I want you to call me Bess, B e s s, and my last name is, here, I’ll spell my last name out for you, Kaffeman, pronounced Kaffeman.

No, I was born in Salem, Mass.

I move here at 6 years old. So, my education started at 6, you know, here, and that’s where it started.

On the east side, is that what you wanted to know? Only until I was 7 and then we moved…are you from Worcester? Do you know?

Do you want to know the street?

Uh, Harlem and southward, we had a grocery store, my folks had a grocery store. From there, when that store, it was a very small store, but when they bettered themselves, they moved up to Belmont Street, a larger store, also with a 3 family apartment. It was off of Belmont St, a store with 3 apartments, it was a big house, you know, it was a grocery, corner grocery store.

I had 3 brothers.

Just my mother, my mother ran it, my father tried to, he was a tailor and he didn’t do it so well so she really was the business head. She really did make something out of the business.

Like I said, my oldest brother went, he was an electrician, and he was too old for the front, you know, in the army. So, they used him as an electrician, like I said, and he was very useful, even at his age. He told me that 17 year olds used to tell him what to do and he was 38, you know, they were boss.

It was beautiful. I loved Worcester, and up to this day, I loved it. It was just a beautiful time for us, for me, anyway, I think to myself. When I look back now, it was such a wonderful life here in Worcester…[in the house that she lived] there was a corner grocery store and the people that lived near there, all denominations came there, including blacks even lived there…all kinds of people and we got along beautifully.

I had an experience with every nationality, Italian, Black, Hispanic. I lived in a place of business. It was the Jewish business and it was a good business. That’s what the Jewish people did, that’s how they made a living. In Europe, most of them bought a cow, and my mother had her own cow in Europe, that’s how they made a living.

The war?

Oh, they were so patriotic, it was beautiful. I worked for civilian defense, do you know what that is?

Its an office, when the people went to war, we’d replace them. We worked as volunteers, we didn’t get paid. We’d go in for about an afternoon. That was my job, I’d go in for this afternoon, someone else would go in for tomorrow afternoon. Every week that way, we all helped each other and there wasn’t a lot of money involved, no money, volunteers don’t get money. They get recognition. You know about volunteers? They get recognition with a dinner and that’s what I did, that was my pay, no, we’d get a dinner somewhere during the year. I still volunteer.

From 1941. I worked for civilian defense which means that I went into the office which I told you about. That had to do with the war. Then they would call me into the hospital because somebody went to war in the hospital. It was city hospital, I went to city hospital. It’s on Queen Street. That was our main hospital, and now we’ve got the beautiful hospitals, but at that time that was our main hospital which was called city. I just worked at a typewriter to replace the girls that went to do other jobs for the war.

Yes, I worked for USO during that same time. That had something to do with the whole thing.

USO, I worked in a small, it was a store that was taken over on Franklin street. I can’t remember what it was before, but this was taken over, big, big store, with a nice floor where they could dance. The boys would come in and play music, they would play records and if there were girls there, they would dance with them. And we would serve hamburgers. We gave our time, say 4 hours 5 hours and we took turns. I didn’t work every single day, I had my turn to go in and do my job. I worked behind the counter and we made our own hamburgers and we charged them very little, I think 25 or 50 cents a hamburger, you know, that’s all it was.

I was married 11 years, I told you, in ’41 it was 11 years.

At that time, what was he doing? He was working for a wholesale grocer , a big wholesale grocer place.

Well, lets see, where did I live? I lived on Farrah ave. Well, my first home was on Farrah Ave, so it must have been, yeah, that’s where I lived.

I never had any children.

Oh yes.

Yeah, everywhere, yeah, movies and everything, we were very patriotic, yeah.

I’m Jewish, yes.

No, I never mixed religion with anything that I did.

Oh sure, everything, my brother was in North Africa and Romnie (sic) was on his way up there, you know Romnie, I don’t even know what he would do, but I remember the name, he was on his way up to North Africa. But, we kept in touch, I’m just telling you, we kept in touch.

