Disciplines

Jewish Studies

Abstract

This interviewee looks back very fondly on his childhood growing up in the Bronx. His parents came to America from Poland in the early 1950s after being in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and settled in a one bedroom apartment on University Avenue off of Kingsbridge road. He recounts a diverse neighborhood, growing up not just around other Jewish people but people from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and of many religious backgrounds as well.

He remembers playing stickball, baseball, and other games on the concrete sidewalk, stating how he and his friends were happy, as “when you're a child and that's all you know, then it is what it is.” He remembers seeing the Beatles the first time they were on TV, though most of the music he listened to at home growing up was Broadway showtunes which were his mother’s favorite.

Amazingly, his middle school, junior high school, high school, and college, were all on the same street in the Bronx. He attended P.S. 86, Junior High School 141, Bronx High School of Science, and Hunter College. He found Bronx High School of Science a very enjoyable time, telling how he went to high school with most of the same people he had gone to middle school with so was able to keep most of his friends, as well as having time to work in a local pharmacy after school and on the weekends. After attending Hunter College as a commuter student where he studied communications, he went on to teach college courses for a short time in the Midwest, then returned to New York City for the rest of his career. He says he and most of his friends growing up were not particularly observant in their Judaism, but rather were “culinary Jews,” meaning that traditional Jewish foods were pretty much the extent of their Judaism.

Keywords: Bronx, family history, displaced persons, University Avenue, diverse neighborhood, childhood memories, showtunes, public school, Bronx High School of Science, Hunter college, career, Jewish life, Holocaust, Jewish deli, New York City

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