New+York

= Chapter 5 = = **New York Calling** =

//In which the family moves to Los Angeles – Milan serves a Thanksgiving dinner for Jack Benny – he learns how to load and unload trucks – other temporary jobs present themselves – a single phone call changes the family’s life -- back to New York to work for Office of War Information – travelling America for Yugoslavia - Roni goes to the countryside for recuperation – the war ends and an invitation is given to work for Encyclopaedia Britannica//

With the job at the film theatre at an end, we got ready to move once more. Our plans were to stay on the West Coast. Friends had told me that with my knowledge of languages it would be easy enough for me to find interesting work in Los Angeles.

The two huge wooden trunks which we had brought from Yugoslavia and which had been shipped on by our Greek landlord in New York, had finally arrived in Oakland. However, we found that our European bed linen in them was useless because American mattresses were of different sizes. We gave the linens to a local hospital and sold one of the trunks to pay for our train trip to Los Angeles.

We could have made this journey by car, since one of the customers who had befriended us, offered to sell us a two-seater which could carry additional passengers in the trunk. I could have paid for it, but I declined the offer. I found myself astounded to think that I could consider buying a car, just six months after arriving in the U.S. As it turned, it was a good decision since though I could afford the car, I wouldn’t have had money to run and maintain it.

One of my Croatian friends had an elderly aunt who managed an apartment house on Whittier Street in Hollywood. We had asked her to look for accommodation for us. When we arrived, she made us feel welcome, and we moved into a one bedroom apartment in her building. She adored Sadja, and did everything she could to help Roni and myself. She was a striking example of the helpfulness we had encountered so often in the States.

As soon as we had settled in, I took the 5 cent tram journey to the California Employment Agency. There were about 50 men and women waiting to find a job, and I joined them. All of a sudden a man rushed in and asked whether there was anyone in the room who had a suit with a formal tailcoat. I raised my hand, for I did have such an outfit which I wore often as a journalist in Belgrade. The man worked for a restaurant which urgently needed one temporary worker for a Thanksgiving dinner. He asked if I knew how to serve turkey at a formal dinner. “Yes”, I said, “providing the turkey is not too heavy. I have done such a job as a student.” My experience impressed the man. “Fine”, he said, “you’ve got the job. You will start tomorrow at four o’clock at Friendship House on Wilshire Boulevard.”

The next day, I arrived and discovered that the glamorous evening party was for the ‘Hollywood jet set’. The party was hosted by none other than Jack Benny, the radio actor who was incredibly popular at the time. In my tails I walked backwards and forwards between the gigantic kitchen and the dining room filled with chandeliers. I served champagne and wine in crystal glasses to ladies in low-cut dresses and gentlemen smoking cigars. I served goodness knows how many courses of turkey and other meats to the round tables decorated with candles. I earned 5 dollars, and Jack Benny added a 5 dollar tip. As a bonus, I was allowed to take home some of the left over meat, which lasted my family a whole week.

The money was added to our piggy bank. By then my wife had managed to save 50 dollars, even though, bit by bit, we had started paying off our debts to the Jesuits who had advanced us money for our trip across America.

The next day I was back at the employment agency. I was offered a job as a door-to-door sales rep for a small company. The company manufactured hair rollers allowing ladies to perm their hair at home. These rollers were a new item just invented by a Dutchman. There was a 20% commission on every sale. I doubted my ability to sell these rollers. I couldn’t imagine myself, knocking at the door early in the morning, trying to convince a lady in her dressing gown to buy the rollers. “Okay,” the employment agency manager said after I had politely explained to him that I would not be able to live up to the challenge of selling hair rollers, “I have something else for you”.

I accepted his second proposal. I started loading cargo onto trains and trucks in the railroad yard. The job almost killed me. I nearly broke down under the burden. My arms were twisted. On the first night my body ached all over. The other workers saw me struggling. A couple of friendly Latin Americans who were carrying off bags of fifty kilos with no apparent effort were amused, but not malicious. One said, “Never done this before?” There was no need for me to reply. They could tell the answer was ‘Yes’.

