Susie Sachs:  This begins an interview with Martin Sachs in New Brunswick, New Jersey on October 21, 2006 with Susie Sachs and Sandra Stewart Holyoak.

Sandra Holyoak:  Mr. Sachs, thank you so much for coming to Rutgers for the interview.  For the record, please tell us where and when you were born?

Martin Sachs:  I was born in 1947 in Jersey City, New Jersey.

SS:  Where did you go to school?  Where did you live?

MS:  Well, I lived in Jersey City until I was about eight years old.  [I] started out at the Duncan Avenue School, PS 17.  Then we moved to Union, New Jersey, and [I] went to Livingston Elementary School.  Junior High School was Kawameeh Junior High School, that's K-A-W-A-M-E-E-H Junior High School, and from there [I] went to Union High School, graduated Union High School in 1965. 

SH:  Please, let us back up a little bit and talk about your father.  Can you tell us about his background and where he grew up, and some of the stories that you remember?

MS:  Oh, I don't think there's enough time in the day to do that.  [laughter] Let's see, well, my dad was born in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1906.  He was ... basically, a lifetime resident of Bayonne.  He went to their local schools, Bayonne High School.  He went to NYU undergraduate and Rutgers Law School.  He practiced law in Bayonne; the firm was Sachs and Sachs.  He served in World War II.  He came back from the war [and] reentered practice with his brother.  ... At the end of 1945, he got married.  ... In 1947, I came along. [laughter] ... After he and my mother got married, they lived in Jersey City; actually, I think they lived in New York City for a very short period of time.  Housing right after World War II was extremely tight to get, so they lived in New York,  ... which worked out well for my mother because she was working in New York City.  They then got an apartment in Jersey City; we lived there for seven, eight years, nine years.  We then moved to Union, and that was where they continued to live for about forty years, until just about the time of their death.

SH:  Was your mother also from New Jersey?

MS:  Yes, she was born in South Branch, just outside of Somerville.  Her father had a farm there, 148 acres as I recall, and my mother was one of eleven children.  They didn't need any outside help for the farm; they had it right there.  [laughter]  ... When she started school out there, she used to tell us stories about going to a one-room schoolhouse and having to walk however many miles it was to get there.  We never believed it.  But we used to go there for picnics, and then one day my father decided, "Let's clock the distance to that school," and we were correct; it was not the distance my mother had said.  It was actually about a half a mile, or a mile, more than she had said.  ... [It] took us a while to live that one down.  [laughter] ... They then moved to Somerville, and then from Somerville they moved to Bayonne, and that was where my mother and father met.  Actually, my father was my mother's father's attorney.

SH:  Really?

MS: ... He [my mother's father] had had an accident—I believe he was crossing the street when he was hit by a motorcycle-- and my father came to visit him in the hospital.  My mother was there and things just snowballed, shall we say.  [laughter]

SH:  Your father was not a young man when he went into World War II.

MS:  No, he wasn't, but he ...

SH:  Do you know where he served?

MS:  Yes, pretty much so.  He enlisted.  He was single.  ... The draft age ... was extended several times, but it covered everyone from about eighteen to maybe forty-five, give or take, and he was in his thirties, I believe, so he figured ... a couple of things; number one, he figured he would probably be drafted if he didn't enlist, and, number two, it was the thing to do, so he enlisted.  He served stateside and he did legal work for the Army stateside.  He did go [and] was stationed in different parts of the country, everything from locally, Fort Dix, to Philadelphia, to Camp Crowder, Missouri.  I think it is now, recently, been named Fort Crowder, but oh, let's see, I think there were several other places; I just don't recall.

SH:  He continued to practice law, but for the Army.

MS:  Correct.

SH: Okay.

MS:  Correct, that's my understanding.

SS:  What was his job during this time?

MS:  In the Army? 

SS:  Yes.

MS:  Well, he had several different jobs.  Toward the last year or so of the war, when it was becoming obvious that sooner or later we would win the war, he was doing a lot of contract termination work.  At one point he was in charge, it wasn't strictly a legal job, but he was in charge of, as they referred to it then, pulling the cards.  [There were] no computers, you used three-by-five cards and he was at a certain base and his job there was to decide who on that base was going to get sent overseas.  Everybody was very nice to him. [laughter] You did not want to get on his wrong side at that point, because he would just pull your card and, you know, decide who went, who didn't, or if you went to the European Theater, or I guess the Pacific.  The exact details I don't know, but that was one of his jobs.  Contract termination was another one.  What else did he do?  Well, reviewing various documents for appropriate legal consideration.

SS:  Was he the first one from his family born in this country from his family?

MS:  Well, he was born in Bayonne.  His mother was born in New York City.  She attended what then was called CCNY, City College of New York.  Now what is it?  City University, I think, of New York.  His father came to this country when he was just a young boy, I believe, or a teenager, together with his father.  Originally, ... if you go back several generations, I think they came from Russia, and then my father's father, I believe, was born in Germany.  His father ... was Russian, and this I find a little hard to understand, never did get the details, but [he] supposedly served as a Cossack, but given the anti-Semitism of the Russians, I'm not quite sure how that materialized, and to this day, at this point in time, there's no way of getting any greater details on that, but one day, as the story goes ... he just took his horse up to the river between Russia, or Poland and Germany, and said, "That's it, I'm getting out of here," and went across the river, and that was the end of his Cossack days.  He was settled in Germany, and, I believe, my grandfather on my father's side, went to Gymnasium in Berlin, as they called it then, and then came to the United States.  On my mother's side, her father came to the United States around 1901, because they seemed to date it to the time of McKinley's assassination. [Editor's note: President William McKinley, Jr. was shot on September 6, 1901, died September, 14, 1901.]  ... I don't remember whether he came with his wife, my grandmother, or not, but they originally settled in New York ...

SS:  Where did they come to the United States from?

MS:  ... My mother's parents came from, I believe, Latvia, but the border, you know, changed so many times, it could have been Latvia, it could have been Lithuania, it could have been Poland, at any given time that border was moving back and forth, but, I believe it was Latvia.  It could have been Lithuania.  They settled in New York, actually, Long Island, and decided to sell the property they had there and ... buy up the farm in New Jersey.  I don't remember [the price], we joked about the price that they sold it for, because that property later became La Guardia Airport. [laughter]  What can I say, missed the boat, missed the plane?  [laughter] ... As I said, ... they had eleven children; I think they had one or two, maybe three, while they were in New York and [they] then came to New Jersey and I think ... we kind of get up to the point we were before. 

SS:  Did they ever speak Russian or German in the house, or did they speak only English or Yiddish?

MS:  My grandfather, according to my mother ... let me back up; my grandmother and grandfather spoke English to me.  ... Whenever I was around, I heard them speak English, but, according to my mother, they spoke about half a dozen languages, which I thought was quite dramatic, and then [I] ultimately learned that for people in that part, coming from that part of the world, that was routine.  He spoke, let's see ... English, Lithuanian, Polish, German, and probably one or two others, I just don't recall, but he did speak several languages.  ... Oh, and Yiddish. Occasionally I would hear them say something in Yiddish; that was usually if they didn't want me to understand what they were saying.  [laughter] My grandmother spoke several, but I only heard her speak either English or Yiddish.  On my father's side, I never met my grandparents.  My father's father died when he, just right about, almost to the day when he turned thirteen.  It was actually, he died a week before my father's scheduled bar mitzvah, and his mother died in 1929, just about one year after my father was admitted to the bar.

SH:  Was Sachs and Sachs, the name of the firm, was the other Sachs a brother?

MS:  Yes,

SH:  I thought perhaps father and son.

MS:  No.  ... My grandfather on my father's side, my father's father ... owned a shoe store, which I understand was one of the largest shoe stores in Hudson County.  In those days, Standard Oil, Exxon now, had a very large refinery in Bayonne, and they [the shoe store] pretty much catered to the workers who were there.  There were still quite a few oil tanks, storage tanks, in Bayonne; ... I think they've slowly been eliminating them over the years.  My knowledge of Bayonne, which used to be fairly extensive because I would always go into my father's office, but not having been there in the last twenty years, ... my knowledge has started to fade, but, in any event, the shoe store, which was operated by my grandfather and great-grandfather, catered to a great extent to the workers at Standard Oil.  My father's brother ... studied law, and went into the profession.  My father originally was going to study dentistry, and, in fact, I believe he was admitted to the University of Maryland Dental School.  ... If I remember correctly, he was going to room with a friend of his, who it turned out was not admitted.  ... My father decided, well, he wasn't going to go down there by himself, and his brother said, "Well," you know, "if you're not going to do that, what are you going to do?"  He says, "I don't know," and he [his brother] says, "Well, why don't you study law?"  ... [My father] says, "Oh, okay."  [laughter] So, he went to law school, and he said he found it pretty easy, so, he studied law, and the firm of Sachs and Sachs formed.  ... I'm trying to be as objective as I can.  I know it's hard when you're speaking about your father, but being as objective as I can, from everything I've heard from different people, it was a very, very well recognized firm in its heyday.  ... I'm not quite sure where my uncle went to law school.  As I said, my father went to, well, it wasn't called Rutgers Law in those days, but it ultimately became ... Rutgers Law and that's what the most recent diploma says.  ... Then, let's see, my uncle's two children, they also studied law but they went off on their own.  Then I followed in my father's footsteps, and I went to law school down in Washington, in Washington, DC, and, well, to make a long story short, I was going to come back up to New Jersey, but I thought, "Well, since I'm down there, maybe I'll get a job with the government for two, three years and get some experience, and then come up here," and that was thirty-five years ago, and I'm still with the government.  [laughter]

SH:  I would assume then that the law firm has closed at this point?

MS: ... Yes, the members have all passed away and there is no more Sachs and Sachs.

SS: ... I would like to return to when you were a kid in Jersey City, what were your activities or interests there in school, or outside of school?

MS:  It was a different world we lived in.  ... I mean, my activities would be to go up the block ...

SS:  For organized or otherwise activities?

MS:  Well, there were no real organized activities.  I mean, it was pretty much go up the block and meet a couple of friends I had.  Halfway up the block was Steven Rubenstein; further up the block was Mark Walman; across the street was Jan (Tetman?); ... halfway down the block on the other side was Laura Glauberman; I don't recall, I think that was her name.  This was the little group of friends I had, and we would sit there and play Davy Crockett or the Alamo [Editor's note: Davy Crockett, "King of the Wild Frontier" was a popular series on television in the mid-1950s, which included a segment on the Battle of the Alamo], the Lone Ranger [another popular 1950s television series].  We were one block away from the Hudson County Park, Lincoln Park.  We would go running through the park and sometimes throw snowballs at people.  [laughter] The statute of limitations has run out. [laughter] ... It was, as I said, a different world we lived in.  You weren't afraid, even at that age, four, five, six, ... seven years of age, to go running around, and I remember my mother saying to me, "Now, if you have to cross Westside Avenue, just ask an adult to cross you."  You'd go up to someone and say, "Lady, will you cross me?" and that was it.  ... I remember once coming home from school [and] my mother wasn't home. In those days, the vast majority of mothers stayed home; they did not work.  In fact, I was talking to someone just the other day and we were talking about it; that back in the fifties, especially, the early part of the fifties, if your mother worked, well, obviously your father was not, didn't have a good income, because, otherwise, your mother wouldn't have to work.  So, I remember coming home one day when my mother was not home, and I wasn't quite sure [what to do] and the next door neighbor was not home, so, I just went back down the block to the drugstore, and, of course, unlike today, everybody knew everybody, even though it was a city.  ... The druggist knew who I was, and I asked to borrow a dime to call my father.  He gave me a dime, and I got on the phone and called him, and, you know, [I] got some very sage advice, "Okay, well, wait for her to come home."  [laughter] So, we would go around, and we had this little [group] ... Oh, and Lisa Mitchell; she lived around the block.  I was, what, six-years-old and I had a crush on her.  [I] didn't realize it, but I think I did.  [laughter] You know, we'd go out and we'd play.  That was the thing we did then and then I kind of grew up with these people from the time, you know, I was just old enough to go running around.

SH:  Did you get involved in more organized sports or clubs later?

MS:  Well, not in Jersey City.  In Union ...

SH:  Why did you move to Union?

MS:  Why did we move?  To get out of the city, to get into a suburban setting, to have our own home.

SH:  Okay.

MS:  You know, in Jersey we lived in an apartment house.  It was the best that was available after the war.  My folks had moved in there in '46, I guess.  I was born in '47.  The apartment did not have an elevator; it was not the most modern place.  One or two ... of my friends had moved out of the area, and it was just time to go to the suburbs and have your own place and some fresh air.

SH: ... So this is when the New Jersey suburbs begin to take their shape, do you think?

MS:  Probably. 

SH:  What year was this?

MS:  Well, we moved, I think, in '56.

SH:  So this is about ten years after the war.  ...

MS: ... Yes, 1955, 1956, is when we moved, because ... I was about eight or nine, seven, eight, nine, somewhere in that range, so yes, somewhere in the mid-fifties.

SH:  I think that is when the demographics begin to change.  I think the veterans were then getting more established.

MS:  Yes, it took a few years after the war to get back into the swing of things.  ... I remember ... our typical Sundays for a long time was to go look at houses, and that is what we would do, just go look, and look, and look, until we found one that we liked.  In fact, that one, the one that we ultimately wound up buying, the seller wasn't going to budge an inch on the price.  ... To this day, I still remember my father saying to him, "Well, I'll tell you what.  You keep your house, and I'm going to keep my money," and walked out.  ... Probably six months later, I'm estimating six months later, the realtor got back to him and said, "By the way, the guy's willing to come down, or, is coming down on his price," and we liked the house.  It was close to the local elementary school, which was good. Right after we moved in, that's when they decided they were going to create a junior high school system, which was quite a distance, well, compared to the elementary school, which was, what, two and a half blocks away.  The junior high was maybe a mile, mile and a half away, give or take, so, you know, that was a hefty walk.  ... Oh, and the house was only ... one and a half blocks away from the main street. You could get a bus; ...of course, in those days, busses were a lot more frequent and convenient and used, more useful than today, where it's ... a mode of transportation of last resort, almost.  But it worked out well.

SS:  Also in regards to her question, when you discussed sports or organized activities when you were in Union, please also include the activity you may have had with a next door neighbor.

