David Schoenfeld
Class of 1960

Both my father and mother were communists. My mother’s radicalization occurred during the depression which started in 1929 and lasted for 10 years. I suspect that her parents were left wing to start with.  My grandfather was in the bonus army, a mass march on Washington with 43,000 demonstrators. It would be small by today’s standards. They camped on the mall demanding that their World War I bonuses be paid in 1932 rather than in 1945 when they became due.  The demonstration was dispersed by the army.  The bonus was paid early in 1936 so in a sense the march was successful.  My father’s radicalization was intellectual.  He wrote theoretical Marxist articles for a journal under a pseudonym of Harry Tilden.  I have many memories of his analyzing current events from a Marxist point of view.  My mother’s radicalism was more emotional as she had felt the injustices of a capitalist society personally.

My mother met my father when he was, in her words, a working-class hero. In 1941 he and six other students were suspended for three months from New York University, for leading a protest against the “gentleman’s agreement” to sideline black athletes whenever the opposing schools objected to their playing.  In 2001 the seven were honored by NYU for their courageous anti-racist stand.  My parents were introduced to each other by Gertrude Elstein a prominent communist who felt they would be a good couple.

I don’t know much about my parent’s activities as members of the Communist Party. I would expect that most of my parent’s friends during this period were party comrades. My mother related that she met Dorothy Indenbaum on the street pushing Arthur in a baby carriage (he was born about the same time I was).   Dorothy introduced herself by asking where the nearest Communist Party Office was.  My mother also tells a story of being in a demonstration with me in her arms and telling the policeman not to arrest her because they would have to care for her baby.  I only remember one demonstration when I was five years old. It was a May-Day parade.  May first was international workers day everywhere but in the United States.  It was established to in 1889 by the socialist party (before it split from the communist party) to commemorate the Haymarket riots in Chicago and the struggle for the eight-hour day.   The parade had the memorable slogan “Milk the cows not the people” to protest a price increase in milk. 

One consequence of my parent’s political activity involved our neighbors who had a television set.  I used to watch Howdy Doody, a children’s TV show, with the boy downstairs.  One day the boy’s mother told me I was no longer welcome because my mother “wanted to put everyone in reform school.”  Years later Helene speculated that this involved her public support for school desegregation in Brooklyn. 

I was at the Peekskill riot in 1949 although I don’t remember this incident.  Paul Robeson gave a concert in Peekskill and it became a huge left wing gathering. A right-wing mob gathered and lined the road leading from the concert venue.  When the concert was over, the mob threw stones at the cars that left the concert.  My father drove our car with Helene and myself and Joseph. I was four and Joseph must have been a babe in arms.  Every window in our car was broken.  My father was terrified. 

The only other story that I remember about that day was that my father reported that his friend, Abe Haber slept through the whole thing.  Initially I thought this was a criticism of Abe but later I remembered that Abe had been shot down over Nazi Germany, had wandered behind enemy lines until he was captured, and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.  A right-wing riot wouldn’t frighten him. Paul Robeson was a fabulous singer.  There are some examples on youtube including a rendition of the Ballad for Americans, which may have had my uncle Joe (Debbi’s father) in the chorus.  Later I learned that Pete Seeger wrote the famous song “If I had a Hammer” for that concert.

Another McCarthy era memory was my father throwing out a box full of pamphlets. I was about 11 at the time.  He told me that he was afraid of getting into trouble but that he was keeping his books in his library and I could read them anytime I liked.  I did read them but much later in my life. 

I was a camper at Kinderland in 1953 after which I went to Camp Toloa where one of the kids in my bunk was the son of someone who was jailed by McCarthy.  We wrote a letter to McCarthy in protest.  I am sure that somewhere in my FBI files is a letter I wrote at 10 years old.  I have to say that I did not have a very good time at Camp Kinderland.  I was badly bullied, and my counselors really did not know how to handle it.  It ended when one of kids threw a rock at me.  My parents came and took me out of camp.  It was a different time and I think bullying was more tolerated or at least not as well handled. 

One of the most consequential things happened to close friends of our family.  Ruth Alscher was a New York City teacher who went to a party attended by some of the people involved with the Rosenbergs. The FBI wrote a letter to the school district, and she was fired.  Worse she was  afraid that she would have to testify so she had a friend admit her to the hospital with a fake injury.  During this period her son Colin lived with us.  He is now my closest friend.  Her firing really made the family suffer as she could not get a good job; it was years before she was able to teach again.  My daughter obtained her FBI file, there was no evidence against her but that did not keep the FBI from contacting the New York City Board of Education and having her fired.

I was a draft resister against the war in Vietnam, and since I was destined for jail (which actually never happened), my father invited Sid Stein who had been a jailed communist to come to dinner with us.  I think my father wanted to dissuade me from my draft resistance, but the visit had the opposite effect. Sid remembered this period of his life fondly and felt he had been helpful to many of the other prisoners both political on otherwise. 

My children have continued the activism of their parents, grandparents and great grandparents. My daughter is a professor at Boston University whose research is focused on how to end mass incarceration. My son is an engineer focused on energy conservation and my other daughter is a doctor focused on a more patient centered health care system.  Camp Kinderland keeps the focus on struggling for social justice for the generations to come.