DEUTSCH:

. . . the password is Tietz, Tietz.

SIGRIST:

Can you spell that?

DEUTSCH:

I think it's T-I-E, Tietz, T-Z, I think, Tietz. Pesce[ph], see? Pesce[ph], Tietz.

SIGRIST:

Spell pesce[ph].

DEUTSCH:

You have a Tietz over here?

SIGRIST:

Spell . . .

DEUTSCH:

In this town? It's the same thing.

SIGRIST:

Please spell pesce[ph] for me.

DEUTSCH:

Pesce[ph]?

SIGRIST:

Yeah.

DEUTSCH:

That's the Hebrew name.

SIGRIST:

Right. How do you spell that?

DEUTSCH:

P, it's a P, you know a P? Pesce is an S and a summat[ph], you know? You come downstairs, I'll show you the word pesce[ph] there in Hebrew, you know. You go downstairs, I'll show you. It's written there, the word pesce[ph], so you'll have it. Teitz is not there, but pesce[ph] is there on the board.

SIGRIST:

Let me just say for the sake of the tape that Mr. Deutsch came to this country for the first time when he was five years old, returned to Russia roughly ten years later or so, and then came back to this country when he was eighteen or nineteen years old.

DEUTSCH:

That's right, yeah.

SIGRIST:

Can we begin, Mr. Deutsch, by you giving me your date of birth on tape, please?

DEUTSCH:

My date of birth? Yeah, sure, you can get it, you know.

SIGRIST:

What is it? Can you say it for me, please?

DEUTSCH:

What, 1902, you know.

SIGRIST:

Yes, what month and day?

DEUTSCH:

What month, April the 15th.

SIGRIST:

April 15, 1902.

DEUTSCH:

1902, yeah.

SIGRIST:

Can you tell me, Mr. Deutsch, where you were born in Russia?

DEUTSCH:

I was born in a town named Kletzk[ph]. You see, on the passport I got the name, and I got everything on there, you understand? That's why I want the passport, you understand?

SIGRIST:

Let me say for the sake of the tape . . .

DEUTSCH:

Even my birthday, my birth might be a little bit different there, you see? But, you see, why, because it's different a little bit, you know, the birth, that's why I want my daughter to give me that, there's more facts to be gotten out of that.

SIGRIST:

Well, we can, we can get those facts later. Can you tell me where in Russia that town is?

DEUTSCH:

That town is, I know it's a small town, but I don't know where it is. Did you ever hear of Minsk Governia[ph]? Minsk? Well, that's the, that's the town that represents the whole state, like here like Trenton, you see, where the governor sits there.

SIGRIST:

Do you have any memories of Russia before you were sent to America when you were five?

DEUTSCH:

Before I was sent to America?

SIGRIST:

Yes.

DEUTSCH:

Sure, I have a lot of memories.

SIGRIST:

Not when you came back later, but before you left when you were five.

DEUTSCH:

Before.

SIGRIST:

Tell me what you remember about growing up in . . .

DEUTSCH:

I remember from, when I was five I came here. Naturally, I was a baby.

SIGRIST:

What do you remember before you were five, in Russia? Do you remember anything?

DEUTSCH:

No, I was too young.

SIGRIST:

Okay. Tell me why you were sent to America when you were five?

DEUTSCH:

I'll tell you why. My father went away from the army. The, you know, the Russian Army with the, uh, the Japanese Army was fighting at that time. He was a soldier in the Russian Army, you know, and he didn't want to stay there, and he came over here in 1905, my father. Then after a couple, two years more, so he took my mother and three boys up, you understand, three brothers. And they were all, and both, two boys are on the passport, and one has his own passport. Now they're both dead, so no use talking about that.

SIGRIST:

What was your father's name?

DEUTSCH:

My father's name was Benjamin Deutsch.

SIGRIST:

And can you tell me a little bit about what he was like as a person?

DEUTSCH:

He was a person, he was working all in the same kind of a job that I'm doing. I was doing electrical work.

SIGRIST:

But, I mean, what was his personality like? What was he like as, you know, what was his personality, his temperament?

DEUTSCH:

He was a very nice man, you know. He worked all his life like I done, you know?

SIGRIST:

What did he do for a living in Russia before he was in the Army?

DEUTSCH:

He was, he was working, you know, from, in Russia he was kind of an apprentice boy, see? Moving to another state, another town, another country, like, a little small, he was in Vilna, you know? You ever heard of the word Vilna? You know, that's the, that's where he was learning to become a tinsmith. My grandfather, he married my mother, you understand? Her father was a, what do you call it, not a tinsmith, but a coppersmith. He used to make, make dip tanks. You know the tanks that they put in oil in here, three thousand gallon tank? They're made out of copper, solid copper. I used to work with my grandfather there, see, at that time. And I told, I learned a lot of work through him, how to do things, you understand? And I was able to do a lot of things. I'm still now able to do a lot of things out of my head, you know?

SIGRIST:

What was your mother's name?

DEUTSCH:

Ethel.

SIGRIST:

And what was her maiden name, before she was married?

DEUTSCH:

Maiden name, that's, I don't know. Maiden name I don't know which way they called, whether it's Cooper or Kottler[ph], I don't know. This I don't remember. I can never get it in the papers, you understand? I don't know which to say. They bothered me all the time at the bank. Give me the name, the name. I said, "I don't know." ( he laughs )

SIGRIST:

Tell me . . .

DEUTSCH:

See, my grandfather was a coppersmith. He used to make all kinds of stuff, you know, by hand, everything by hand. Everything was blazing and everything. And I learned a lot of that.

SIGRIST:

Do you know how your parents met?

DEUTSCH:

How my parents met? I don't know if I know that, no. I don't know. I know that they met in the same city, you know. His father lived in the same city. My mother's father lived in the same, but a few blocks away, that's all. That's how they met there. And he was working there in Vilna, you know. He was learning a trade, being a, not a coppersmith, but a tinsmith. He learned a trade there. Then he, he got together with my mother, you understand, and her father was a, so he started to work for my, for my grandfather, and learned to be a coppersmith.

SIGRIST:

Did your father ever talk about being in the army, and what that experience was like for him?

DEUTSCH:

He, all I know, he ran away from there. That's all I heard. I never, I never saw him. I have a picture of him, being in the army, you know, in the Russian Army. You understand? But that's also by my daughter, you know?

SIGRIST:

But he never talked about that experience at all.

DEUTSCH:

No, he never talked about that, no.

SIGRIST:

Yeah.

DEUTSCH:

He never told me nothing about that he was in the army. He was in the army, but he never told what he done, when, this I don't know.

