MEMORIES OF 1938
I ran to school every day in Maspeth Queens
afraid of being attacked by German Bundists
because I was the only Jew in my school.
The Principal of my school, a Rosicrucian,
promised to protect me, appointing me the
Chief Justice of our school’s Supreme Court.
I doled out punishments to delinquent kids
ordering them to deliver pounds of wastepaper
or metal for the war effort. One classmate,
Rudy Schultz, told me he had his father’s
permission to kill me since Jews were being
killed every day in Europe. Rudy showed me
a picture he took of his father in his Nazi
uniform the day he attended the rally at
Madison Square Garden with 20,000
German American Nazis who did not
disappear until 1941when America
finally declared war on Germany.