Benjamin Witt

Jacobsen: Ben, When were you born and where? 
WITT: July 9th, 1900 in Austria and the city was – well I’ll have to find out. 

Jacobsen: No matter. When did you come to America? 
WITT: Sometime in February, 1905. 

Jacobsen: You were then four years old. Did your parents bring you? 
WITT: No. My father came here about 1903 and my mother came here in 1904 and then I came here with my three sisters in 1905. 

Jacobsen: Where did you go to in America? 
WITT: New York City. 

Jacobsen: New York City. What schooling did you have there? 
WITT: In New York City? 

Jacobsen: Yes. 
WITT: Well, I didn’t go to school immediately. I was under-age. We lived on Houston Street, in a beautiful area at that time. It wasn’t a ghetto. We had a park right across the street, and as a matter of fact I landed here Friday evening and Saturday morning I came home with a couple of blue eyes, because they wouldn’t let me have what I called a hutchinka, which is a swing in Jewish, and I became a roustabout. I was a little tough kid when I was three or four days in the park there. It was nice weather, of course dry at that time. We found money in the streets then. After I got educated, running after the carriages of the rich people that used to come to Houston with the horses and carriages and throw pennies out from a wooden barrel, which is the truth. I understood at that time that my parents and relatives that we had here, that this was a land of golden opportunity because you could find money in the streets. 

Jacobsen: You didn’t have what you would call a deprived childhood then? 
WITT: No, I had a very good childhood. I made a lot of friends. Naturally, in a neighborhood like that there were a lot of children and I always managed to be amongst seven, eight or nine year old kids, even when I was five. And they liked me because I was willing to do anything that they did, you know, follow the leader stuff, in that era except anything that was dirty or wasn’t the wishes of our parents. We were educated to be good children and my sisters were studious. As a matter of fact my older sister made more money than a city judge in those years because she knew about eight languages and she was 15 years old and she was an interpreter. She got 50¢ for every case she interpreted. Or 75¢, I forgot what it was. She made as much money as a judge. Then I went off to school. I started at PS 131 that was right around the corner from where I lived and I was always immaculately dressed. 

Jacobsen: Did you graduate there? 
WITT: No. I went from PS 131 to PS 25, transferred, because we moved to a larger apartment and from there we moved to Cavanaugh and Houston Street. I went to a larger school in New York City, PS 188. 

Jacobsen: Did you go to high school? 
WITT: No. I didn’t even graduate public school. We got most of our education through Civic. These foreign born young men who came to this country and took the opportunity of going to City College in New York, used to come around and teach us in the school grounds or playgrounds and they formed civic organizations and they taught us in Jewish, some of them spoke two or three languages. We were all from foreign-born parents and we were all foreign-born, to be good children, because the opportunity that we had at that time was getting a little out of hand with the Tong wars that we had in the New York area amongst the Chinese, who were great dope peddlers. We happened to turn out very good boys. Incidentally, George Burns’ father had a mikvah on Cannon Street and Stanton. His name was Buchhalter. One of George Burns’ brothers was one of my playmates. 

Jacobsen: How old were you when World War I broke out? 
WITT: Well, World War I broke out in 1914. I was 14 years of age. 

Jacobsen: What were you doing at the time? 
WITT: I was an errand boy for a glove house, J. M. Reuben & Son. They manufactured leather gloves and material gloves. 

Jacobsen: Tell us how you were recruited in the British army. 
WITT: I wasn’t recruited into the British army. We heard at the time, when Billy Sunday – one of the greatest evangelist I ever knew (I had heard a lot of rabbis and priests, ministers) – was advertised in the newspapers that he was going to be on Times Square with Sergeant Guy Empey, one of the first heroes of the First World War. 

Jacobsen: I remember him. 
WITT: Were you old enough? 

Jacobsen: Well, I was born in 1903, I can remember reading about him. 
WITT: Well, anyhow, there was five of us went up there: Abe Firestein, Max Silverman, and George Burns’ brother, Abe Buchhalter, myself and another fellow we called Monty that had a cousin around our neighborhood. He used to pal around with us. And we all went to hear Sergeant Guy Empey and Billy Sunday preach a sermon. He was a great acrobat. We went up to see the acrobatics more than anything else. Times Square was jammed. You know they used to have these open squares built, what do you call them, where people would speak?

Jacobsen: Platforms. 
WITT: Platforms, and we came up there and we saw these soldiers, four or five different regiments, different uniforms, different medallions. 

Jacobsen: Which army? 
WITT: British army. And they told you right away, “only non-Americans.” And they told us  about Samuel Isaacs, one of the first Jewish boys that won the Victoria Cross. Now that’s a very important thing to fellows of our age who were going to be past 17, not even 18 years old, which was our category. 

Jacobsen: You were only 15 years old when you went to this meeting? 
WITT: The first meeting? Oh, no. The first meeting that we went to was a little later. 

Jacobsen: What are you talking about now? 
WITT: The one I am talking about is the one that I got into because I had heard two or three before then, before this [one in]1918. 

