The Columbus Jewish Historical Society

Interviewer:  It’s the 27th day of March, 2024.  This is Bill Cohen from the Columbus Jewish Historical Society and we are in the home of Gabor Klein in Columbus and we’re going to interview him about his life before Columbus and after Columbus, during Columbus right now.  Gabor, tell us, before we even get started, do you know, do you have a Hebrew name or a Yiddish name?

Klein:  Avrom Kopel ben Mordechai Yosef.

Interviewer:  Well, move in a little closer and say that again.

Klein:  Avrom Kopel ben Mordechai Yosef.

Interviewer:  Wow. Do you know why it’s such a long name?

Klein:  Yeah. I was, I have a lot of grandparents.

Interviewer:  So, that name is from all the grandparents.

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  How far back can you go in terms of what you know about your grandparents? Do you know much about any of the four of them?

Klein:  No.  I know just one and because, when we were in Hu… I was born in Budapest and so I used to go over to my grandmother and grandfather’s house every day with my mom ‘cause my mom is the youngest of seven children so she used to go to her mother’s house every day and we used to eat lunch there every day and I used to go and eat lunch with my grandfather.  He was bedridden at the time and he used to shave off Roquefort cheese and every day we would eat Roquefort cheese with a roll and scallions and I remember just being in bed with him and jumping up on bed and he’d have the whole pile of Roquefort cheese ready and we’d eat Roquefort cheese and to this day I am addicted to Roquefort cheese.

Interviewer:  This is in Budapest, Hungary, and approximately what years?

Klein:  That was from the time I was born, 1950 ‘til October 1956 when we left and we had to escape the Hungarian Revolution.

Interviewer:  Do you remember much about 1956 and the escape?

Klein:  I remember a lot because it was very intense.  We had to escape on foot overnight.  It was December and it was cold and rainy and I had a great time.

Interviewer:  In what way did you have a great time?

Klein:  Well, I’m a little kid, you know?  I was fascinated by everything.  My cousins were with me.  My two older cousins were with me, my aunt my uncle, my mother and father and a guide and we escaped in the middle of the night and I remember everything.

Interviewer:  You escaped on foot…

Klein:  Oh yeah,

Interviewer:  …and you, you walked how far, how long?

Klein:  About six hours to Austria and I wrote a paper in English in college and got an A on it.  It was called, something, The Light.  It was called The Light because I kept asking my mother when we’re going to get there and she kept pointing toward a light in the distance and said, “When we get to the light.”

Interviewer:  Now remind us a little bit about this history.  This is 1956.  The Russians had controlled, the Soviet Union had controlled, had controlled the country but the Hungarians were revolting?

Klein:  Yes, uh-huh, and there was shooting in the street, bombs.  I saw Russian tanks with dead soldiers on top of the tanks, craters in the ground, and, we, you know, we had to watch it.  We had to be careful going out because they were shooting into bread lines and milk lines.

Interviewer:  People were in line to, because they were hungry.

Klein:  Well, because there was a war going on, a revolution, at least, but my parents had to leave anyway because my father was Orthodox, so he couldn’t work under the Communists.  He had to work on Shabbos.  He had to, he just, his entire life was stopped because of the Communist takeover.  The Communists were anti-religion and all religions were banned – Christianity religion. Muslim religion, Jewish religion.  It was all banned, so, that was another reason he left.  He was happy to leave.

Interviewer:  Did your parents, course maybe you were too young to understand the politics of it, but if the Revolution would have succeeded, your parents would have been happy?  Did they support either side?

Klein:  No.

Interviewer:  No?

Klein:  No, because one of the problems was the people who were revolting against the Communists were the Fascists that were left over from the War.  The War was only over for a few years.

Interviewer:  World War II.

Klein:  Yes, so, the Fascists were trying to take control back, so all the Jews left, as many as possible.

Interviewer:  Jews didn’t like either side.

Klein:  That’s right. Yeah, and that’s why there’s a lot of Hungarian Jews here.   They came here, a lot of them came here after the War because, a lot of them came during the Hungarian Revolution, the ones that didn’t come as refugees after the War.

