A Short Autobiography by Sy (at 21 years of age, Summer 1946)

I am the oldest of two sons born twenty-one years ago of first generation American parents. My brother Arnold was born a little more than a year after me, so I was always assured of a companion. Up the time of grade school graduation my mother always dressed my brother and I alike and we were often confused for twins.

Both parents are from healthy European-Jewish stock. Both have had high school educations and my father attended Cooper Union in the evenings while working days. Father supported the family in a manner becoming of a middle class family. For the past sixteen years we have been living in a cooperative apartment house, which is a new (16 years old), modern, elevator structure located on New York’s Lower East Side – which is a slum and factory area – a typical sociological interstitial region, and one with the convenience of being near much business activity, which has detained my parents from moving from the area.

Although the house we live in provides a pleasant atmosphere, one cannot live in a shell and as a child I was associating with many “poor” (from a sociological point of view) companions – the elements of the streets. So I can recall the gang wars; the huge bonfires in the streets that obstructed traffic on election eve until the fire department came; the burning of a dead dog in a lot upon the dare of the culprit’s friend; and the adolescents engaging in promiscuous activities while trying to stay hidden from view on the East River piers. Sometimes it seemed that snowballs had to be thrown at each and every girl that dared pass our street after a snowstorm. Along the way I started playing cards and dice for pennies, and started smoking when I was eleven (and getting a heck of a walloping with a leather strap when my Mom learned about it).

These, and the many other bad influences that I came into contact with on the streets were offset by my home life. Home was always a clean, tidy place. Mom always saw to it that we had the best of food – and plenty of it. She also saw to it that we had clean shirts and socks each morning and a bath every evening before bed. My homework was given a thorough going over each evening, and if it didn’t meet up to my parents’ expectations than I would be up an hour earlier than usual, to do it over again, on the following morning. If I needed any special help with my studies my parents tutored me.

Up to the time of their deaths my grandparents lived in the immediate neighborhood and they influenced the many religious rituals and customs we observed at home. At about the age of eight I began attending Hebrew school after regular school hours and continued until the time of my confirmation, which took place when I was thirteen. I attended the Sabbath services at the neighborhood synagogue on frequent occasions and all the high holidays when all my uncles would come from their own communities to observe the holiday services in my grandfather’s pew.

The month preceding the holidays was one that was spent buying new clothes. The evening of the holiday’s advent always saw my brother and I dressed in new outfits.

I was valedictorian when I graduated grade school at the age of eleven. My brother graduated with me at the age of ten. I took an examination for Stuyvesant High School, was enrolled there in the Fall of 1936, and I graduated in 1940. Attending Stuyvesant made it necessary to travel on a crowded bus each morning, but if the weather permitted I walked home, which meant that I would save a nickel for spending money.

As a child we spent our summers at either the seashore or the summer resorts located within a few hours travel of the city. About the time I was ten I began going to camp for the summer vacations. At first I went to the settlement house camps, then after being inducted into the Boy Scouts I began to attending the Ten Mile River Camps. While at Camp Manhattan (one of the camps for scouts from Manhattan) I was patrol leader, which meant I was in charge of my bunk. Each year, two Canadian scouts visited our camp in exchange for two of our boys who went up to their camp over those two weeks. The honor of having Canadian scouts as visitors amongst them fell to the best bunk of the best tribe in the camp. Competition for this honor was keen during the four weeks proceeding the coming of the guests. For two of the three years that I attended the scout camps my bunk had the honor of having the Canadian scout live with us. One of the biggest thrills of my life took place while at the scout camps – my induction into the Order of The Arrow – A secret scout honor fraternity. You are eligible for induction if you get enough votes cast in a secret ballot by your fellow campers.

The following year my interests began to focus more on girls and social functions; so I went to a co-ed camp where I worked as a waiter and had my evenings free to attend to social dances, rowing at night, campfires and blanket parties.

