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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

who became famous gangsters and were killed. I remember Boggy Foyer was a basketball player who I knew that became a gangster and then was killed in a gang fight. But that's the way it was. What areas do you want to cover?

Q:

Jews aren't known for being athletes.

Foner:

Well, basketball.

Q:

At that time.

Foner:

Basketball was Jewish, heavily Jewish. Nat Holman, City College. Even in the pros, the Celtics, and then the Jewels came out of St. John's had mostly Jews on it. And when we played basketball, we played against some teams that did not have Jews, obviously, but most of the teams that were good had Jews. The best team was usually at Thomas Jefferson, with “Rip” Kaplinsky, Java Gotkin, and others who later went on to college to star were playing there, mostly Jews. We would spend Saturday night going around. The Williamsburg Y was near us, too, and the Williamsburg Y had a lot of cultural activities. Occasionally we saw a play there, but that did not stand out. We went there because it had a gym and we could play there, we could watch games there. We would even go the church right beyond it on Saturday night because there were basketball games, just to watch them play, the kids.

Q:

You would watch the Christians play.

Foner:

We'd watch the Christians play. But at that time we were already in high school. We were older. The period of the beatings was a young time.

Q:

Like how much younger? Five, six, seven?

Foner:

No. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, before going to high school.

Q:

That period lasted for as long as you could remember until you got into high school?

Foner:

Yes, it was always playing basketball.

Q:

No, I meant the period of the anti-Semitism.

Foner:

Yes, the anti-Semitism was with you all the time in the sense that we lived in a Jewish milieu, even when we went to a band. We went to the Jewish resorts. It wasn't a religious resort; it was Jewish. We pretty much stayed within that framework. I'm trying to think of





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