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Oh, we're gonna test this guy. This is Harvey Schwartz, and I'm in San Francisco with Gene Pauline, and we're doing an interview on Gene's life and background, um. And uh Today is um It's Tuesday, the 26th of March 1996, and the interview is part of the,

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um, collection of the Labor Archives and Research Center at San Francisco State University. Can you, can you tell me, um, When you were born and where you were born, just a little bit about your background, name, rank, and serial number kind of stuff to start out

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with. OK. I was born in 1921 September. And uh I was born a twin. And um In New in Irvington, New Jersey, which is a suburb of Newark. What was the what was the day of your birth? September 24th. They didn't know that my mother was

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having twins, so it was a big surprise and a delight. They wanted a girl and they got 2. And they were delighted. We lived there for 3 more years, 3.5 more years. Then my mother. Went to Brooklyn to visit an aunt and saw. That there were

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people sitting on stoops. Talking Yiddish, which had not happened in New Jersey, where she lived, so they immediately decided to move to Brooklyn. And that's when I became a Brooklyn bum. How did they get to New Jersey, do you know? My parents. My mother's brother had

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um emigrated from Russia before her, before she did, and he started, he opened a business in New Jersey in Newark. And eventually he moved to East Orange, and they lived in, uh, when they married, they moved to Irvington. Um Why did they come from, come over

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to the United States, do you know? They were, they, those are the stories they told us, the pogroms and the Jews that were murdered and Jews that were taken into the army and treated very badly. And um My uncle decided that he had no, there were

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no opportunities for him. And Russia, so he just decided to come. I assume my father had the same experience. His brother came. From Poland. My father lived in Poland. He was born in Poland. And it was the same idea. They had programs equally as bad as

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those in Russia. You mentioned 1905. Was there any political connection to the 1905 revolution in Russia? It's kind of a long shot. I don't think so. I don't think they were leaving because of that. I don't think they had any connection. My grandfather and mother were

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not political at all. And I don't think my father's family was either. OK. Now, you mentioned, um, when you get to Brooklyn, you mentioned the term Brooklyn Bums, which is a wonderful term. I was gonna ask you what you know about that. Well, it was the

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Dodgers, the Brooklyn Bums, and so I I make fun, you know, I kind of. I wasn't a Dodger fan. I wasn't actually, I wasn't a baseball fan. But I like to say that because Brooklyn is connected with bums. It just makes it, And more a little

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more interesting, right, right, um. You mentioned um. To me once, something about your relationship with your sister that you learn cooperation and so forth, right? I'm pretty sure I did. We, we discovered very early on that it was crazy to compete. We weren't very competitive at

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all. I don't remember feeling competitive with her. My, it's interesting because my aunts used to encourage Me to be kind of jealous of her because she was always the quiet one. I was the more aggressive one. And She, she, my sister explains it that she was

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born after me. I was the aggressive one in utero, so I was the aggressive one in in life. I don't know that that's true, but we are different in that way. She is more passive. And I've always been a little more active than she. And um

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she can be, but her husband's very much into Judaism and uh the Jewish culture, etc. So they're not, they're political in terms of, they love Israel, where I'm not crazy about Israel. I mean, it's OK, but I don't like what they do. The, um, Even in

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our in our early lives. I was more involved in political stuff than she. She was more a student. I didn't like school, she liked school. She loved school, as a matter of fact, and At 13, I was, Eager to get out into the world and my

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father got me a job in his factory. Well, it wasn't his factory. He worked in a factory. Um, before we get onto that, I was gonna ask you what it was like growing up in Brooklyn, um. It was all right. It was very, it was, it

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was kind of a ghetto. There were a few non-Jews. Most of the people who lived there were Jewish. There were a small number of blacks. Who lived in basements and often were Janitors and things like that. We had a black janitor. My mother and father bought

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a house in 1927. When we were uh 26, when we were 5. And um It was a lot of work, and eventually my mother hired a black janitor. Who did some of the work around the house. And I think having him there helped me understand the

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oppression of blacks. And uh know that it existed anyway, that people didn't look down on blacks. That had a tremendous effect on me. And of course, it made me move in the direction of anti-racism and stuff like that. Um You mentioned that there was some anti-Semitism

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in Brooklyn. I experienced it mostly in Manhattan when I was And then the trains and the subways, you'd go on the subway. Go to Manhattan or to anywhere in New York on the subway. And um Especially at Easter or Christmas. The Jews were always pointed to

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as the killers of Christ and stuff like that. So it was scary. I never would say that I was a Jew. And I assume people knew that I was Jewish. The people I um I was friends with and the people that I communicated with. But when