“You are damaging your back,” they shouted. “Look at us. This is the way you do it.” It was all about balancing a load. They taught me the required skills. After a few days I was no longer a stumbling, broken man crushed by the weight he was carrying.

Despite my progress in grasping the techniques of lifting and carrying heavy loads, I was happy that the job of loading trucks and trains didn’t last long. A Swiss man came to the local employment department looking for someone with sufficient background to be able to undertake a feasibility study for a new type of theatre to be opened on the outskirts of the City of Los Angeles. The area was largely undeveloped, but had been planned for city expansion.

My job was to record how many buildings currently existed, and how many homes and businesses were planned to be built and what the projected population density would be. All this was to help the developers determine the feasibility of building a very modern, multifunctional theatre complex with adequate parking facilities. In order to acquire the information, I had to interview residents, merchants and city staff. I was paid 5 dollars per interview plus expenses. It was a temporary assignment, but it was certainly less back-breaking and more interesting than loading trucks and trains.

While I was still working on the feasibility study for the theatre complex, I was interviewed by a Mr. Fritz who owned the Ditto Company of Los Angeles. Mr. Fritz was an educated, cultured man who drove a convertible and lived in a big villa in Beverly Hills. Although he was a rich and cultured, he had a simple and pleasant manner about him. He was well liked by his colleagues and by the employees of his company, who served him with great loyalty. The Ditto Company manufactured copy machines of the German Ormig type. During my interview, Mr. Fritz was surprised to see that I recognised these new type of machines, but I had already seen them in Europe. He obviously liked me and commented that “maybe someday, you might even be selling these machines for us.”

I was offered a full time job in the shipping department with a starting salary of 30 dollars per week. One of my first tasks was delivering a truckload of drafting paper to an airplane manufacturer. I didn’t mention that I had never driven a truck and only had a little experience driving a car in Belgrade. I was afraid that if I told anyone, I might lose my job. So I studied the map thoroughly, said a little prayer and started the truck. Fortunately, the traffic was very light and I managed to make the delivery without incident.

During the next week, I became familiar with the entire large warehouse. I started to realize the warehouse was stocked in an unplanned and disorganized manner. At the end of the week, I sat down and sketched a reorganisation plan that would bring cases of the most frequently ordered materials closer to the freight elevator and others items stored in order of demand.

On Monday morning, I left my suggestions on Mr. Fritz’ desk. He liked my proposal and promoted me to head of the shipping department. I was given a budget to carry out the reorganisation. The next few days were very busy. I had developed good relations with my colleagues who did not seem to resent my promotion. I was settling in for what I thought would be a long term of employment.

Then, everything changed. Out of the blue I received a telephone call from the U.S. State Department in Washington. It was late February, 1941. I had only been working with the Ditto Company for a few weeks. The telephone operator said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Washington wanted to speak to me. At first I thought she was joking and put the receiver down. But she called back and I realised that this was serious. I was dreading to hear further bad news from Yugoslavia -- my sister had died a few weeks earlier. We had been informed about her death indirectly via a Swiss colleague who had sent the sad news. I thought of my mother when I answered the phone the second time.

The operator in Washington put me through to the office of the Under-Secretary of State. An assistant to the Under-Secretary, Sumner Welles, told me that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had asked him to call. He said, “We know of you from the former American Ambassador in Belgrade, who was a friend of yours. We also learned a lot about you through the Yugoslav consul in New York, whose wife studied law with you and whom you briefly met upon your arrival in the States, before you left for Oakland. So we have a pretty good idea of who you are, of what your abilities are. We were convinced that you are politically reliable, but we didn’t know how to find you. With help from the Bell Telephone Company, we discovered that you had found a job in Los Angeles using the State Employment Agency, which is how we tracked you down.”

His next statement stunned me. “We would like to ask you to come back to Washington. We need your help to set up a Yugoslavian government-in-exile. You know many Yugoslav people and we would appreciate your co-operation. Are you willing to come?” I was still surprised, but I had to answer quickly. I said “Yes.” The voice at the other end of the line started to talk immediately about practical arrangements. I was asked about my “financial requirements”. I hesitated, and then thinking of a small raise, mentioned 50 dollars a week. The gentleman in Washington roared with laughter. He informed me that the train tickets were already waiting for Roni and me.

