Library of Congress Interview with Mr. Michael Boorstein The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project MICHAEL A. BOORSTEIN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: September 13, 2005 Copyright 2009 ADST Q: Today is the 13th of September, 2005. This is an interview with Michael. Do you have a middle initial? BOORSTEIN: A. Q: Michael A. What does the A stand for? BOORSTEIN: Alan. Q: Do you pronounce it Boorstein or stein? BOORSTEIN: BoorSTEEN. Q: Boorstein. B-O-O-R-S-T-E-I-N. All right, Mike, let's sort of start at the beginning. When and where were you born? BOORSTEIN: I was born in Washington, D.C. on September 29th, 1946. Q: You want to talk about, can you tell me a little about on your father's side first, then we'll go to the mother's side. Where did they come from? What do you know? Interview with Mr. Michael Boorstein http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001519 Library of Congress BOORSTEIN: Well, I know quite a bit. My father was born in London, England in February of 1906. Next February will be his 100th birthday, but he's no longer living. He was the only son of a family that had a total of six children and the other five being girls. An older brother died as an infant. His parents were Ukrainian Jews from Kharkov and my grandfather was in the laundry business and during the early part of the 20th Century there was a period of upsurge and anti-Semitism. Q: There were some pogroms in that area, weren't there? BOORSTEIN: Exactly. So, my grandfather had the wherewithal and the wisdom and he went with his wife and children before my father was born to London. Again I don't know why he picked London or what exactly he did when he was there, but nonetheless while my grandparents were in London my father was born. When my father was about two years old my grandfather decided things were okay and they went back to Kharkov. Q: This would have been about? BOORSTEIN: 1908 or 1909. The last child, another girl was born back in Kharkov. Then of course they endured the Russian revolution. In the early 1920s my grandfather found the means to legally immigrate to the United States. My father came over with his mother, father, and younger sister leaving the four older sisters who already were either engaged or married back in the USSR at that point. Well, in the early 20s, it was not quite formed as the USSR obviously, but what became the USSR. They immigrated to the United States and first settled in Philadelphia. How much further do you want me to go with my father? Q: Did you know your grandfather? BOORSTEIN: No, my grandfather died before I was born. I did know my grandmother. She lived until about 1955 or '56. Q: Well, we will come back there, but how about did your father talk about the Ukraine? Interview with Mr. Michael Boorstein http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001519 Library of Congress BOORSTEIN: Well, unfortunately, my dad died at the age of 55 when I was 14 years old so that was a factor and I did not know that much about my father's life in the Ukraine from him. I can later on tell you about whatever family was left in the Soviet Union who I actually saw and interacted with in the late 1970s when I was assigned to Moscow. Q: Okay, we will pick that up, but how about on your grandmother, we are talking your grandmother, your grandfather rather. BOORSTEIN: Well, she lived to her early '80s and I didn't know her that well because when I was you know, six, seven, eight years old she was living with my aunt and uncle in New Jersey and we were living in Bethesda, Maryland. She would come down two or three times a year to visit. Her English was never that good. She spoke predominantly Yiddish and Russian. I do not know whether I was so young, I did not have that kind of curiosity. I kind of wish now that I had. I heard stories from my older sisters and my older brother about her and about the family later on, but in terms of my own interaction with her, it was pretty minimal. I found out later that she was originally from Lithuania. Q: How about on your mother's side? BOORSTEIN: Well that is even a more interesting story. My mother also was from Ukraine. She was born in a village called Chudnov, which is 35 miles southwest of Zhitomir, which is in turn about maybe 100 miles west of Kiev. She was born, her exact date of birth is unknown because the records were lost, but she believes it was sometime June July of 1909. She was the youngest of eight children. She had six brothers and a sister and her older brother, actually oldest brother had immigrated to the United States before she was born. Another brother left when she was like two years old. Then after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, by the time she was 11 she was an orphan. Her father died of Typhoid Fever when she was 10 or 11 and six weeks later her mother was killed by marauding bandits and bled to death in the forest before they could get any help. So, with two of her older siblings, I guess three of them through the Interview with Mr. Michael Boorstein http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001519 Library of Congress auspices of one of the Jewish welfare organizations I think the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) or something like that, that was very active in bringing Jewish refugees over from the Shtetl, basically, they were able to leave and go to Warsaw where she told me years later that she lived in Mila Street, from the book Mila 18. She lived there for about a year and then with one of her brothers and her only sister they all came over by ship to the United States in 1922. There she was met by this older brother whom she had never met and settled also in Philadelphia and that is where she and my father met. Q: Well, how did they meet? BOORSTEIN: You know, I am not really sure other than the fact that they were in Philadelphia. My mother was only 17 when she got married. My dad was 20 or 21. I imagine just through the closely-knit Jewish community of #migr#s at the time, that is where they met. My grandfather resumed the laundry business in Philadelphia at that time and my father worked in that business with him and ultimately took it over. Q: On your mother's and father's education, how far did they go, do you have any idea? BOORSTEIN: Neither my mother or father ever completed high school. Whatever education they had, well my dad was 17 when he left Kharkov so maybe he had early high school education. I do not believe he ever completed a high school equivalency in the United States. My mother definitely because she was only 11 when she came over, 11 or 12, she took some courses to help with learning English when she got to the United States, but never formally completed high school. I was just going to add that my mother because she came over at a relatively young age, she bore no accent from the old country. My father had a very slight accent that was not all that apparent, you had to talk to him for a few minutes to get a sense that English was not his native language. Q: In your family how Jewish was your family, religious, that sort of thing? Interview with Mr. Michael Boorstein http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001519 Library of Congress BOORSTEIN: Not very. We were basically secular Jews, I mean, I certainly had a very strong identity as being Jewish and in growing up even though I was born in Washington and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and I was really a minority. I think in my elementary school class out of 30 or 35 kids there were two other Jewish children, so I felt a degree of bigotry growing up. I got into fights and was called names and whatever, nothing that I think scarred me deeply, but nonetheless in the family we celebrated the Jewish holidays. We would go to the synagogue for those occasions, but we did not keep a kosher. My grandmother, my paternal grandmother kept kosher, but nobody else did. Q: Where does the family fall politically? BOORSTEIN: Democratic and liberal, very traditional at that time for most Jewish immigrants. Q: Your father in Bethesda, what was he doing? BOORSTEIN: Like I said, he originally went to Philadelphia with his parents and then shortly after my parents were married, the family relocated to the northern part of New Jersey. There was a business opportunity and my grandfather again was in the laundry business. My grandfather I am told holds a patent in the Soviet Union for inventing the first automatic dry cleaning machine in the Soviet Union. I have never gotten proof of this, but it is sort of in the family lore. I guess I should do some research to find that out, but you know, dry cleaning as a way of doing business really didn't get active in the United States until after the Second World War as I understand it.