Jacobsen: How old were you now? 
WITT: I was going to be 18 in that year, 1918. And one of the sergeants, I forgot his name, it sounded like Fulton but it wasn’t, he said, “You, you, you, you, if you are American born we are sorry, if you are foreign born you can help. You’re eligible to go.” But I said to the guy, “But I’m not even 18 years of age,” and he said, “Go over there and tell the guy you’re 27.” I was a National Guard [Guardsman] when I was 15 years of age. My birthday was in July and we went out selling Liberty Bonds. We were outfitted in Army uniforms and one of my greatest idols was a fellow by the name of Irving Anzman, who was a captain in the American army who went with Poncho Villa. When he came back after the Poncho Villa episode, he was a hero in the east side where we lived on Cannon and Houston, because of Sam Anzman, his younger brother of our age. He taught us militarism and told us to be good boys and at that era it was a pleasure to be amongst these counselors from the colleges. They never got any pay; they never got any money. 

Jacobsen: You joined the National Guard then? 
WITT: In 1915, in September of 1915. 

Jacobsen: What ranking did you get? 
WITT: Buck private. 

Jacobsen: Did you remain a private or were you promoted? 
WITT: No, I was a private. I went out for about eight Liberty Bond sales, parading and marching, in full regalia. I was a big, tall, husky kid. 

Jacobsen: Did you like the National Guard? 
WITT: I had a lot of fun there. As a matter of fact, one of our finest captains there, a fellow by the name of Meyers, of German origin, told us, “I am an American. We have everybody in here. We have Italians, Germans, Jews and Russians. You name them we had them in there. Catholic, Protestants and Jews.” The Armory was on Marcy and Heywood Street in Brooklyn, and it was easy for me to get there. 

Jacobsen: All right now, how many of you enlisted in the British Army? 
WITT: Four of us enlisted and I was the only one that went. The others, after they signed up, went home. 

Jacobsen: Is that so? 
WITT: I didn’t go home. As a matter of fact, I forgot how much money they gave me. I slept in a nice lodging house in Times Square. 

Jacobsen: Immediately, you didn’t even go home that night? 
WITT: I didn’t go home. I went to see Al Jolson.

Jacobsen: When did you notify your parents? 
WITT: I didn’t notify them. I forgot. He was a heavy weight champion at the time and he was in show business. 

Jacobsen: Al Jolson, you don’t mean him? [Ed note: Perhaps he means Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight champion.]
WITT: Al Jolson was in a play. I got tickets to go to see that show, not Jeffries. He was a white man. 

Jacobsen: A heavyweight? 
WITT: Heavyweight, yes, of that era. 

Jacobsen: Corbett? 
WITT: J. J. Corbett? No. 

Jacobsen: Sullivan? 
WITT: No. No matter. I had a nice supper and I went to see that show. I had plenty of change. They gave you about $3. Went down to the automat and had coffee and then I went to the hotel. It wasn’t the Taft. 

Jacobsen: No matter. 
WITT: I slept. And the following morning I reported to the recruiting station around 43rd and Broadway and from there we shipped [out]. 

Jacobsen: Well, didn’t you ever let your parents know? 
WITT: No. Well in that era, at my age, parents and sons didn’t get along any too well. Oh, excuse me. I had a stepmother at that time. My real mother died in 1911, in October 1911. I didn’t live home at that time, I don’t think. And if I did I have forgotten. It was a wonderful experience. First of all, at that time it came out in the newspapers where a German soldier, of Hindenburg’s stature held a baby up in his left hand and with his right hand he had a big sword and he was going to cut the baby in half and that atrocity brought our attention. The Pathe News in the movies, we used to get the Pathe News on the screen and it even showed like the Disney pictures.

Jacobsen: Cartoons. 
WITT: Cartoons. It showed what the Germans would do and it even came out at that time like in 1912 in a William Randolph Hearst paper, the New York Journal, there was a picture in there of our friends across the street, across the sea, where it showed a Japanese with his hands on top of the ocean like and he had gun boats and swords and cannons and everything, sneering at the United States, and it said: “Our friends across the sea.” 

Jacobsen: That was Hearst, I remember very well. When did you leave this country then, in the Army? How soon after the enlistment? 
WITT: I think it was on a Tuesday or Wednesday I went in. 

Jacobsen: Within a day or two. 
WITT: Yes. 

Jacobsen: On a ship? 
WITT: No, no. We went up to Windsor, Nova Scotia. There were about 60 of us, but from my gang I was the only one and we went up to Windsor, Nova Scotia. 

Jacobsen: All Jews ? 
WITT: We were amongst the Jews that joined the Jewish Legion. 

Jacobsen: Right away you joined the Jewish Legion? 
WITT: Right away. The Jewish Legion. That’s what they came for. They formed the Jewish Legion because the Jewish Legion immigrated from the Zionist Mule Corps. 

Jacobsen: You mean you became the Zionist Mule Corps? 
WITT: No, no, we became the Jewish legion, the Zionist Mule Corps was formed by the Turkish army who got all the Jews and made mules out of them, and they called them the Zionist Mule Corps. [Ed note: the Zionist Mule Corps was made up of Jews from Palestine and was a legitimate part of the British Army.]

Jacobsen: Mule drivers you mean. 
WITT: Everything. There were Jews living around that area, the Dardanelles. I had a lot of experience from those guys. 

Jacobsen: So you went to Nova Scotia? 
WITT: We went to Nova Scotia and from there we went to Windsor, Nova Scotia. We had barracks there and I was considered – they knew that I belonged to the National Guard and they notified the National Guard that I was in his Majesty’s Army and the Prince of Wales was my commanding officer. I was closer to the Prince of Wales at that time when he inspected us when we came to Plymouth Crown Hill barracks than I am to you now. 