A few days later, our small family left Los Angeles for the East Coast via Chicago. In Chicago, the front page newspaper story was about the German bombing of Belgrade. The paper reported that members of the last Yugoslav Government had fled, and were now safely in neutral Portugal. King Peter of Yugoslavia, son of the murdered King Alexander, had settled in New York with Queen Alexandra, hoping to set up a government-in-exile.

The State Department asked me to go to New York to look after the members of the former Yugoslav government who were coming to the USA from Portugal and to find suitable lodgings for them. I hesitantly accepted a six months contract and a good wage for playing Secretary General. The word playing may sound a little disrespectful, but unfortunately I soon realised that the Yugoslavian government-in-exile did not take their task seriously. The King didn’t really have much experience and was convinced he didn’t have much support from the people of Yugoslavia. He didn’t seem to be genuinely interested in politics, and spent the days at the bridge table together with his female entourage. His government consisted of nine loyal elderly men, not one of whom spoke English. They supported the king, but didn’t do much else. They were more preoccupied with their own financial situation than with the future of their country. On top of this, the Yugoslav Minister of Justice was the same man who had tried to fire me in Kragujevac several years ago.

I did not regret having only a six months contract and was happy to leave after it was up. I left after finding a worthy successor, a former Yugoslav diplomat who had been consul in South Africa. He took over my assignment and I left with a clear conscience.

In the meantime, another new and interesting challenge presented itself as a result of a wonderful concurrence of circumstances and encounters. In New York I regularly visited a club in the Rockefeller Center at 510 5th Avenue. It was where Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian and other Middle European journalists regularly met. There I also met other people connected with Yugoslavia. Among them was Josef Čižek, the son of the former president of the Supreme Court in Bosnia. He had come many years ago to America to study journalism at Columbia University. After his graduation he had become an American citizen and changed his name to Joseph Peters. He became a reporter and later an editor of the Herald Tribune. He had a good reputation as a journalist and at that time was the President of the New York Journalists Guild. We remained friends for a long time.

Joseph Peters was always willing to help whoever he could. In 1941, he had taken care of Dr. Svetislav Petrovic. Who was Dr. Petrovic? He was an ex-reporter of the Belgrade Pravda! When I was head of foreign news in Belgrade for Pravda, Dr. Petrovic was our correspondent in Paris. Though we had never met each other in person, we had established a good working relationship over the phone. And now Mr. Peters brought us together in New York. Dr. Petrovic, who could hardly speak English, was working on a book entitled, Free Yugoslavia, and Peters was assisting him. Dr. Petrovic immediately asked me also to help him and since my position as Secretary General left me enough free time, I agreed. I did quite a bit of translation work for him and my wife typed up the English version of his Serbo-Croatian manuscript. (I still have a copy at home of Free Yugoslavia, with the author’s hand written dedication to my wife).

However, the result of our meeting in New York which had the most impact on my life, was a subsequent introduction by Dr. Petrovic to a man who was helping him financially -- the shipping tycoon Bozidar Banac who was a Yugoslavian “Onassis”. Dr. Petrovic had learned from him that WRUL, a short wave radio station in Boston, was looking for someone for its planned Serbo-Croat broadcasts. The station call letters stood for World Radio University of Learning, and the shortwave transmitters were at Hatherly Beach in Scituate, Massachusetts, a town about 20 miles down the coast from Boston. WRUL had been leased by the State Department during the war and was used as a transmitting facility for the Office of War Information (OWI). I was told that the transmitter building and the Boston studios were guarded by soldiers.

The FCC decided that each of our shortwave transmitters should have separate call letters, so WRUA, WRUS, WRUW, etc. were added. The station was supported by the American government and co-operated with CBS in order to send short wave messages in different languages to those parts of Europe that were occupied by the Germans. By coincidence the office of the Under-Secretary of State which had brought me from Los Angeles to New York, had made me exactly the same offer. They suggested I get in touch with the WRUL. They knew Mr. Banac through the tycoon’s many political acquaintances in Washington. They thought that by sending off messages in Serbo-Croatian to Yugoslavia, I would do both my mother country and America a favour.