SIGRIST:

But you know he disliked it enough to want to get away.

DEUTSCH:

He disliked it because he had to run away because they were going to take him in the army. See, he was in the army, four years in the Russian army. And, naturally, if he wouldn't run away, he would be in the army again, and be in the war.

SIGRIST:

When he came to America to get away from the army, where did he go to live?

DEUTSCH:

Where did he go? Most, in New York, I think, mostly, you know. He brought a few dollars with himself, you know, and he lived and started to work. He had a, my father had an uncle, you know, in New York City. He was the first Jewish man to start the electrical business, you know, the fixture business. And he, he was a rich man. And he started to work for him, that's, in the same trade, you understand?

SIGRIST:

Now, when you came, when you were brought over as a youngster, did you come over with your mother?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, sure.

SIGRIST:

What do you remember about the experience of going to America when you were a kid?

DEUTSCH:

That's a long story. ( he laughs )

SIGRIST:

Well, tell it to us.

DEUTSCH:

That's, well, I was a small kid, you know. It's very hard to remember.

SIGRIST:

Well, do you have any memories of it, going over?

DEUTSCH:

All I know is we came here, you know, understand? I was a baby. My father put me into school over here, in Madison School, you know, and I started kindergarten, you know? That's all I can remember, you understand? But, uh, going, coming here, to this country, I have a lot more that I know what happened, you see? That I was a baby, so I don't know.

SIGRIST:

We'll we're, we're starting at the beginning, and we're working our way . . .

DEUTSCH:

I know. We went, I know. We went, we went on the boat. I don't know what boat it was when I came as a kid. I don't remember that boat. The boat I remember is when I came back.

SIGRIST:

Well, we'll talk about that when we get you back over there. Um, tell me a little bit about growing up in New York City. What do you remember about, about what New York was like in those days?

DEUTSCH:

In New York, when I was a kid, I lived in New York, too. I lived in Jersey. First we lived in New York, then we moved to New Jersey.

SIGRIST:

Why did you move?

DEUTSCH:

I don't know why he had to move. I don't know. Maybe he was looking for another job, you understand? There was no work or something, that fact I don't know. How it became, I don't know. Because I can't tell you, I don't know.

SIGRIST:

Well, tell me why they, why you went back to Russia?

DEUTSCH:

Why we went back? My mother took sick here, you understand? And the doctors told her that, her father was left alone. Her mother died, you understand? He had a big house, and he was doing the same kind of work my father used to do, and I was learning the same kind of work as, he taught me a lot of work. And my mother took sick here in New York, you understand? She went to doctors, she was in the hospitals. The doctors found out that she's sick, it's no good. The climate is no good for her over here. They suggested, my father, her father kept on writing letters, she should come, she's going to have the house, she's going to have the garden, she's going to have everything, because she was the only one left. There was two other sisters in the United States, older sisters, but he didn't care about them. But only my mother he wanted, you see? She was the youngest. And, naturally, we were three kids there. And when we came down there to see him, he was an old man, and he couldn't live by himself no more. He wanted somebody there to be able to take care of him a little bit.

DEUTSCH:

Well, how do you think your mother felt about having to leave America to go back to Russia?

DEUTSCH:

She, they told her, they told her to go back. The doctors told her, "The climate is better there for you." She came there in a certain time which, before the World War. Before, the World War started in 1914, you understand? And when we came there, she felt better. When the war started in 1915, she turned worse, sick there. In my town there I used to, get a doctor, a Polish doctor, and he used to treat her. And after that, you know, she took sick, and she died. In 1915, she died.

SIGRIST:

So did your father stay in America?

DEUTSCH:

He stayed in America, yeah.

SIGRIST:

So is he sending you money?

DEUTSCH:

He was sending us money to bring us here. You see, you understand, the sick. That was this, the time that we weren't here, never were here, but that's the first time we came here. He sent my mother money, you understand, and, for the kids, and we came over here, and that, we landed in New York somewheres. I don't know where, because I was a baby yet. I don't know where. I know one, I know, I remember when we landed for the second time coming here.

SIGRIST:

Well, tell me. When you went back to Russia, now, you've pretty much grown up in America. I assume you spoke English, probably.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah. I spoke English. I couldn't speak no Jewish. ( he laughs )

SIGRIST:

Well, how did you feel about going back to Russia? This was like going . . .

DEUTSCH:

I didn't know anything about Russia. You understand? Because I was a baby when I came here. You don't, it's very hard to realize what you go through. The only thing I know what I went through coming here, that what, I had a job coming here. It took me three full months to come here.

SIGRIST:

But I want to know how you adapted to Russia when you went back?

DEUTSCH:

When I went back I adapted, I was a greenhorn there.

SIGRIST:

You had to learn to speak a different language.

DEUTSCH:

I had to learn, I had to learn to speak, what do you call it, Jewish. I couldn't speak Jewish. I was talking, all my parents, I was talking to them in English. I didn't learn no Jewish. Then when I got older, they took a rabbi to me, you know, I started to, then I forgot the English. ( he laughs )

SIGRIST:

Tell me about the house that you lived in when you went back with your mother.

DEUTSCH:

The house? I lived with my grandma, grandfather's house. That's my mother's, you know, father, you understand? And then she died.

SIGRIST:

Can you describe the house for me, what it looked like.

DEUTSCH:

Describe? You know, describe. You know, I will recognize a European house, how it is?

SIGRIST:

Well, could you describe it for me in words, please?

DEUTSCH:

You know, it's an old house, you know, it's about, maybe seventy-five or eighty years old, an old house. You walk into a foyer, you know, it's made out of sand, you know? There's no floors, you know, it's sand. And, uh, you come in from there, you come into a room there, you know, where there's a big oven there. Let's say, a normal room, from here to there, you know, like a baker's oven. You ever see a baker's oven? That's what it is, and that's how they, they lived there. Then in the middle of the, of the place, there's a living room, like? See? Then they build another, a place to burn wood, you know?

SIGRIST:

Like a stove.