Jacobsen: Plymouth, England? 
WITT: Yes, Plymouth, England. Crown Hill barracks. That Crown Hill barracks was everything that we read about in those years, about the underground from the palaces you would be able to walk maybe a half a mile or a mile to an escape ground. This is the truth. We went underground from Crown Hill barracks. We went to what they called Brighton, a pleasure resort like Coney Island. In Nova Scotia we got our basic [training?] and then we went on a 21-boat convoy and we landed on Tilbury Dock. I haven’t got the date on that. 

Jacobsen: The year? 
WITT: 1918. This was just about the time that the United States was coming back from the second battle, which was disastrous. From there we got some training for about a month and then we went to France. From Crown Hill barracks we went to LeHavre and from there we went to… we stopped at Malta, no we stopped at Gibraltar. We refueled in Malta, from there we went to Port Said [Egypt]. 

Jacobsen: What was your motivation in enlisting in the British Army? 
WITT: To defend the rights of the Jews in the Palestinian troubles there. 

Jacobsen: I see. 
WITT: I forgot what the main occasion was. I was a good Jewish student, because my mother passed away before my Bar Mitzvah and I took an oath, at that time as a 12-year-old boy, to do everything in my power to become a good Jew. I didn’t like the various stories that came out about the atrocities because it was in the New York World, not the Times. I was able to read the World. 

Jacobsen: The atrocities by the Germans or by the Turks? 
WITT: By the other forces, the Germans and the Turks and the Bulgarians. As a matter of fact, from Port Said we went to a place called, we called it Kantara, but today its Quantara, and from there we went out on the desert, what do you call it, reconnoitering, you know around the desert ground. Naturally, we went out at ten o’clock at night. At that time the war was in the desert countries and the war was mutilating those soldiers and they even had families along with them where we captured soldiers, women and children. That hurt us because we had to share food with them, and we didn’t have too much ourselves. 

Jacobsen: Turkish soldiers, is that it? 
WITT: Bulgarian. 

Jacobsen: Oh, really, down in Egypt? 
WITT: Bulgarian. Well they were with the Turks and the Germans in those years. I forgot what other country that they had there. Now, we didn’t get any help, even though the French and the English had a great power over Palestine in those years. 

Jacobsen: Palestine was Turkish then? 
WITT: But they had some French and English protection, or something. 

Jacobsen: Well, there was some extra territory allotted, yes. 
WITT: Maybe up around the larger areas. 

Jacobsen: You were an infantryman, right? 
WITT: I was an infantryman and I was, because of my prowess as a soldier, my sharp marksmanship, sharpshooter, I was transferred to the Third Divisional Headquarters, commanded by General Shea. Captain Frank H. Doran was my officer in charge. I went to various places in the desert where I mapped details of different outfits, both on camel and horseback. We had two German Benz automobiles and when we had the captured prisoners we built roads with mesh wire, put across the sand. These are some of the places, Quantara. Oh, incidentally, we had great English Colonels, Colonel Samuels and Colonel Patterson. Colonel Samuels came from a very, very wealthy family. 

[words missing at beginning of tape] ….from Quantara to go up the hill , when we reached into Jaffa, from Quantara we went to Jaffa. 

Jacobsen: How did you get there, did you walk or ride all the way? 
WITT: Feet. We were marching. We walked over 150 miles. 

Jacobsen: You’re talking about the Jewish Legion. 
WITT: I am talking about the Jewish Legion. 

Jacobsen: How big was it? 
WITT: I was in the 40th Royal, there was a 38th, 39th and 40th Battalion. We must have had at least, I won’t exaggerate, I’ll say at least 3500 men. 

Jacobsen: In the Jewish Legion? 
WITT: In the Jewish Legion. And we were spread out. Now we had Jews that would knock you off your feet if you heard their names. O’Brien and there were a couple of Scotchmen. Harry Lauder was a bum compared to their names, and they spoke Hebrew more fluently than they spoke English, because their parents in those years wanted them to have a Jewish education and a Hebrew education. They had synagogues there, Hebrew schools. 

Jacobsen: By there you mean where? 
WITT: Scotland, Wales, Ireland. We had them from all over the world. 

Jacobsen: Despite these names they were really Jews. 
WITT: Yes, Jews, no intermarriages. Real Jews. 

Jacobsen: All the people in the Jewish Legion were Jews. 
WITT: Of Jewish parentage, mostly male. Now here’s an incident. Doc, you would be surprised if I told you. I’m talking to Charlie Nathanson and Charlie Nathanson looked to me as if he came out of a Chinese laundry, slanty eyes, jet black hair, a drawn face. I said to him, “Were you born in New York City?” “No, I was born in Harbin, China.” Now we had three of those guys, Charlie Nathanson. Oh, he tagged along with me while I was in the army before I was transferred over to the Third Divisional Headquarters. That was a very important job. They trusted me as a messenger. 

Jacobsen: You were still a private? 
WITT: I was still a private. 

Jacobsen: You remained a private all through? 
WITT: No, I became a lance corporal when we got into Jaffa. And in Jaffa, I think I was 17 days or 19 days when I was Chief of Police, acting Chief of Police to get the messages off to the headquarters and I stayed with Mendel Beilis and his tzimmes. Do you know what tzimmes are? 