Interviewer:  So, you fled on foot…

Klein:  Um-hm.

Interviewer:  …and did you have to, did you just sneak across a border?

Klein:  Yeah.  We had a guide who overnight, he was a Gypsy guide, and he walked us across the border and then we went in to a Red Cross camp and I remember that because the big doors, huge doors.  I think it was a monastery, actually, and then we walked a hundred miles from the place we crossed, hundred kilometers, the border to Vienna.  We had to walk and my parents, we had to knock on farmers’ doors and say, “Eat. Work. Work. Eat. Sleep.” in German, you know, because they spoke Yiddish, the Germans, and people were very nice.  They let us.  They fed us and let us sleep in the barn or wherever and then we’d go the next day.

Interviewer:  It sounds a little like the Underground Railroad and…

Klein:  Yeah…

Interviewer:  …slaves in the US.

Klein:  …and some people were nasty and most were not.  Most were okay.

Interviewer:  Your parents let them know that you had fled Hungary…

Klein:  Um-hm.

Interviewer:  …and you were seeking freedom.

Klein:  Well, I was six years old. I was just, I was seeking toys.

Interviewer:  Huhn.

Klein:  And then we stayed in Vienna.  This is, my mom tells me, for about six months until we got visas to come to America, sponsored by my uncle, my mother’s brother-in-law, and we, as soon as we got the visas we were transferred to a camp for American citizens who were waiting to be transferred.  Then we had to wait for transfer, transport, and then we were flown to America on Army planes.  I remember those planes because they were deep green, propeller planes and we flew to New York and had to be processed and we flew to Cleveland to where my aunt and uncle lived.

Interviewer:  So, how long did it take between the time you fled Hungary and the time you got to go to the United States?

Klein:  December, January, February, March, April, May, June -seven months.

Interviewer:  So, in the meantime you were in a camp.

Klein:  Um-hm.

Interviewer:  Did you call it a Displaced Peoples Camp or what did they call it?

Klein:  I don’t, I’m not sure.

Interviewer:  Okay. What was life like in that?  Do you remember?

Klein:  it was very happy because everyone, Jewish. I remember in the original place they celebrated Christmas while we were in, waiting to get in to a place in Vienna. And they were very nice. Everyone was happy to be out, so everyone got along.  Everyone was happy, and everyone, there was a mumps epidemic during that time in the camp and we had to kind of be careful.

Interviewer:  Did you get sick at all?

Klein:  No.

Interviewer:  You said a Gypsy helped guide you to freedom, basically.

Klein:  Um-hm.

Interviewer:  So, this was a paid, you had to pay somebody to kind of smuggle you across or help you.

Klein:  Everything we had, really.

Interviewer:  You had to give everything you had?

Klein:  We, all the money, we had to give all the money, and he wouldn’t take us unless we’d give him all the money, and my uncle, I think we gave him ten thousand forint which is the Hungarian currency and at that time was everything they had.

Interviewer:  So, you fled with you mother, your father…

Klein:  …aunt, uncle and two cousins.

Interviewer:   Did you all wind up in Cleveland or

Klein:  No.

Interviewer:  …did you scatter around?

Klein:  The aunt and uncle ended up in Columbus and they ended up, my cousin Eva, ended up marrying Irwin Szames’s brother, Gerald, and Gerald and Eva moved to California and they have family in California.

Interviewer:  The Szames family, some people listening to this or reading these words might know them from his connection, Irving’s connection with Martin’s.

Klein:  That’s, and Irv’s Kosher Bakery, and the Hoffman Family, the Greenblatt Family, there’s a lot of extended family.

Interviewer:  But first you wound up in Cleveland with your mother and father…

Klein:  Yep. Um-hm.

Interviewer:  …and so, the year was approximately 1957…

Klein:  Yes.

Interviewer:  …so what happened then?  You were six or seven years old.  What do you remember about that time?