MS:  [laughter] Okay, I see where you're coming from.  [laughter] She [Susie] would make a great lawyer because she follows one of the main precepts, which is always know the answer to the question you ask.  [laughter] It so happened, that in Union ... one of our next door neighbors was Joe Collins, who was a major league baseball player.  He played first base and the outfield for the New York Yankees for about twelve or fifteen years, from the late forties ... I guess through roughly 1960.  When we moved ... to Union, one of the things Joe would do is, during the summer, he would have the kids in the neighborhood, we would play baseball in the street and he would pitch and give you pointers on what you were doing wrong.  I remember one day, I was hitting and I was consistently missing the ball.  ... After about three, four such swings and misses, he said, "You know, I see what you're doing and you're cutting under the ball.  You've got to try to level your swing out a little bit," and he worked with me, holding my hands on a follow through, and then he threw the ball again and it went, you know, about a block away.  ... But that was the sort of thing that we would do.  ... These were not organized games; this was, sort of, a, you know, pickup game and he had three boys of his own.  Later on he had two girls, but he had three boys. ... All the kids in the neighborhood would get out there and ... his own children comprised a third of the team right there ... but it was a lot of fun.  ... It was also a lot of fun, just to take it to the next step, he would very often have members of the team over for barbecues.  ... I got to meet the Yankees of what you might call, the great Yankees: Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Bill Skowron, Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Gil McDougald; I could go on and mention a few others that I know, Hank Bauer.  I know I've forgotten a few, but they would be there, and I remember [a funny story], I think it was Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, or Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, I forget now.  I had a dog, and we used to keep him on a rope in the backyard, a long rope.  It was a boxer, beautiful dog, and I remember Mantle and Maris, or Mantle and Berra whichever; one day I went out to hook the dog up to the rope, or whatever, and they were saying, "Hey, we'll buy the dog from you, how much you want?" and here I am, all of about ten years old, you know, saying, "Oh, no, I don't want to sell him to you," negotiating with, you know, these guys.  "Oh, no, no, he's not for sale, he's my buddy."  [laughter] "Well, we'll give you a baseball for him."  "No."  [laughter] ... But, I did get a baseball.  Joe did provide me with a baseball with all of their signatures on it, and this was back in the days before automatic signature pens.  So you knew that that signature was, in fact, that person.  ...

SH:  Do you still have this baseball?

MS:  Yes, yes, enclosed in a plastic container.  Unfortunately, the signatures are starting to fade a little bit, but I still have it.  ...

SH: ... Is it fair to say that you are still a Yankees fan?

MS:  Yes, I think it's fair to say that.  [laughter] When the Yankees ... back in the sixties, started ... and after Joe retired, and the Yankees started their, shall we say, decline back in the 1960s, and ... part of the team, together with castoffs from the Dodgers and a few other teams, formed that ragamuffin group called the Mets, I started watching the Mets.  [laughter]  ... It was amazing that first year and Stengel was so right when he said, "Can't anyone here play this game?"  [laughter]  So, I still like to watch the Mets ... but, I mean, yes, I'm a Yankee fan. [laughter]

SH:  This must have been a very exciting year for you ...  [laughter]

MS:  A very disappointing year.  [laughter] I was hoping for a subway series, yes, I was definitely hoping for a subway series.  [laughter]

SH:  I had thought that perhaps that would guarantee the fact that you would be in the New Brunswick area. [laughter]

MS:  But, I definitely got to get tickets in the spring.  I was telling Susie, I want to take her to Yankee Stadium because [of] this heresy that's going on about building a new stadium is just terrible.  ... So before they tear down the old stadium, I got to get there one more time.

SH:  During your childhood in Union and the famous next door neighbor, were you also involved in activities that dealt with your school?  Did you play a musical instrument, were you in any clubs, or Boy Scouts?

MS: ... Actually, I'm surprised I never did join the Scouts, and I don't know for sure why I didn't.  My mother had been very involved with the Scouts, with the Boy Scouts, and even has some certificate that was given to her for her work on behalf of the Scouts.  The only thing I can think of is that it might have entailed having to be driven someplace after school and my mother did not drive.  So, that's the only thing that goes through my mind as a reason.  But, I was involved with some extra curricular activities.  In junior high school, I was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper; that was a lot of fun.  What else did I do?

SS:  Photography?

MS:  Well, that was high school.  I was yearbook photographer, or one of the yearbook photographers, in high school and I was also, I forget.  [laughter] Well, I was on a couple of things in high school, I just don't remember offhand what they were.  I did do something on the high school paper, but it was not that much.  I just don't remember what I did.  But, I remember, I was also, as I said, yearbook photographer and something else, I just don't remember.  I'm sorry.

SH:  Were you involved in any kind of student government, or anything like that?

MS:  No.

SH:  Was your family politically involved?

MS:  Not really, in terms of running for office, no.  My folks had some friends or relatives who were involved in politics.  A friend of my father's was a congressman from Hudson County, or at least back then I guess it wasHudson County.  When I say was Hudson County, the district encompassed Hudson County; with redistricting probably many times since then, I have no idea what area covers that now.  [laughter] My mother had someone she knew who worked for Manny Sellers, who was Judiciary Committee Chairman for a number of years.  ... I think that was pretty much it.  I think my father knew someone in state government.  I mean, he knew a number of the judges, but that was ... to the best of my recollection, I think that was it.  I mean, on a local level, they were probably friends with a number of people, but, at this point in time, I just don't recall who or what it might have been.

SH:  Had your father ever considered becoming a judge?

MS:  I don't think so.  I don't think he had a desire for it.  ... I don't recall him really expressing a desire for something like that.  It's my recollection.  ... It's a good question, I just don't recall.  ...

SH:  It was very interesting politically in New Jersey during that time, I guess you could say.

MS:  Yes, yes, in the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties; yes, especially, up around Hudson County it could be very interesting, yes, so I understand.  [laughter]

SH:  Had there been any discussion around the dining room table?

MS:  Not that I recall.  ...

SH:  Was your family very observant?  Did you have a kosher home?

MS:  It started that way.  Both parents were brought up Orthodox.  As time went on, they became conservative. For anyone reading the transcript later on, that's one step down from Orthodox.  [laughter] ... I think toward the end of their lives, probably a little less conservative than they had been originally.  There was sort of a very slow progression, liberalizing, for example, the dietary laws.  To some extent that was brought on by just facts beyond their control.  Kosher butchers were not that many, they were few and far between, and becoming fewer and far between, at least as near as we could tell, and, especially, when I started living in DC, if they came to visit, especially, as I say, when I first went down there, the number of Kosher area restaurants in DC were minimal.  So, if you went out to eat, you would either have to eat fish or minimize your observance of the dietary laws.  So, it was sort of a situation that was beyond their control.  It was either that, or go hungry.

SH:  You talked about your father's father passing away before his bar mitzvah.  Did you have one as well?

MS:  Yes, in 1960, [I had] a bar mitzvah in Union, and ... the family was [there].  ... It ... was only two years or so, give or take, two or three years after we moved to Union.  So, what we did was had a lot of the furniture taken out of the house, and a caterer came in and put in tables.  I think we had the furniture put in the garage.  It was a big, detached two-car garage, and tables were set up throughout the house.  ... We had, I would venture a guess, at least 100 people in the house that night.  The only thing that they didn't move out of the ground floor was the piano, and we had a piano player come in and entertain.  ... It was a very nice reception.

SH:  Had you gone to Hebrew school?

MS:  Yes, yes, three times a week.  It was a foreign language and I ... foreign language is not one of my favorite subjects.  ... It doesn't matter whether it's Hebrew or French or Spanish, it doesn't matter, or Latin.  [laughter] I had grave concerns I would make it as a lawyer because I didn't know if I could handle the Latin.  [laughter] There was no doubt after the first semester that foreign language was going to keep me out of Phi Beta Kappa.  I'm just not wired for foreign language.  [laughter]

SH:  I thought, perhaps, it may have cut into your baseball time.  [laughter]

MS: ... Studying for foreign language, I once many, many, years ago, I once tried to calculate what my grades would be if I subtracted out foreign language grades and not even including the additional time that I would be able to devote to those other subjects, and, gosh, I would have been a real, damned good student!  [laughter]

SH: ... Great, I loved that as I could identify with that quite well. 

MS:  Thank you.  She, Susie, cannot.  ... She cannot, nor can my wife, identify with my inability to do foreign language.

SH:  Do you sing?

MS:  You got to be kidding.  [laugher] Actually, in ...

Dorothy Sachs:  He plays the piano very well, though.

MS:  In junior high school ... I was on the glee club.  Unfortunately, right around ... between the summer break before, I guess it was seventh grade, eighth grade, whichever, eighth grade I was picked, that summer my voice started to change.  ... In the fall, I came back, it was nothing like what it had been the previous year.  [laughter] ... The teacher actually gave me a hard time.  ... I remember my father having to go to school and talk to the teacher, and saying, "This is not my son's fault that his voice has changed.  Now, you can either put him in a different class, or deal with it."  [laughter] ... They dealt with it, somehow.  I mouthed a lot of words to a number of songs. [laughter]

DS:  But, you play piano very well.

MS:  Well, I play at the piano.

DS: No, you play beautifully.

MS: Thank you, dear.

SH:  I am assuming that you took piano lessons?

MS:  I took piano lessons, yes, I did that for a number of years when I was in junior high school. I don't remember if I started ... I might have started when I was in elementary school, junior high school ... into high school.  ... It was either my last year, or my last two years in high school, that I needed the committed time to devote to my studies and just didn't have time for that.  There was something else I was involved with in high school, and ... I'm embarrassed I don't remember what it was but there was something that I was involved in.

SH:  What were the family vacations like?  

MS:  They were nothing like they are today, and, I guess, putting it in perspective, there are a number of reasons for that.  We go on a vacation today, it's nothing to whip out the American Express card and say, "Here, charge it," and off you go.  In those days, credit cards were ... either not in existence, or they were charge cards.  So, you got your bill at the end of the month, all you did was postpone payment from the middle of the month to the end of the month, and then it had to be paid.  Also, you didn't have transatlantic flights like you do nowadays; and I remember you could spend a Sunday afternoon going to Newark airport to watch the planes take off, because that was an exciting thing to do.  Some of those ... big four-engine planes were brand new, and it was a novelty to see a plane take off that was that size, that could fly from here to Florida non-stop.  ... As I recall, I think there was a restaurant at the airport, The Newarker, I think it was called, that you could sit there and dine as you're watching the planes take off.  Today, someone would look at you and say, "You got to be out of your mind," but that was a Sunday event to do.  It was also very expensive, and so we did not do that.  [Editor's Note: opened in 1953 managed by Joe Baum, who later opened the Four Seasons and Windows on the World.]  My father was of the school that if you couldn't afford to do something and pay cash for it right then and there, you don't do it.  ... As you notice, I am holding up ... an expensive pen in my hand, and he used to use fifteen cent Bic pens, so maybe he knew what he was doing.  [laughter] But we did take motor trips, we took several motor trips.  We went up to ... I'm trying to think.  Well, one of the first we took, I think I was twelve, ten or twelve, we drove down to Washington, DC, and ... in elementary school I had won a little, plastic, Brownie-type camera.  My folks had their bellows type Kodaks, and I wanted film for my camera, my camera, [Editor's note: emphasis on latter "my."] and I remember my father saying, "I'm not gonna ... waste money on film for that little thing."  My mother, behind his back, gave me a roll of film.  Anyway, they got many rolls of film for their cameras, I got a roll for mine, we went down to ... Washington and, unbeknownst to them, over the years, the bellows started drying out and pin-hole leaks, light leaks, developed, so, all their pictures were ruined and the only pictures we have of that trip are the six or eight that I took on my little Brownie.

-----------------------------END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE---------------------------

SS:  Please continue.  We were talking about the pictures that you took in DC.

MS:  Right, there were ... maybe a half a dozen or so pictures that I had taken, and they came out well.  ... At that point, I convinced my folks that I really was interested in photography, that it would not necessarily be a waste of money, so we started saving for me to buy a camera.  ... I don't remember what it was, maybe fifty cents a week. We laugh at the amount now, but we go back to 1958 or so [and] it was probably a reasonably significant figure. ... The first time I used the camera was right around the time of my bar mitzvah.  So, I got it; it would have been around 1960.  It was a 35 millimeter camera, cost about thirty-five dollars, I think.  Of course, by the time you add in film, flash, flash bulbs, and a case, and so forth, that probably brought it up to the unbelievable figure of about seventy dollars.  So, I started taking pictures, and I was doing reasonably well at it, and then we ... took a trip, another trip.  That's right, we ... drove down to Florida.  I think I was about fourteen at the time.  I was the navigator [and] my father was the driver.  I was the navigator ... I can't believe that he didn't look at a map when I didn't know about it, such as during the day at [the] office, but, basically, he had said, "You just plot the course, and tell me which way to go."  So I'd be in the backseat saying, "Okay, we follow Route 301," or whatever it was, "down to Florida."  ... When we were down there, I remember we stayed at the Fontainebleau Hotel, which, in those days, was the big hotel in Miami Beach.  ... It was quite an experience for a fourteen year old, but, we also had relatives there.  My mother had two sisters who were living in town, and we spent some time getting together with them.  One of them suggested that we take a boat over to Nassau.  It was almost like an overnight shuttle. Well ... being a last minute thing, I think the cruise was like the day after the next day, we got probably what was the last stateroom on the vessel, which we used to refer [to] as being in the basement.  It was the lowest level, under the waterline, interior, but, you know, it was one night.  So, one night over, one night back, so, what difference did it make?  The difference it made is that partway over, the engine conked out, and there were no lights.  ... As I think back ... I don't even remember emergency lights coming on to light the halls.  So, we slept on deck, on the lounge chairs on deck and, of course, it's the summertime, it's the Caribbean, so it was hot.  ... I think we got towed into Nassau.  We had a very nice time in Nassau.  Unfortunately, the ship served as your hotel, so the only thing you could do is sleep on deck, but they made some emergency repairs.  ... I remember one of the reasons when we went over there, one of the things my mother said ... a client of my father's had just recently come back from there, and had spoken about the great deals you could get on china.  So, they went to some china shop and saw a pattern that they liked, and it was a very good deal.  I don't remember the specifics of it, but I remember them walking out and going, "Hmm, well, let's just walk up and down the block here and see what's doing."  It was the main street.  "We gotta come back there and get this china, that's too good a deal to miss," and we went down about another block, and there was a camera store, and we walked in there.  Stanley (Toogoods?) was, I think, the name of the store and we asked them about cameras, and they showed us another 35 millimeter that was far superior to what I had, and ... had greater capabilities to take pictures, and I remember overhearing my parents discussing [it], "It's either gonna be the china or the camera."  Both was beyond what they wanted to spend, and the order went in for the camera.  ... We didn't take it back with us; they shipped it, the store shipped it to the airport, and then we took the boat back into Miami, and ... we spent some more time down there and then drove back up to New Jersey.  Let me digress, let me digress.  I had mentioned earlier my mother had lived in New York.  Her family lived in Bayonne, or, was living in Bayonne.  She had a sister who worked on Wall Street, or down by Wall Street, some insurance company there, and my mother was going to go to nursing school.  She was, I think, accepted at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital, I believe is the name.  ... The class she was going to go to was filled, and she was accepted for the following semester or year ... but she needed to get ... some money for it.  In those days, her father thought it was just terrible for her, as a single young woman ... living in New York, but the commute was a bit much to go from Bayonne and you'd have to take the bus to Jersey City, probably "PATH" into, or, in those days, it was called the "tubes" into New York, and then subway to wherever you were going to work.  ... Initially, she got a job as a salesgirl at ...

DS: Orbach's. 