Jacobsen: No, I don’t. 
WITT: Prunes, in his house. I have a tzimma for you, a tzimma or tzimmer or whatever. 

Jacobsen: Mendel Beilis was the Jew who was tried in Russia on the charge of…? 
WITT: Yes, shulgen kapooris. Ritual blood accusation [Ed note: was a Russian Jew accused of ritual murder (Blood libel) in Kiev in the Russian Empire in a notorious 1913 trial, known as the “Beilis trial” or “Beilis affair”.] He was a great guy. 

Jacobsen: In going up as far as Jaffa, did you have to fight your way up or was there no resistance? 
WITT: No, no, until we came to Tel Kabir. No – [Beershalen?] and Quantara, that was our main hunting grounds, you know, what do they call it, headquarters. A tremendous vast area. We had sand storms there, the food was full of sand. Our bodies were full of sand when they had the sand storm. 

Jacobsen: But you had no combat up to then? 
WITT: No. 

Jacobsen: Were you satisfied with your treatment by the British? 
WITT: Oh, nobody was able to find any complaint. It wasn’t me personally. It was every one of us out in that area. You want to realize that the 38th was mostly English and Canadian soldiers or of English heritage. 

Jacobsen: English Jews you mean. 
WITT: English, Scotch, Irish. 

Jacobsen: Jews? 
WITT: Jews, of Jewish heritage. We had some English Jewish officers, like from the West Point of England. 

Jacobsen: Sandhurst? 
WITT: Sandhurst. Oh, incidentally, that picture of us, I was with Lillian Baldwin of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and to tell the truth, I had two nights of pleasure with her. She harnessed me. I didn’t harness her. Where’s that picture? Well, anyhow. 

Jacobsen: We’ll look at it later. 
WITT: Anyhow, at that time I was 20 years old. My service discharge says two years and 289 days in the service. From Jaffa we went up to Damascus, Syria to David Beilis, Mendal Beilis’ son. 

Jacobsen: Wait a minute, up to now you hadn’t done any fighting, right? No combat? 
WITT: The only combat we did was in a place called Tel Kabir. Tel Kabir was the central point. North of Tel Kabir was the wine country of Palestine. Now we stayed where we captured all the Arabs which was forced in with the Turks, we didn’t capture too many, I think there was only about 3700 or 3800 of all denominations.

Jacobsen: That was in this area? 
WITT: In Tel Kabir, because they had hiding places in these cities and were known as the twin hills. You also have twin hills in San Francisco. 

Jacobsen: Yes, in many places. Was there much fighting there? 
WITT: In Tel Kabir? 

Jacobsen: Yes. 
WITT: No, I don’t think there was 20,000 rounds of ammunition knocked out in that area. 

Jacobsen: Few casualties if there were any.
WITT: No, if there was casualties on our part, it was from, what do you call it when you use quinine? 

Jacobsen: Malaria. 
WITT: Malaria. The only casualties we had at that time was when the fellows went out with their pit helmets, and their brains weren’t cooled off with ice or something like that, with cold water. We always had chilled water buried in the ground and in the sand. We always had a canteen of chilled water. We found about 1500 bedraggled, dirty, filthy, wounded, hungry, starving soldiers. 

Jacobsen: You mean Turkish soldiers? 
WITT: Of the opposite brigades. Turkish, and we had Germans there too, because they were the opposite, they were Lieutenants. 

Jacobsen: Most of them were Arabs? 
WITT: No, the Arabs were just peons. They did all the dirty work. 

Jacobsen: Mostly Turks then. 
WITT: Turks, Bulgarians and Germans, very few, maybe one German and 30 or 35 Bulgarians. The Arabs were labor. We used to get a lot of information from the Jews that came from [Taamaan?]. Did you ever hear of that, Doc? 

Jacobsen: [Tabann?]? 
WITT: [Taamaan?]. Now, those were real holy Jews because at sundown on Friday, they saw the sun out in the east setting and boy, they ran helter-skelter to get dressed. They were all farmers, desert workers. Who they worked for at that time I don’t know. When you saw them running, we were told not to fire unless we saw gangs. Talking about gangs, two of our Brooklyn boys were brought to trial and they were going to be shot because we were robbed in Jaffa. The Arabs came and got under the tents and stole a lot of our rifles and the next morning when we came out to line up for duty, no rifles and they found out, like I said, through these [Taamaan?] Jews, they found out that there was a settlement of Arabs and higher up Arabs, that they do the stealing. Arthur Hollander, a Brooklyn boy – I met him in 1965 when I went back to New York, to Brooklyn, and I looked him up and he was still alive, he was about two years older, he is about 78 now – and another kid, Freddie, a tough kid, Freddie Burrows. So help me God, they went to that village, they borrowed a couple of rifles, they stole a couple of rifles, buddies, you know, went into that village with about six more guys with rifles and shot up the whole village and killed about 15 Arabs – men, women and children, and got the rifles back. But they were tried, anyhow through the Arabic hierarchy that wanted justice done in those years even, but it was proven that those were our guns. They had Arabic markings already on the butts of the rifles. You know, as a young fellow, at that time, we don’t have that spirit today. We don’t have that spirit that we had in those years. It was true during the Second World War and it was true in the Korean situation, and it was true, we were in it, but the Vietnam business, and we’re in trouble right now, because if anything ever happens between Russia and China, I don’t know what the hell we are going to do. 