DEUTSCH:

All the way up to the ceiling, you know, made out of tile. You ever see tile? You know what tile is? Square tile, twelve inch in diameter, you know? That's what it is, and they build a whole, all four around, four pieces all around. And they have it built a certain way that the chimney would take away all that smoke, and all that, the fire and all that. And that's how you warmed yourself up, you know? Then there was another big stove, a big stove, you know? And they baked bread there in that house, on Friday they used to bake bread, all kinds of, and they used to prepare food for Saturday, and they used to use a, big pieces of wood, you know, you know, logs, you know. They pick them up and they burn them, then they give the heat. The thing was made half circle from bricks, you know, the top part, you know? You ever see a half circle? You ever see a window there with a half circle with bricks? That's the way the ceiling was made, from bricks. So it doesn't, it doesn't cave in, you understand? You know, they used to build a, a place, a big thing with boards, and make it half way around, like, you know, like a moon, half way around. And they, and they put the bricks on top of the wood, they build it, and then they take out the wood from underneath, and that's kept, kept up, and you could stay there for a thousand years like that. ( he laughs ) And that's the way we baked, and we ate, and we cooked.

SIGRIST:

Tell me, since you're talking about food and baking, what kinds of things did you eat when you lived in Russia?

DEUTSCH:

We ate everything like we eat here, you know.

SIGRIST:

What was, what was something, for instance, if your mother, or whoever did the cooking in the house . . .

DEUTSCH:

They did the baking, they done everything by themselves.

SIGRIST:

Do you remember them, how they baked bread?

DEUTSCH:

Sure.

SIGRIST:

Can you describe that for me, in words, how they baked bread?

DEUTSCH:

You know, you know how they make, they make flour over there?

SIGRIST:

Could you describe it, please?

DEUTSCH:

They use, they use black, it's all black bread, you know, you understand? And they, they buy, you know, what they call that, that makes it go up, you know? What do you call that word?

SIGRIST:

Yeast?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah. Huh?

SIGRIST:

Yeast?

DEUTSCH:

Yeast, yeah. Yeast, they used to put in yeast. My grandmother used to do it. My mother did, too. You understand? They used to put yeast, and they tried to put, a lot of flour, you know, black flour. And they used to work with their hands, you know, to mix it, you know? That's the way they worked. Then they worked it up, you know, to make a five-pound bread, a round bread. And they used to take it out and make it five, you know, a round bread, but it's black bread, five pounds. And they used to put five of the pieces in round, five-pound rounds, and put it into the stove, and it used to bake there for so many hours, you understand? Then they'd take it out, and you'd have, the bread was beautiful. Good to eat, very good, it was healthy bread, too.

SIGRIST:

Now, did you grow vegetables, also?

DEUTSCH:

We grew vegetables, yes. It was, we grew potatoes. We grew a lot of things. We grew, we grew a lot of things, you know? Potatoes, we had a garden, you know, maybe about three hundred, four hundred feet big, you know? A very big piece of land.

SIGRIST:

What was the typical Russian dinner? What was a typical dinner, an everyday dinner?

DEUTSCH:

A typical dinner is what? What do you think you eat, you eat, what do you call it, soup? You eat chicken sometimes, you don't have chicken all the time. Just on a Saturday you get that, you know? We have soup, and when we go to work in Russia, we start to work, we go to, first to, to pray in the synagogue. We get up four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock, we go pray there. After we come from the praying, we have, we go to work first. We work till about ten, eleven o'clock. Then we stop working, you know, we were bricklayers, masons, you know, building buildings, you know, foundations and buildings, all that kind of work we was doing. I was working there, my grandfather was working there, his, his son, my father, was here, you understand?

SIGRIST:

Did you have to make the bricks, or did you just place them?

DEUTSCH:

No, we, we had, we had bricks, regular bricks. And we made, and I had another uncle, that I made bricks. I, myself, was making bricks. And then we had a fabric.

SIGRIST:

How do you make bricks? Can you describe that for me?

DEUTSCH:

Made out of lime. You know what lime is? You know, dirt, you know, we had. We had a big fabric, making all kinds of things. Pots, and all kinds of, fancy things, you know? All that, that was a special fabric there. And my uncle used to be doing the, the stuff that used to put the, the clay on top of it, you spill it over, you know. And that burns there for a week or two, between, they have passages in, you see. One, the passage like that, and there's a passage this way, a passage this way. They used to make all kinds of pots, all kinds of different things. When you put them pots on, you put them in between so that the fire can go through in between this way and that way, see. And you burn that, that thing there. My grandfather used to sit there all night for two weeks, burn that till it got finished, you know, gets a gloss on it, and everything else. And then they'd make certain finishings, you know, for buildings, you know. You know, pieces like . . .

SIGRIST:

Detail work.

DEUTSCH:

Detail work, fancy work. All that came out from that fabric. I was working in that fabric place. I was making bricks outside, you know. I was a small boy at that time. I done all kinds of work. And then I went to work, you know, to my grandfather, you know, the coppersmith. So he learned me how to do all kinds of copper things to make, you know? We used to bring, it used to come Easter time, pesce, pesce, you know? They used to wipe, wipe them, you know, because they got to be clean inside, you know, so you, they took, put them on the fire, and then they take sand with the cement, not cement, sand, and take some special, special stuff like, uh, what do they call it, it's really strong, that stuff. I forgot what they call it in here, in this country. It's, uh, the, when they're clean bricks, you know, did you ever see the way they, they put on certain, I forgot the name of it. That's the stuff we used to use that takes off all the dirt. I used to use a stick, a broom, you know, make a point on it, and rub on it with your elbow until it got perfectly. Then we used to put it on the, on the fire, you know? They had a, a place where they, you know, when they blow this here? ( he laughs ) That's what they had there. They put, what do you call it, charcoal there, and heat that up, and used to whiten it inside, you know, whiten it, with cotton, you know. You know cotton? Not the regular cotton. The cotton that they grow in the fields. That's the kind of cotton they use. And they white it, and it used to come white. Like silver, you understand?

SIGRIST:

That's very interesting.

DEUTSCH:

Well, I know, this is . . .

SIGRIST:

That's hard work for a young man to do.

DEUTSCH:

That's hard work. It's a lot of work, you see. But I learned a lot of it.

SIGRIST:

I want to talk a little bit about your grandfather, actually. Did they live with you when you went back to Russia?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, when my mother died.

SIGRIST:

Okay. They . . .

DEUTSCH:

We lived, my mother and him together, you understand? When my mother died, naturally, she died with them, and he lived with us, the three of us, you understand.

SIGRIST:

Can you talk to me a little bit about when your mother died, what you remember about when she died and the funeral?

DEUTSCH:

I know, I know the year, I know the year that she died.

SIGRIST:

She died in 1915, you said.

DEUTSCH:

'15, yeah. She died on my hands.

SIGRIST:

Do you remember, do you remember, for instance, the funeral, if there was one, can you describe it for me?