I would not have to travel to Boston for the broadcasts as I could do these from the CBS station in New York. Mr. Banac put a small office at my disposal in one of the buildings he owned at the Battery in Lower Manhattan. It was in exactly the same spot where later the World Trade Center towers were built. I was eager to accept his offer. WRUL paid me for gathering the necessary information on the war that was relevant to the Yugoslav population. I put together all I could find in the national and foreign newspapers and magazines, all I could hear on the radio and all that was discussed in diplomatic circles.

As the Yugoslavian resistance became stronger and better known, the demand for news of their activities increased. Tito’s partisans acquired a powerful short-wave transmitter and their transmissions were being picked up in England. As soon as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), part of the American government, heard this they decided to set up a listening post in Forest Hills outside Manhattan. They asked me to monitor and receive these short-wave messages. There were active underground units fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia, France, Belgium and Norway. I was chosen, not only because I knew the language, but because I also knew shorthand and could write down important information verbatim. On my way home in the subway, I would typed out notes on a typewriter held on my knees.

In the beginning things were very elementary. The Americans were not as well organised as the Brits. The Brits could tap almost anything that was broadcast with their widespread monitoring service and they systematically informed the world through the BBC World Service. On top of this, the Brits had their own connections with the Yugoslavian resistance. Churchill had sent a personal envoy to Tito at an early stage of the war. Compared to the UK, the Americans were inexperienced because officially they were not yet involved in the war. Pearl Harbor was still to come. Only several months later did America take part in the “war of the air waves” through the Office of War Information (OWI).

While all this was happening on the world stage, our private life was going through its own drama. Finding an affordable apartment was a daunting task. We moved several times, living once in a damp basement apartment until we found a decent, one bedroom apartment at 103 W 77th Street across the street from the Natural History Museum and near Central Park. Even though it was a five flight walk up, we were happy to be there and it was only a 20 minute walk to my office.

We had just settled in, when on the second day I found mail in our mail box and raced upstairs to show it to Roni. “Imagine,” I said. “Here in America they work fast - they already have our address.” Just at that moment the door bell rang. A tall gentleman at the door said, “Excuse me, but do you have my mail?” “No.” I answered “there is only my mail - M. Herzog - as you can see.” He looked at me strangely, and then explained his name was also M. Herzog. Well, we started to laugh - he was Maurice Herzog, first violinist of the Brooklyn orchestra and had moved out of our apartment a few days before. He had come to the U.S. from Belgrade, just as I did, but he was a Hungarian who had played in the Belgrade orchestra for a few months while waiting for his visa to the U.S.

By early 1941, stories of Nazi cruelties filled the radio and daily newspapers. At the same time, the German propaganda machine worked full time to counter the stories with accounts of their own successes. The United States government knew that it would have to respond to the German propaganda, but it reacted cautiously. Some parts of the government, especially the War Department, were prepared, but not openly operational.The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, changed everything. Once the United States entered the war, the American government realised it lacked the equivalent of the BBC World Service. As there was no television at that time, the radio played the same key role as television later did during the Vietnam and Gulf wars. The “war of words” was tremendously important. After December 6, 1941, the United States Government put serious effort into developing war time radio capability.

The OSS immediately created a new agency called the Office of War Information (OWI), to deal with German propaganda. All of us who had met informally at the Club on 5th Avenue in the Rockefeller Center were called to a meeting. Eleven of us were selected to form a core group to form the OWI. I was named the head of the Yugoslav section and had to recruit a staff of Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian speakers who would write and broadcasts programs in these languages.

I had been warned that it would be difficult to find politically reliable staff. There were lots of Yugoslavs in America, but many had their own political objectives, depending on their ethnicity. After all, the Yugoslavian state was nothing more than a collection of ethnic groups with different religions, interests and concerns. The OWI wanted to avoid internal tensions in my department at all costs. After a while, with the help of some acquaintances, I succeeded in finding six staff members for the five daily broadcasts. Four of them were Mary Vuchetic, Lucy Sternberg, Prof. Matic Mio Katushic and Mr. Rosenberg, whose first name I can’t remember. The first three stayed with us until the end of the war. Rosenberg later went to Italy and was killed. One of my colleagues was a Slovenian who broadcast to the Slovenes. His broadcasts were so successful that he was awarded a medal in Slovenia when the war ended.