Jacobsen: You’re right, but let’s stick to this for the time being. I agree with you. By the way, how was the food in this British army? 
WITT: We got good food. 

Jacobsen: No attempt to stick to kashrut, I suppose? 
WITT: Oh no, there was no kashrut. That was impossible. If you were hungry, even a camel’s hump was delicious, with a little mustard. 

Jacobsen: All right. You say you went from Jaffa to Damascus. 
WITT: From Jaffa we went to Damascus, Syria, to get David Beilis, Mendel Beilis’ son, who was captured, to be an interpreter. There was a young fellow that spoke 11 languages. 

Jacobsen: How did you go to Damascus? 
WITT: By train. Damascus at that time was – 

Jacobsen: – From Jaffa? 
WITT: From Jaffa. 

Jacobsen: There was a direct train apparently. You didn’t have to go through Jerusalem? 
WITT: Oh, no. Jerusalem was a stone’s throw. You were able to walk to Jerusalem from Jaffa. 

Jacobsen: Well, it’s quite a long walk. 
WITT: Well, at that time it was nothing for us. We used to catch hitches on mules with trucks. 

Jacobsen: So you went to Damascus. Who was in control of Damascus then? 
WITT: The allies in that area, the English. 

Jacobsen: Not the Jewish Brigade? 
WITT: No, no. The Jewish Brigade didn’t control anything. The Jewish Legion didn’t control anything. They were just under orders. 

Jacobsen: All right. So you got this fellow Beilis. 
WITT: No, we didn’t get Beilis. The war was over. See, we were going to invade that part of Turkey where Mendel Beilis’ son, David, was captured, and this was December 6th when we found out that the war was over. Not November 11th, December 6th, the Jewish Legion found out. As a matter of fact, that brochure that I showed you, that they wanted me to come to the reunion in May, it’s a little bit too steep for me. That’s about $1500 all around. 

Jacobsen: What did you do then, when the war was over? 
WITT: Well, we stayed in Damascus about three days and we got further word through, what do you call it? 

Jacobsen: Telegraph? 
WITT: No. 

Jacobsen: Wireless? 
WITT: Wireless, and we started coming back to Jaffa. We stopped in a few places in Syria. We stopped in Lebanon, we stopped in Jordan. Jordan wasn’t too far. Some of the fellows borrowed a car that belonged to some colonel or general, or major general or adjutant or captain and they went to all these places. They took chances. Talking about Jerusalem, were you ever there? 

Jacobsen: Yes. 
WITT: Did you go where the graves were?

Jacobsen: Yes, yes. 
WITT: By the Wailing Wall? 

Jacobsen: That’s not in Jerusalem. 
WITT: Were you to the Wailing Wall? 

Jacobsen: Yes. 
WITT: You had better give me back $1.20. I put two 60¢ pieces in the Wailing Wall. I’ve even got it down here. You know, the guy bore a hole in the 60¢ piece, put the nail in there and tacked it into the wall, the dirty bastard. After we left you know. 

Jacobsen: Some Arab got it. 
WITT: No, the guys who had the racket, nailing all this money. The wall was always filled up with money. As a matter of fact, shiny silver piastas [Ed note: small change currency in Palestine under the Turks]. 

Jacobsen: All kinds. 
WITT: No, no, mostly half pounds. In Tel Aviv it was nice when we went to the gymnasium, in Herzl Square. Were you there? 

Jacobsen: Yes, not in the gym, but in Tel Aviv. 
WITT: In Tel Aviv, in the college, you know from child to college to doctorate, what’s his name, Rabbi Stampfer used to get a kick out of me when I used to come to the Neveh Shalom, now that my daughter is the president of the Shaarie Torah synagogue.

Jacobsen: Oh, is she? Dora? 
WITT: Dora is president of the Sisterhood and Jerry is vice-president of the Men’s Club. Doc, with an experience like that and to come home alive. Yes, we lost most of our Jewish boys who didn’t make it, died from malaria because we never saw such things. We were so accustomed to being outside. We were ordered between ten and two o’clock to stay in the shade. We had shade but those tents and the nets that we had and it was remarkable. “Don’t tell me what to do.” You understand? That’s the attitude we took. Even I didn’t enjoy being locked up four hours each day. Now, we all got food. The wagon came around with a couple of mules. It had a great big umbrella, a tent over it, you know what I mean. They came from tent to tent and doled out the warm food or the cold snacks and everything else. In those years we didn’t have in the field tent in the desert. 

Jacobsen: Sure, sure. Well, then were any lost in combat? 
WITT: In combat, I’ll safely say we lost 1,000. I forgot. We must have had at least 15,000 Jewish Legionnaires. I’m going to send this guy a $10 bill for an ad in the paper on the booklet they’re putting out. It goes to someplace I never heard of, but they had what like you would call the American Legion in one of them areas not far from Israel, from Tel Aviv, where they have it all decorated with mementos. They asked me if I had any mementos. My mementos are going to my grandson.  

Jacobsen: Of course. Well, you say you had a few casualties in action? 
WITT: In action, yes. How many, I don’t know. 

Jacobsen: There wasn’t much. When did you liberate Jerusalem? Didn’t the Jewish Legion march in, in front of the army to liberate Jerusalem? 
WITT: We came in after, when Palestine was already under the English regime. 