MS: Thank you.  Orbach's.  [laughter] I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, my wife would have the answer for me.  [laughter] ... She [my mother] was in the right place at the right time, and in a relatively short order, she worked her way up to become Mr. Orbach's personal secretary, or ... some such position.  ... At that point, she was notified, "Okay, your nursing class is available," and she's thinking to herself, "Hmm, why should I leave this cushy job to ... go to school to take a job that's gonna pay me half of what this is gonna pay, to take bed pans around?  I don't think so."  So, she stayed where she was.  [laughter] But her interest in nursing was because basically her entire family ... which, by the way, I said she was one of eleven, ten girls and one boy, was almost all in the medical field.  ... I mentioned earlier, my father and his brother were in law, his brother's children went to law school, [on] my mother's side ... about half or three-fourths of the sisters went to nursing school and wound up marrying physicians.  We had some very interesting family dinners, let me tell you.  [laughter] Sometimes you thought you were going to need to call in outside lawyers and physicians to take care of what was going on. [laughter]. But, in any event, as I said, I wanted to digress because of my mother's interest in medicine, and why she wound up in New York.  Other vacations, my father became ...

SH:  What happened with the camera?  Did it get to you?

MS:  Oh, yes, yes, we got the camera, and I used it for a number of years, and then wound up getting another camera that had even greater capabilities.  ... I think now... I'm probably on my easily tenth camera since then. 

SH:  So you continued this interest.

MS:  I still have an interest in photography, and I'm still trying to figure out why each camera I get is so much more expensive than the previous one.  [laughter] That part I have not figured out, but I like to think that there is not a picture that cannot be taken.  All you got to do is just anticipate what it is, and get it, and my wife will tell you that we've been ... some places where you just don't have time to focus and to adjust your settings  and so forth.  You just have to point and pray, and I've gotten some excellent, excellent pictures in situations like that.  I enjoy it; it's almost like a challenge to get the picture.  Remember, I said I was on the high school photography group, and, obviously, there you composed your picture, but sometimes you just don't have the opportunity to compose or you're going to miss it, so you take it and hope for the best.  Other vacations, we went to ... well, during the summers, we'd go down to Bradley Beach.  That was not so much a journey as it was just summertime when we lived in Jersey City.  You either stayed in the city, and the apartment was not air conditioned.  In fact, we were the first family in that apartment to have a television set, and it was interesting because once we got the TV, there was no antenna you hook it up to.  So, as the story was told to me, I was too young to remember it, but my father and what they used to call the superintendent, nowadays building engineer, went up to the roof and lashed an antenna to some part of the structure, and, very scientifically, was able to get the antenna wire, the old twin lead, to the apartment.  ... That was very simple, you just threw it over the side of the building about where the window was, you went down to your apartment and reached out the window and pulled the wire in, very, very scientific way, and then fish it along the baseboard to the TV.  ... Even though I was only ... six years old at the time, this was a man's thing to do, so I could handle the TV.  [laughter] ... They had a little splitter where the wire came in, and somehow it reversed the polarity. I still don't understand exactly how that changes the picture, but, oh yes, I was able to move it around from side to side.  [laughter] ... Of course, being in the New York area, we were very lucky because we had channels two, four, five, seven, nine, eleven, and thirteen.  So ... we couldn't understand it when we talked to people from other parts of the country and they had two stations, three stations, one station, you know, couldn't understand it.  [laughter] Yes, we used to go to Bradley Beach in the summer, when I was in Jersey City, and we rented a room.  ... For all I know, they still do it, but these houses, these very large houses, at least as I recall as a kid, they were very large.  They would rent out rooms to families for the summer, and we would go down there, stayed for a year or two at one house, and then for the next three or four years we were at another house, and a lot of people came back, or several of the same people came back year after year.  So there ... most of the people got to know one another.  The house was maybe two to three blocks off the beach, and then that was your summer.  My mom would be down there with me, and we'd go down to the beach and play in the sand, play in the ocean, come back.  My father would come down Wednesday night, I think, and then for the weekend, and ... we did that until such time as we moved to Union and we had a backyard, and didn't need to leave the house.  One interesting story, I don't know if I'd mentioned earlier, the fact that I had a dog when I was growing up ... a boxer.  ... When my father would come down, he would sometimes put him in a kennel.  Well, one time he brought him down in the car with him and the rule at the house was "no pets," though they did make an exception for one person who had a parakeet, but no four- legged pets.  Well, everybody in the house got a hold of my folks and said, "Listen, don't leave the dog in the car overnight.  You take him in, we don't mind, we won't tell the owner."  I think their name was (Lerman?), I'm not sure, I think,  "We won't tell the Lermans about it."  The Lermans got a hold of my folks and said, "Oh, don't leave the dog in the car overnight.  When no one is around, bring him up and we won't tell anybody else."  [laughter] So, we dutifully agreed to both of them saying, "Oh, okay, fine, good,"  and the dog had a sixth sense to know that it was not supposed to make any noise, so [we] took him up to the room and he spent the night there.  Everybody was happy in their own beliefs that the other person didn't know.  But other vacations we took ... let's see ... we went there twice, the first time I might have been fifteen-ish, twelve-ish, twelve, fifteen, somewhere in that range, we went up to Niagara Falls through the Finger Lakes Region of New York, Watkins Glen, and so forth, and that was quite interesting.  When we got up to the Falls, it was either, was it that time or the next time?  I don't remember, we went there twice; another time I think I was seventeen, so that was about four years later, and we went through the caves that are behind the Falls.  ... In fact, I took a picture of that.  So, that was very, very interesting, and we went up there when I was, I think seventeen. This time I was able to help with the driving.  By that time ... my father was active in the AmVets organization, American Veterans of World War II and Korea, so ... he had a convention out in Columbus, Ohio, and there's a story I can tell about that.  From there we drove up to Cleveland, from Cleveland, on around through Erie, Pennsylvania, through Niagara Falls and Canada--Montreal--and then down through Lake George, and so forth.  I remember, as I said, I was seventeen, I helped with the driving, and I remember at one point my father yelling at me, "Slow down!" and I, very defensively, [said], "I'm not speeding."  But I slowed down anyway, and, about thirty seconds later, we went around a curve and there was a radar trap set up.  "So you see, I told you I'm not speeding."  [laughter]

SS:  What do you remember about Civil Defense?

MS:  My mother was active.  She did something in New York during the war, one of those blocks, city block warden type things.  ...

SH:  But for you as a young kid in the fifties, did you ever have any of the drills?

MS:  Oh, yes.  Oh, yes, I mean, that was like a fire drill.  It was a routine thing, you just got used to it, "duck and cover."  You know, the alarm would go off, and you had the two drills, either, "Okay, we've got a five-minute warning, out into the hallway, and pull your coat over your head"  ... I don't remember if we would go to our locker and get our coat or not, but, "out into the hallway", and, if you had your coat, it was over your head, "cover up your head," or "just lean against the wall" and then the "all clear" would sound, and then the other one was no warning. But the alarm would go off; you got under your desk, and, you know, just kind of covered up.  That was just a routine part of life.  Every Saturday, I think it was different days in different parts of the country, but every Saturday at noon, the air raid alarm siren would go off to be [tested] in the township, Union, to be tested, you know, that was just ...

SH:  Did anybody have a shelter in the backyard?

MS:  No, no.  We didn't have that.  I guess, if we needed something ... the way our basement was constructed, it probably would have been as good a shelter as most.  Yes, you had the basement windows that could have been problematic, but, you know, for purposes of a blast if New York got a hit, we were far enough away that it probably would not have ...

SH:  There was no stock piling of water or foodstuff or anything like that?

MS:  No, no, no, and we probably have more stuff stockpiled now in our house because of potential terrorism, or just, "Gee, the pipes could freeze."  It seems as though down in Washington you hear about more ... water pipes freezing and streets being closed off for repairs than you do up here.  Maybe they just don't put the pipes as deep in the ground there as they do here, I don't know.  But, yes, we have more water lying around than we ... did back in the fifties.  ... I mean, as a kid when I was down the shore, I can remember seeing, not that far off the coast, the warships going back and forth.  Of course, you had Bayonne ... the naval base, they had a naval base there.  You had the Brooklyn Naval Base, so there was a lot of warships that would come into that area, and if you were down in Bradley, it wasn't that far away; you'd see them heading out to the Atlantic.  Also, it was a routine thing to see the Navy blimps; you know, the battleship grey blimps, "US Navy" written on the side, going patrolling back and forth. You know, it was just the way things were.

SH:  As a freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior, how aware were you of what was going on in the world, as far as the politics of the day or the international arena?  ...

MS:  College or high school? 

SH:  High school.

MS:  I think, probably ... more so than the average person ...

SH:  You were raised with television, so you were used to instant news and that kind of thing.

MS:  I was always interested in listening to the news.  I would always get the news and I always tried to follow world events.  I always found world events to be interesting, and I tried to follow it and see what was really going on.  So, to answer your question, yes, I think I followed it pretty closely. 

SH:  The 1961 Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion and other world events?

 

MS:  Oh, yes.  Oh, yes.  I remember, well, of course there was, you know, the Bay of Pigs; I remember listening to it and trying to get reports because it was probably as close to [war]; actually, we were closer to thermo-nuclear war than we realized, given what has just recently come out with the revelation that the Russian and Cuban commanders in Cuba had the authority on their own to use tactical nuclear weapons should we invade.  So, yes, I ... mean I followed that.  You know, I was well-aware of the fact that, you know, what the significance of moving the, I believe they called them the Ajax anti-aircraft missiles down to Florida meant; when they started calling up some reservists, I believe, or putting them on standby, I recall that.  Yes ... military history is something that has always intrigued me, interested me, and something I follow, and I find that sometimes gives me a lot more information than what you hear on the news in general.

SH:  We have talked about your interest in photography and your work on the school newspaper, did your school keep people abreast of what was going on ...

MS:  I don't remember the school doing anything about it.  For one thing, it only lasted ten-twelve days.  I don't think, and I don't say this in a disparaging way, but I don't think the bureaucracy could get something organized in that short a period of time to teach, even with the bureaucracy such as it might have existed then, which was probably a fraction of what it would be today.  We undoubtedly would discuss it, whether it was among ourselves or ...

SH:  In civic classes or current events ...

MS:  Yes, we probably did, but I don't remember.  I cannot pinpoint from memory a particular class or classes where we actually discussed it.

SS:  Would teachers put a political slant into their classes in high school?

MS:  No.  No, I don't recall in high school anyone doing that.  No, I don't recall that.  I didn't really encounter that, quite frankly, until I got to college.

SH:  The US advisers were in Vietnam in the early sixties, and it was beginning to be reported in the press.  Was this something that you, as a young man who was approaching draft age, would think about or was it something that you discussed with your buddies before college?

MS:  Okay, before college, no, no.  Up until that point, actually up until the Gulf of Tonkin incident, there was not that much interest in it.  It was, "Yeah, we've got this little thing going," but at that point, you know, we probably had troops assisting others in Central America and probably had troops elsewhere.  The big concern was probably Berlin rather than this little, what at that time was considered inconsequential, naively so, but ...

SH:  That is part of how we are painting the picture of how the American public becomes aware of ...

MS:  Yes.  ... It was not until the attack, I don't want to say attack, the apparent attack on the two destroyers, I forget the names of them.  There was the, was it the Maddox?  I forget the other one.  Oh, well, we know which vessels we're talking about.  [Editor's note:  August 2, 1964 the USS Maddox (DD 731) reported being fired at by North Vietnamese torpedo boats.  On August 4, 1964 it was mistakenly reported that the Maddox and its reinforcement, the USS Turner Joy (DD951), were again attacked.  The "Tonkin Gulf Resolution"--officially the "Asia Resolution"-- was passed by Congress on August 7, 1964 authorizing the President to take retaliatory action against North Vietnam.] Until then, it really was a very low key concern to anyone ... I mean, yes, there was this going on, but, you know, no one really paid attention. 

SH:  What about the Civil Rights movement in the South, the Freedom Riders, and things like that?  That is beginning in the mid to later sixties.  Are you hearing things about that in Union at that point?

MS:  Bear with me, my recollection is ...

SH:  Martin Luther King is starting to make a name for himself, he has been put in jail, and John F. Kennedy called him in jail.  Kennedy gets elected, perhaps because of the black vote.

MS:  My recollection ... faulty though it might be, is that there was not that much discussion of it.  ... It was an event that, or events, that were taking place that were newsworthy, that you followed, but it wasn't all encompassing, at least when I was in high school, as I recall.  Hopefully, having dinner tonight, I'm not going to sit there and go, "Oh, shucks, I forgot about whatever," but my reaction, at this point in time, to your question is that I don't think it was one of those issues that had matured to the point of being a common everyday discussion.

SH:  Were you as young man someone who was a fan of the Kennedys?

MS:  [laughter] When I was in junior high school, we had mock elections and I ran as President Kennedy, which surprises some people today, but I remember making speeches about "having to go forward, the malaise of the fifties"; what we look back on now sometimes as "the good old days", and, "we need new fresh blood" and, well, the same type of speeches that were being made.  So, at that point, yes, I was a, I don't know if I'd call it "a fan of the Kennedys"; I supported, such as a junior high school student could, I supported the position that was espoused by Kennedy.  I thought he would be a good president who would take us forward.

SS:  What was the general attitude at that time in New Jersey regarding the South in general?

MS:  Actually, before I answer that, let me just say, the election results in high school in my campaign ... mirrored what the ultimate election was, it was a squeaker.  I won by a squeaker. [laughter]  I don't know if I can answer your question because I just don't remember clearly what the, or if I can pigeonhole clearly what the view in the town was, or Northern Jersey was, at that time. 

SH:  Was Union completely integrated?

MS:  There were very few blacks in Union at the time.  ... Actually, Union was a very conservative town then, I have no idea what it is now.  Mayor Biertuempfel [Editor's note: pronounced "beer temple"], and don't ask me to spell it, because it had an unusual spelling, was a Republican; he was elected many, many terms, as I recall.  He managed to keep the taxes low, the school system in those days was very good, the police was very good, the fire department was starting to convert from volunteer to paid.  You know, probably more of an issue was whether they were going to build a second junior high school for the increasing population, and what they were going to do with the fire department: make it totally paid, half paid, half volunteer, or what.  There were very, very few blacks in the town, as I recall, and they all seemed to be in the Vauxhall section of town.  I think there was one black girl in my elementary school class, when I say class, my particular classroom.  When I got to high school, there were only a couple that were in the high school.  Race relations were not, as I recall, were not a problem.  Everyone seemed to get along, no one was pointing fingers, no one was rabble rousing, nobody was burning crosses, or anything like that.  It seemed to be, to use that phrase, "the good old days," and, I mean that in a sincere way.  As I recall, there was not a problem.

SH:  No clan activity at all?

MS:  None that I was aware of, none whatsoever that I was aware of.  Can I say, as a matter-of-fact, that there was nothing like that?  No, because something could have happened that I didn't know about. 

SH:  This is truly your story as you remember it.