My best activity in high school was swimming, and I swam breast stroke on the Stuyvesant varsity team. I was a member of the Camp Manhattan Swimming Team for three years, during which time we went undefeated in all competitions with the other boroughs’ camps. One day I was put up against three other swimmers, one of them a boy about three years older than me and over a head taller. When I saw this fellow get on the line I looked back at my coach and said, “What am I supposed to do against HIM?” My coach just waved me on and said, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to be afraid of him. You can beat him.” He had more confidence in my ability than I ever hoped to have at that moment. Once the race started I tried not to think about the intimidating big guy, I just swam. When I made my turn I was surprised to see him first coming up about 10 yards behind! I practically loafed on the last lap and had plenty of time to sit on the pier’s edge and watch him make his touch. From that time on I didn’t let the size of those pitted against me disturb my confidence in what I undertook.

While in high school I had decided to take a course of study that would help me qualify for a position as an Industrial Arts Teacher. My parents approved of my decision, as did one of my shop teachers at Stuyvesant with whom I had discussed the matter. He thought I had the mechanical ability and mental capacities necessary for this type of training. This evaluation was made after he had looked at my records and from his observations while I was studying under him.

When I started going with girls I ran into some parental objections. My folks had set some high ideals for me to strive for. But it seemed to them that I often “ran around” with girls of doubtful respectability, at least according to the reports that reached my parents’ ears. At that time I wanted to go with these girls regardless of what people said about them. “Forbidden fruit is the sweetest,” someone once said. After inquiry and evaluation my folks told me that they were pretty comfortable that I wouldn’t do anything “out of the way,” but they were concerned about the influences of these girls on me. Of course they worried that I might carry on an affair and that it could get me in trouble.

For awhile, I took my love affairs “underground”. I had some clandestine meetings with the girls, but in spite of it all I always had behaved more-or-less like a gentleman. When my parents learned that I was still seeing first this and then that girl that they had disapproved of, I got quite a talking to from both of them. When I still refused to promise not to see the girls anymore, my parents decided that my allowance should be cut off. But I eventually found a new “love interest” they found more acceptable, and my allowance was resumed.

I turned sixteen years old during my first semester at New York University in 1940, and most of my schoolmates were two to five years my senior. It was a little difficult at first to try to add anything to their bull sessions – which centered mostly on their manly abilities (that’s a nice way to state it) - while my topic of interesting discussion was more about the batting averages of this or that major league ball player. Occasionally I would ask a question, but it was usually answered with, “Oh! You don’t have to know about such things yet – You’re still a kid. When you get a little older you’ll find out.” (I did get older – and I did find out.)

The invasion of Pearl Harbor happened during my sophomore year. After that, some of the boys in my classes enlisted, other got their “Greetings!” in the mail, and the remainder spoke about what branch they would eventually go into when they were called. I had just turned seventeen and there was still almost a year before I would have to report to my draft board. But each passing month saw the classes getting smaller and smaller, until in 1943 I was amongst the students who were missing from their customary seats at NYU.

I dreamed great dreams for myself in the period between my army induction and my arrival at Camp Upton. I was in the army a bit less than 36 hours when my dreams came tumbling down, as I was rudely awakened at 3 am, marched with half closed eyes to a mess hall about a mile’s distance by a “five-day general” – that’s a man who entered the army five days before you did and he tells you what to do –, and worked my first KP until 10 pm that night when we were finally permitted to return to our barracks.

About a week later, as some new hopes gathered in my mind on the basis that I was going to training in California, any further positive expectations of army life and its associations were forever smashed when my platoon sergeant, a red-faced Irishman from Chicago said:

“Men, after 5 o’ clock I don’t want to know you and you don’t want to know me. Don’t try to get on my good side by offering to buy me a beer when you see me in the PX for I’m liable to throw it in your face. And, when you address me remember, I have a title. If you forget this last part you’re liable to find yourself doing an extra day’s KP on Sunday. That’s all! You have 5 minutes to change into fatigues and leggings”.