Jacobsen: I see, that was later. Who was the commanding officer of the Jewish Legion? 
WITT: The commanding officers were General John Shea, and Lieutenant Churchill. Winston Churchill’s nephew committed suicide and I had to drag his body out, because he played around with General Shea’s daughter. She got a little “fragrant” and he wouldn’t marry her. She was a beautiful young lady, but I was a buck private. I was a tough guy. I had to deliver a message up there one day from Captain Doran, my commanding officer whose father was the president of the Royal Dublin Railways in those years and he became acquainted with a beautiful Jewish girl, and I got onto a horse and the horse knew just where to go and Doc, so help me God, I only hope I have a picture somewhere to show you. There was a fellow named Goldstein who was a Naval Captain in the Spanish-American war who settled down in and became a wine broker. He spoke English to us and I met him. We stayed there two days. It was a beautiful little settlement, very modern, you know, sidewalks, well the streets weren’t all sandy, there were cobblestone streets, nice buildings, everyone was making wine there. 

Jacobsen: How high up in rank did your Jewish officers go? In the Jewish Legion. 
WITT: Colonel. Rabbi Jaffe said he was a captain but his rank didn’t count because we had a lot of services, wherever we were able to get on a Saturday or on a holiday. 

Jacobsen: By and large you were an observant group? 
WITT: Very, very. Nobody got into trouble except Freddie Burrows and Hollander. 

Jacobsen: Aside from the malaria was the health good? 
WITT: Very. We were all examined periodically, every ten days. We went through not Red Cross, but professional nurses, and doctors. It was a wonderful thing. 

Jacobsen: After you came back to Tel Aviv, when the war was over, how long were you there before you were sent home? 
WITT: No, I didn’t come back to Tel Aviv. I came back to Tel Kabir. 

Jacobsen: How long were you there? 
WITT: We lived in a regular mansion, a Pasha’s mansion. It took over, oh, there were about eight buildings there. Some were built like mosques. The one I stayed in was built like a small mosque. Do you know what I mean? Servants quarters. And we had everything you could possibly want there. We had Arab workers there milking the cows, making the water run, you know what I mean, with the wheels and they walked days and days, hours after hours, 24 hours a day. Of course, they were treated humanely. They were walking around and we were there after December 6th, I came home February 18th. I think we left around Christmas time, Hanukah. 

Jacobsen: What good or bad stories can you tell me about your life in the British Army, in the Jewish Legion? 
WITT: When we hit into Egypt, we each had ten day rest period. And those of us who had a few bucks, I forgot how much we got, I think we got ten shillings a week, which is equivalent to $2.50 a week. But those of us who had some money, and I was very lucky, shooting craps, playing British games, I always made a couple of dollars. When we landed in Cairo we went to a place called Ezbekieh Gardens and Doc, I am telling you the God’s honest truth, we saw Arabs hanging from lampposts. 

Jacobsen: In Cairo you say? 
WITT: In Cairo, Ezbekieh Gardens, a beautiful place, not too far from the biggest hotel, the Shepherd Hotel, which was the greatest hotel in Cairo. Naturally, it was all militarized then, taken over by the military. And we saw these fellows hanging from the lampposts and the people walked by, the natives walked by. We were aghast, you know. We learned a few Arab words: “come here” or “girl.” I forgot my Arabic. I knew about 15 or 20 words. If a guy stole, they cut his hand off the first time. If he was caught three times they hung them. He was no good to the government. Some of them were armless. And then prostitution was great there from Australia, New Zealand. There is an island there between Australia and New Zealand. 

Jacobsen: Tasmania? 
WITT: No. Like Australia and New Zealand. [Ed note: he could he mean Nauru?] 

Jacobsen: Tasmania is. 
WITT: Is that in between? 

Jacobsen: It is just south of Australia. 
WITT: White people? 

Jacobsen: Yes. 
WITT: Well, there were a lot of beautiful white girls who were lonesome for males and became prostitutes and they landed in Egypt. I forgot the name of the hotel that I stayed in for a shilling a night, there was four of us. 

Jacobsen: You said there were four of you living in one room and three days later you saw [the bodies]?
WITT: Two days later we saw three bodies in the courtyard. He heard the clumps. Fellows found their sisters and killed them, threw them out of the window, four stories, third stories. 

Jacobsen: These were men from Australia, New Zealand and that area? 
WITT: Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. 

Jacobsen: Really, is that so? 
WITT: There must have been 15 at least. 

Jacobsen: You know that for a fact? 
WITT: So help me, I was there, Doc. 

Jacobsen: It seems a remarkable coincidence that they would find their sisters there. 
WITT: Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. In New York City there were two Russian fellows came over here at the time when Charles Becker was electrocuted on the Nicky Arnstein case. One of the cases and they found their sisters who were madams of whore houses on the Great White Way in the Broadway area. They heard about it and they came from very, very prominent families and they were both Jews and they stabbed their sisters. They immediately fled and the government tried to get them back here, because somebody was at the same time that the, what was that big fire in New York? 

Jacobsen: The Triangle fire. 
WITT: The Triangle fire. I was there at that fire it’s a funny thing; they found out where the sisters were, they were both running a bordello. 