MS:  Yes, but as I know it, there was nothing ... no activity like that, that I was aware of.

SH:  When Kennedy was assassinated, do you remember that?

MS:  Very well. 

SH:  Can you talk about that?

MS:  Sure.  I was in school, it was a Friday, we had an assembly, and at the beginning of the assembly, the vice principal I think it was, came out and made an announcement that the president had been shot.  ... I don't know if at that point, if they had determined that he had been killed or not, but just that he had been shot down in Dallas.  ... The assembly, whatever it was, was over for the day.  We went back to class and one of my colleagues, one of my classmates, rather; sorry, I've been using the term colleague for thirty-five years.  One of my classmates was saying that he was very, very concerned that ... if Kennedy died, that Johnson would take over.  ... My comment to him was that in terms of the line of succession, I wasn't that concerned, because I thought Johnson had a lot of experience, and could do well as president; little did I know.  But, in any event ... there was no class as such in terms of teaching for the afternoon.  People would come by and stick their head in the door and say they just heard a report from the front office that he had died, and so forth and so on.  I remember coming home and putting on the TV, and watching what was going on for the next two days, two or three days, just staying glued to the TV watching it.  ... Then what I did was for his funeral, I got out my 8-millimeter movie camera, probably went to the store, picked up some movie film, hooked it up and I had never done this before, but hooked it up in front of the TV, and decided to just film off the TV.  For the benefit of anybody reading this transcript in the future, this is in the days before video tapes.  So, I recorded it off there, and ... at one point, they broke to show Oswald being led out of the jail for a hearing, and, of course, that's when Jack Ruby comes in and shoots him, and it's kind of like, "Okay, I've just photographed someone being shot," but, yes, I ran about four rolls of film off the TV to record this.  So, yes, I followed it as closely as I could as ...

SH:  You would have been a sophomore during this time?

MS:  I think so, it sounds about right.

SH:  What was the reaction then when Martin Luther King is shot?  By then Bobby Kennedy has decided to run against Johnson?  At that point, I believe you are just about to come to Rutgers?

MS:  Well, when Martin Luther King was shot, I was in Rutgers, if I remember correctly.  Bobby Kennedy was shot I think in ... when was he shot? '68, so I was in Rutgers. [Editor's note: Presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles, CA on June 5, 1968] Same when King was shot.  [Editor's note: Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968] I was in Rutgers, because I remember the episode rather well.  The dorm I was in, I was in Clothier, I was in the same room for four years.  The last three years that I was in that dorm, the floor stayed together.  Yes, a few people might have changed from room to room, but virtually the entire floor stayed together for those last three years.  We had our own independent fraternity, you might say.  We were, for the most part, I guess you would call that floor ... the politics of that floor conservative, and that might be a bit of an understatement.  A few of the people there, you could probably call very conservative, and I don't say that in a disparaging way, it was a fact, they were very ... There was no one there who was a card carrying member of the Democratic Party, as far as I recall.  I could be wrong, but that's my recollection. [laughter]  .... When Martin Luther King was shot, it created, well, around the country, a lot of rioting and a lot of protesting and demonstrating, and New Brunswick, and the Rutgers campus, was not immune to that, and there was a rather loud demonstration going down ... George Street.  I have to get my bearings, George Street.  To counter that, several people on our floor took their stereo systems, I'm not quite sure whether it was one system, two, or whatever, put it up by the windows, and as this loud demonstration ... went by, started playing Dixie, which resulted in an exchange of terminology that I won't go into now, between the demonstrators and some of the people on the floor.  I'm not quite sure how it or what ultimately became, the dorm is still standing, so I know it wasn't burned down, but at that point, I decided this would be a very good time to leave campus and go drive home for the rest of the day, and that's what I did.  Took some of my notes with me, because I didn't want to leave my notes of the past, you know, semester, stuck it under my arm, and said, "I'm out of here," and my roommate, I think, went to his girlfriend's house, because he lived farther away and a couple of us decided that the better part of valor would be to seek, not shelter in place, but seek shelter elsewhere, and that was what we did.  So you know ... it gives you an idea.

DS:  Going back to Kennedy's assassination, you were actually a junior.

MS:  Thank you.

SH:  Please continue.

MS:  Okay, just to clarify, elementary school for me went through sixth grade, junior high school was seventh, eighth, and ninth, and then high school was tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades.

SH:  So you would have been a junior in high school.

MS:  Junior, yes.

SH:  This is a great story, thank you, but before we continue with Rutgers, did your family expect you to go to college?

MS:  It was taken for granted.  I mean, it was not a case of, "We want you to," it was just that's the normal course of events, and as is graduate school, you know, this is what you do, and I had a choice: I could study law or I could study medicine. [laughter]  Medicine was out because I'm some kind of color blind, so, plus the fact that when I was, I don't know, from the time I was five years old, as I said, I used to spend Saturdays going to my father's office, and in those days, well, especially also since he was his own boss, that coupled with the fact that, in those days, you worked a six-day week; but, being his own boss, you know, if he didn't produce something, he wasn't getting paid.  So, I would go in, I would sit at a desk in the outer office, do my homework, and he would do whatever he had to do, and he even had some clients come in on Saturday.  But, in any event, and I lost my train of thought.  ... I saw him sitting at his desk telling people what to do, and, "Oh, I like this idea.  You sit at your desk, you tell people what to do, and they pay you. This is for me."  [laughter] So, I mean, from the time I was five-years-old, I said, "Okay, I'm going to be a lawyer."  Bear in mind, earlier I said my mother's whole side of the family was medicine, and I had one of my uncles out on Long Island trying to convince me that I should study medicine and take over his practice.  Boy, I'd have been wealthy if I had done that, but unfortunately, or fortunately, I did not, because, it turned out, being quite a bit color blind, it's difficult to see, or to practice medicine, if you can't see where something is red and inflamed.  [laughter]  So that really hit home, when, actually when I was in law school when I ...

-------------------------END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO---------------------------------

SS:  Please continue.

MS:  Okay, as I said, I went to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and I saw dissected sections of different body parts and they would have arrows pointing to different areas indicating that this red area is a carcinoma, or what have you, and I'm staring at it and not being able to differentiate the colors.  So, I knew my decision to go to law school instead of medical school was the right one.  [laughter]

SS:  Was Rutgers your first choice and what made you want to go to Rutgers?

MS:  I think it was my first choice.  It was like the family school.  My father had gone to their law school.  My cousin had gone to this campus.  Another cousin had gone to this campus.

SS:  For undergraduate?

MS:  For undergraduate, yes, and I had been on the campus, my aunt and uncle had brought me with them once or twice when we picked up my older cousin, who had gone here in the mid-fifties or late fifties.

SH:  Was this your mother's side?

MS:  My father's side.  ... It was, well, you know, you finish high school, you'd go to Rutgers or something like that, yes.

SS:  Were there other schools that you were considering?

MS:  Yes.  I mean, you can't put all your eggs in one basket.  You had to apply to others, and, yes, I did.  Like my father, I also applied to NYU, and that's a funny one, too, because I got a phone call one afternoon, shortly after I got home from school, and the person identified himself as Dean Somebody or other, and he said, "We have your application, and you applied for the downtown campus," I think they had two campuses, "the downtown campus, but we don't have room for you there, but we can accept you in the uptown campus, you know, and, so, you decide what you want to do, and here's the phone number you can call me back and let me know."  "Okay." ... It struck me as unusual, but then again, I didn't have that much experience applying to colleges, being an only child, you know, I couldn't say, "Oh, yes, this happened to my older brother or sister."  So, I called my folks, and at that point my mother was working in my father's office, and I said, "Here's what phone call I just got," and they said, "You've just been had, because no dean is going to call you and say, 'We want you for one campus but, you know, can't put you in that campus, but we can put you in the other campus.'"  So, I said, "Well, it sounded pretty legit, here's the phone number."  It was a New York City area code and they said, "Well, okay, we'll try it out, we'll check it out," and, lo and behold, it was true.  It was very legit, but for whatever reason, I chose, I chose Rutgers. It was my first choice.

SS:  What were you involved in when you got to Rutgers, and what was your major, and why?

MS:  Well, my major was history, and I concentrated in U.S. history, and within that I tried to concentrate on twentieth century U.S. history.  I minored in political science and came pretty close with English or literature, I guess English is what they called it, to have like a second minor, but it was a few credits shy of that.  I always had an interest in history from the time I was just a kid, actually from the time I was just, gosh, three or four years old, I had an interest in history, and I think that started with my parents inculcating in me an interest in it, particularly in ... what life was like back in the twenties and the thirties, so that it's almost as if, you know, without sounding silly, it was almost as if I lived through the Great Depression; it's almost as if I lived through World War II, because I got inside information, the actual ... you know, from numerous people, not just my parents, but that developed, that planted the seed, and then I would start, especially with World War II, I started developing such an interest in it that I would speak to people and try to get a greater feel for it.  ... When I was just a kid, I would not go to bed at night unless my father told me a war story, an army story, and every night he had to tell me a different story.  Well, you know, you can't say, "Well, I reviewed this contract for the termination of the purchase of property where we were going to put up barracks."  That would be ridiculous.  So, he would make up these stories as he went along, and, you know, one that still sticks in my mind is how he was walking across this bridge with a group of soldiers. ... The Germans blew up the bridge and they all fell into the river, and they had to swim to the other side of the river with all of their packs still on them, their eighty pounds of packs, and somehow he was able to swim with all these on him.  But nobody could shoot back at the Germans, because all their bullets were wet, but he figured that if he blew on the bullets, they would dry.  So he blew on the bullets and was able to shoot the Germans and save the rest of the men in the group.  [laughter] ... I'm about four years old, and eating this up, believing it, but, it got me interested in the subject, and then I started speaking to friends and relatives of the family.  My father had one or two people, knew one or two people who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and, I don't remember names, but, yes, I'd speak to them.  I spoke to a family member; I had an uncle who was in the medical corps, and he was right on the frontlines attending to the injured and wounded, I should say.  ... My father had a friend who was, I think, a priest, who was involved in the book, Guadalcanal Diary.[Guadalcanal Diary (1943) memoir written by war correspondent, Richard Tregaskis, with the US Marines during invasion in 1942]  I think that was someone who he knew, and I got a feel for what it was like at Guadalcanal.  There was a number of my teachers, in junior high and high school, had been in World War II, and, afterwards, I would be talking to them about their experiences and what it was like to be a pilot or a bombardier on planes that were going and bombing in Europe. ... I had another uncle who was involved in the Italian campaign and was cut off for something like ten days, cut off from his unit, and was in combat for like ten days straight.  I think that was in and around the Battle of Anzio, theAnzio landings.  So, yes, I developed this tremendous interest in the subject, and by the time I got to college, it was, "But what else is there to do but that?"

SS:  Do you have a favorite professor or class that you remember?

MS:  There were a couple.  There were a couple. Richard [P.] McCormick is one, Professor McCormick, the President's father.  He taught a survey course on American History.  He kept you spellbound, his lecturing.  I could never conduct a class as well as he did.  You were just spellbound by it.  You know, you'd just sit there and it was just hard to take notes, because you'd just want to concentrate, and listen, on what he was saying.  I think Sidney Ratner taught a course, a history course, and I think he was one that was interesting, and Professor Bovie, Smith Palmer Bovie.  ... He was with the Classics Department, which was over on Douglass, was another one of my favorite professors.  I'll tell you a story about him.  By way of introduction, you couldn't take a course at Douglass if a similar course was offered on the Rutgers campus.  Rutgers campus in those days was only men.  It was not uncommon to be in a class, a lecture class, and have someone, and I remember this, at Murray Hall ... more than a couple of times, saying, "Girl on campus!" and we'd all run to the window, and look out, "Yes!  It's a girl!" [laughter] There's that musical, what is it?  "We're deprived because we're depraved," or "We're depraved because we're deprived." [Editor's Note: West Side Story (1961), based on book written by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, music by Leonard Bernstein, originally directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins] It fit us perfectly. [laughter] We managed to figure out how we could get a course that we wanted at Douglass and I remember signing up for Classics, which I also thought I might find interesting, which I did. [laughter]  It was very interesting.  I had a class, and I would run out and, across the street from Scott Hall, get the bus over to Douglass, and it was over in Hickman Hall, and I'd always walk in about twenty minutes late because that's how long it took to get there, and second semester, it was my junior year ... my folks gave me a car.  "Wow. A car!"  So, I used to, after class, I think I used to try to park it near my class [on College Avenue campus] and then after class, hop in the car, 'cross town, pull into the parking lot behind Hickman, and go into class.  ... The first day of the second semester I see Professor Bovie walking in front of me and I was going to honk and wave.  Oh, oh, Professor Bovie had a way, if you got an A on the midterm, he would call you up, even there were probably 100 people in class, he would call you up to the front of the stage, and congratulate you.  There was probably about a half a dozen of us that he did that to, "Congratulations, congratulations."  I was going to honk my horn and wave, but I figured, number one, he probably wouldn't remember me from the previous semester.  Number two, he probably wouldn't recognize me, until twenty minutes after class begins anyway, so I didn't bother waving.  I mean, he did look up ... He started class the way he did so many, you know, all the time.  "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another class of Classics 352.  This afternoon we will continue with our discussion of Ovid'sMetamorphosis on page seven.  Mr.  Sachs, was that you in the Buick in the parking lot?"  Or, "Was that you in the green Buick?"  "Yes, sir."  "Oh, you know you almost hit me?"  "Well, sorry about that, sir."  "Oh, you mean, sorry that you didn't hit me?"  I figure, well, at this point, "What the hell, let's go for it."  I said, "No, sir, if I wanted to hit you, I would have hit you."  Half the class laughed, the other half went [Editor's note: makes gasping noise]. He laughed, and from that point on to the end of the semester, it was always, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  Welcome to another class of Classics 352.  Continuing our discussion of Ovid's Metamorphosis on page 300.  Mr.  Sachs, how's the Buick?"  "Fine, sir."  "Good."  "On page 300, and we will continue."  That was it.  I mean, there's probably a tad of exaggeration on that, but not much.  I mean, that was basically what he did. [laughter] So, yes, he became one of my favorites, and, actually, he autographed one of the books that he had authored or translated from the Ancient Greek.  He autographed [it] for me, and put some saying in there, and I looked at it, and I went, "Ahh, sir, I don't read Latin," and he says, "Oh, here's the translation," and he says, "You'll find it on page seven, line whatever."  I looked at it, and it spoke about, you know, to the future, to the leaders of our country or something, so I hate to have disappointed him, but in any event ... [laughter] He was a great guy. He recently passed away.

SS:  What about Friedelbaum?