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I got to Manhattan, I didn't Say that I was a Jew. Unless the people that I've worked for. seemed OK, and then I could say that I was a Jew. I worked for somebody when I was about 15. Who was a translator and uh was a

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wonderful man. And taught me a lot and um I was gonna be a French teacher, so he, he gave me a little bit of backing. And we were sitting in the office on a Saturday morning and it was a it had a series of desks. On

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each side of the room and 3 desks ahead of us was another man in the office on a Saturday. And he's on the phone and he's talking about these dirty Jews. So Mr. Hamill just looks at me and he says, he whispers, don't pay any attention

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to him, he's just ignorant. So that was part one of the things. I mean, it was pretty rampant. My brothers changed their names. From Kuczynski to Carr, so they could get work. My brother, Andy, who was an engineer, couldn't get a job until he changed his

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name. It's, it's in. 40. Well, he was working before he got into the service in 1941, 1938, 1939. Right. What was your name? Your maiden name was uh Kuczynski. Kuczynski. Can you spell the Polish name. They spelled it K U C Z Y N S K

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I. But when my father came to Ellis Island, they changed it to Kuczynski. Yeah, um, you may have mentioned, what was your, what was your dad doing at this time? He was a A cloaks, what's called a cloaks operator. Which means that he worked in a

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in a factory that made cloaks and suits, women's cloaks and suits. Cloak is a kind of technical term for coats. And uh he was a very fine. Um, balmaloja, that's a Yiddish word for um. For the, the kind of um Oh, what does it mean? And

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my brain's not working. It means um. Craftsperson Perhaps he was very fine and he usually had work even during the depression he had work. And he worked in the sweatshops in the beginning when he, when he first came. And then, of course, the ILGWU organized and

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he became a union member. He was a very good union member. When did he become a union member, do you know? I think it was in the 30s. OK, yeah. They had strikes and, and, um, Uh. They picketed and they did all kinds of stuff and

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it was the 30s, I'm pretty sure. Do you remember seeing those things? The pickets? Yeah, it's a little, you're a little young. I was young. I was too young. I was, well, I entered my father's shop in 1934. And they were already unionized. They were already

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unionized. Yes. Um-hum. I'm pretty sure. Um, I, I want to talk about that, and, and, but first I want to ask you one question, one little interesting tiny point. Um, you wrote a paper at the age of 12 on the, uh, Rochdale cooperative movement. Can you

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remember doing that? Yes, I do. How did you get oriented that way? How did you end up that way I was interested in cooperation. I, I think being a twin made me consider the fact of cooperation, uh, better being better than competition. And uh I was

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interested in in cooperation, cooperatives. And we had to write a paper, so I chose that. How, how did you come to find out about the cooperative tradition? I'm not exactly sure how I found out. I don't think I found out about it in school. I think

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I must have read about it, you know, from a library book. It was interesting. My brother, I was Yiddish speaking when I was born, when, when I was young, but my older brother, who was 8 years older, went to school. He too was a Yiddish speaker.

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And uh brought English into the home. And so we spoke a little English when we got to school. Not a lot, but we did know English. And then we had friends in the street. And uh The The fact that we were Jewish and working class. had

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a tremendous effect. I mean, there were kids in our school. The school was across the street and it was in a kind of a lower middle class neighborhood. But people from other neighborhoods, better neighborhoods would come too. So we saw kids who were richer, who had

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better clothes, whose lunches looked better than ours, you know. The fact that my parents were immigrants did not speak English, was, I felt a little bit of a handicap. I didn't Criticize them or anything. We tried to teach my mother English, writing and reading, and she

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said she'll never learn. We didn't believe her, but she, she insisted on it, so we didn't pursue it. And she would read the the forwards, you know, the Jewish paper. My parents were not radical. My brothers were. My brothers both joined the Communist Party when they

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were in their teens. And uh my parents were not, they just weren't radical. They didn't read the Freiheit, which was the other paper. So It was through my brothers that I became a radical. How, how do they, uh, become, become radicals? I know, you know, Brooklyn

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had a lot, many multiple, multiple traditions, City College. I'm sure they went to City College. Yeah, well, my brothers were involved with, um. People who were in the Communist Party. And uh They became members. I never became a member because I didn't. I think I've always

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been an anarchist, and I didn't like the idea of joining a Um A party and Being told what to do. OK, um. They tried while I was when I was a teacher later on when I was a teacher, they tried. They had people in the AFT,

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a lot of them were communists. You mentioned that. Let, let's, um, Do a little bit on before I, I actually wanna talk about that. That's on my outline, but um. Kind of keeping the chronology going a little bit. Um, you'd mentioned that your dad got you

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a factory job, uh, in 34 and you were 13 years old. Can you describe what that was like? What's it like for the terrific. I loved it. I loved going on the subway and going into, into town and having lunch with my father or alone. And