Jacobsen: These were Australians and New Zealanders you were talking about. Were they in the Jewish Brigade? 
WITT: No, they were not. They were with the Aussie outfit. Maybe they were Jews for all we know. 

Jacobsen: When you ran into these other outfits in the British Army did you have any friction or did you get along? 
WITT: Oh, no. If you had enough to buy a brew, or if you had six cents to buy a schooner, you had friends. I had a lot of friends. Do you stay up late enough to see Johnny Carson’s show? 

Jacobsen: Occasionally, I don’t watch him very much. 
WITT: Did you see that Carl Reiner?

Jacobsen: No. 
WITT: Carl Reiner appeared on there and he is of Jewish origin. Johnny Carson says to him, “Carl, do you still pick up the tabs?” He says, “Oh, no. I cut down a great deal. Now the most, ten couples.” He says, “What happened?” And he says, “I like people. I like company and when I didn’t have a dime somebody treated me to a frankfurter or a hamburger, for a nickel or a dime, people showed that respect.” I’ve been doing the same thing out here ever since I came here. Doc, I don’t have to tell you when my wife was in a nursing home, I had to pay $389.28 (and I’ll show you cancelled checks) a month, besides the doctor’s bills and other visits and buying her personal things, body rubs and cotton, I went broke. Thirty-seven months. 

Jacobsen: I believe it. 
WITT: And here the doctor says, “If she lives 60 days.” And she lived 37 months and 12 days, and I told my kids, “Whatever you want to give to your mother.” So they bought the whole gown, and they bought a casket, not quite $1,000. Well, I belong to the Shaarie Torah, I mean Tiffereth Israel, Rose City Lodge. And they bought a stone, a double stone. That’s why I am still a bachelor, I am afraid to get remarried, do you understand? Or shack up with somebody because, Doc, I lived with Ruth nearly 50 years and she was a great gal. 

Jacobsen: Oh, yes. I remember her well. 
WITT: She was a great gal. 

Jacobsen: Yes, she was. You had a fine family altogether. 
WITT: I’m very happy. You see, we taught our kids at an early age, honor thy father and thy mother, that adage, because we were taught that too. I took good care of my father. I took good care of my stepmother. Incidentally, Dora’s grandmother was my stepmother. 

Jacobsen: Oh, really? 
WITT: Now, Dora’s got three sisters here, and one in New York who lives right opposite my niece. They were out here when Ruth was in the nursing home and then one of them was adopted by a great family in Long Island. 

Jacobsen: Coming back to this for a minute. When this Jewish Legion was first formed, did they have British noncoms or did they make noncoms out of you men right away? 
WITT: Well, they had various battalions and regiments. But the Jewish Legion was forming and they got these fellows who had worldly experience in warfare and combat and breaking down ammunition and mines and everything else, so they conscripted them to transfer to the Jewish Legion. Now when the first Jewish Legion was formed, the 38th, they became very, very intelligent soldiers. They knew more about strategy than I don’t know! Well, we are living in a different world today, Doc, don’t forget, that was a long time ago, 57 years ago, 58 years ago. The environment was entirely different. We didn’t have them kind of educated gangsters that we have today, but we had fellows with guts. It was kill or get killed for that purpose. I’m not talking about private, and it was a remarkable thing. 

Jacobsen: And then after you people learned, at least the first members of the Jewish Legion, I suppose they got rid of these other noncoms? 
WITT: We had up to sergeant and a major. We had a lot of Jewish boys. Oh, like I told you, we had colonels, captains. There was one captain, Captain Rice, what a fellow. He didn’t care who the hell you was: “Have a cigarette, have a pipe full of tobacco.” He had cigars, pipes full of tobacco and cigarettes on him all over, and if not he went into the tent, he had his own tent, two of them had a tent and each had a servant and they used to hand out stuff. They were very capable, very powerful families in England in the mercantile business. As a matter of fact, we had a couple of Jewish boys from London, above Whitechapel which is the ghetto of London. I forgot, but there was a difference in that area, there was east of Whitechapel, I forgot the name. 

Jacobsen: Did you get to know any Arabs? 
WITT: No, no. 

Jacobsen: Did any of the boys get to know any Arabs? That you know of. 
WITT: No, the only thing is that we had Arabic girls for a stick of chewing gum or something like that. No, we shied the Arabs away because we were told that they were very, very sneaky and it was a proven fact, that after the war when I got married and lived in Brighton Beach, Doc, Arabs came around with hand sewn and handmade rugs, carpets, pieces of embroidery, something like that, you could see that they would steal your right eye out. 

Jacobsen: Brighton Beach in Brooklyn? 
WITT: Yes, in Brooklyn. It was the truth. We caught a couple of them that we had arrested. 

Jacobsen: When did you come out here? 
WITT: When I came home from the army, February 18th, the early part of March, 59 years ago tomorrow night, they ran a block party for me. Did you ever hear of those parties? 