MS:  Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  Stanley Friedelbaum.  I had him, I believe, it was Constitutional Law.  How could I forget him?  I am getting old.  He was very, very good.  We had him for, as I said, for Constitutional Law, and he made it come alive.  It's a subject that can be very exciting, very interesting.  Really, it can.  Or it can be extremely boring, and he put life to it, and I really enjoyed him.  I mean, there was one case, I don't even remember the case anymore, about where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a company, actually it was I think, a father.  It was ... Hammer vs Dagenhart, US Supreme Court, 1918.  [A father] who brought suit against this company for, or against the government, for some child labor law, and children couldn't work, as I recall, if they were below a certain age, like fourteen, or something, might have even been twelve, back then.  ... The father brought suit, saying that he was now being deprived of his children's income, and the court ruled in his favor, and I remember him talking about, you know, "Hooray for the court, isn't that progressive thinking, you know, a wonderful decision."  It just keeps your interest there.  I mean, here we're talking, what? thirty-five-plus years, and I still remember his comments about it.  So, yes, Friedelbaum would definitely go into that group, and I'm probably still forgetting somebody, but ... [laughter]

SH: No one else is listed on the pre-interview survey.

SS:  Did you carry over any of your interests or activities from high school into college, such as the newspaper?

MS:  Yes, I worked on the paper a little bit, not very much, I think maybe a semester, and didn't really, didn't really care for it.  My interest in working on the paper was waning from high school through, you know, college, and other things got me interested.  The first two years, foreign language kept me busy. [laughter] The requirement, which has since been dropped by the University, which I wish they would make retroactive, and then recalculate grades regarding foreign language. [laughter] But, be that as it may, that kept me busy.  So, I really didn't have a whole lot of time, and actually, I did find the adjustment to living on campus to be a difficult one.  By my junior year, I was starting to enjoy it.  By my senior year, I was having the time of my life, and I enjoyed it.  Also, I got active in the Pre-Legal Society, and I decided that, it was almost a moribund-type of organization, it needed an infusion of new blood.  It needed me. [laughter]  So, I decided I wanted to be president, and I spoke to some of my friends who were interested in law or business, and we thought it would be a very good idea to go and nominate each of us ... for office.  So, we went to some of the meetings and at the meeting where they were going to have, oh, and we spoke to the faculty adviser.  ... We went to the meeting and, surprise of surprise, I was nominated for president, I nominated someone else for vice president, and on down.  Uncle Mike was nominated for Treasurer, and we were elected.  [Editor's note: Uncle Mike was Martin Sachs' roommate his last two years at Rutgers.  Susie Sachs, who asked the previous question, calls him Uncle Mike.] ...

SH:  Which year was this?

MS:  This would be at the end of ... my junior year.  It was in the Spring, and we took over, let me rephrase that, we assumed responsibility, with the Fall semester starting, and ... actually we had a pretty good organization.  I don't know if it's still functioning or not, but each year when they would call me, for a number of years when they would call me and ask me if I would make, they the school, a contribution to the Foundation, for a number of years I designated it for the Pre-Legal Society.  ... I stopped doing it when I was consistently getting thank- you letters from the Law School in Newark, saying, "Thank you for sending to the Law School," and I'm going, "No, no, no.  I sent this to the Pre-Legal Society in New Brunswick."  "No, no, the Law School's in Newark."  I said, "I know that.  I sent it to the Pre-Legal Society in New Brunswick." [laughter]  So, finally, I just gave up, and I said, "Okay, let it go."  Once or twice, they said, "Well, we'll try to reroute it," you know.  I said, "Is it still functioning?" and half the time they didn't know, and they said, "We don't know, we're just collecting money."  But, yes, that was the thing that I enjoyed most and  I had speakers come in, we had monthly meetings, and I had speakers come in or provide information on what the profession was like, what getting into law school was like, and that sort of thing. 

SH:  Do you remember any of the names of the speakers that you brought in?

MS:  Aaron Gordon was one.  He's since deceased.  He was an attorney in New Jersey, in Jersey City.  He had just won; actually, he and my father worked together on a case involving an injury to a fireman in line of duty.  It had been argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court, so it was someone who, I mean, he became a friend of the family.  So, it was someone who it was easy for me to approach and say, "Aaron, can you, you know, do this?"  Who else did we have?  I honestly don't recall.  Actually, I think at the same meeting, I think I had my father.  That was relatively easy to get. [laughter]  ... I think we had someone from the Law School come down, from Rutgers Law, come down and talk about admissions, is my recollection.  In fact, I might have even had a law student come back in to say what it was like being in law school.  That's my recollection and we had ... a fairly large, actually, we built it up to, I don't know, if I had to take a guess, 100-150 members, maybe, dues paying members.  In fact, one of the members ... was John Futey, I remember, who recently served as head of the Rutgers Alumni Association.

SS:  Did you get any perks from being in the Pre-Legal Society?

MS:  Got a lot of aggravation.  Perks?  Got to go into the Dean's office a lot.  I got ... the school to pay for, or partially, to pay for a telephone.  My roommate and I were, we think, we think we were the first ones in the school to have two phones in our room. [laughter] And don't forget, we're talking about a dorm room now.  ... I convinced the school that I needed it for the Pre- Legal Society, and now ... Mike had his [for] personal use.  I got mine because I needed it for the Pre- Legal Society, the head of the Student Council had one, so I said, "I need one," and  they agreed ... but they hemmed and hawed, and I said, "I'll tell you what.  I'll split the cost with you." So, they agreed, and we did it that way, and I can tell you an interesting story about that, or about the phone.  The way the room was set up was, you know, I had one half, Mike had the other half ... when I talk about Mike, I'm talking about Mike Salapka, and he and I are still very good friends.  Susie refers to him as Uncle Mike.  But, I remember, one day, I was sitting at my desk, on one wall, doing a paper, typing away, and this was, of course, in the days before computers, and Mike was at his desk on the opposite wall, doing something, and my phone rings, and I picked it up, and it was Mike, wanting to know how you spell a word.  I said, "Well, I don't know, hold on." I put it down, and I take my dictionary down, and the only thing I could do for the dictionary, because my typewriter was on my desk, and the papers were on the bed, was to go to the end of the bed, which stuck out into the middle of the room, which was about two feet away from him.  So, I put my dictionary down, and, as I recall, I went back to the phone, and said, "Hold on, I need to get a piece of paper and pencil to write this down."  So, he said, "Oh, he's got one," so I put the phone down; he then hands me pencil and paper.  I then write down the spelling of the word, and then go back to my phone at my desk to tell him, but he says, "But you've got my pencil and paper."  [laughter] So, I walk over and handed him his pencil and paper, and then proceeded to spell the word to him, and he thanked me, we hung up. [laughter]  We did things like that.  We did crazy things like that. [laughter]

SH:  Was ROTC still mandatory when you came to Rutgers?

 

MS:  No, it was not mandatory.  It was strictly volunteer, and ... there was a lot of controversy about it.  The Vietnam War was starting to become more problematic, and the draft was becoming more of a common occurrence among students.  ... I don't remember what year it was, try as hard as I can, I can't, just can't recall what year it was ... one or more of the student groups, I think it was the SDS, Students for Democratic Society. Personal note, totally misnamed, but, be that as it may, and I'm trying to behave myself, be that as it may; they took over, forcibly took over, the building.

SH:  The administration building?

MS:  No, no the ROTC building.  ... They just occupied it ...

SH:  Was this your freshman year?

MS:  I think it might have been, but here's why I'm not sure.  A group of us, quite a large group of us, went downtown and purchased eggs, cartons of eggs.  I thought we were just going to be making scrambled eggs for breakfast, of course, but I thought it was a bit odd when they said, "Just put some in your pockets, and we'll meet down at the ROTC building on the sidewalk," and my recollection is that one of the deans came up to me, and started talking to me, and I don't know how he would have known me as a freshman; as a senior, yes, but not as a freshman.  So, to say the takeover was my freshman year ... I don't want to say; it would be easy enough to research it.  It can be researched, I just ... don't know the date, but, in any event, I gave my eggs to somebody else, and told them they could make scrambled eggs themselves, in the morning, undoubtedly, and I just went back to my dorm.  ...

SH:  Because the Dean had talked to you?

MS:  Yes ... because, at that point, I was no longer incognito.  So, as I walked back, I'm pretty sure I saw, about a block away, or two blocks away, carloads of State Police. You know because word had gotten out that we were going to come and, not take over the building, but throw the eggs at the people who were taking over the building. We did not like the fact that they were doing something like this.  We thought it was totally criminal, and the administration ...

SH:  Did you perceive the egging of the ROTC building was in support of ROTC or against the SDS people?

MS: ... I didn't understand your question.

SH:  Did the administration and/or papers report the egging of the ROTC building? ...

MS:  Well, nothing materialized.  No one ever wound up doing anything because it just fizzled.  No one really wanted to get into trouble, except the people who were in SDS, didn't care. 

SH:  The building was never egged at that point?

MS:  Right, to the best of my recollection, there was just this crowd that mingled, had the intent to show our displeasure with SDS, but wound up doing nothing, and SDS stayed there for a couple of days as I recall, and the administration didn't do anything.  Some wag once said that, and I don't know whether it was that demonstration, or a demonstration in Newark, or some other, because, when I was here, demonstrations ... one of the things that bothered me was the fact that you had, it was a time of such dissention, that you didn't have a long period of enjoying college life and worrying about the football team, which, in those days was, perhaps the best you can say, is pathetic.  I mean, if we won, if we beat Princeton, it was a winning season; you could lose every other game, [but] that was a winning season.  But we usually lost to Princeton, and, you know, so it was always a losing season.  [laughter] You know, when I first came on, the big issue was, well, you couldn't have women in the dorm except, I think, once or twice a year, for like an hour in the afternoon, and then the next year, they said, "Well, it can be from 2:30 to, you know, seven o'clock," or whatever.  ... It was not until ... I guess my junior year, I think, you could have them in the dorm, but the door had to be open, or cracked open, or something like that.  I mean, it was not until my senior year that no one really cared, and instead of that being a concern, there seemed to be much more of a concern over, or much more interest in burning draft cards and stuff like that, than there was in the traditional college issues that you had for eons.

SH:  Were there a lot of demonstrations with the burning of the draft cards while you were here?

MS:  I think there were.  You know, not necessarily burning [draft cards], but just demonstrations against the Vietnam War, demonstrations against the government, and when I say that, it was not only against the government in DC, the federal government; demonstrations against state government, because it was felt that they weren't giving the school enough money; demonstrations against the administration, because it was some perceived, ratio of races that was not met; demonstrations against ROTC, because in a "democratic society" you shouldn't have ROTC, and, surprisingly, there were a number of professors who supported this.  I won't mention names, but there were a number of professors who actively supported, and came out and spoke in favor, as I recall.  As I recall, and this is why I'm not going to mention names, just in case I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that there were a number of professors who spoke in favor of Ho Chi Minh, and  ...

SH:  Eugene Genovese ...

MS:  Genovese was one, yes.  He certainly ranked up there at the top, and there were a few others who, who supported that type of, the success of the enemy.

SH:  Who was the president of the University then?

MS:  Mason Gross, he was president.

SH:  How did he handle it? 

MS:  He didn't, he didn't.  One wag said that he gave away more to the student demonstrators than he ever gave away on a "The $64,000 Question." [Editor's note: Mason Welch Gross, Rutgers University president from 1959 to 1971, served as a judge on the television show Two for the Money from 1952 to 1955.]

SS:  What is a wag?

MS:  Like a pundit, political pundit type of thing.  Before he became president, he was, I think, the commentator on "The $64,000 Question" or one of those, one of those type programs, and someone said he gave away more ... here than he ever did on the program. 

SH:  What about the makeup of the University, as far as the students go, fraternities versus non-fraternities versus ROTC?  Was the power equally shared?

MS:  I don't know.

SH:  Was there a tilt one way or the other?  I mean, you had managed to form almost an independent fraternity as you said ...

MS:  Right.  I had some friends who were fraternity members.  I was not a member of a fraternity.  ... In terms of how much power the fraternities had vis-a-vis the administration, I don't know.  I don't know.  I would be guessing.  I know there was some kind of fraternity council, and what [or] how much pull it had, I don't know.  I really don't. 

SS:  Do you remember teach-ins or any sit-ins?

MS:  Oh, yeah, there were a lot of them.  There were a lot of them.  Interestingly enough, most of them were pretty much, as I recall, one sided.  You didn't get, well, to use the slogan of Fox News, you didn't get a fair and balanced presentation at any of them.  It was pretty much, they all had a political agenda, and it was a very definite political agenda, as to how bad the government was, the US government, and that was pretty much it.  I mean, I make no bones over not being a big fan of the turmoil that was going on at the time.  I was totally opposed to it, and as time goes on, there has been nothing that I have seen, learned, or concluded, that has changed my mind. 

SS:  How was it compared to riots that went on?  Did you see any riots in DC when you were in law school?

MS:  Yes. 

SS:  How was it compared to riots in DC?

MS:  Well, it was a little bit different.  It was a little bit less violent, probably for a couple of reasons.  Number one, it was ... the demonstrations were as, well ... as the political crescendo increased through the Johnson and then Nixon administrations, the anti-war movement increased.  The personality, to some extent, you can look at the personality of Richard Nixon, which was one of, "I don't care about the students," this is "in their face" type of thing.  On the other hand, the students became, students nationwide, became more emboldened, I think, by the lack of any consequences of what they were doing.  Also, in DC ... it's the center of government, and you have far more publicity.  So, I can demonstrate all I want out in Podunk, but let me do half that in DC, and it's going to be on national news, and, in DC, I remember one day coming out of the law library, well, the students were blockading ... one of the main thoroughfares, Massachusetts Avenue, and as I came out of the law library, well, every time the police would break them up, ... they'd dispersed, and then a few minutes later come back and block rush hour traffic.  ... This was going on and on, and finally the police made a charge, just as I was walking out of the library, and I see a group of a phalanx of police coming, with their batons raised, and I just kind of dropped my books and covered my, put my arms over my head, thinking I was going to get clubbed, and the next thing I know someone is laughing, and when I looked up, there was some police officer there, saying, "Oh, don't be silly, we're not interested in you.  You're wearing a tie, a suit, short, combed hair, you know, you're obviously not one of those demonstrators," and, it was true.  The demonstrators almost consistently had hair that was longer, and I'm talking about the males, had hair that was longer than any of you females that are here.  Second only perhaps to the length of a slovenly looking beard.  I don't know when they last took a bath or shower, perhaps if they were out in the rain they got a little clean. [laughter] But, I say that, you know, with a little sense of humor to it, but, yes ... there was, it was almost like a uniform.  It was almost a uniform of the group, and, anyway, so, that was, you know, the type of demonstrations.  So, then of course, they had the demonstrations downtown on the mall, but I was not near that.

SH:  When the march on Washington took place, you would have been here at Rutgers during that time.  Were there any discussions here about it?

MS:  Probably. Probably.  I don't remember specifically, you know, any one activity standing out.  ...

SH:  Were you still at Rutgers when the riots broke out in Newark?