Yeah, my brother used to write me, yeah and through the media. Oh, we had a shortage of food. What was I trying to, oh, stamps, stamps, they had to have books of stamps and you couldn’t buy anything unless you gave them stamps. The one that suffered from that kind of business was the person who owned the business. My brother, one of my other brothers owned a business, and he could have had a breakdown from what used to happen with those stamp books. He had a market on Water St. and it nearly killed him.

What?

He had to support the war, he had to do everything they said and it was just an awful way to do business. Very bad and very strict; it was just heartwrendering (sic) the way they would treat it but they could help it.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I don’t remember any violence, we were sensible, we did our job. When I belonged to civilian defense, they told me what my job was, if there was a bomb, I would have to run and help the people that were lying on the ground, and my husband said ‘you wouldn’t run, you’d be running backward, the other way’ that’s how he used to kid me, but when you’re needed, you just stay.

Well, it was normal…well, it was sad and normal. The first boy that was killed was a Jewish boy, so naturally, our hearts went out to the family.

Oh, against Hitler, definitely. Yes.

The same thing, oh they hated them.

Well, I didn’t go to them, there may have been, but I didn’t go to them.

Oh, you mean within the circles? Nobody was against them. We were happy when our president dropped the bomb, we were very happy.

Well, you know, the Jewish people loved president Roosevelt, but they didn’t know him very well. They didn’t know that he was not a friend, we found that out in a movie afterwards, but my mother wouldn’t throw away a picture…when she died, the drawer was full of papers and pictures of president Roosevelt. He didn’t treat the Jews as well as they thought he did.

The Holocaust, I just read about it, I couldn’t comment over it, I have no way of commenting over it.

No, we didn’t talk about it during the war. My mother said that she would never see her father again. She left Europe for a time and while she was in America, she said that I know I’ll never see him again.

No, I never had any problems with racism anywhere…[speaking of Pearl Harbor] oh, what they did to the bodies and everything, I never wanted to talk about it, it was too gruesome that a thing like that could happen. It was unbelievable and you just couldn’t talk about it.

When did they start moving out, that’s what I want to know, when did our manufacturing places start…have you got any history on that?

We had so many manufacturing. My brother, the one I told you about, the electrician, he worked on electric trolley cars and train cars, he was an electrician, and when they left Worcester and moved to Chicago, he was so upset I thought he was going to start a war himself. He was so upset, he was so proud of his work here in Worcester, and then one by one, they left. The furniture places went down south, it was cheaper to manufacture down south. They left, one by one, they started closing up, we had so many. The wire products that we manufactured, and we manufactured what the people, up in the air…

No, not the parachutes, but the

For the Astronauts, we manufactured right here on Park Ave.

Yeah, spacesuits, they still do, I think they still do.

Yes.

Oh yes, yeah.

No, the excitement went straight to the end. They were very proud of what they manufactured and it kept up until the end, until the ones that left, there weren’t too many left.

Like New York, like time square.

Oh yeah

I don’t remember, I don’t remember, but I did what everybody else did, yeah. I don’t drink, I wasn’t much of a drinker, I woul’ve said that I had a couple of highballs, but I never liked drinking.

Right after the war, I think everything started going down, our Main St. especially. We had a beautiful Main St. I would cry everytime; I didn’t go back there, I kept away from Main St., do you know what I am talking about? You know how we used to walk down on Main St., with hats and gloves and suits and we were special, I’m telling you, you don’t see that any more.

I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, I don’t know what changed it.

No, it just tapered off gradually, it was just a gradual thing, it wasn’t right away after the war, and the war had nothing to do with it. Maybe the methods of the way they started living, I don’t know. People, uh, dressed different. You know how the boys wear their pants now? With their pants all crushed on the bottom. I wish you could seen how the boys used to come to my store from Clark College. And have their pants fitted perfectly and shortened at a certain length, and I had to be careful, it had to be the right length on the bottom, you don’t get that anymore. Everybody, I looked, even at the Oscars the other night, the men don’t wear their pants right, they were sloppy, all these big fancy suits. That’s what I miss. I had a wonderful era, you can’t take that away from me. We were a bridge club for 50 years, we started right after high school. You don’t see that now.