The first broadcast took place in German on February 24th, 1942. From then on we broadcast regularly in various languages. I asked my friend Josef Čižek -Peters, who was born in Yugoslavia and spoke an excellent Bosnian dialect, to join us in the opening special broadcast that was beamed to Yugoslavia. Sometime soon after his broadcast, Čižek received a message that his niece and friends had heard the broadcast and congratulated us. We, at OWI, celebrated the fact that we had been heard in spite of the German efforts to block us.

Several weeks after the OWI was established in New York, I was sent to Washington to attend a meeting. After the first session, we had some free time and a young man, Steve, from the State Department was assigned to show me around. The moment that stands out most vividly in my mind, is the point when we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial and looked out over to the Jefferson Memorial. Steve turned to me and asked, “Why did you come to the U.S?” I answered, “Because ever since I was 12 years old, I was interested in America. I devoured as many books as I could find about America, and this interest obviously continued because around 1932, after I had graduated, I wrote a letter to the U.S. and asked whether they would invite me. It took many years, before the U.S. replied that I was welcome. So I am here -- grateful for the generous welcome.” Steve then asked about my plans and hopes for the future. I replied “Now I want to do something for this country-- something worthwhile, to return the hospitality. It is up to me now to prove that I deserved the welcome.” I clearly remember that he was so touched by my answer I could see his eyes become wet.

The OWI started out small, but grew rapidly. At the end of the war it was broadcasting in 40 languages. At the beginning, OWI was more interested in propaganda, and less about the objective news coverage which had given the BBC World Service such a reputation for reliability. Soon it developed two separate sections, the Voice of America which was primarily a news service and made radio broadcasts. The other section made newsreels and documentaries and was not divided into language departments. I worked for both sections but my main responsibility was with radio in the Voice of America.

Gradually we developed a process by which I was distributing the work between my colleagues, some of whom were simply writers and others were writers/broadcasters. I did most of my broadcasts during the day, since another colleague preferred to handle night broadcasts. Most of our news was received via teletype. The teletype was essentially a printing telegraph that continuously turned our news 24 hours a day. It was capable of being used over most telephonic communications systems. In a sense, it was a precursor to the fax machine. We selected material that was relevant to our department and added information from other sources such as radio and the print media. In addition, I was permitted to write a daily commentary using my name. This was added to the central recording, which was done every morning at 10:30 a.m. I was not known as Milan Herzog on the OWI broadcasts. I used the name Milan Iskra. I had used Iskra, the family name of my stepfather, before when I was making free lance contributions to the Belgrade Pravda.

Every Monday morning we were summoned by the leaders of the OWI for a briefing, in which we were given instructions. The OWI was not keen for us to get King Peter of the Yugoslavian government-in-exile in front of the microphone. They feared that the upsetting delicate political balance in the Balkans would fuel internal conflicts in the United States. Their main objective was to unite as many parties as possible in their opposition to the Germans. It took no effort at all to keep King Peter and his government-in-exile at a safe distance. The gentlemen showed little interest in political or military developments in Yugoslavia. All they wanted was to stay out of the public eye.

The Yugoslavian resistance was led by Marshal Tito and General Mihailovic, but even when declaring our support for the resistance, we had to be careful. We took great care not to favour Tito’s left-wing partisans over the more conservative and royalist supporters of Mihailovic. We had to walk on eggs. I was very careful myself -- I had a picture of both Tito and Mihailovic in my office. The picture of Tito had been provided by the U.S. Army itself. It was one of the first wireless images sent by the troops. Despite all this, a Republican senator --- probably a forerunner of Joseph McCarthy, who conducted witch hunts against communists in the 50s -- thought it necessary to warn people through one of the Hearst publications that he had spotted a photograph of Tito in the office of the Yugoslav section of the OWI, and asked “how can you trust their Chief, whose name is Iskra.”

