .e0ican Dept risis (19,2) .adras, India; Political/Economic onsul 19,911991 Environment ommunist government Economy Education ulture US commercial Presence Banking Tamil refugees Indian military 6ulf War refugees ommunications Relations Indian navy Rajiv 6andhi death Tamil Tiger Hindu1.uslim relations Politics Budapest, Hungary; Attaché, Environment, Science and Technology 199111994 Family onversion to democracy US funding ardinal .indszenty Raoul Wallenberg Environment Hungary/Russian relations Hungarian scientists US1Hungarian Science & Technology $oint Fund for Research Pollution remedy projects Danubian ircle Austrian concerns Regional Environmental enter for entral and Eastern Europe (RE ) 2 ongressional delegations 6eorge Soros contributions $ewish population Soviets Peace orps State Department; Bureau of Oceans, Environment & Scientific 19941199A Affairs (OES) North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) US1 anadian relationship .e0ico1US relationship Air pollution reduction Rivers Bilateral accords State Department; Office for the oordination for Assistance 199A12000 to the Newly Independent States (S/NIS ) Assistance oordinator Richard .orningstar ontractors hernoble Support for Eastern European Democracy Act (SEED) ountry Economic Development Projects ommittee on Sustainable Economic ooperation (SE ) Office staff Bi1national commissions Nuclear powered submarines International Energy Agency (IEA) hinaBs oil industry Enron collapse Alaskan oil .arriage Cagos, Nigeria; Economic ounselor 200012002 Environment Internet fraud (41119) Terrorism American International School Oil producers 6overnment 6eographically divided embassy 3 US commercial presence Nigerian National Petroleum ompany (NNP ) Ethnic groups Dictatorships rime and orruption Islam .ilitary HI31AIDS Relations with embassy (Abuja) US1Nigeria relations 3IP visitors Brasilia, BrazilD Political/.ilitary Affairs Officer 200212005 6overnment President Cula da Silva Ambassador Donna Hrinak Relations Brazils Diplomatic Service Peace orps rejected Embassy morale US1Brazil military cooperation American ServicemenBs Protection Act (ASPA) Brazilian military Technological cooperation IraE War Ambassador $ohn Danilovich Temporary Duty in Bamiyan Afghanistan 2002 Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Purpose of PRT Environment New FealandBs (Giwis) HTask Force ribI Bamiyan village Non 6overnment Organizations presence 6eography Economy Organization and procedures of PRT Bamiyan Buddha statues HAre there caves in the Hindu GushJI Reporting 4 Operations 3isitors US Bagram base Gabul $ewish community British military presence Herat Brasilia, Brazil (continued) 200212005 Elections Reporting BrazilBs foreign relations BrazilBs diplomatic corps Arab1South America Summit in Brasilia Relations State Department; FSI; Dari language study 2005 Gabul/Herat, Afghanistan; .ember, PRT 20051200A Italian control Environment Civing conditions ommanders Emergency Response Program ( ERP) Routine Reports to Embassy Security mission Relations with Afghan community Ethnic groups US military presence Herat Political system PRT organization and projects Terrorist attacks Afghan Border Police Dyn orp Reconstruction projects Afghan/Iran relationship Economy Dependence on poppies Turkmenistan Taliban influence 5 Anti1poppy programs Islam Herat riots WomenBs issues State Department; Bureau of E0aminers 200A12008 Retirement 2008 Post Retirement 20081200, Private business INTERVIEW OHEND .y paternal great1grandparents, Adolph and Rose .arkowitz, emigrated from 6alicia, Austria1Hungary to America. They reached Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1,,9. .y grandmother Yetta, born in 1,90, was the eldest of seven siblings who reached adulthood. .y great1grandfather became a peddler. Despite his humble beginnings, he sent three sons to college. For my grandmother, college was never in the cards. Adolph .arkowitz believed education for women was a frivolous lu0ury. She was stuck doing housework and raised younger siblings while her brothers became successes. .y grandfather Abraham ohen whom Yetta married in 1912 was a cigar1maker from Couisville, Gentucky. After their marriage they lived in .anchester, New Hampshire, where he went back work rolling cigars. .y father, Norman Benjamin ohen, was born there in August 1914, the month World War I broke out. .y grandmother was not impressed with her husbandBs profession. Within three years she pushed him into the same business as a brother1in1law and a slew of her cousinsD retail shoes. By 1919 my grandfather purchased a humble shoe store back in her hometown of Pottstown. Abe ohen was not a very savvy businessman and on numerous occasions he demonstrated e0ceedingly poor business acumen. Yet, despite the depression, World War II, and other traumatic e0periences the Royal Shoe Store lasted ,0 years, many times longer than most retail stores. .y father was primarily responsible for the longevity of the business. Q: Your father went into the shoe business. OHEND From about the age of four, my father lived in Pottstown. He was the eldest of four children, two boys and two girls. While in high school Dad labored for his father. In spite of the store, family circumstances were always close to the poverty line. Dad was very intelligent. He graduated Pottstown High School in 1921 at 1A, the youngest in his class. He wanted to be an engineer. He applied to only one college, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and was accepted. However, his parents refused to let him go. 6 They claimed, disingenuously, that the family could not afford for him to go to college. So after graduation Dad slaved away in various dead1end shoe jobs throughout Pennsylvania during the Depression years. We only learned about his life story in 199A, three years before his death when he and I collaborated on his memoirs. I turned the stories he recounted into a book manuscript I called the hicken Hill hronicle. Dad remembered vivid details about his childhood and the stories told to him by his grandfather and uncles. I hope to publish the hicken Hill hronicle which is both a colorful account of the $ewish immigrant e0perience in small town America and a boyBs tragic relationship with his bitter mother. Dad entered the army as one of the early draftees in .ay 1941. Yet, every weekend while in training he returned from Pine amp, New York, to assist in the shoe store. Two years later, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the field artillery. By sheer luck, he was not sent overseas with his unit, the 2,th Infantry Division. A hand injury during Tennessee maneuvers washed him out. All his fellow officers were killed during the bloody Hurtgen Forest campaign and the Battle of the Bulge. Dad never forgot them. He received his army discharge in 194A. Although Pottstown was the last place he wanted to go after the army, his parents beseeched him to come back and assist in the shoe store. As the dutiful son, he returned and kept the shoe store afloat. Si0 years later, he met my mother during a blind date in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They were engaged within weeks. Q: What sort of education did your mother have* OHEND .y mother, a born and bred New Yorker, received her business administration degree from NY, ity ollege of New York. During the late 1940s, NY was one of the best avenues for the children of $ewish immigrants to get a Euality college education. For the first half of the century, American universities had $ew Euotas which limited the intake of $ewish students to no more than ten percent. But NY had no Euotas. .om got her degree and took the e0ecutive training program with Ale0anderBs, the New York department store. She then worked for Emily Shops in New York as a bridal consultant. Emily Shops then sent .om to manage their Harrisburg store, a ladies shop. ThatBs where she met my father. .y motherBs parents were immigrants as well. Both arrived in America while young children during the first years of the twentieth century. .omBs father, Harry Cevine, served briefly in the U.S. Navy during the First World War. He married Cillian 6ottlieb in 1925. .y mother, one of two daughters, was born a year later. .y grandfather was a successful salesman during the 1920s, but he lost his job and suffered terribly, as many did, during the Depression years of the 1920s. During the Depression, the family moved back in with HarryBs in1laws, Eli and Sara 6ottlieb. Towards the end of the 1920s, he started a toy manufacturing company in .anhattan, the Hale1Nass orporation. The company lasted until the early 19A0s when it went bankrupt and my grandparents retired to southern Florida,