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being a worker, I loved it. I used to go I used to take the subway and go down to work um Canal Street or places like that to pick up buttons or zippers or whatever they needed. And I would sit in in the office and maybe

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Do some billing or I don't remember exactly what I did in the office, but a lot, a lot of my work was going and going shopping, going picking up stuff. But I felt great. I felt like an independent woman. That's great. Were you, were you at

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that age in the union? I mean, you were just, it's kind of young. No, no, I was non-union. How, how many, uh, did you do this like in I did it one summer. Summertime. Did it one summer? Yes, OK. You didn't work with the machinery and

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all that. You were young for that, but I used to go in the factory and talk to people and And uh watch the machinery I knew. I mean, my father He was a tailor from the time he was 10, I believe. And my mother was also

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a tailor, so they, we had a machine and We even tried to use the machine. We never became as good as my father or mother. My sister still sews. I haven't had a machine for many years, so I haven't been sewing. I was gonna

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ask you what was high school like? Can you recall? As I said, I didn't like school. I even went to work in During high school, I really didn't like school. I didn't. It, it just wasn't enough I don't know, it just didn't have enough for me.

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Um, in junior high, as a matter of fact, We took an achievement test, the two of us. They kept us together all during elementary school and in junior high as well, and in the 8th grade, the end of the 8th grade, we had an achievement test.

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I scored a little higher than my sister, so she went into a regular class and I was in the so-called rapid class. And at the end of that year, my sister got into Arista, which is the honor society, and my teacher was furious. She said, how

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come you didn't get into it? You're in the RA why aren't you, why didn't you get into Arista? You know, it's crazy. It was nuts. She really, my sister really liked school. She did her homework and I didn't. I couldn't be, I couldn't care less. I

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was much more interested in going out. And that was true in high school too. I went through it. I didn't cut classes or anything like that. And I enjoyed. A lot of it, mostly French. I really enjoyed French. And uh I think it probably is my

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second language or something. Or 3rd language, but uh There was a depression. I was going to be a French teacher. I was going to go to France and become a French teacher. But it was 38, 39, you didn't go to France. And you didn't have any

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money. So I Changed To a, a, uh, got a bachelor of business administration. In high school, I learned to type and I had jobs with my typing. That's how I got that job with Mr. Hamill. I was about 14 1/2 when I worked with Mr. Hamill

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or 15, I can't remember. Were you, go ahead. Interesting. Did, did you, you were working part time for him when you were going to school? In those years there was an awful lot. I mean there was an awful lot of politics in the air, and particularly

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in places like Brooklyn. Were you all that Spanish War, all that. Were you? Oh yeah, in high school we were picketing and we were protesting on the Spanish War. Civil War, yeah, I was involved. My brothers were and I was. My sister, not so much. She

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had already developed a close relationship with a with a boy. And she was more interested in going dating and stuff like that. Well, I, I had dates, but I wasn't. Um Connected to anybody and um. She married when she was 21. Actually, she, was she 21?

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No. Yeah, she was 21. And I married a couple of years later. Well then you went to City College. Um, what year did you go to City College? 30, let's see. 40 No, I got into college, to high school, to college and 38, so I was

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at Brooklyn for a year and a half. And uh Enjoyed one class, one teacher in that school. My classics teacher. And then uh a friend of mine and I decided we were gonna change to City College because we weren't gonna get jobs and In the teaching

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field unless it works commercial. So we went to City College and took, I became. I got a bachelor of Business Administration and became a teacher of commercial subjects. Like typing and stenography. I actually learned stenography quite well. You, you'd mentioned that you had, um, joined the,

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uh, house plan, which was a student cooperative. What was that about? It was a, of course we were commuting, commuting students, so we weren't, didn't live. City College did not have any dorms. They may not, no. But they didn't then, of course. But house plan was

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a way of, of having a connection with other students in a kind of cooperative way. We were trying to encourage the coop the mode of cooperation in a school setting. So that I really was Much very much interested in that. You've you've always been interested in

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this cooperative aspect, haven't you, sort of, yeah. Hm. Did you know at home too, we, my sister and I were expected to help with the house. We were cooperating. And it wasn't my mother didn't uh there was no incentive with uh allowances or anything. No, we

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didn't get any money. We didn't get any presents, we didn't get any money. It was my parents were poor. Although my father earned a living, they they didn't believe in sharing with the with the kids, the money with the kids. They didn't understand it and uh

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so we had, I had no money. That's one of the reasons I went to work. I want to be able to buy stockings if I wanted stockings or Whatever. And uh I wanted to have my own money. Do you remember what kind of wages you made?