We used all possible sources to gain information, but relied primarily on what we received by radio. The Forest Hills listening post was better equipped now and was providing us with a lot of information. Of course the English language department was blessed with visits of important national and foreign statesmen, American politicians, scientists, writers, poets, artists, sports figures and entertainers. At the Serbo-Croat department we received a visit from Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady, who came to encourage the population of occupied Yugoslavia. We also interviewed the famous mayor of New York, Fiorello la Guardia, who was serving his third term in office. La Guardia had been an American consul in the Yugoslavian port city of Rijeka and therefore knew our country well. He also surprised us by demonstrating that he not only knew Croatian, but could speak the dialect of the Rijeka area.

We occasionally ‘borrowed’ Jacques Maritain from the French department. He was a great Catholic philosopher who was a guest professor at Princeton between 1941 and 1942 and taught at Columbia University until 1944 and was often invited to assist the French Desk. The Yugoslav Desk would occasionally ask him to give broadcasts to the French speaking radio audiences in Yugoslavia. Maritain was well known in academic circles in Croatia. It was interesting to talk to him about the human individual transcending the political framework at a time when totalitarianism was dominating Europe. For so many oppressed people, there must have been a message of comfort in Maritain’s Christian personalism.

Of course we also provided entertainment. Every Sunday afternoon we broadcast a major popular concert, each week from another city in the U.S. These concerts received a positive response from many listeners.The idea of concerts was in response to German propaganda which presented the citizens of the U.S. as ‘people without culture.’ Our answer was to broadcast interesting concerts led by leading conductors who had fled to the U.S. During the intermissions, we described the city where we were and underlined that it was the citizens who were paying for the event. We broadcast from major cities such as Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and other places with well known orchestras. But we also did smaller cities. I remember one day we were in Youngstown, Ohio, and the part of the orchestra consisted of volunteer Austrian, German and Czech immigrants who were factory workers. All of them were amateurs, but they gave an excellent performance.

While all this was going on, the news of the war had a deep impact on me. I was aware that my mother was in enemy land, as was my wife’s whole family. I also read daily about the numbers of young people who were volunteering for the U. S. armed forces. I felt a growing desire to join them on the battlefront. One day, I went to the recruiting office to join up. I was immediately accepted and was assigned to a communications section for helping out either in North Africa or Italy. I passed all the preparatory tests and was given the usual series of injections etc.

The day for my departure was set and my office had been informed. However, on the day I went to the office to bid farewell to everyone, my boss walked in and yelled at me “Stop, stop Milan! Not so fast.” He said that he had an order from Washington which declared that I would not be allowed to leave as I am already on war duty at the OWI and since they cannot find a substitute for me, it was imperative that I stay and that the military had already been informed. I was stunned and disappointed, but I had no choice. Soon thereafter, our youngest member, Mr. Rosenberg joined up and was sent to the Italian front where he was killed in action, six months later.

There were other assignments I undertook while working for the OWI. I regularly gave talks to clubs of Yugoslavian immigrants in distant places such as Gary (Indiana), Columbus (Ohio), Detroit (Michigan) and San Pedro (California). The talks were on practical matters such as dealing with ration coupons. In those days, it was not possible to buy food in a grocery store without coupons distributed by the government. The reason was that there was a shortage and in order for every one to get a fair share, coupons were given out. There were different colors for different items – e.g. red ones for meat and blue ones for butter and oil.