Klein:  Well, you know, I happen to have a cousin who is three months older than I am and so, and Iris who is four years than we are, so I had two cousins here and we, I couldn’t speak English, so Larry pretty much taught me how to speak English because he just, you know, we were six, seven years old.  There’s no, no distance between us and so, Larry and I were great friends. We are today and today is his birthday and my mom and I called him today on his birthday.  He’s 74 today.

Interviewer:  His name is Larry…

Klein:  …Blaustein.

Interviewer:  Blaustein.

Klein:  Um-hm.

Interviewer:  B-l-a-u…

G/Interviewer:  …s-t-e-i-n.

Interviewer:  And where does he live?

Klein:  Chagrin Falls. Cleveland.

Interviewer:  How quickly did you learn English?  How hard was that?

Klein:  It wasn’t that hard.  You know, kids learn fast, so that was, July, August, September, and September school started, and I was enrolled in the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland and, in second grade, and in second grade there was a guy named Bob Gabor and he was here for about three years, so he spoke a little bit of English and Hungarian, so, he was my interpreter, so, here’s this seven year old kid with an interpreter and they left me in second grade for a while, about four months and it wasn’t working so, they came into my classroom and the principal whispered in the rabbi’s ear and I was all upset because they kept pointing at me and all of a sudden, they told me to get my stuff and my jacket, and they hauled me out of that class and took me down the hall and, by this time, I was crying because I didn’t know what was going on and they took me and put me in the first grade class and sat me in the back and all these drooling kids staring at me and I was just in the back of the class crying, and so, that instilled a real thing in me to be better and to try hard and to, it really got me in to wanting to be popular and so, that’s how I grew up.  I grew up with that class and then I switched classes to ninth grade.  I skipped a class in eighth grade to ninth and I was smart.  I was vice president of student council.  I was the tallest guy in class.  I was fast.  I was the fastest guy in the school.  I just, it drove me to excel.

Interviewer:  It’s interesting because it could have worked the other way.

Klein:  Yes.

Interviewer:  it could have demoralized you and you could have given up but instead it made you try harder and so, even though you were demoted one grade early, you later skipped a grade so you got back to where you started.

Klein:  Yeah, and I have to tell you, the reason that I stayed positive was my parents because my parents, even though they had been through the Holocaust and they escaped Hungary and they went through life like that, they always stayed positive.  They were not negative people and so I was raised to be, to excel and to compete but not be a a-hole, to be, to have compassion, to pay attention to people, like they were, you know, so I have to really thank my parents for not subjecting me to a lot of negativity.

Interviewer:  What do you know?  What have you been told about your parents’ experience in the Holocaust?

Klein:  A lot, but not a lot early on.  When I was 15, 16, they started telling me more stuff, and even now, I find things out from my mom that I didn’t know before, so, you know, it’s, they were very smart about how they did it.  They were very smart.  They didn’t want me to suffer and have a negative attitude towards life and I don’t.

Interviewer:  So, what do you know about your parents’ experience?

Klein:  Well, now I know a lot.  I mean, my father was in Ravensbruck and Buchenwald and labor camps and he only got out because he was able to work, and my mom was also in Ravensbruck and because she was 18 and very robust, she was sent to a factory in Penig, Germany and they were being bombed all the time and so they had to run out of the factory when the Allies were bombing and have a shovel over their heads to prevent them from being killed, and they had to walk about a kilometer and a half every morning in the snow with no clothes, very bad clothes.  They didn’t feed them much.

Interviewer:  They had to walk that distance to go to work?

Klein:  Yeah, and back, and my mother was 69 pounds when she got done.

Interviewer:  When she was liberated…

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  …she weighed 69 pounds.

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  Were your parents already married when they…

Klein:  No. they were completely separate.

Interviewer:  Did they know each other?

Klein:  No.

Interviewer:  They didn’t meet until after the Holocaust.

Klein:  Right. I mean, they both lived in Budapest and my grandfather, who was married a second time because my father’s mother had died when he was two, so, my grandfather owned a textile factory, just six machines before the War, and he was taken away, he and his wife and two kids and they were killed and then my grandfather and my father came back from the camps and my mother came back and she was very lucky because her entire immediate family was saved.   They were in the Jewish ghetto protected by Wallenburg.