DEUTSCH:

The funeral, there's nothing to describe there. Over there they, they walk with the body, you understand, they put them, they put them on boards, you understand, and they walk with the body with a horse. It's way outside of the city. And over there they bury you, you know, in wood. No coffins like here, you know, coffins. They take, you have wood, strips of wood, and they lay it alongside the edge, and they put pieces like that there, and they build it up that high, it's long, you know, you understand. And then they take boards on top of it and put it on, so that the dirt don't go down, you see. And then they put more dirt on, and they cover her, that's all. And they put a stone, a little stone, you know? You ever see the old stones, that's two hundred years old. You ever see them in New York in the cemeteries. That's the kind of a stone, you understand?

SIGRIST:

Now, do you know what she died of?

DEUTSCH:

This I don't know. This is, got to be from here, and I don't. I never, never remembered what she died of. She used to get, she had a little trouble with the heart.

SIGRIST:

Was she treated somehow? Would, did she take some kind of medication, or was . . .

DEUTSCH:

Oh, yeah. She took medication. I don't know what kind. See, there was a doctor in that same town, a Polish doctor. I had to call him all the time.

SIGRIST:

Well, that's a privilege in itself, isn't it, to have a doctor?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, yeah. He was a doctor, and he was a good doctor, too. But, uh, you know, he couldn't save her.

SIGRIST:

So when your mother died you went to live with your grandfather?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah. He lived, we went, we lived there anyway, see. But we went, see, so, my mother died, we buried her, and that's all. Then he started, I started to work with my grandfather, this one, my mother's father. And he taught me a lot of things, what to do, and all that.

SIGRIST:

What was your grandfather like as a person? What was his personality like?

DEUTSCH:

His personality was a very nice, a very strong man.

SIGRIST:

What did he look like? Can you describe him?

DEUTSCH:

The same height. He had a beard on himself, a white beard. And he used to sit by the thing there and work, on copper stuff, you know? He used to make things. He used to make pots. He used to do samovars. They used to fix them. Do you know what a samovar is? Huh?

SIGRIST:

Can you describe for us what a samovar is?

DEUTSCH:

( he laughs ) You know, they put coal in there, and they put water in there, you know? And they put in charcoal, make a fire, and it boils, the water starts boiling. And they have a faucet there, you know, a regular small faucet. They make hot water, hot tea. And that . . .

SIGRIST:

Is that a standard drink in Russia? Did everyone drink tea?

DEUTSCH:

That's, that's the best drink you can ever get. In the first place, we used, we don't use plain water. We use special water they bring from a, from a, a place where they have special water, like a, and they bring it, you buy it, see, you understand? You buy so much water, and you keep that water. Over there they don't have no, no place where to get water. There's no water in the house. You've got to go to the well there, and the well is a hundred foot deep, with a stick, with a pail. You bring it up, and you fill up another big pail, and two people carry it with a stick, you know? You know? A big thing, round here, made with pieces of, and you carry it that way, from there to, and it used to be, winter used to be terrible, you know?

SIGRIST:

Describe for me what winter is like in Russia. Did you get a long of snow, or?

DEUTSCH:

Oh, the snow is six, seven foot high at one time there. Yeah.

SIGRIST:

How would you get around when there was that much snow?

DEUTSCH:

It was no good to get around. ( he laughs ) We wore, we wore special boots with rags on your feet, and then put on certain, certain boots from, made out of, out of, uh, not leather, but it's like leather, you know. And you put it on, and you don't freeze so much. You just, you don't have, wear no socks. You just, you wrap the rags around your foot. That's the way, that's the way you lived. When you had, these things used to come out to (?). And that was kept warm your feet, better than the, and then in other places when you dressed, you had to dress, you wear boots, leather boots, like they have here, like the women have here, fancy ones. And they got plain ones.

SIGRIST:

Would you have a fancy pair for special occasions, or . . .

DEUTSCH:

No. Yeah, well, you had shoes . . .

SIGRIST:

If you had money you would have.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah. You have, if you had money you could buy it there. Not the shoemaker make them for you.

SIGRIST:

Tell me, tell me what you remember about the Russian Revolution, because that's all around this time.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah.

SIGRIST:

What memories do you have of that time period?

DEUTSCH:

My memory of the Russian Revolution, I remember, is it was that, it was the First World War, the soldiers were coming into our town, you understand, and they, when they saw some tomatoes on the windows, you know, from Russia, they couldn't believe where we get the tomatoes. They don't grow no tomatoes in here, you understand. They grow way up, up somewheres near Siberia somewhere's, up there they grow them. So they came in and bought by us all that stuff, you know. We had to give it away, too. Someone used to bake, and we used to give them bread, you know. And there were a lot of things we had to do because we were not the bosses. They were the bosses.

SIGRIST:

Were the soldiers rough . . .

DEUTSCH:

They were rough, yeah.

SIGRIST:

. . . with the people. What do you remember about the soldiers' behavior?

DEUTSCH:

They used to beat, beat you and everything else, you know. It was the pogroms there, you know. They used to steal the stuff from you. Come in and take out everything what you got in the drawers, and they beat you up yet, and everything else. I was beaten up many a times.

SIGRIST:

Can you tell me of one of those times?

DEUTSCH:

When I started to come, well, let me tell you about coming here, the United States, the second time, you understand.

SIGRIST:

All right.

DEUTSCH:

That's a long story.

SIGRIST:

Okay. Well, go ahead, we'll . . .

DEUTSCH:

You know, I, my mother died, we were left alone. He left us the house, my grandfather, you understand. He left us the house. We were left, three brothers. I had an uncle, my father's brother, and we took the house and sold the house, you know, to somebody else, you know, in the family, for a hundred and twelve thousand marks, you know, Polish marks. We got Polish, and we got, and I got a passport there that time. That's why I want to talk about the passport, made out to three brothers, you understand. And I had, I still had the passport, I still have my citizen papers. My father's papers I got, when he became a citizen. And, uh, I started to go, and then they had me arrested that night, you know. They took me on a, middle of the night, and they arrested me, and didn't, about four or five hundred people. I was the youngest between the whole bunch.

SIGRIST:

Why were you arrested?