I was on the road quite often and travelled mostly by train. Once, on the way back from Detroit, I had a most unusual experience. It was so unusual that I thought I was hallucinating. It is still fresh in my mind. I was sleeping on the train, when all of a sudden I was dramatically awakened by the shrieking sound of another train manoeuvring next to ours. Our train was moving very slowly and in the twilight, through the window of my carriage, I saw half a submarine gliding by!! I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t even know what world I was living in. Could it be that I was on the wrong train? The next minute another half submarine passed distressingly slowly in front of my window. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was sure I was seeing half a submarine being transported on a long flat railway wagon – but what was it doing here? It took a long time before I got over my amazement. Did I see two halves of one submarine on a train? Submarines near Detroit? That far from the open sea? Was that possible? It was! The American war industry was going at full speed and submarine bodies were being made far from the ocean in Detroit-- the most industrialized city of that time. In order to transport them to the Navy base on the East or West Coast or the Gulf of Mexico, they had to be cut over their entire length. The two pieces were then mounted on long flat railway wagons. On arrival at the Navy basis the two parts were joined together. The explanation was understandable. But it was a miraculous sight. For a long time I wondered whether or not I had really been hallucinating.

In addition to my responsibilities in the OWI, I was also asked to help the films division to translate their scripts and sometimes they used my voice for their foreign films. The famous director, Frank Capra, had been commissioned to make a series of nine films to explain why and for whom the Americans were fighting in the war. The series was called “Why We Fight.” It consisted mainly of footage from the war front. The English commentary of the original series was dubbed into 27 different languages. I was responsible for the Serbo-Croation version, copies of which were later dropped from planes over Yugoslavia. I was so excited about the job I spent nine hours reading nine commentaries without making a mistake.

While recording at the Astoria Studio in New York, a man working for Fox came up to me and asked me to do the same for feature films. He also wanted to recommend me to Metro Goldwyn Mayer. One thing led to another -- after working for Fox and MGM, I worked for Columbia and United Artists. My wife typed up the scripts I had rewritten, allowing us both to make extra money. At the end of the war we had 9000 dollars in our bank account, all our debts had been paid and we could start dreaming of buying our own house.

About this time, Roni became very ill. She had started to have some health problems in Europe which had continued in California and New York. One evening, we had friends over for dinner and she served her delicious sauerkraut. As she put the dish on the table, she collapsed. We rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a large tumour in her uterus. After she was discharged from the hospital, she had to stay in bed and needed constant attention. Our next door neighbors, the Ornsteins, a Jewish family who had fled Austria, offered to help. They kindly looked after Roni while I was at work. Since she was unable to look after Sadja, I used to take him every morning to a nursery school run by a retired Austrian pediatrician named Dr. Krause.

Sadja was a bright child, but I saw so little of him I did not know much about his activities at home and at the nursery. One evening several months later, while waiting for him at the nursery, I notice some remarkable clay figures. The teacher came up and said, “Are you admiring your son’s handiwork?” I was stunned. I could not believe that the pieces there had been sculpted by Sadja. The teacher said that he made at least 5 pieces a day. I then remembered that one Sunday when we were in the park, Sadja had looked at a sculpture of an animal and had declared that he could make that. I laughed and ignored his comment at the time. Dr Krause picked up a horse head that Sadja had made and said she planned to get a copy made as a gift for Roni, because she wanted to keep the original piece at the school. That plaster of Paris copy still sits on our shelf in Hollywood, some 60 years on. Alas, Sadja gave up his interest in sculpture after he graduated from high school.

At the nursery, Sadja learned English and no longer spoke his mother tongue. In those days, immigrants tried their best to speak only English. On the weekends, whenever I had the time, I used to take Sadja to a park across the street where all his playmates were also speaking English.

I am reminded of an adventure that happened to us one Sunday in this little park at the back entrance of the Museum of Natural History. On this Sunday, as usual he was playing and I was reading the paper. I suddenly realized that it was lunch time and looked up, but could not see him. I saw a group of children playing, but did not see him among them. I started to search for him and some people even joined me. I went home to see if perchance he had wandered home, but he wasn’t there. So I contacted the park security and they searched but no one could find him. Then suddenly a boy ran towards me, but I did not recognise him. I thought he was one of the black kids who were also playing in the park. Apparently all the kids were playing in the coal heap that been delivered that day for the Museum, and Sadja, covered in soot, had escaped my notice. I will never forget the panic of those few hours.