Interviewer:  Protected by?

Klein:  Wallenburg, the Swedish ambassador and so, my aunt, my uncle, they were saved.  My three uncles, the three sisters’ husbands were killed and they died in labor camps, but the immediate family, my uncle was in the Hungarian Army and he was captured by the Russians, so he was saved because he was captured by the Russians.  When they found out that he was Jewish, after the War, they let him go and he came back from Russia, so, I think that’s one of the reasons my mom was positive because she came back and she found everyone alive.

Interviewer:  Now, your parents didn’t know each other during the Holocaust…

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  …but, and they were in work camps inside Germany…

Klein:  Oh, yeah.

Interviewer:  …but they were taken to Germany from Hungary?

Klein:   Oh, yeah. Um-hm.

Interviewer:   I see.  The Nazis invaded and took a lot of the Jews back to Germany.

Klein:  Yes, they did…

Interviewer:  Okay.

Klein:  …and then my, my grandmother and grandfather were also incredible people and after the War, there were a lot of orphans in Budapest, people who came back and found all their relatives dead, and my grandmother and grandfather would have people over for dinner and lunches constantly, always.  They would have Shabbos meals with, there were six of them, eight of them, actually, and they’d have four more for lunch, you know, just to feed people, and so, my father was one of these guys that my aunt, one of my aunts brought in from the street, and that’s how my father and mother met, over dinner…

Interviewer:  Now…

Klein:  …and, over dinner, but not at Barcelona.

Interviewer:   Wait.  Explain that a little.

Klein:  Barcelona’s a fancy restaurant in Columbus.

Interviewer:  Oh, okay.  Yes.  Now you were, after the War, and you were born in 1950…

Klein:  Um-hm.

Interviewer:  …and you’re in Cleveland, and you were at a Jewish day school.  You didn’t go to a public school.  You went to the Jewish school.

Klein:  Hebrew Academy of Cleveland and then Mesivta High School which was part of the Hebrew Academy and there were a couple of Columbus people in Mesvita because Rabbi Rubinstein sent his kids to school in Cleveland because there was no Torah Academy yet.

Interviewer:  You’re talking about Rabbi Rubinstein who later became the, was the rabbi at Agudas Achim?

Klein:  That’s correct, and Sharon, his daughter, and his son Marty came to Cleveland and I went to school with Marty, and Marty passed away about three weeks ago in Arizona, so…

Interviewer:  They came all the way from Columbus and lived up in Cleveland so they could go to this Jewish day school.

Klein:  That’s right, so, I’ve known Sharon since she was 14 years old, and also, Steve Gellman, Rabbi Gellman, the chazan,’s son, also came to Cleveland and he went to Telshe Yeshiva, but he used to come to my house and stay at our house for Shabbos.

Interviewer:  So, he went to a different Jewish day school in Cleveland.

Klein:  And so, I knew Sima and Fred and all those people.

Interviewer:  So, this shows, this represents or symbolizes some of the ties between the Columbus Jewish community and the Cleveland Jewish community, even though they’re 140 miles apart.

Klein:   Yeah, well, Jews are Jews.  You know how it goes.  Jewish geography.

Interviewer:  So, your parents went through the Holocaust.  Did they keep their Jewish faith, their Jewish theology or did they reject it?  What did you, what were you taught as a seven year-old, an eight year-old?

Klein:  I was brought up Orthodox. We went to a – what’cha’ma’call’it? Shtetl, not a shtetl, what’s a Jewish temple in a private house called? Shtiebel.  Shtiebel It’s called shtiebel.  So, we went to Rabbi Dietch’s Shtiebel because Rabbi Dietch was the Helmitzer rabbi.

Interviewer:  Was the what rabbi?

Klein:  Helmitzer.

Interviewer:  What does that mean?

