Session: 123456789101112131415161718192021222324         Page 67686970717273747576777879808182838485868788899091 of 592

When was it that you and they were actually suspended and lost their jobs, do you remember?

I think it would be around '41, '42.

Well, by '42 already we were Allies.

But it would be '41. I think it's '41.

The date I have was that the Rapp-Coudert Committee turned from Brooklyn to CCNY in March of 1941.

Yes. All right.

So the suspensions probably followed.

Followed some time thereafter, yes. Then the war came.

First came the invasion.

Pearl Harbor.

First came the invasion of the Soviet Union.

I remember I was driving in a car. I was out of town at one of these summer camps, I think, and I heard the news on the radio.

What was your reaction?

That was a shock. That was a real shock. You think the Soviet Pact was a shock? Oh! This was a real shock.

In what sense?

Well, first, it was a total surprise. Although if you had read carefully, you wouldn't have been surprised. But it came as a shock, and also the question then came up very, very sharply -- could the Soviet Union stand up? You remember, they had been moving through like paper, and the question was -- could the Soviet Union stand up? Could socialism be destroyed now? Was this the end of the Soviet Union? That obviously presented a problem. But then quickly thereafter, the change in the political situation in the beginning. Then you had all of the campaigns for Russian War Relief and all that kind of thing, so you had a change in the situation, although generally many of the political operators were very, very cautious about anybody who came from the past into this thing, your background.

What do you mean?