Roni did not recover as fast as the doctor had hoped, and he advised her to leave the city for the countryside. A Yugoslavian friend who had a house at Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire invited us to stay there. “Bring your wife up, it’s so wonderfully quiet here,” she said. So Roni left by train with Sadja. A couple of hours later she called me in a panic. “There is no one here,” she said, “and the house is locked up.” I didn’t know what to say or do. But just then the telephone operator, who had transferred Roni manually, politely spoke up. (In those days there was no automatic direct dial; one always used an operator, who dialled the number and usually stayed on the line.) “Perhaps I can help you,” she said. “I know someone in the area who runs a small inn. Can I put you through to her?” She put me through to an absolute stranger who turned out to be a very friendly lady who immediately understood the situation. She invited Roni and Sadja to come and stay with her. “Don’t worry about the price,” she said as if wanting to remove all remaining doubts. So Roni and Sadja moved in with her at the other side of the lake, and I went up the following Sunday and felt I was going to visit a new friend. It was an ideal place for Roni to rest with plenty of fresh air, pleasant people and all for a reasonable price.

We later found out why our Yugoslavian friend was not there to meet Roni. Her husband, who was a general in the U.S. Army, was in charge of coastal defences and needed her urgently. He had arranged for a plane to take her to join him and in her anxiety, she forgot to call me. However, she got in touch with us soon and apologised.

In the ensuing weeks I went up to see Roni and Sadja whenever I could get the weekend off. On my second visit, we discovered that there was a little cottage across the road from the Inn. It seemed abandoned and we found that it belongs to the innkeeper. I proposed to the lady that if I did minor repairs, we could move in there and thus free the room in the inn for other customers. She happily agreed, and as a result for the entire summer we had a home on the lake. While there, little Sadja learnt to kayak. Roni took advantage of her long period of recovery to brush up her English by reading newspapers, listening to the radio and chatting with the innkeeper.

The lady, who had become a good friend, suggested that maybe we would be much more comfortable in her family home which was close by, and which was not being used. We decided not to move in, but used it occasionally to listen to her phonograph and radio. One day, in the garage, completely covered in dust, we noticed two beautiful pieces of furniture– a sofa and a chair. We both thought they would fit beautifully in our apartment. When we asked the lady about these pieces she said that they belonged to her grandfather and had been covered with a Chinese silk brought by her uncle from Beijing. But since she had no place for them, she had left them in the garage. She asked whether we would like to have them. We could not believe our luck, but explained that we did not have the resources to take them to New York. She looked at us and smiled and said that she often drives to New York and since her station wagon was usually empty, she would be very happy to drop these off at our apartment on her next visit. She said she would be happy to find a good home for these pieces. She did eventually drop them off, and we still have both the pieces some 70 years later. Once more we had been shown an example of American helpfulness which had saved us so many times before.

In 1945 the war ended, and in a friendly letter the State Department informed all the employees of the Special Services that they could start looking for another job. This was probably not such a good thing for the OWI, now known as the Voice of America, because it lost its most experienced employees. Perhaps this is the main reason why the American world service radio never established the authority and reputation that the BBC World Service gained. In the whole world the influence of the BBC World Service has remained much greater than that of the Voice of America, despite the United States’ efforts to undermine the communist propaganda of the Soviet Union with satellite programmes such as Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe and the attempts to broadcast their own propaganda in Eastern Europe.

I immediately left the Serbo-Croatian department of the OWI in 1945. The State Department gave me a farewell letter in which the Secretary of State wrote that I had served my country like the best soldier and that I could be proud of my achievements. He encouraged me by saying that there would be plenty of job opportunities for me, and if I needed help, I could always appeal to the State Department. They would always be there for me.

I was lucky enough not to have to take up the offer. I had another offer -- Encyclopaedia Britannica. As I handed in my resignation letter to my boss at OWI, William Benton (who later become the US senator from Connecticut), he told me that he was also leaving and gave me his card. He said, “Go to my company, Encyclopaedia Britannica Films and see Mr. Arnspiger, the President, and you will be offered a new job.” He told me that they had a large number of science films which needed to be translated into Portuguese and Spanish and he thought that I was the right person to do it. Although I had a different plan -- I wanted to start my own business translating entertainment and business films -- I was so attracted by the idea of working for the famous Encyclopaedia Britannica that I decided to give it a try.