Sam Bittman
Class of 1958

My parents were never arrested or fired, but the FBI were frequent visitors, waiting
for me at the mailboxes on the ground floor when I got home from school, or
coming to the door later in the day, to ask me about my parents, where they
worked, who their friends were.

I remember one time two agents came to the door. I opened it and was immediately
afraid of them, not answering their questions but nervous that I might slip and pass
information that might get my parents thrown in jail. My mother overheard the
conversation from the kitchen, came rushing to the door, asked the agents what in
hell they thought they were doing there, and forcibly pushed the door closed on
them. 

Kinderland was a respite from all that hiding, all the running ahead of friends
coming into my apartment to make the Daily Worker or the Freiheit hadn’t been
left on a table. So, to have had even those three short seasons at camp with you,
feeling we were a majority, not vilified commies, was heaven for me. I also had
shule with other red diaper babies, learning Yiddish and feeling like a mensch, not
an enemy of the nation. Places of real safety for me, for us, to grow up a little more
easily, in full view.