With this last remark he stepped outside the barracks and blew the last whistle for everyone to fall in! I don’t think 30 seconds had passed out of the supposed 5 minutes. It was a motley crew that stood before him before we fell in, and we took another terrific dressing down before he let us in to make the required change of uniform. From then on I had realistic view of the army and all that it subjected me to.

I finally finished my Infantry training at Camp Roberts and left California in December of ’43 for Ohio State University, where I was to take engineering under the Army Specialized Training Program. I got a three day pass for Christmas, which allowed me 36 hours at home. Until that Christmas I never knew how comfortable and wonderful it was to be home and with my parents. I was loved, honored and respected; in the army I was more-or-less nothing but a number.

In Europe we stopped being a slave for our jeeps, and we let them get muddy and battered. The lieutenants warmed up a bit toward us. Maybe because they had heard of officers meeting untimely deaths of dubious nature. They even asked the lowly GI to call them by their first name. They were actually getting civil. They didn’t chew you up and down for having mud on the underside of your mudguards!

As the allied armies drove the Germans up the Rhone river in a routing, the valley lay littered with devastated hulks of the battered German war machine. In the Fall, everyone was sure we’d be home for Christmas (1944). The Christmas present the Germans threw at us sobered us somewhat after the heady French wines we had been drinking at our fast pace into Alsace. I didn’t bother to stay up and greet the new year (1945) – I was glad to get a little sleep for the Germans were giving us quite a celebration at the time. The war seesawed for a while until we got back on our feet and started the last long drive that ended with our victory.

In this summary I have passed over the war rather hurriedly but there are certain events that I still remember, for they’ve been etched with a strong acid in my mind.

In February, 1945 we liberated a number of “Kriegies” (Prisoners of War) when we took Hammelburg, amongst them General Patton’s son-in-law. For the most part these men were captured during the Bugle. I was shocked to see how they had wasted away in two months as prisoners. There was one lieutenant who screamed every time he saw a railroad freight car, after he had ridden countless freight cars while a prisoner. The Germans had a practice of locking the Kriegies in the cars and transporting them by day. Our planes would strafe the rail lines each time they saw a moving train, and unfortunately many of our men were killed in this manner.

The Saturday night proceeding Easter Sunday we moved into a small city south of Darmstadt. At 7 in the evening we gave the people living in a designated block an hour to move out. At 8 pm we went in and drove the remaining Germans out of their homes at gunpoint. Old, young, healthy, crippled, sickly, they left their homes for wherever they could find a place to sleep. I held some pity for them, but I thought of Hammelburg and how our prisoners had been treated, and my pity melted.

In May, with the war in its last throes, I went to the concentration camp at Dachau. The stench of the dead and dying cover the area. It was difficult to look at the shells of what had been complete human beings. Their guant faces, their bulging eyes, their broken bodies forced tears to my eyes. I went through the murder factory and found it unbelievable that such things existed. I got to the basement where there were two barrels of human ashes.

I remained in Germany until the winter (1945-6) when the point system finally caught up to me. I had alternatives of going home or to the University of Basel in Switzerland. I took the latter and, if nothing more, learned quite a bit about the Swiss people, customs, and skiing. I left the continent in April 1946, arriving home by Easter.

While in the service I didn’t give much thought to my career. Most thoughts were directed to the day I could throw off the military yoke and revert to being a “free man.” Regaining the ways of a civilian after my three years in the service, I continued to possess a desire to teach Industrial Arts. In fact, I believe it stronger now than before, perhaps it has received nourishment from all the evils that I have witnessed. Another “good” that I received from my military service (in spite of everything) is my ability to take orders from someone above me, and refrain from any tendency I might have to say “go to hell and do it yourself.” A large amount of self control just didn’t come along with my natural temperament.

- Seymour Schuman

New York University Summer 1946