DEUTSCH:

The communists were fighting with the Polish. They were there, the young fellows to be there. They didn't care whether you wore shoes or not shoes. They didn't let me put on my shoes or nothing, just a little blouse, that's all, without a hat, without anything. And they chased us in the nighttime, you know, all the way up to about three or four miles from the city, you know. And there was a big, a big barn there, you know, we used to carry, what do you call it, hay, or other foods, you know, so they didn't have no foods whatever, but they pushed us in there, about five hundred people. And they wouldn't leave us out to do duty or nothing. ( he coughs ) Go nowheres. Everybody, a mob, you know. So finally it came in the morning, twelve o'clock came by. My brother, my youngest brother next to me, brought me food to eat, twelve o'clock. And I was barefooted. He says to me, he says, "Take the pot," and I brought a pot, you know, a special pot with soup in there, "and eat, and go out. Walk out. Don't run. Just walk out." And he told it to me in Jewish, you know. And they didn't know what I was talking about, you see, you understand, because I didn't talk English, I didn't talk no Hebrew, I didn't talk no Russian, I talked it in Jewish. I took the pot, with the bare foot, and I walked by the soldiers there, they didn't know who I was. They thought I was my brother, the younger brother, see. And I walked out, and when I walked out, I started to run home, you understand? I ran all the way to home, you know? I run about four or five miles. When I came into the house, you know, "What are you doing here?" My grandfather says, the other grandfather, from my father's side. "What are you doing here?" I says, "I ran away from the army." No, I didn't stay long there, because I knew the army, the fight was going on at that time. And I wanted to go to the United States. I said to my grandfather, I says, "I'm getting out of here in a couple of days." I just took some clothes, you know, a change of clothes, that's all. Not many clothes. And I hired a wagon, you know, with a horse, and a fellow that lived near us there, he was going from one town to the next, from one town to the next, you understand, to take us. Because that train, you couldn't get on, because there was a war going on. So I hired, that night, that was, I think a Friday night, it was. And, uh, I called him over, and I went over, and as I come onto the wagon, who do I see? The doctor that's healing my mother sitting on the same, the same wagon going to a place. Where were they going? They're going to Bonevich[ph]. That's where the main stab[ph] is, you know, the main generals are there. He wanted to know what I should do, should I go away from the city or not. And then there was another of our person that sold us the, what do you call it, the medicine. He knew me, too. So both of them, I had to be driving all night long with this fellow. I knew that fellow, too. He brought us over there to that place, where the trains were there, but we couldn't get on the trains. Only soldiers were allowed, that's all. So I went and hired, I came to that down, Bonevich[ph], you know, they call, it's a bigger town. That's where they have trains there. It took us all night to travel there that much. I came there, and I didn't stop much. I looked for another fellow there to take me, with a horse and wagon, to take me to the next town. So I hired him, and he took me, we was riding all night. All night we were riding. Not during the day, during the night. And we stopped off in an inn there to get a bite sometimes, you know, to, maybe you want to urinate or something like that, you know? We were all day like that there. We were, for a whole week we were going around there like this here, till we came to a big city, you know, Bolkavisk[ph], a big, no, Bialistock.

SIGRIST:

Bialistock.

DEUTSCH:

Bialistock. Bolkaviska[ph] is a smaller town there. I kept going from one town to the next, from one town to the next, all day long. Then we managed, somehow, to come. The last place was Bialistock, you know? It's a big city. So we stayed there for a whole week, you understand? And they have it in there, they arrested every day. Every day they arrested me. They says, "Why don't you want to go to the army? What are you, running away from the army?" END OF SIDE ONE BEGINNING OF SIDE TWO

SIGRIST:

This is probably happening all over Russia, right? They want to get the young men into the . . .

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, yeah. I had to get to, I had to get to Warsaw in order to get an English passport, an American passport, I had to come to Warsaw. You know, so I stayed in that city, that, Bialistock, you know, and I was there for one week. They kept on bothering me and bothering me until finally I got out of there. So I got myself a train to go to Warsaw. It took us overnight, you understand, to get to Warsaw. In Warsaw, when I come, so I came off. I looked where I can get a place to live there, trying to find out, pay a, you know, pay the money for, to live with my two brothers. I found a woman there, she took us in. We had, we went outside to eat, you know, at the restaurants all the time. And, uh, we went, every morning we went to stay there in line, you know, to get our passports. For a month, for a whole month, we couldn't get the passport, every day. Both, the three of us, the three boys. How are we going to get out? We can't get no passports. There was a lot of people there, a lot of people, a lot of Jewish people there. And finally my uncle, I had an uncle in here, in this country, sent somebody over to get us out and get us a passport to Warsaw. He came to Warsaw, and he started calling our name, you know, "Where's the Deutsches?" You understand? And we had the passports in our hands. He says, "Give me the passports." He said, "Never. You stay here." He went up to the, to the American, he brought down the passports, you know, fixed up already and everything. We paid him ten dollars for the passports, and the minutes I got the passport, I didn't wait five minutes, because I knew I was going to be arrested again. I went and I hired a horse and a little, you know, not a wagon, but it's like, like in the park, you know, in Central Park.

SIGRIST:

A carriage.

DEUTSCH:

A carriage, you know, it's a fancy carriage. So I hired, and they took me all the way over to the, to the train, you know. But the train, I was afraid to go. I didn't want to go with the train, because they were going to stop me after, what do you call it, where they put you on, to go, not to go, you can't cross the, the place. So I went and I find myself a German boat, swing them in there, you know? It took us eighteen hours to get from that place to go to Danzig, you know. ( he laughs ) In Danzig we get off the boat, and we got into the town, but they wouldn't let you stay in town. You had to go into a place where it was special for the, for these people but, you know, you had to live there. Not, so, we got off there. We lived there for two weeks. And then we started to go further. We had to go every day to bathe, and they gave us to eat, and everything. I had enough money for myself. I had enough money for my, for me, for my brother, for the three of us, because I took the, and when we came, we went away from Danzig, you know, we went to Antwerp, you know, to Belgium. Over there, you know, it was already different, you know? It's not Germany.

SIGRIST:

Wait, before we get to Antwerp, when you were in this place where everyone was staying in Danzig, were you inspected at all? Or did you have to undergo . . .

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, we had, every day we had to go boil off our clothes. We had to go inside there, in hot water, every day, until we got out from Danzig.

SIGRIST:

So this was a place where people were held until they could go . . .

DEUTSCH:

Held, yeah, they wouldn't let them go. Other people wouldn't, they wouldn't let them go. They wouldn't, if you want every day to go to, to, in hot, boiling water, like, with a spray, you know. You had to go every day.

SIGRIST:

Well, and so many people are trying to leave at this point, too.

DEUTSCH:

They can't leave if they don't clean themselves, you know? A lot of girls, you know what they done? They, it nearly killed them with that, they used to delouse them and everything else, you know? We had the same thing, too. We were all loused up, you know? We came to Belgium. You know, we had a place there with the, these people, from Danzig.

SIGRIST:

Did you take a boat from Danzig to Antwerp, or a train?