Klein:  That means the rabbi from Helmitz and that’s a city in Hungary, so, we went to his temple, and then we moved and we went to Young Israel and my father then went to Rabbi Bloom’s shtiebel also and I was, I was bar mitzvahed at the Shomer Shabbos Synagogue which was run by Rabbi Amram Bloom who was big bearded guy.  He was one of the biggest guys in the country.

Interviewer:  Physically, you mean?

Klein:  Oh, he was six four, big, booming voice.  He was incredible and he had a sombrero hat because he was from Brazil, so, he had a Brazilian hat which was bigger than normal, so, I was raised in an Orthodox, very rich, Orthodox environment in Cleveland Heights which was the place for Jews at the time.

Interviewer:  Cleveland Heights was the, a “first ring suburb,” we would call it.

Klein:  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer:  So, you were hinting that the Hungarian Jews hung together.

Klein:  Oh, yeah.

Interviewer:  And then Jews from other countries hung together.

Klein:  And the, no, the Hungarians, the Litvaks, the Poles, they all hung together, Germans.   It was all together and the kids went to school and so, they didn’t stay isolated.

Interviewer:  Oh, you’re saying, you’re saying that all those who kind of came out of the Holocaust…

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  …or came out of Europe, or recent immigrants from Europe, they all hung together, regardless, or some of them, regardless of whether one was from Germany and one was from Hungary.

Klein:  What happened was, they went to original shuls, so, from maybe ’56 to ’66 they went to Green Road Synagogue which was from one part of Europe to the Helmitzer Rebbe which was another part, to another part and then about ten years later they started going to each other’s synagogue because they lived closer.  They were Jews and were Orthodox so, the synagogues got mixed up, and now, by now they’re completely, you know.

Interviewer:  I see.

Klein:  They still have a tradition of remembering the “old country” but most of the people don’t remember.

Interviewer:  Did your parents ever talk to you about, when you were a child, did they ever talk to you about how they could believe in God after going through the Holocaust?  Did that struggle in their minds play out?

Klein:  There was no struggle with my parents, but we did talk about my uncle who was left in Budapest, my mother’s brother, and we talked about him because he became an atheist, and the reason he became an atheist was because of what happened to the Jews and how could this happen, and he became an atheist.  Of course, we were very close anyway, but we talked a little bit about that, and my grandmother, forget it.  She was always Orthodox in a very quiet way, but my relatives were, grew up in Budapest, which was a very urban city.  It’s like New York and it was called “The Paris of the East” so, they were modern. My mother used to go to opera. She would, they would keep Shabbos.  They would keep kosher but they were modern and they dressed in dresses and no, no, my grandmother wore a babushka but not all the time, so, they were modern and my grandfather, I think, when he went out, he didn’t wear a kippa.  When Shabbos, had to pray, he put one on, but that’s how they were.  They were, I would say, they were modern Orthodox.

Interviewer:  When you were in high school in Cleveland Heights, did you mostly have Jewish friends, or did, was there some mixing out into the general community?

Klein:  Mostly Jewish friends because we didn’t have time.  We went to school from 8:30 in the morning ‘til 6:30 at night once we got from ninth grade on, so we didn’t have time.  We had Hebrew school.  The only time new had non-Jewish friends was when we played in the Jewish Basketball League and I played for Young Israel and we had a bunch of guys from Young Israel and we had one guy who was a neighborhood friend, so, we gave him a fake Jewish name and he played basketball for us and then we got caught and we got disqualified, but he was about one of the only non-Jewish people we knew.

Interviewer:  Do you happen to remember the Jewish name you gave him?

Klein:  I don’t.

Interviewer:  Ohhh. Do you, in your mixing, your limited mixing with non-Jews in Cleveland Heights, as a teenager…

Klein:  Well, we had neighbors, you know. We had neighbors, right next door we had a Black family, and the kids would be playing in my mom’s yard and they would come over and bring flowers for her birthday.  They were great friends, Brittany and all, and we still are in touch with the Sapir family now and we know their grandchildren.  We see pictures of them, even now, because my mother lived next to them for 25 years, you know.