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I made a big $5 a week. In my father's factory. And when I worked for Mr. Hamill, I think I, I worked by the hour, I think I made maybe 1 dollar.5 cents an hour. Not very much. No. That would, that would be OK in the

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30s though. I bet you didn't even make that much. If I remember wages from the 30s, I can't remember. I know I had money. It must have been at least $5 or $6 a week. My mother was crazy about Mr. Hamill. She'd make cookies for him

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and cakes and stuff. He was a very nice man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. That's great. You see, I, until, until I met Mr. Hamill, I assumed that the Goyen were enemies of ours because of what my mother had said. And although my mother was quite

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religious and had A guy come into the house when she wanted to turn the lights on on on the Sabbath on Rosh Hashanah. It didn't happen during the week, during the year, but on Rosh Hashanah, she had somebody come in and turn the lights on. Um

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She was always very nice to these people. But that was because they were helping her out. But the stories she would tell us, my father did not tell us these stories. My mother mostly communicated that with us. Um, that the Gayan were bad people. They hated

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Jews. And so I was very Watchful But after I met Mr. Hamill, I realized there were very some very good clients. So uh It wasn't that hard anymore. Um-hum. Those are great revelations, aren't they? Oh yeah, sound like that when you're young, but it wasn't until

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I, I came to California that I was able to say I'm a Jew. To somebody who wouldn't know. You know, to be able to say, I'm a Jew, this is who I am. In New York, I never did. Do you recall the early war years? What

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were your feelings? My feelings were I was confused, you know, first, the Russians. Or against the war So I was completely confused. And we, where we were, we did not know very much about what was going on in Germany, if we knew it at all. Our

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family had Mostly left. We had no, no German family. And they had left from Poland and Russia. And they were either in Argentina or the United States, so we had no contact. And I do not. I know we all hated Hitler, of course, and In 1941,

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when the, when Pearl Harbor happened, I was really upset because I hated war. I was always, my father took me to see All Quiet on the Western Front when I was 12. And that made me a pacifist, so I was a pacifist. And yet I didn't

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know, I was confused. I didn't know what to do. And, uh, My older brother was married and had children, so he never had to go. He also had had polio and he wouldn't have had to go. My second brother was in the Navy. And uh I

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supported and my later-to be husband was in the army. And I sent all kinds of um Letters and presents and stuff to him, so I supported that. So my pacifism was set aside because of Hitler. And uh I never hated the Japanese the way most people

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did. But uh I just thought it was a The, the usual with war. Wars. I started by uh politicians for their own reasons. And I hadn't really studied it at that time. I was I was more interested in the literary aspect of of my life rather

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than the political. Although I knew I was involved in And I knew Spain was being raped and And, uh, Supported that movement too. Do you, you, you mentioned the um The Russians and their um You know, they're Yes, it was they're anti-Hitler, then they're, then they're

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Nazi-Soviet pact in 39 till 41 and as being there again that whole communist um. Trying to convince change and to convince us that the war was very important, etc. I thought to myself, God, this is ridiculous. I see. Yeah, so I wasn't very communist, you're not

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committed to the Communist Party, so you could sort of step back a little more than some people. Right, I had Friends who were members of the Communist Party and I didn't Criticize them, that was their choice, but I couldn't understand it. I didn't understand what they

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saw in it. And my brothers left the party when Um When the Hitler-Stalin pact was made. Oh, they did. Yes. Yes, they both left. That was 39. That's right, yeah. Yes, I'm pretty sure they left. It's activated September 1st 39, essentially when Hitler invaded Poland. Yeah.

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And of course, we, I knew that Stalin had no choice, that it was, it was very unwise for him to fight the Germans at that time. But uh It didn't last very long. Do you remember the discussions that your brothers had with you about it? They

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didn't have them in, in our house. They wouldn't, they didn't, but I was reading the newspapers and I And uh And I knew, I, I remember. This is a little off the subject, but I can remember, I think it was 39. When the first Adam's smashing

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started. And I said to myself, God, this is gonna be a bomb. That's amazing. And I was terrified. And And I was against dropping the bomb, of course, and I didn't think it was necessary, but Did you feel that way? I'm sorry, uh, you felt, you

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felt that way at the time when the bomb was dropped in 4? You were gonna say something about your brothers. My brother, well, one of my brothers was in the service and uh He never went overseas, which for which we were very happy. And my older

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brother Became, uh, he became a government worker and he was he became anti-communist by then. It's interesting. And uh In later years, they both voted for Reagan. Wow. My 2nd brother was very unhappy with Reagan, so he was, he's now back to a more liberal stance.

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But my older brother remained pretty, uh, Pretty Republican if you if you ask me. It's weird.