DEUTSCH:

I took a boat. I took a, the boat was Schwindaminda[ph]. See? The name of the boat was Schwindaminda[ph].

SIGRIST:

Can you say that slowly?

DEUTSCH:

Schwindaminda[ph]. That's a German name.

SIGRIST:

Can you spell that?

DEUTSCH:

It's hard to spell. ( they laugh ) Schwinda[ph], here, Schwinda[ph] . . .

SIGRIST:

Schwinda[ph] meaning wind.

DEUTSCH:

Minda, no minda. Schwindaminda[ph]. You see? That's just a plain word. Not, but I went in that boat so they, I went on the German boat. They gave me a special passport there to come to, to Antwerp. We came to Antwerp, so we had, we had tickets. We had, not, tickets we didn't have, but we bought tickets to go to the boat to England, you understand? I went, I went there, and we bought tickets. I had (?) with the card, you know? I bought three tickets, and we went there, we stayed there a couple of days, a week, almost. Then we went out to another place.

SIGRIST:

And you think this is right after the end of World War One, right after the war ended?

DEUTSCH:

The war was still going on, you know?

SIGRIST:

The war was . . .

DEUTSCH:

Because I came here, it was just ended, you know, when I came here. I came here, it took us three months to go hold us to, you know, that place. It was terrific, terrible. And then I, I went to, from Antwerp, I bought tickets there, and I went away from there. I used to also, every day I had to go bathe, burn your clothes and heat it, and everything else, delouse you, and everything, but they didn't do that. And we suffered. We slept on the floor. We didn't have no place to sleep, so we slept on the floor. And we went away from there, and we went, we went to Dover. You know Dover? You go to England, from Dover you go to England. You know, that's also quite a ride there. We came there, we paid tickets, and we came, from Dover we came to England. And then when we went off the boat to England they pushed, they pushed us in, you know where, where the docks are there, you know, the English, in England. They didn't give us a room, a place there to bring in small children, all kinds of children. So we stayed there two weeks. Finally, and they, they kept on taking our tickets and giving it to somebody else, you know, the English, you understand? They wouldn't let us go. Finally we made up somehow, we got the tickets, and we had to go away to get onto the boat. The boat was, you know, in the, in the, far away from there, in a certain place. I forgot the name of that, that place. I think it was, the boat, I remember, was Adriatic. It's an English boat, yeah. And, uh, at that time, from England, they kept us there in that there place, dirty places and everything. Everything was chaos and everything. I don't know.

SIGRIST:

And you stayed for two weeks in England.

DEUTSCH:

Two weeks there, yeah, in England. But we had to get onto the boat. We couldn't get on. They kept on using up our time for somebody else. Finally we got out, we got the tickets, and got onto the boat. Got onto the boat. Thinking about that name from the, from that place where I landed on that boat, uh . . .

SIGRIST:

There were several places.

DEUTSCH:

South . . .

SIGRIST:

Southampton?

DEUTSCH:

Southampton, yeah. See, now I remind myself, Southampton. So much to remember, you know? Southampton.

SIGRIST:

So that's where the Adriatic left off.

DEUTSCH:

That's where the Adriatic was there, see? It was an old boat. It was a very old boat. We went off there from Southampton, and we started to go, you know? On the ocean, you know? We started to go, I took sick. I took sick. I started to vomit, and I couldn't stop. ( he laughs ) My brothers was all right. They felt good. I couldn't eat no food, and I got sick. And we kept on going, an old boat, you know, it took us fourteen days to go across the ocean.

SIGRIST:

Where did you sleep in the boat? Where . . .

DEUTSCH:

We were down in the third, in the third grade. All the way down.

SIGRIST:

What did it look like?

DEUTSCH:

What do you look, what do you, they give you an old, you know, a piece, a little, you know, bed, a small bed, and you sleep there. What do you think, everybody a little bit, like a bunk, you know? That's what it is. Nothing fancy in there, you know. It's a terrible thing to come to the United States like this. Finally, the boat was finished. We was riding fourteen hours on the boat.

SIGRIST:

Fourteen days.

DEUTSCH:

Fourteen days, yeah. Fourteen days, and a big storm came there, a real big one. The boat was going up like this, all the way up in the air, and all the way down. Everybody got sick. ( he laughs ) Terrible. Everybody kept vomiting. And you're not, you wasn't allowed to stay on the deck. I stayed on the deck for a long while, you know, I couldn't stay inside. That boat was going for two days like that there, up and down, like this here. Then when we came to a, what do you call it, to Ellis Island, naturally we came into, I don't know where we landed in Ellis Island. I know the boat let us off there in Ellis Island, and we went in there. My father was waiting for us there, and he, and I wrote him a letter. I said he shouldn't, they shouldn't spell my name Deutsch, because I got on my passport Teitz. He didn't do it. He didn't get the letter or nothing, and we were all around there, couldn't get my father, I couldn't find him, for three days. And my brother, my youngest brother, was born in the United States, you know. He had a, he had a birth certificate. He lost the birth certificate on the way, you know? ( he laughs ) He was a young kid.

SIGRIST:

So you stayed overnight for three days at Ellis Island.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, for three days.

SIGRIST:

What do you remember about sleeping overnight at Ellis Island?

DEUTSCH:

I don't remember the beds, even. ( he laughs ) There were so many people at that time. Oh, thousands of people in there. They kept on asking us what we can read, what we, how the eyes are good, and they examined the eyes. And they examined, my brother, they gave a lot of trouble. On account of him we had to stay back.

SIGRIST:

Why? What was wrong with him?

DEUTSCH:

They say he's got to, they claimed he's got a, what do you call it, American citizen, American born. Where's your, where's your birth certificate? They couldn't produce it. You understand? Because we lost it. No, finally, they didn't want to let them out, let him out, you know. On account of him, we had to wait. Finally we got, somehow we got, he couldn't, they asked him to read. Because he was a young boy, he couldn't read good. They asked me to read, I read Jewish, so I, and the other one read Jewish, so that was all right, we passed. Him, they wouldn't let him go through. We had the passport all the time, and a different name they gave him, and everything else. I had a lot of trouble. I had a lot of trouble.

SIGRIST:

And you didn't remember any of your English at this point?

DEUTSCH:

No, I didn't talk no English.

SIGRIST:

You didn't speak English any more.

DEUTSCH:

I didn't. I spoke, I was able to write Jewish and read Jewish, yes, but that's all they need. They don't need no more. Well, finally, in the third day, you know, my father was found there, you understand. Because I told them that my name was different in the passport, and he's claiming me a different name. I says there's going to be trouble. I knew I'm going to have trouble. But I wrote him, and he didn't get it. No. He came the third day, he brought me forty dollars. So the people in Ellis Island says, "We want forty dollars for these boys, to let them out." So he took out the forty dollars, and he paid. And we came off Ellis Island, and he took us to an uncle of mine in New York City.

