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I grew up in Greenpoint Brooklyn, a solid Polish neighborhood. They had a temple, a Hebrew school and two kosher butchers. My mother would go to this kosher butcher about three blocks away. A very charming man that butcher. I see him now, handsome and charming. We all got along pretty good. Polish people, Italians and some Irish, but every one got along pretty good.
It was the 1930's, the depression time. We might not have had a lot of money but we had a lot of laughs and comradeship...
I think of the time when I was in the Navy when I was the captain of a submarine chaser off Newport Rhode Island. We came ashore and there was a questionnaire submitted to us regarding our backgrounds, schools, and at the bottom they asked about our religion. I had no qualms, every one was what they were.
I found that officers off my ship didn't get invited to certain functions nor did I because I put Jewish on the bottom of that paper. I didn't think of it twice. They didn't invite any officers from the ship, they did not think it would work out if they were invited, and I wasn't either.
I had no complaints because I remember what my mother always said, coming from Bukavina province as she did. She said that in America you should get up every morning and kiss the sidewalk, it's so wonderful.
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