Interviewer:  So, does that symbolizes, does that symbolize how, at least in your life, as a teenager? Jews and non-Jews in the Cleveland area got along.  They got along well? Do you remember experiencing any anti-Semitism?

Klein:  Yeah. There was some but not in Cleveland Heights.  I mean, Cleveland was a very segregated city. Even amongst goyim, the non-Jews, the Poles were in the Polish neighborhood, the Germans in the German neighborhood, the Slavs in the Slavik neighborhoods. They, and they would fight.  They would fight with each other.  The Germans would fight the Irish.  The Irish would fight…it was terrible and we didn’t want to go to the West Side at all. ‘Stay away from the West Side of Cleveland’ because that’s where all the non-Jews were, but my mom worked at a nursing home, a hundred and seventy-five bed kosher nursing home, and so, there were fifty employees.  I would say most of them, except for the management were Jewish and the management were Jewish and most of the employees were not, so my mother was friends with the nurses and most of the people were Black and my mom was very much, she was very kind to Black people because there were liberators in Europe, a lot of Black soldiers, so, my mother had no prejudice against Black people, and I remember she invited some Black nurses over the house for dinner and the neighbors were, the Jewish neighbors, not the Black neighbors, but the Jewish neighbors were like, “Mrs. Klein why did you invite these people over to your house?” and she said, “Well, you don’t like it?  Too bad.” and so, I was brought up from a very early age not to be prejudiced against Black people.  Germans? Yes. Poles? Yes. But not Black people.

Interviewer:  So, you graduated from the Jewish Academy…

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  …and that would have been in the 60s.

Klein:  ’68.

Interviewer:  ’68.  And then what happened? Is that when you moved to Columbus or…?

Klein:  No.

Interviewer:  No. What happened?

Klein:  What happened was, I got into three schools, basically.  I got into Case Western Reserve.  I was trying to, I got on a waiting list for Columbia, and then the Yeshiva University in New York, so, I waited, because I wanted to go to Columbia really bad, and it was getting down to the wire.  My parents wanted me to go to John Carroll and I really did not want to stay in Cleveland.  I’d been so used to being in the same environment all the time, Orthodoxy. You know.  I just wanted to get out, and it was not against my parents.  I love my parents.  They were really great to me.  I didn’t have any negative thing towards their parents.  I just wanted to get out and spread my wings a little bit, so, it was really August.  I still, I was still on the waiting list at Columbia and two weeks before school, I decided, well, I’m going to go to Yeshiva University because I enrolled and got in, so that’s what I did.  I went to Yeshiva University and I was there for two years and then I decided to take a junior year abroad because, again, I was at Yeshiva University but, and I liked it.  It as fine, lots of friends, lots of, good school, but I just wanted to spread my wings, and I had a friend from camp, from Jewish camp named Simmy Freedland.  His father was a rabbi who had died. and Sim and I would hang out and I would walk away from Yeshiva University my second year and get in his car and we would go away to New York and hang out and I would stay at his house from time to time in Queens and I made friends with people from Queens College, and so, that’s kind of, I came out from that Orthodox surroundings.  They’re all Orthodox and, but they’re more liberal Orthodox than I was and so, that’s kind of how I decided to take a year abroad because a lot of other people from my school, and Sharon Rubinstein and Sam Fried who was from Columbus. He was here in Columbus quite a while.  He was, Sam was married to Sharon for a while and…

Interviewer:  He was another of your friends.

Klein:  Yeah.  He was the president of student council in Cleveland and I was vice president of student council.

Interviewer: Where did you wind up going abroad?  Where did you…

Klein:  Hebrew University.

Interviewer:  in Israel.

Klein:  Yeah, in Jerusalem, so we went there and that, that was phenomenal.  We had 400 students from all over the world – French, Jewish students, Swedish, Japanese, you know, English, everywhere, Columbia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and so, my horizons widened, and I met a girl from Brooklyn.  We became boyfriend-girlfriend, blah, blah, blah, and unfortunately, at that point, I kind of edged off of my girlfriend in Cleveland because I had been with someone for two, three years, in high school, but that, I grew away from that and I ended up with Debbie Gross who incidentally, found me after 40 years, seven months ago, and she and I have talked every week since we got back together.