SIGRIST:

Did you remember what your father looked like?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, I have a picture of him, not here. But my daughter has a picture of him.

SIGRIST:

But, I mean, at that time, you know, you knew you had to meet your father, but did you know what he looked like, or . . .

DEUTSCH:

I knew, I figured out what he looked like, because I was coming the second time, so I knew him already.

SIGRIST:

But it had been a number of years.

DEUTSCH:

He had a moustache, he had a moustache here, you know. Beautiful. He was a good looking man, too. And us three boys he's got in the same picture with my mother and him. I still got the picture in my daughter's house, you know.

SIGRIST:

Had you been in communication with him all the time that you were in Russia, like when your mother died, had he been writing letters?

DEUTSCH:

I used to write letters to him. But I didn't need his money, you understand? He, I asked him to send me money, so once in a great while he sent me a couple of dollars. Not enough money, you understand? And we didn't need the money to get through, because we, I was working, you understand, for my uncles, and we had enough food to eat for all of us. And my grandfather did, the one that, my mother's father, he died afterwards, and we had to go to the other, the other grandfather, you know, with my grandmother, and we lived over there. Because this house, this we sold, you see, you understand. We had to sell it in order to get ourself a passport and all that. We went through a lot of trouble.

SIGRIST:

So money really wasn't a problem for you?

DEUTSCH:

No, money, money wasn't a problem, because I brought twenty-five dollars here, and gave it to my father, you understand? We had all our money. I had a hundred and twelve thousand, you know, that's Polish money. That brought, in American money, over a thousand dollars.

SIGRIST:

Well, how did you feel about seeing your father again?

DEUTSCH:

Oh, I knew him. I knew him. When I, I remembered him, see?

SIGRIST:

But, I mean, was this something you were looking forward to be seeing him again?

DEUTSCH:

Sure, yeah, sure. He had no wife. My mother died, it was about thirteen years. So he went and got himself another woman, you know, he was going to marry. He didn't marry her then, her, but, until we came, you understand? Till the three of us came. He hired a, what, a place to live, the three of us, you know, and him, and her, and, uh, she was a sick woman.

SIGRIST:

The first night that you were in America again where did your father take you?

DEUTSCH:

They took us to, they took us, an aunt to us, my mother's, my mother's sister, all, the three of us, you know.

SIGRIST:

And how did you spend that first night?

DEUTSCH:

The first night we slept there by her, that's all. My uncle had a, a business, you know? See, the same kind of business, electrical business, a store, on Springfield Avenue, 82 Springfield Avenue.

SIGRIST:

In New York?

DEUTSCH:

In Newark.

SIGRIST:

Oh, in Newark.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah. And he had a store, and he told me, he says, after a couple of weeks, "You're going to work for me." All right, so I started working. I was a, I got fourteen dollars a week, you know? And I was working already. My father was doing the same kind of work. Not here, but in another place, for another company. I worked for that company forty-seven years, you know? And he worked there, but they fired him when, when it came in the bad time, you know, in '39? They fired him. He worked thirteen years there. But then after a while, after the war started, you know, over here, in the Second World War.

SIGRIST:

The Second World War.

DEUTSCH:

I worked in the, the shipyards.

SIGRIST:

Tell me how you learned English when you came back to America.

DEUTSCH:

I learned, I went to school, night school. I went to Morton Street Night School, you know,

SIGRIST:

Can you describe for me what going to night school was like, I mean . . .

DEUTSCH:

It was very good.

SIGRIST:

How did they go about teaching you English?

DEUTSCH:

Oh, I caught it on very fast.

SIGRIST:

But how did they teach you? How . . .

DEUTSCH:

They taught me like every other child. Yeah. I learned at night school, because I was a grown-up already, see? My brothers went to day school. I wouldn't go because I had to work, you see, so I went to night school.

SIGRIST:

Did you get the job right away when you got here?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, a couple of weeks. My, my uncle, yeah. So he paid me. And when I started working for him, I started to go on jobs, you know what I mean? And he liked the way I do the work. He says, "Oh, you're a good mechanic." And that's the way I came here, you understand, the second.

SIGRIST:

And what was different in this country from Russia? What was . . .

DEUTSCH:

Over here was like day and night. You know, I remember when they, what do you call it, the tubes were made, the Hudson tubes.

SIGRIST:

Oh, what do you remember about that?

DEUTSCH:

I remember when the Hudson tubes went, and the Holland Tunnel, all those things I remember. We used to go with the water, go to New York with the little, I got a little car at that time, I used to take them over there to New York, go to, all over. I used to go to Coney Island that way, you know, all with the boats. I went all over.

SIGRIST:

Now, what did your brothers do once you got here?

DEUTSCH:

They, they went to school.

SIGRIST:

One of them was quite young.

DEUTSCH:

One was quite young. We went to school. The other one went to school, too. But I was working.

SIGRIST:

Are you the oldest of the three brothers?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, I'm the oldest of three brothers.

SIGRIST:

What are the names of the other two brothers?

DEUTSCH:

Sidney and Max.

SIGRIST:

Is Max the youngest?

DEUTSCH:

Max is the youngest, yeah. He died, my brother Sidney died two years, two years younger than I was. But he died, uh, about, it was about, what, seventeen or eighteen years ago.

SIGRIST:

I see.

DEUTSCH:

My brother, the other one, the younger one, he died about seven years ago or something like that. I was six years younger than him, than the youngest. And, uh, I, I made myself do.

SIGRIST:

Talk to me about your father. You said he remarried to a sickly woman.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, a sickly woman.

SIGRIST:

Talk to me a little bit about that.

DEUTSCH:

He married out this woman. He didn't know what, what, uh, fall, you know, what do they call that sickness that you drop and you don't know where you are? Uh, you don't know, you fall and you foam, foam from your mouth, and she had that sickness, you know. They call it, in Jewish they call it fallicke[ph], you know? I don't know how to say it in English, you understand? I don't know how to say it, how they call it in English. They have a certain word for it.

SIGRIST:

Did you like this woman? I mean, how did you feel about her?

DEUTSCH:

No, no. I didn't like this woman. She wasn't a true mother, a second, she didn't like us, and we didn't like her, you understand?

SIGRIST:

So it was mutual, then, at least.