Jacobsen: Yep. Sure. 
WITT: Now, here’s the best part of it. I lived on Fifth Street and Avenue B, which was the junior Great White Way area of Times Square. My friends and neighbors of our family who were living near George Burns’ father’s mikvah, they gave me a block party and I think I got about $265. I was a millionaire. You know $265 in those years. I was a 20-year-old guy. I didn’t get drunk with the money. And then I got some presents. I got a stickpin. I was a very well liked fellow. You see I took care of a lot of children over there who were going the other way after they corrected me. You see, Doc, those fellows that taught us in civic leagues we used to go around to big apartment houses and we used to beg people not to throw any water and sacks out or have their children play around or throw garbage out in the backyard or in the street from the fifth floor, because they didn’t have any elevators in those houses. We would go around and pick up the garbage and we would tell them when we would come around, school children; we were all school children then, until about 12 years of age. When we were nine we were educated into this civic league business and we got the Police Department behind us. We were given permission to close off the lower part of Houston Street between Cannon and Garrick Street so that we could play football, because Houston Square was there. Oh, incidentally, if I told you I was the water boy for Teddy Roosevelt and (what was his name?) the organizer of the American Federation of Labor? 

Jacobsen: Gompers. 
WITT: Samuel Gompers. Would you believe it? 

Jacobsen: No, it’s surprising. 
WITT: My father was the president of the synagogue up in the [unclear] and if I had known about this and if I didn’t have this trouble. Oh, I went to the Doctor to get my eye examined for my cataract and he told me I just didn’t have enough pulp on there right now. 

Jacobsen: Not ready. 
WITT: Well, no. I couldn’t have bothered Marilyn to take time to go to the vault. She’s got a lot of my papers, little pads. I had a lot of notes. 

Jacobsen: Sometime you might have her do it. 
WITT:  Yes, I’ll go to get the medals to prove it to you that it was me. 

Jacobsen: I don’t need proof. 
WITT: The beautiful pictures that I have. 

Jacobsen: We’ll take these pictures now. Maybe we’ll come back for them if we make arrangements to photograph them. 
WITT: You asked me about coming out here? 

Jacobsen: Yes, when was that? 
WITT: They made this block party for me, so then if you remember, I told you a fellow by the name of Abe Firestein was along with us on this five-man journey to hear Sargeant Guy Empey and Billy Sunday. His father was a ice dock dealer in the lower east side of New York and he had three or four ice trucks in those years. He sold it to the houses for l5¢ and stores and the beauty part of it was he got hooked up in Bridgeport, Connecticut on a loan and he took a business over, a gas station. The gas pumps were on the curbs in those years, right off the sidewalk, I think ten inches off the gutter. He had four pumps, two on Railroad Avenue and two on State Street and he offered me the job at $35 a week. And if I sold, he didn’t know anything about the business and his son, he wouldn’t trust his son, because the son was mama’s boy and he wasn’t going to go and stay away from mama and his brother. Abe had one brother and a sister. He asked me to take the job. So I went up there, looked the situation over, went up there by train, looked the situation over, $35 a week. And then I found out I was able to make – borrow $1 from the business, by selling some stuff for bigger prices than I saw. This was in 1920 and then I ran into a girl friend, Ruth, and came back in 1922, but I gave the store up. He sold out. I made a few dollars there. On $35 a week I was able to save about $15. I ate out. I had a few beautiful girls come in. I was a young 20 year old. I came out with my khaki shirts and khaki pants, riding breeches and boots, brown bow tie and my hair combed down. I was a handsome brute then. That’s what they claimed. Well, anyhow, to make a long story short, I worked for him, and I had some beautiful propositions. While I was there, Sam Karp –

Jacobsen: – Well, this is going to run out, let’s stick to when you got out here. 
WITT: When I got out here? 

Jacobsen: How did you come to come out here? 
WITT: Well, then I worked for the National Dairy, Sheffield Farms. I became a milkman. I couldn’t get a job on the inside. I couldn’t take it, and when the Second World War came on, we were told that we had to get war jobs, so I applied to ALCOA in New York, in the New York agency, or the employment service and they had a man out in Long Island. Well, Long Island couldn’t satisfy the aluminum company with the juice, all the power that they needed and they asked me if I wanted to come out here. Well, Doc, if you remember, we had these great big geography books, where we would open it up. We saw the State of Washington and Vancouver stood out like this, right out in the Pacific Ocean. We were going to come out here when we were 12 years old and catch those Indians and scalp them too, you know, for killing our white people. So I took the opportunity. As a matter of fact, I can prove it with the records in ALCOA here that I was in charge of 44 people coming out here under my leadership. They found out who I was, and I worked for them for two years and then I came out here and stayed from June 4th when we landed here until July 31st, 1965. 

Jacobsen: Which year did you come? 
WITT: 1944. 

Jacobsen: 1944 to ’65, then you retired? 
WITT: Twenty-three years and four months with ALCOA. I could have stayed, even up to now. My health was good. My wife said, “Ben, you didn’t make it ‘til now.” My house was paid. 

Jacobsen: Then you joined the American Legion. 
WITT: The American Legion. As an allied veteran, I was eligible to join the American Legion. I also belong to the Forty & Eight. That’s a beautiful organization. As a matter of fact, we are going to have the American Legion convention here in July, the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th. The State. The National will be somewhere else. I had opportunities to go back to New York. Relatives. You know my sisters. I have three sisters.

Jacobsen: But you don’t want to go back? 
WITT: I have my roots out here now. Do you understand? Both my kids are married, even though Dora is adopted, you know. The reason I had to adopt her was when she went into that scholarship program under ALCOA, she had to be a daughter. She was no blood relation. I had to give them that history. Then Caples – I got a bill from him “Paid in Full”. A Lot of nothing, “Paid in Full.”