Interviewer:  So, Debbie Gross was the young woman you had a relationship with in Israel.

Klein:  Yeah.  Debbie Ackerman at the time.  She’s now Gross.

Interviewer:  And you reunited with her.

Klein:  Yeah, and she’s married, still married to Mr. Gross, Jack, and she has a kid, but it doesn’t matter.  We’re like, tight, like we never left each other.  It’s amazing.

Interviewer:  This journey to Israel, was this motivated by a patriotic feeling of wanting to help Israel or was it motivated by the kind of counter culture hippie movement that was swirling around the U. S. and perhaps around the world at the time or was it motivated by something else?  What made you…

Klein:  I think it was all of the above, the hippie movement, some curiosity about Israel, wanting to get away, and it was an opportunity to get away and see the world, so I think a combination of everything, plus, you know, you know how people are when they’re 20.  They’re stupid.  They’ll do anything, fearless.  I was brought up to be fearless because my parents were fearless and they were full of fear but they were fearless and that sounds like a contradiction but it’s not.

Interviewer:  They moved ahead despite their fear.

Klein:  Yes. Psychologically they were able to overcome their fear and move forward and that’s how I’ve lived my entire life.  Even my business, I’ve been band manager for 45 years.  In the music business, you cannot be fearless, fearful in the music business as you know, Bill.

Interviewer:  Israel, what did you think of Israel?  This was late 60s, early 70s.  What did, did  you like Israel?

Klein:  It was beautiful.  I loved it.  The food was tremendous.  It was between the ’67 War and the ’73 War, which means, there were no walls in the West Bank and you could hitchhike through the West Bank and the Arabs were kind of happy to see you because they’d been living under Jordanian rule and Yasser Arafat, so, that’s when Arafat got thrown out of Jordan to go to Lebanon, and so..

Interviewer:  Wait, now, Yasser Arafat, not the King of Jordan, Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader.

Klein:  Well, yeah, because I think the PLO leader came in after the ’67 War and he took over. He wanted to fight, so, all I can say is all the West Bank was accessible to Jews and the Arabs were not fighting and we would go to Nazareth and eat in a Arab restaurant and no problems at all. People were nice.  Every now and then you’d get a few people that were not, that would not serve you or, and then you left them alone.  You honored that.  You said, “Oh, sorry,” and went, but for the most part, it was very peaceful and there were no bombings, no nothing.

Interviewer:  Did you, did you have anything to do with the kibbutzes, kibbutzim?

Klein:  Very little.  I was there for a short time and my relatives did not live on kibbutzim.  My relatives were in Israel before and they were, Tvi had a grocery store.  My other, none of them were kibbutzniks.

Interviewer:  What happened after you were in Israel?  Where did you go from there?

Klein:  From Israel?  I went back to New York and I transferred to NYU because I didn’t want to go back to Yeshiva University.

Interviewer:  Why is that?

Klein:  Because I was more interested in the secular studies.  I was interested in philosophy.  I was interested in, in economics.  I had been a physical chemistry major and I switched to economics and philosophy, so, I just wanted to have, concentrate on those kind of studies.  I didn’t want to concentrate on anything, so I’m a Yeshiva boy who went bad.

Interviewer:  So, this would have been in the early ’70s.

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  And did you get your degree from New York University?

Klein:  Yeah, New York University.

Interviewer:  What happened then?

Klein:  What happened then, I was in New York and my, I had another girlfriend who got a, went to BU, Boston University in psychology and I went up there, so I would go up every week and go back to New York and go back and come back.  I got tired of that so I moved in there.

Interviewer:  You moved to Boston?