No, we just kept helping, we wanted to help. That’s why we joined the organizations, the USO and Civilian Defense.

Oh yes

We missed the males, definitely.

Yeah

No, I didn’t know too many. Oh, we saw a lot of women working where men used to work.

Yes

No

Oh yeah. The women went all out, all they could do, whatever time they could give.

Yeah, we were careful, we did what we had to do.

Come to think of it, I didn’t do gardening, but I worked on babies cloths to send away some place to the hospitals or something. They came to my house and we had a group sitting around sowing, cutting out baby cloths, yeah, we did that.

Did a lot of your women friend have their husbands away at war?

No, well, not mine, cause like I said I was married for 11 at that time, some of the men were too old. My brother was there, but he was 38 years old like I told you so he didn’t do too much. He did his work, he did his electrical work. But my mother was scared, a ship was bombed on the way back to America, and he was on it, so before she found out that he was alright, it took a little doing.

Yeah, we felt that he was doing what he had to do. He was single by the way, that’s why they sent him. They took all of the people that were necessary and available. Mine was an electrician.

No, we just sat back and did what we had to do, we didn’t start anything or comment on anything. We just took it in our stride and waited for the war to be over. But we were happy that Truman dropped the bomb, oh yes, that made us happy, absolutely.

No, oh yeah, there were stories, the papers were full of them, people were writing books were’nt they? And there were a lot of reporters killed out there trying to get stories, weren’t there?

No, it didn’t affect us, it was part of our lives, but it wasn’t too close to our lives, I’m speaking for myself, but it wasn’t too close to us. I wrote to my brother, I told him I was planting tomatoes because you know, you had to do your own planting in those days. So, I wrote to him, just to write something about what was going on here at home.

No

See, the thing is that it was always in the food business, my mother said, that’s why she bought a grocery store, she said that we’d always eat.

No, he went right back to, after that first day when they checked him out, he went right back to work.

No, my husband worked, I told you for a wholesale grocer, so it didn’t affect him.

No, we didn’t have too many strikes here. All the manufacturing places seemed to keep them happy. They kept em happy. In fact, I told you, when they moved out of Worcester and moved to Chicago, my brother was upset, he was mad that they moved to Chicago.

Did I think the war was great?

We didn’t question. There was a war, who were we going to complain to, we couldn’t complain to anybody.

Well, I wouldn’t want to hear of it again. No, no way. I wouldn’t want to see it happen again, definitely.

Well, we didn’t.

Wasn’t England bombed first, and didn’t we go into help England?

Yeah, yes. That’s the way I felt and then I was glad that Russia became our friend and not our enemy.

Oh yes.

Oh yes, you had to fight for what you wanted. You had to fight for it.

You wanted a good life. We could’ve been slaves, if we didn’t fight for it.

Oh, being attacked? No, we felt that there was somebody there looking after us. That’s the way I felt. Those that could. Look at now, look at all the boys that went over to fight this war that we’ve got there. They never hesitated; the Americans never hesitated.

We weren’t in it?

Oh, I felt, keep out of it, like keep out of it. If it’s not your business, keep out of it.

Yeah, something happened to us. Wait a minute, I gotta think back. Something happened to us, like a bomb or something?

Is that what happened, on the ocean?

Well, I know the Japanese, when they came over at Pearl Harbor. That started the war.

Well, we already had one war with Germany, the first world war was with Germany, so they didn’t want another one.

That I don’t know, I don’t know how they felt, all I know is they acted. There was action, that’s all I know. I can’t remember what I read about it or what they felt about it but all I can remember is action. They wouldn’t allow us, they had to fight for their lives.

No, they had to just fight for peace. That’s all it was, they had to fight for their families and for peace. We all wanted peace. So, we did it the best way we could. I relieved, some people left for the war and I relieved some people that left for the war. That’s all. That was all I could do.