MS:  Well, they were during the summer, and I remember them rather well because, or at least one of them.  As I recall, it was either during the summer, or it was on a weekend, because I was at my father's office, and he asked me to go either pick up some papers or drop some papers off in Newark that morning, and it was, you know, mid-morning.  Now, the riots didn't break out until either late in the afternoon or in the evening.  I think it was the evening, and that morning, when I was in Newark, I kept wondering, "Why there's so many people milling around?"  It struck me, now I've been to Newark many times, and it just struck me how many people were just milling around.  I mean, it was almost as if so many places had had fire drills and everybody's out on the street, and I got out of the city, and I'm thinking, you know, I couldn't figure it out, just nothing was registering, and that night, when they spoke about the spontaneity of the riots, my first reaction was, "Balderdash.  There was nothing spontaneous about this."  I was there, I saw it, you know.  You don't have hundreds upon thousands of people, let me stick with hundreds, milling around ... where, normally, you would never get that, and then, all of a sudden, you get this "spontaneous riot"?  It didn't add up to me, and I didn't believe it.  So, yes, that was how I, that was my connection with the riots in Newark. 

SH:  Going back to Rutgers and looking at the more common place activities, what was the interaction between Douglass and Rutgers College?  Was there a definite social schedule?

MS:  The interaction was not enough. [laughter]  I tell it like I see it.  I have always told it like I see it.  ... I don't make things up.  The interaction that was, was interesting, because a lot of us felt that the Douglass girls were very snooty, almost too good for the average Rutgers men, and would sooner go out, even if they weren't dating anyone, they would tell you they're dating someone from Princeton, and that was the feeling we got. That was the feeling that we got, almost consistently, and I dated a couple of Douglass girls.  Coopies, as we used to call them and they would tell you about how they didn't generally wouldn't go out with someone from Rutgers because, you know, their GPA was higher, or something.  Which, now, I'm glad to see that Rutgers is the higher GPA, sort of, you know, turn around is fair play. [laughter] But I'll tell you something about Coopies.  After I got done with law school, and I was practicing in Washington, DC; I was with the Department of Justice, and had been there for a couple years, I was walking down the street one day, after lunch, and ... two young women were looking at a map, trying to figure out where they were, and one of them turns, she says, "Oh, excuse me," she says, "can you tell me where Fords Theater is?" and, you know, holding the map, and I said, "Well, you're," pointing on the map, I said, "you're right here, so, you go down, you know, a block, and then turn left, and it's off on the other side of the street."  She said, "Oh, thank you very much," and I said, "Oh," I said, looking at her ring, I said, "I see you're a Coopie."  She said, "What?"  I'm thinking she just didn't hear me.  I said, "I see you're a Coopie."  She says, "What's a Coopie?"  I said, "Oh, I'm sorry." I said, "I'm terribly sorry, I saw your ring, I thought it was a Douglass College ring."  She said, "Well, it is."  I said, "And you don't know what a Coopie is?"  She said, "No."  She turned to her friend, and she said, "Do you know what a Coopie is?"  Her friend said, "No."  She says, "And I graduated Douglass, too."  I said, "Oh," I said, "I'm sorry," I said, "I seem to recall that when I went to Rutgers, we used to call girls from Douglass 'Coopies'."  She said, "Oh, never heard the term."  I said, "Well, it was after Cooper Dining Hall or Cooper Hall, or something like this."  She says, "Oh, yeah, well, they tore that building down."  ...

---------------------------END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE-------------------------------

SS:  Please continue.

MS:  Okay.  So, I said, "Oh, I thought you were from, you know, Douglass because of the ring," and, I said, "'Coopie' from Cooper Hall."  "Oh, that was torn down years and years ago."  It really hit me, "years and years ago." I was only out of there, maybe five years, and I looked, and I said, "Oh, did I say you go down the street and turn left?  No, you turn right." [laughter]  Made me feel old.  [laughter]

SH:  What were some of the other shining moments here at Rutgers for a young man who has, basically, taken the ball and run with it, as far as the Pre-Legal Society is concerned, and, the unofficial fraternity at Clothier?  What were some of the other great memories of Rutgers?

MS:  Actually, there were probably so many that I'm not going to be able to mention them.  ... There probably are a few I would refuse to mention.  [laughter] You know, it's hard to point out a particular thing.  ... It's the entire period that you look at, or that you look back on, and you say, "Well, I remember, for example, walking across campus at Christmas-time and seeing the decorations in the windows, and some of them even maybe having, you know, whether it was flashing lights or maybe some Christmas music in the background."  It just had a very collegial, nice, warm feeling.  Seeing, I guess now they call it, Voorhees campus, covered with snow, and just the pathways to the class, you know, it was just very picturesque, very college looking, you know, typical ivy walls, so to speak.  Some of the professors were outstanding; some weren't.  But the professors who were very, very good, who would, as I said about McCormick and some of the others that I mentioned: Ratner, Bovie, Freidelbaum, and I'm probably missing a couple, but they kept your interest in something, and it was fascinating to listen to them. You know, you would just be spellbound.  ... One thing that I remember was, from my view out of Clothier.  I faced the river, and, sometimes, the way the moon would just be reflect off water was, it was just absolutely picturesque, you know, sort of the thing that you would think was artificial.  ... Then there were some times that, at the moment, might have seemed funny, or whatever, as you look back and you say to yourself, "Well, if I didn't think it was funny then," or, "if I thought it was funny then, now I don't."  Or, conversely, "If I didn't think it was funny then, now I do."  There was the time we had one guy down the hall, I think this was my freshman year, every weekend he'd go out and get as drunk as can be, and what they did one [day], his roommate and a few others on the floor, they put Vaseline on the doorknob, and when he came back, he was so drunk, he couldn't turn his doorknob, and we learned a whole new vocabulary from him that night. [laughter]  ... Some of the mixers were ... really interesting, they had funny moments to it, at the time, you know, it didn't seem so, so funny.  One where I was at the, we used to go to the Ledge, which is now the SAC, but that was ... our student center.  We didn't have until, I think, well, it was warmer weather, so it was probably around April or so of my senior year that this current student center opened up.  But we'd go to the Ledge, and they'd have mixers there, and I remember once, got into a discussion.  Well, I went there and it was so crowded, I said, "Well, I'm just going to get some, drink of water or soda, or something, and I'm going to leave."  ... I went over to the ... little coffee shop area of it, the fountain area, the grill area, that's what it was, it was a grill area, and was having a ... whether it was a soda or coffee or whatever, and this young lady was talking to someone, and asked him something about the heat or the crowd or something, and he said that he didn't know, he was just a freshman.  ... I said something like, "It is, believe me, I'm a junior.  This is typical," or something, and that girl did a military-style right face.  I mean, except for clicking her heels as you would expect by the honor guard at National Cemetery, Arlington Cemetery.  It was a magnificent turn.  That was the end of the freshman, and she turns, "Oh, I'm a junior, too," and she went to Newark State.  So, we started talking, and we went around campus, and walked and talked and talked.  I think that was one of the nights you could have someone in your dorm; we went back and talked and she said something about, I said, "I think the dance gets over," I think it was, whatever it was, "at one o'clock," or whatever.  So, we get back there, and there's no one around, and discovered that it actually ended an hour previous, and in the interim, her friend, who had come down here with her, they'd notified the police because her purse was still there, and her parents were notified that she was missing.  Needless to say, she and I did some quick explaining, and the next day I called her and again apologized, and asked her out, and we dated for several months.  You know, at the time, you're thinking, "My God, am I'm going to be prosecuted for kidnapping someone?" You're not laughing about it.  Thirty years later, you recount the episode and you think how funny it is.  Here she is missing, "hahaha," and it was not "hahaha" at the time.  [laughter] So it was one of those things that was just, just funny.  You know, going to the football games, another thing that stood out, always trying to figure out how we were going to lose a game. [laughter] You know, we're ahead twenty to nothing, with three minutes to play, and, by golly, we got to figure out how to lose this game, and we did! [laughter]  I got to tell you, Rutgers is a very, very good school.  They figure out a lot of things, which is why now, with the success of the football team, I got my fingers crossed, please let it continue.  My wife will tell you I stand at the radio, or the TV, if it's televised, to the point of where I got a hoarse voice because I'm cheering the team on.  You would think I was still a student, and I tell her, "It's absolutely astounding to me that we now figure out ways to win!  This is just contrary to everything that I've known about the school for thirty years." [laughter] There are other things.  I will probably think of it over dinner, and say, "Oh, I should have added this, and I should have added that."

SH:  You attended Rutgers at such a tumultuous time ...

MS:  It was.

SH:  In the nation, at Rutgers, in the state, so that was the reason for the question, please continue.

MS:  I was here, don't forget, during the period from 1965 to 1969, and during that period of time, the school, for better or worse, I'm not going to make a decision on this, or form an opinion on it, but the school got away from the concept of in loco parentis, and it was, to call it a tumultuous time would probably be very accurate, if not perhaps even understating it.  ... My view of college was, as I had come here to see, you know, as a kid to see my cousin, and, you know, you wore the Rutgers jacket, or the Rutgers sweatshirt.  You went around campus and the kids had their books in their hand and ... if you were radical, you might even be smoking a pipe, and, you know, you'd be discussing philosophy.  You would be discussing whether or not [General George] Washington was actually standing in the boat when it crossed the Delaware, you would be discussing some concept of physics, you might be discussing dabbling in art, and I'll just comment that someone, I was at a meeting Thursday, and someone was introduced, and they said that part of their background was, you know, they graduated law school in 2003. They're new, and they had, before coming to the Justice Department, they had dabbled in art, and the person leading the conference said, "How is it that you always dabble in art, but you never hear of anyone dabbling in physics?"  Just an interesting observation, I thought.  But, in any event, the school, when I was here, was always engaged in, or it seemed as though the Student Council and the various other student committees, were more concerned with the execution of the war and what the Pentagon was doing, right or wrong, or, usually wrong in their views, in Southeast Asia or the world; or, why Congress didn't know what it was doing, and why the President didn't know what he was doing, and why the Governor didn't know what he was doing.  No one could do right according to the student groups at the time, that the only one who could do right was Ho Chi Minh, and it was a very, it was a downer.  It was a downer.  The school was, to a fair extent, supporting the right of the students, and, I'm not saying they don't have a right, but, you know, their right ended where, I felt where my right to get an education and be free of this haranguing started.  So, it was a disappointment in that respect.  Again, on the other hand, you know, there was an awful lot, a number of the students, you know, were just absolutely brilliant people.  There was a fellow graduated a year ahead of me, we had gotten friendly, he graduated with 4.0.  I like to think that I'm partly responsible, because the morning before one of our exams, we were having breakfast together.  We were having breakfast and we were discussing, I believe it was constitutional law.  ... He mentioned something about one of the cases.  I said, "No, no, no. The holding there was something else," and he said, "Oh, you're right, you're right," and that was one of the questions on the exam, and I said to myself ... "I take credit for his 4.0."  [laughter] He went on to Harvard Law and got a job in New York and last I heard, many, many years ago, I think he was made partner there.  Like I said, I went on to American University Law School, in DC, and spent almost thirty years at the Justice Department.  In any event, oh, I started saying, let me just cover a couple of things and wrap it up, a few odds and ends.  I think I mentioned earlier, and I don't know if I, because we had to change the tape, and I don't know if we ever got back to it, when I said it was a good thing I did not go to medical school.  I was in law school, I took a tour of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and they had these arrows pointing to parts of dissected bodies.  They were body parts, and I could not see why it was red and why what wasn't, so, you know, that would have been a problem for me.  The time when I was here, another point I just wanted to make.  Actually, I think I might have just said that other point twice, but this just gives a greater emphasis, that's all.  [laughter] ... Rutgers got known as the Berkeley of the East.  I mean, all the demonstrations started out in Berkeley, and kind of moved across the country.  But, Rutgers got stuck with the name Berkeley of the East, and that was not a title I particularly enjoyed having.  Other things that I enjoyed, you know, I enjoyed it when I would put on my Rutgers jacket and walk downtown.  I wore that jacket all the time.  I was very, very proud of the fact that, on my back, it said, you know, "Rutgers," and, it's a wonderful feeling, to this day, to say to someone, "Yes, well, I did my undergraduate work at Rutgers."  "Oh, good school."  I mean ... it makes you feel good and I can remember, oh, some of the other funny stories.  We had a geology course, and ... it was a whole day, we went around the state.  ... We're in some field out in Sayreville, some place out there.  I'm sure now it's a large development, but we're looking around at the different types of mud and stuff, and then the professor, the instructor, yells to us, "Oh, be careful!  There's quicksand there!"  You know, we're going, "Oh, shoot."  [laughter] Yes, it's funny now.  At the time, yes, you're thinking, "Will I live to see tomorrow?"

SH:  You actually stepped in the quick sand?

MS:  Don't know, I mean, have no idea.  If I did, it does not act like it does in the movies.  [laughter] ... Then we took the bus, the bus went all around the state, and we were coming back through, I guess the area around Hackettstown, and, at the rate the driver was going, we would have been here, probably arriving about now. [laughter] I mean, you could walk faster, and people on the bus, you know, "Attaboy, cannonball, hey, cannonball, you know, think you can get it up to ten miles an hour?"  Yes, it was funny.  We had some fun.  There were, you know, undoubtedly ... some fun times in some of the classes that I just don't recall, but I do remember that there were incidents that you sit there and you go ... "That was an enjoyable time."  I'll mention one other thing.  Earlier, much earlier, we spoke about trips that we went on, and I said there was one that my father had been active in the AmVets veterans' organization.  He went to the convention ... this would be in the sixties ... we went out ... to Columbus, Ohio, and we knew he was going, he and a group of others, were going to be meeting with the Vice President, I think it was [Herbert H.] Humphrey at the time, and we had pre-arranged so that when he came out of a certain door, I would be standing there.  He would be walking with the Vice President, and I would stand there, and take their picture, and we also knew that the meeting was scheduled for so many minutes, so I knew what time they'd be coming out, and I paced off the distance to the door, and I set the focus, and, you know, just adjusted everything.  ... About a minute before they come out, and you knew they were getting ready to come out, because a) it was the time, and, two, you could hear the Secret Service radios crackling, one of the Secret Service agents stands right in front of me, and they're generally about six foot twelve.  [laughter] So, I reached up, and tapped him on the shoulder, and talk about wrong choice of words, I said, "Excuse me, but could you move over so I can get a better shot at the Vice President?"  [laughter] Get an idea what an Uzi looks like. As he's going for that, I go, "Camera, camera, camera, picture, picture," and, of course, by that point, my father and the VP walk out, and I got their backs. [laughter] 

SS:  Around the time you were graduating from Rutgers, they were starting to talk about making Rutgers coed and about starting Livingston College.  Was there talk of this during your senior year?  Did they bring any questions regarding this to the student body, or was this just behind the scenes with the administration?

MS:  The student body wanted women on campus, as I recall.  I mean, that was one of the things that many of us griped about.  I don't remember much about Livingston, because if they were talking about it, it was just... in the early stages of talking.  The school had taken over Camp Kilmer, which is up at the Heights, as we called it, now Busch campus.  In fact, one day ...

SH: It is now Livingston Campus.