DEUTSCH:

So most of the time we ate outside, I ate outside. I ate in a restaurant. I didn't want to come in. But finally, you know, she died, you know, she suffocated. She put her face in the pillow, on a Saturday morning, and she suffocated, she couldn't breathe no more. And there was another kid came, a brother, a half brother, you know? He was about seven or eight years old, and he had to go into a, what do you call it, into a different home, you know, for young kids, you know, because we couldn't take care of him. My wife was, I had, I married a, you know, and I had my own children, you understand? So we suffered like that, you know? We didn't have, and that time was the terrible, terrible time, in 1929 we couldn't get no, no work. I couldn't get my work, I couldn't make five dollars a day, you know. The money was taken out, closed up, all the monies in the banks.

SIGRIST:

You'd already been here for some time by then.

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, yeah, sure. All the money was closed up. Roosevelt closed it up. We couldnt get no money. Finally, I lived in a place, I had to pay rent, and I go to the bank on a Saturday morning, I had money, I had enough, I had about five thousand dollars there, I wanted to pay thirty dollars rent, you understand. I go to the bank, I tell my wife, I said, "The bank is closed, so we'll get Monday." She says, "That's, the bank is closed for good." ( he laughs ) It's break up. You know? Finally what we do, Hoover was president at that time, and I worked in a certain job, you understand, and, uh, I couldn't get, I couldn't get my rent paid. You know, I couldn't get my money. They said the money will be good. The money was paid out later, in interest and everything, but it took ten years to get it. I had a lot of trouble. And I worked, then the war came, and I couldn't get no job no more, so I went in the shipyard, you know. I worked in, what do you call it, in Bayonne, in the shipyard there. I worked for a couple of years there. And I was, they liked me there. I was a, this foreman used to give me all of the work. If something is wrong, used to keep me for night work, and I fixed the boat, and the boat would go out. Certain part was missing. And then he put me on the water, sometimes fixed lights there in the boats, in the end of it, you know? I had a lot of trouble. And that's about enough, I think, I told you. ( he laughs )

SIGRIST:

Did your father ever want to go back to Russia for any reason?

DEUTSCH:

No, no.

SIGRIST:

Did you ever want to go back to Russia for any reason?

DEUTSCH:

I didn't want to go back no more since I made through all that stuff. I didn't want to go back no more, you know.

SIGRIST:

Life was much better here.

DEUTSCH:

I got fifty million things yet more to say, but it'll be enough. ( he laughs )

SIGRIST:

Before we close, I do want to see if there was anything else . . .

DEUTSCH:

I don't think anybody else will give you a story like that.

SIGRIST:

It was a great story.

DEUTSCH:

Huh?

SIGRIST:

I want to see if there's anything else that you remember about the communist takeover in Russia and . . .

DEUTSCH:

The communist takeover is, the war was going on by us in that town, in that small town. There's about ten thousand people in there, you know? We knew that, when they're firing, they're throwing cannons over our houses. We had to hide, you know? I had to dig out a big, a big room like this here in our garden, you know, I had a big piece of land there, and dig it out about eight, ten feet deep, you know? We made a doorway there, and we put, you know, what, what, trees, we took trees, you know, big trees, and we covered it over, then put one layer, and put one layer this way, and covered it with sand. There was sand in our dirt there. So we put it up with sand, and we put another layer. We put about seven, eight layers like that then. Then we made a door, dug out on the side there, and my mother had to climb in there, you know, and that didn't help them to live, you understand? We had to climb in there, otherwise we'd be shot.

SIGRIST:

And did you see people being shot and . . .

DEUTSCH:

Oh, yeah, sure.

SIGRIST:

This was a common occurrence at that time.

DEUTSCH:

We saw people get shot, the horses got shot. The airplanes used to fly and shoot them. You know, and there, when I went across here from my town, they were shooting, going across the borders there, you know? One day we had certain money, the next day we had Polish money, the next day we had German money. You know, it was terrible.

SIGRIST:

Was there one group, one, like the German soldiers, or the Polish soldiers, who were particularly nasty?

DEUTSCH:

They were all nasty.

SIGRIST:

They were all nasty.

DEUTSCH:

They were all nasty. You couldn't find a good one if you run about two, ten thousand, you figure you wouldn't find a good one. It's a war. You know what it is. This one is looking for that one to kill, that one is looking for this one to kill. And they're shooting, the guns were gone, you know, kept on going. You didn't know whether the guns come down or not. So that's why we had to run away quick and get away from the guns.

SIGRIST:

It was a very bad time, wasn't it?

DEUTSCH:

Oh, at that time. Then I had trouble to, what do you call it, to get through. They beat me up all the time over there in Warsaw. So I went, on my passport, I found another fellow there with us. I spent five hundred dollars, five hundred marks, and we got a general, you know? They take, they take, you know, money. They took money. They took about three people, we gave so much money, and they put a special stamp in my passport. Still there. That's why I like to keep it, you see? That stamp is still there, that I'm not supposed to be taken into the, into the army. Then when he put that stamp on nobody took me, nobody brought, nobody bothered me to here, hit me.

SIGRIST:

It was a way of buying your freedom in a way, wasn't it?

DEUTSCH:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only way I could get it. I couldn get it no other way. And I was there so many weeks, and I got so disgusted, you know, and they used to go on, the people there. I can't, I'm running in here, you see.

SIGRIST:

On your legs.

DEUTSCH:

My legs, over here, against myself, on the stomach, over here, you know? I had some things to protect the things. If not, they'd go steal it on you. You'd be left without money. But I knew when I saw one fellow, somebody, you know, a Polish guy walking to me, run away from me, you know? I had a lot of trouble I had to go through. And in England, also, it was no good, you know. The food was terrible, and they kept me away from getting on the boat there, in Southampton, you know, I had a lot of trouble. And the ride that I rode over the ocean also was no good.

SIGRIST:

You said you were sick. ( he laughs ) You got sick.

DEUTSCH:

I was sick as a dog, you know. What are you talking about.

SIGRIST:

Right, right.

DEUTSCH:

I was glad that I got off the boat already.

SIGRIST:

Well, Mr. Deutsch, I want to thank you very much. This has been . . .

DEUTSCH:

I don't know if the other thing will be the same like, like yours, but I'm going to do it for her.

SIGRIST:

Yes, I think you should. I think you'd be very good.

DEUTSCH:

She'll have it separate, you know. I know, it's a long story.

SIGRIST:

Yes, it is, indeed. This is Paul Sigrist signing off with Paul Deutsch on Thursday, April 21, 1994, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

DEUTSCH:

I think they'll have, this will be in the papers.