MS: Livingston? Okay, because, I mean, that whole area we just called the Heights, and as I was looking through ... my yearbook, everything was referred to as the Heights.  So, that was the name, with a capital H and there were only a half a dozen buildings up there, when I was here, and they took over Camp Kilmer, in fact, it was so deserted, that people would take their cars up there and see how fast they could get, I mean, because, you know, there was nobody around.  The big issue, I think ... was not, you know, was pretty much getting, well, let me phrase it this way.  The student body was almost a dichotomy.  You had a group, a small group, a relatively small group, that were very radical, very outspoken.  You also had another group, perhaps larger, that were almost apathetic.  They were just here.  They wanted to get their education.  "Give me education, I can't be involved.  I don't know ... you know, I want out," and that was almost their attitude.  I seem to recall that toward the end of my senior year, there was a demonstration where they wanted students from Newark who were protesting that they weren't getting sufficient funding, and if they didn't get funding, they didn't want to be part of the University, and they came down here to demonstrate, as I recall, and, yes, they had some support, and I think the student council supported it.  ... But, the average student on campus, was, "Oh, maybe we can get rid of Newark.  Yes, we don't want them anyway, I mean, it just pulls our GPA overall average down, so, this is a good opportunity to get rid of them."  You know, I mean, that was ... When someone says, "What was the interest ... in Livingston?" Livingston was kind of low on the list of, as I recall it, on the list of priorities, or ... issues, for people.  They didn't even wantNewark.

SH:  For Rutgers to become a co-ed institution, was there any discussion about joining Rutgers College and Douglass College and doing away with Douglass? 

MS:  Not that I recall.  ... Not that I recall.  Student council people might know better, but I just don't remember anything like that, and, you know, it probably would have been for the future type of thing, and ... I mean, I don't want to sound apathetic, but it was ...

SH:  In your senior year, did you know where you were going to be going to law school?

MS:  Yes, I seem to recall, and I'm probably wrong, but my recollection is that, in and around Christmas time, I got my acceptance letters.  ... I was accepted at Rutgers, I was accepted at American University.  Actually, I'm trying to remember whether it was Rutgers Newark or, I think it was Rutgers Camden, I just don't remember.  It might have been Camden, but in any event, which now has a higher GPA than Newark, or higher rating, according toU.S. News[& World Report], but in any event, there were one or two others.  I remember asking my folks, "Okay, which one should I select?"  They said, "That's your decision."  I said, "Hey, come on, you guys tell me what tie to wear in the morning, you know, this is a little more important."  [laughter] They said, "Yeah, but you're color blind, that's why we tell you what tie.  You know, this is your life, you pick." ... [laughter] I went down to Washington, and sat in on some classes, and spoke to some people before I made up my mind and decided, "Okay, I'll try Washington."

SH:  That must have taken a lot of pressure off your final semester.  Did you enjoy your final semester at Rutgers?

MS:  Yes, I loved it.  I loved it.  Academically, it was my best time.  Socially, it was, by far, the best.  It was, roommate-wise, it was excellent.  Well, my last two years, I stayed with the same roommate.  It was ... course-wise, it was very, very good.  So, yes, if I could have had all four years ... as delightful as that last year, I might have tried to figure out how to spend a fifth year here, I don't know.  [laughter]

SH:  Between semesters, or in between the spring and the fall semester, what were you doing?

MS:  I think during that period of time I worked in my father's office.  He had me doing, essentially, clerical work, but it gave me an idea as to some of the things that lawyers do and then when I graduated, oh, actually, I, yes ... I think I worked in his office.  When I graduated, that summer, I worked as a counselor at a children's camp where I had gone as a camper myself, years earlier, and had been a junior counselor for a couple of years also. 

SH:  Earlier we talked about the fact that ROTC was no longer mandatory, but the draft lottery was out there. Were you part of that, and where did you stand?

MS:  It didn't really bother me until I was in law school, and at that point I looked into enlisting and, let me be right up front, it wasn't so much because I was anxious to join the Army, as I felt I may as well try ... as my father did, get into something, and then have a choice that might be more to my liking than someone saying, "You, you go here."  ... When it became, well, to make a long story short, it pretty much was, "Take off your glasses and read the chart."  "What chart?"  "The one on the wall."  "What wall?"  "That one."  "Put your glasses on.  See it?" [laughter] "Oh, yes, that one."  "Okay, you see the door over there?  We'll call you, don't you call us."  Makes a long story short, but, I mean ... that was it, and my opportunity to enlist or be drafted went ... down the tubes.  On the one hand, yes, it was fortuitous, because [I] didn't have to worry about being shot at.  I mean, not too many people enjoy being shot at.  On the other hand, it could have been interesting.  I mean, depending upon what the assignment was, it could have been interesting.  ... It could have been career changing, in terms of the type of work I did, the people I would have met, and had I stayed in the reserves ... well, let's see, at that point, I think, and I'm not positive, but I think lawyers went in as a captain.  [I] easily could have come out as, at this point, at least a lieutenant colonel, would be my guess, maybe colonel, so, I mean, the two, the pension from, you know, the Justice Department, the pension from the Army, it would have been nice.  It would have been nice, but it wasn't to be.  ...

SS:  What did you do once you graduated from law school?

MS:  I spent a year with, when I got out of law school, I was hired on what I guess is the equivalent of the honor's program at a now defunct agency, and dealing with transportation issues.  ... Then I transferred into the Justice department, and I spent just about thirty years there, doing, well, the first six, seven years I handled what is now called asset forfeiture, and that was where you would seize property which had been used in such things as drug cases, well, primarily, a lot of drug cases.  Then I went over and I spent another seven, eight years or so at the Office of Special Investigations [OSI], this is all within the Criminal Division.  OSI, its jurisdiction, at that time, was the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.  ... Now, we did not prosecute them criminally for the war crime.  What we did was based upon ... their lying in entering the United States after the war.  So, you would take away, for example, many of them had become United States citizens; we took away their US citizenship, and then once they had reverted back to their prior status, which would be that of an alien lawfully admitted, we would enter them, or put them in deportation proceedings, and, it's all based upon the fraud they committed, because, to come into the United States, they had to swear that they had not engaged in persecution.  If they said, "Yes, I was a guard at, you know, Bergen-Belsen," well, they would not be allowed in, because that was persecution, persecution of an individual on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular group or religion.  So, many of them would say, "No, I was, you know, I was a farmer some place."  Well, once OSI got going, and we started developing resources and building up these resources ... we could determine that these people were, in fact, because we got captured records, and say, "Well, wait a minute, here is a pay slip for you showing that you were a guard at Bergen-Belsen."  "Oh, well, you know, at the time I was just there for one week of R&R, rest and relaxation."  "Well, what about the second pay slip?"  "Oh, well, you know, actually it might have been two weeks." "Well, here we've got, you know, 300 pay slips for you."  "Oh, I forgot."  [laughter] Interestingly, of the 100 or 200 ... or 300 that we investigated, not one, to my knowledge, ever said, "You know, I'm glad ... this has come to light because it's bothered me, it's been on my chest, I got to get this off my chest."  Not one ever said that.  They all had excuses.  They all would say, "I shot over the inmates, I never shot at them, I shot over them."  "Oh, I would bring them food and water, but I had to be careful, because I would be killed."  "Oh, some of my best friends are Jews," you know, "I keep my lawn well mowed, you know, so you shouldn't deport me."  Not one ever said, "Yes, I did it, and it's terrible, and, essentially, I confess."  ... Then when it looked like OSI might possibly be running out of Nazis to deport, I looked around.  ... It would also take, maybe, a year or so to get a case right for trial.  ... After you did that once or twice, and ... your defendant would die on you because of age or develop Alzheimer's, and you'd just be boxing up all these files because you can't use them now, because they couldn't participate in the defense of their trial.  I looked around for something, and decided, "Let me find something else before OSI goes out of business," and they say, "Okay, you're going to go to the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Section. You're going to go to the Fraud Section.  You, somebody else, will go [here or there]." [I decided] I'll pick myself where I want to go, and they had ... an opening over in Immigration.  I said, "Well, you know, this deportation, it's the same thing, I'll try that."  So, I did that, and that was fascinating, and I enjoyed that, and I did that out in the field for, oh, I would venture a guess, about thirteen, fourteen years, give or take, and then I probably prosecuted several, conceivably, several thousand cases.  [I] then, went over to ... work on a task force at INS [Immigration and Naturalization Services] headquarters, again, denaturalizing people who had committed fraud.  This was not Nazis, but just anyone who had committed fraud, and then, with the advent of Homeland Security, the functions I was involved in got transferred ... INS got abolished, and immigration functions, for the most part, got transferred out of Justice over to Homeland Security.  So, we went from DOJ to Homeland Security, and I've been doing that for the last four, five years.

SS:  Going back to OSI, how were the whereabouts of Nazi war criminals determined?

 

MS:  Oh, a whole bunch of ways.  Everything from someone writing in, and saying ..."I just saw someone walk down the street," I think this was in New York, if I remember correctly, "I just saw someone walk down the street, and I seem to recognize him from, you know, World War II days, concentration camp days.  He was a guard at the concentration camp," to cross-checking various records.  Once you could get these records, we got a list of all the SS officers, and you could run their names against, whether it was Social Security, or some other list, and just do a cross-check.  A lot of these people who came in were so brazen, or naïve, they used their real name, and, you'd find, you know, Johann Schmidt, which is a name that is fictitious, sort of the German equivalent of the generic "John Smith" and, yes, now here we've got, well, a whole bunch of Johann Schmidts, but then you would break it down to see, you know, pull out their immigration records, and see where were they born, when were they born, when did they come into the United States.  Well, if you can match up a date and place of birth, there's a pretty good chance that that's the same Johann Schmidt.  You go, then, and interview them and we would then send a letter out to a person ... saying that ... "There's a review of your file [that] indicates that there might be some questions concerning your activities during World War II, and your admission to the United States.  We'd like to talk to you." ... you know, "You have the right to have an attorney present, but we want to meet you at such and such a time, and usually at the US Attorney's Office."  So, they would show up and profess their innocence, and, you know, that's when you would say ... well, you'd go through a whole chain of evidence to establish, for example, that this was their signature, that this was an ID card that might have been issued, that this was their name, that they never used any other names, that that was, in fact, their date of birth, and the authenticity of the document, and then, once you've locked them into that, then you just show the string of what you have, and see how they answer it.  Once they do that, you know, any story they give in the future is a contradiction, and they have a lot of explaining to do.

SS:  How would you come across the more graphic information of what they had done at the concentration camps?

MS:  We would check with various records we have ... for survivors, and there are groups of survivors.  So, you can go to, and I forget the names of them, but you'd go to their group, that group, and say, "Who do you have from ..."  ... They were very, very cooperative with OSI.  The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Austria was very cooperative.  I met Simon Wiesenthal.  He was at OSI.  We worked very closely with the various police agencies, with the various historical agencies, such as Wiesenthal's, and, oh, I can't think of her name, there was some woman who, darn it, I can't think of her name, she was similar to, did investigative work similar to Wiesenthal, and they would go out and search and hunt for people, and just check records, various records.  ... The Nazis kept meticulous records.  So, once you found those records, it was just a case of tracking that person to see where ... that person wound up, and you just ... cross index your records.  Then, you, you know, you contact these, either these groups, or these, you check these records, the database, and then you contact the person.  We had some false leads too, you know.  We had someone write in and say, "My next door neighbor is a Nazi."  So, you contact the person, "Okay, sir, on what basis ... how do you know he's a Nazi?"  "He owns a German Shepard."  "Okay, thank you.  We'll call you. Don't you call us."  [laughter] We had some person write in and say, "I have information, and I will provide it to you, but I want to get paid," and Allan Ryan, who was the Director of OSI at that time ... this was before the days of email, tacked up a copy of his reply back to the person: "Go fly a kite."  You know, he didn't take that kind of BS from anyone, and he certainly wasn't going to pay someone for that, and then ... someone would mention it to someone that they were ... We had someone, I think, in a carpool that slipped once, where he mentioned something.  ... Another person, a case I was involved in, mentioned, it got mentioned at some ... he got involved in politics and his opponent somehow learned about it and mentioned it at ... a local, local politics, and mentioned, "Well, folks, how can you vote for him?  He's a Nazi war criminal."  So, you know, there are all sorts of ways that it came out.

SS:  Would they get deported back to Germany then?

MS:  No, they would get deported back to the country, well ... there's a hierarchy of countries that you get deported to and you would get deported back, generally to the country from which you left, or the country of your nationality, and, I might have the order wrong, because it's been a few years since I had to look at that, but the country from where you left, or the country of your nationality, or any country that is willing to accept you.  Well, very often, with the Nazi war criminals, the country, the European countries, or the country of nationality, especiallyEastern Europe, much to their credit, was very interested in getting these individuals back, because they would try them for the actual criminal act.  ... We had to be very, very careful in our prosecution, because even though our case was a civil case, once they got back to Europe, it was not uncommon for them to face a firing squad, and we knew that that's what it was.  So, we treated our case as a capital case, and, for example, we might have an interview of an individual last a couple hours, much like this, and then we would leave, and we'd always have two attorneys, at least two attorneys, on a case, a paralegal, and a historian, who could speak the foreign language, who usually reviewed documents with us, but also would make sure the translations, and so forth, were accurate.  But, then, we ... would review, whether it was in our office afterwards, or whether it was flying back from wherever the interview had taken place, our questions and the person's answers.  ... "Did you notice he blinked his eyes a lot at that point?"  ... "Did it seem like he was rubbing his hands at some point, almost nervous like?"  I mean, it would get down to that point, to try to determine whether the guy is telling the truth or not, because, we did not want it on our conscience that we were sending an innocent man before a firing squad, ultimately, anyway ...

SH:  Did you provide the receiving country with any of the material that you had used or found in your investigation?

MS:  ... A lot of the material we got came from foreign countries because a lot of the witnesses would still be back there, and what we would do is ask the foreign country to go out and interview certain individuals, or to present a photo-spread.  We would prepare the photo-spread, but then they would present it with a ... well, following ... an outline of questions that we prepared, and how it was to be presented.  I mean, we didn't just give it to them and say, "See if they pick up, pick number six," because we didn't want to take a chance of some foreign government sending an agent out and saying, "Isn't this the guy ... who committed atrocities at the camp?"  I mean, there goes your case.  But we wouldn't necessarily even tell a foreign government which individual on there was it, you know ... here ... [are] the pictures, and here's the protocol you follow in presenting it."  Usually, we'd have someone from our State Department go along, as I recall, with it, or we ... had someone on contract out there who'd ...

SH:  Did you ever go?

MS:  I did not go overseas for that.  I was scheduled once, and then my boss decided he wanted to go instead.  He called me into his office, and he said, "I'm going to pull rank on you," and it was to go to Moscow and, at first I was very disappointed and then I realized we are talking about something like December, January, February, or whatever it was ...

---------------------------END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO------------------------------

SS:  Please continue.

MS: ... Then I realized this was, we're talking Moscow in the middle of winter, so, I said something like, "Oh, gee whiz, okay, such is life," and went back to my office thinking, "Wow, did I dodge a bullet on that one."  As I said, no, I did not get a chance to travel overseas on that job, did travel around the country a lot, but not, not overseas.

SS:  What did OSI do once they were running out of the Nazi war criminals?

MS:  Oh, oh, good question, glad you asked that.  After I transferred out of there ... shortly after that, we had the collapse of the Soviet Union and, when the Soviet Union collapsed, even though they had been very cooperative with us, nonetheless, they did not give us access to all of their archives.  Once the Soviet Union collapsed, and the new government came in, they gave us access to, if not all, many, many more of their archives.  So, OSI got a new lease on life, and access to a whole lot more data and a whole lot more defendants.  Now, Congress has extended the jurisdiction of OSI so that it includes not only those who engaged in persecution under the Nazis, or the Nazi government of Germany, but also various individuals who have engaged in persecution, government sponsored, pretty much around the world.  So it can be the Pol Pot [Saloth Sar, leader of Cambodian Khmer Rouge 1976-1979] government from Southeast Asia.  It could be something in Africa.  It could be something from Central America, doesn't matter, it can be anywhere in the world.  So, they've got a new lease on life.

SS:  Human rights violations.

MS:  Human rights violations, yes.

SS:  At this point you were no longer with OSI? 

MS:  Right, well, after about eight years with OSI, I went over and started doing immigration work, dealing with the US Immigration Court, and probably did a couple of thousand deportation cases, and after about twelve or thirteen years of that, took an assignment dealing with, actually, it was with the INS headquarters, dealing with denaturalization of individuals who had acquired citizenship through fraud, not Nazi war criminals coming over, but ... just anyone who is in the United States who had committed fraud.  Actually, there had been a program a few years back, I think it was under the Carter administration, as I recall, called Citizenship USA, and there was ... pushing, trying to get as many, I hate to use word foreigners, but aliens, who were permanent residents, to become citizens, and there was a tremendous amount of fraud that was committed. So, in looking back on it, it was determined that a lot of these individuals were not entitled, because of their criminal record, to become citizens; they just did not qualify.  So, we had to go back and review hundreds and hundreds of files to see who did not deserve citizenship.  We would then do much as we did at OSI, review the file, contact the individuals, and advise them that it looked as though their ... citizenship needed to be revoked, and you go through a revocation process.

SH:  Was this from the Cuban boat lift or from Vietnam?

MS: ... No, it was just anyone who was in the country.  There was a push, I think it was under the Clinton administration, to try and register as many people or get as many people as possible ...

SH:  Was this Carter or Clinton?

MS:  Carter.  Did I say Clinton?  Sorry, Carter.  To get them citizenship, so they could vote.  I'm not going to get into underlying politics, but, in any event, many of them committed fraud and said they had no criminal record, when, in fact, some of them had been convicted of ... homicides, murder, rape, robbery, ... some really heinous crimes, which they "forgot" that they had committed them, and, unfortunately, "forgetting" that they had committed, you know, felonies, or several misdemeanors, just doesn't cut it.  So, they would be put into denaturalization proceedings, and then, from there, [I] went over to, you know, the functions of ... the immigration functions of Justice were transferred to Homeland Security when it was created, what, four, five years ago, and that's how I wound up in Homeland Security. [Editor's Note: United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a Cabinet level department, was established November 25, 2002 - on March 1, 2003 DHS absorbed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)]

SH:  Did you have any role in Homeland Security policies with all this experience you're bringing?

MS: ... Well, yes and no.  The overall policy is being set, as the saying goes, by people at a higher grade bracket than I am.  That's pretty much coming from the White House, together with input from the Attorney General and from ... the advisers that the President has, and however they want to do that.  In terms of how we handle certain functions, if you get it down to the tactical basis, yes.  ... For example, right now ... I'm working on something where my supervisor has this idea, and it's, "Okay, Marty, let's ... here's what I would like to have done, do it."  So it's ... you get to do ... the actual leg work on it, and ... that's a small portion of a much bigger picture.  ... When you're talking about the functions of Homeland Security, I mean, you're painting with a broad brush, and, no, I'm not doing that, but, if you get down to how you're going to, for example, assess a fine against a carrier, let's say an air carrier, for bringing someone into the country without proper credentials, passport and visa, then, yes, for that aspect, you know, my views will be solicited.

SH:  When did you meet Mrs. Sachs?

MS: ... January 20, 1980, in a food line, and we haven't stopped eating since.  [laughter] ... It was a lecture that we went to listen to, regarding the 1980 elections, and, to this day, we still have a disagreement as to who was in front of who.

DS:  It was a breakfast luncheon.

MS: ... Yes, it was a breakfast luncheon.  I seem to think I was in front of her, but in any event, we started talking, and we continued talking, and we then listened to the lecture, and then we continued talking some more.  At that point, they started closing up the place, and we decided we'd go out for some coffee to talk some more.  I was actually going to head on to the office that day.  It was a Sunday, but I was still ... going to go into the office.  I never did make it. [laughter]  We probably spent two to three hours ... in a Hot Shoppes having coffee, until they more or less threw us out, you know, occupying a table on a cup of coffee, so.  So, she lived not that far away, so we went over to her house and continued chatting and, at that point, it was starting to get dark, so we decided to go out for dinner, and we went out for dinner, and I think I asked her out at that point for the next week, and that's how it started.

SH:  You went to a lecture on a Sunday morning to talk about an election that's already happened?

MS:  Oh, no, no, no, it was the upcoming election. 

SH:  Were you going to become involved politically?

MS:  No, it was just to learn about it.  ... They had on two separate weeks, I don't remember whether they were separated in between by a week or not, but they had someone from the Democratic Party and then someone from the Republican Party talking about the '80 elections and I went to both of them to learn what I could.  See, I always was interested in following and learning ...

DS:  I wasn't so much interested in learning about the politics.  I thought I might meet someone intelligent, quite honestly.  [laughter]

SH:  You went looking.  [laughter]

DS:  Yes I did.  [laughter]

MS:  Well, she was looking for someone intelligent, but, you know, you can't win them all. [laughter]

SH:  How long did it take you to propose?

MS:  Let's see, we dated for about two years, and then, I guess, after two years I proposed, and we got married about six months later, so, yes, we dated for a while.

SH:  After that initial meeting, I expected it to happen the next week. [laughter]

MS:  No, I wasn't done asking questions ... and it was interesting ... [laughter]

SS:  Going back to Rutgers for a moment, do you remember your graduation ceremony?

MS:  Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun.  There was one little scary moment there, because we didn't know what was going to happen.  We graduated up at the stadium, the old stadium, and down on the field was, I think, Dean Crosby, who was Dean of the college, and he would hand you your actual diploma.  Now, how they managed to figure out and get, I don't know, 5000 diplomas, in order, is ... an undertaking that I just have never been able to figure out.  But, in any event, so, you had to march in, and sit down in a particular order, and somewhere ahead of me, several rows ahead of me, some people got mixed up, and if you look at pictures in the yearbook you'll see that there's, you see the stadium seats, and we were seated ... in the end zone.  There's this group of people standing up and it's probably, I don't know, three, four rows deep, and the whole bit and you think, "Why are they standing up?"  It's because we didn't know where to sit, and we're trying to figure it out rather hurriedly, and, finally, we get it set up, and they start calling our names, and so you walk down to the field, and you get your diploma, and they shake your hand and congratulate you.  But, as I said, having been with the Pre-Legal Society ... they knew who I was, well, I mean, they knew undoubtedly, probably, you know, well, probably just a small handful of the students, given the number involved, but they knew, among others, they knew me, and ... they started saying, "Oh, well, congratulations, hope you enjoyed it," and I said, "Yes, I'm going to miss it," and we're starting to chat, and the next thing I heard a murmuring in the crowd, and I then realized that the person who'd gotten their diploma ahead of me was far away already, because you then marched up through the stands, and they were probably thinking, "What's wrong with this guy?  Don't they have his diploma?  Isn't he graduating?"  [laughter] Little did they know, I'm just there chatting away with the Dean, having a great time!  So, with that, I got my diploma, and walked up, and saw my family.  ... I think they admitted that they were a little concerned as to what was taking place down there.  [laughter] ... You know ... "Mr. Sachs, we reviewed your records.  Sorry, you don't graduate." [laughter] ... But, you know ... that was graduation.

SH:  I thank you so much, and I thank Mrs. Sachs for being here, and Susie.

SS:  Thank you very much.

MS:  You're all very welcome.  I enjoyed it. 

[TAPE STOPPED]

...

SH:  Please continue with the stories that have to do with the organizations that your father was involved in.

MS:  Right.  ... He was involved with AmVets veterans' organization, American Veterans of World War II and Korea, and not only was he a member of that, but for a number of years, he served as the State Attorney for that group and he was also head of the Masonic Lodge, the Mason's group.  He served as the head of that group for, Master is the term they use, for several sessions, and he also was head, and, I believe president, of a group out in Bayonne called Bayonne Aid Progressive Association.  So, he was very active in civic affairs, and I was going to mention my mother was ... with the whole side of the family being involved in medicine, she had a couple of sisters who ... were nurses, and in World War II, they would meet the transports when they came into New York and ride in the ambulance with them back to hospitals for treatment, and there were several instances where my aunts would tell me about caring for soldiers who just didn't quite make it to the hospital, and they would literally die in their arms.  So, I ... heard a lot of stories that were ... very detailed, very graphic, and very first-person.

SH:  It is an amazing generation.

MS: ... It is as, I think it was Tom Brokaw, in his book, and I will defend it, his use of the term.  It was undoubtedly "the greatest generation," to my way of thinking, anyway, with all due respects to my daughter, who is also among the greatest generation. [laughter]

SH:  We usually ask our interviewees if they would like to talk about their family, and, your daughter, Susie, is sitting here, and probably turning beat red at this point, but please, if you would like, talk about your daughter.

MS:  Fortunately for me, I'm color blind, so I can't see how red she's turning, although, even me, I can see it's starting to get the shades of you know beet red there.  Okay, Susie, I don't know if you have enough tape left, but I could go on and on about her.  To say that she is the apple of my eye is putting it mildly.  She's, you know, everything for me.  She is a wonderful girl.  She is sincere, she is delightful.  She is bright, modest, well, sometimes she's modest, and yet, you couldn't ask for a ... better child than she is.  She's very bright.  She made Phi Beta Kappa her junior year, what a 3.9 GPA?  Her goal in life is to find my transcript here at Rutgers.  [laughter] But, you know, we ... just love her.

SH:  As you should.

MS:  ... and it's easy to do.

DS:  She's a great kid.

SH:  Mrs. Sachs, could you tell us briefly about your background.  I think it would make a nice bookend to this oral history.

DS:  Okay.  I was born in Boston in 1944.  My mother was a social worker.  She was a graduate of Radcliffe College, part of Harvard University, and my father had his CPA, I'm not sure ... he died when I was young.  I think it was from (Benson?) College, and ... he owned a dry goods store.  I went to school in Boston, went to a, it was a six-year high school that went from grade seven through twelve.  It was very unusual.  It was a college prep school, but it was a public school.  So, my family wanted to move to the suburbs, but that would have meant that we had to pay tuition for me to finish school in Boston, so we just stayed in Boston until I finished.  Then I went to SmithCollege in Northampton, Massachusetts.  I majored in math.  Originally, I wanted to become a social worker like my mother, but my mother took me around to her co-workers, and everybody was saying, "You're so good in math ... you can earn more money doing something in math than being a social worker," and then I thought I'd major in French, which is probably a good thing I didn't, since my husband has some problems with learning foreign languages.  [laughter] ... But I did wind up majoring in math, and when I graduated I went into the work force.  I worked for a think tank, as a contractor for two years.  Then I went into the government, in 1968 was my first job in the government; worked for the Treasury Department, and, I don't know if you recall, in 1964 there had been a quarter shortage, and one of my first jobs in the Treasury was to make sure we didn't have anymore coin shortages.  So, I ran a mathematical model, and I had to do this on a weekly and monthly basis to make sure that production was enough, so that we weren't going to run out of coins.  ... Of course then, they started taking silver coinage out of circulation, so we had to make sure that we were producing at a fast enough pace that we could not only make up for the coins that we were taking out of circulation, but so that we could keep up with the increasing demand.  So, that ... was fascinating.  I enjoyed that, and there were a few other really good assignments I had there, but things were a little slow for me, and I found that I took a semester of Russian, because I felt that my, my mind was just going to sleep, and I figured ... I loved languages, and I thought, "Well, what's the hardest language that I could take?"  ... I already ... spoke French, I ... had taken a year of Spanish, I had taken Hebrew and Latin. I had six years of Latin, so I thought, "Well, I'll try Russian," and Russian was fantastic, it really got my mind going again.  But after one semester, I decided, you know, I'm not making a career of this, so I stopped taking Russian, and I changed jobs instead.  [laughter] So ... after the Treasury Department, I worked for the Veterans Administration [VA] for a number of years, and I did an awful lot of traveling around the country for the Veterans Administration, so, that was ... very interesting, and I really enjoyed meeting the veterans in the different hospitals. They enjoyed seeing a young woman.  I think I was responsible for one individual, one veteran, who, an elderly man, had had a heart attack, no, not a heart attack, a stroke, and he just, he had given up, he had just given up. They would take him to physical therapy, and he would just sit there, and I went down at one point, and I was doing an audit of the rehabilitative services, and, all of a sudden, I was just, you know, looking [at] files and what not, and I heard the therapist say to him, "Why, Mr. So and So, shame on you, you can really move your head, you're looking at that young girl."  So, I turned around, and I saw him looking at me.  So, I put my papers down, and I said, "Mr. So and So," I said, "I'm going to walk around your chair," I said, "and if you want to see me, you're just going to have to move your head, because that's what you're supposed to be doing here."  So, I did that, and we all had a good laugh over it.  [laughter]

SH:  He did move his head?

DS:  He did, he did move his head.  [laughter] ... Then I had to go and evaluate one of the services in the night shift, so I looked him up.  I went to his room, and, oh, he was just pleased as punch to have the attention, and, hopefully, you know ... I hope that I got him interested in fighting and coming back.  But, anyway, so I worked for the VA for a number of years, and then I went to work at the US Customs service, and I worked there until the reorganization that became Homeland Security, and I'm with Homeland Security now.

SH:  So, the two of you worked there.

DS:  Well, actually, I now work in the building he used to work in, and he works in the building I used to work in. We were in the same building for five months.  [laughter] ...

MS:  We work in different bureaus.

DS:  Yes, so, as I say, he's working in the building I was in, and vice versa, and I do budgeting work, so I'm using my math now.

SH:  You've come full circle then. 

DS:  Yes.

SH:  Thank you so much.  I really appreciate it.

DS:  You're welcome.

SS:  Thank you very much.

---------------------------------------------END OF INTERVIEW-------------------------------------------

Reviewed by Susie Sachs 1/7/09

Reviewed by Sandra Stewart Holyoak 6/4/10

Reviewed by Martin H. Sachs 2/1/11