Klein:  Yeah, and then I would still go back to New York because she was pretty busy and then my friend Steve Gellman was a film major at Ohio State so he and I, I had friends at Barnard, two women friends.  The woman, Gloria Garfunkel, who later became a clinical psychologist at Harvard, and Gloria and her roommate were in a class and they wanted to do a film so, Steve came from Columbus to New York.  We stayed in the dormitories at Barnard, which were illegal at the time, and we filmed, made a film.  We took about six weeks and my friend presented the film in class and it got all kinds of rewards.  It was a film about Bellevue Hospital that was being built.

Interviewer:  This is a psychiatric hospital.

Klein:  Yeah, and they were out of money.  Oh, it was not, it was another hospital, Bellevue Presbyterian.  It was like a 120 Street on Columbia campus.

Interviewer:  So, it was just a regular hospital.

Klein:  Yeah, so, we went there, and so, we made that film and so, I went back to Boston and my girlfriend had gotten a job and she was a psychiatric social worker so she got a job in New… Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so, she moved to Portsmouth and I stayed in Boston, back and forth, back and forth, but it’s an hour, and then we broke up and I was really devastated and I came to visit Steve in Columbus for a couple weeks, because I had to clear my head, so, I came to Columbus and I happen to come in Columbus during ComFest, 1976, early ComFest, and Steve knew everyone in town.  He was a musician, a filmmaker.  He knew the people who did films in town.  He knew people, all the art people from Ohio State, all the ComFest people, all the musicians, at Positively Fourth Street which was a collective bar, so I came in to a ready-made group of people, like, I immediately knew 60 people in Columbus in two seeks, and I volunteer for ComFest.  I work for Boyland, and Boyland was a judge and he was a head of security for ComFest during that period and I worked the barricades at ComFest that year.

Interviewer:  Now, Bill Boyland was a judge who later ran for mayor.  He was a left-wing activist…

Klein:  Oh, yeah.

Interviewer:  …and when you say you manned the barricades, what do you mean by that?

Klein:  Well, we had barricades and I had to stop people at the barricades and see if they had permission to come in, because we kept people out of the barricades.

Interviewer:  Security.  It was security.

Klein:  Uhm-um.

Interviewer:  You tried to make sure there wasn’t any trouble at the…

Klein:  That’s right.  I had my AR-15. No.

Interviewer:  Now you’re kidding about that…

Klein:  Yes.

Interviewer: …but you did have some authority to keep people out.

Klein:  Yeah, gently.

Interviewer:  So, was that a good experience for you?

Klein:  It was great.  I had a great time and, at that point, Steve and I decided to start a film company in Columbus called Innervision Films and I stayed here for three months.  My roommates in Boston were aghast and…

Interviewer:  They were aghast that you would stay in Columbus?

Klein:  Yeah, and I sent for my belongings to be sent from Boston to Columbus, so, I didn’t, never went back to Boston.

Interviewer:  They were aghast because you were leaving what they saw as a cosmopolitan city and going to what some people referred to as a “cowtown” in the Midwest?

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  That’s basically…

Klein:  …and because I broke my lease.

Interviewer:   Oh.

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  But you didn’t see Columbus as a “Cowtown” at that point.  You thought it was pretty good?

Klein:  You know, I knew everybody.  The whole city was great.  It was completely open to me so, I came here and Steve and I started making films.

Interviewer:  Now when you talked about ComFest in 1976, and it had begun around 1972, on a little patch of ground right next to the OSU campus.  Is that where it still was in 1976?

Klein:  Yeah, on 16th and Waldeck.

Interviewer:  It has moved several times since then and grown but, you were in on it in the early times.  What do you remember about those early ComFest days?

Klein:  Ah.  It was sweaty and messy, makeshift.  The stage had no top on it. You had the sun beating down on everybody, was sweating.  It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun, and so, I was involved with Steve.  He was filming. We were, had access to backstage.  I met all the musicians.  It was quite an experience.  The food co-op was in the building that was right there.  What was the name of that building?

Interviewer:  Maybe you’re referring to the Wesley Foundation.

Klein:  Yeah, Wesley Foundation.  The basement of Wesley Foundation was the food co-op. I, of course, joined the food co-op and met more people at the food co-op cutting cheese and I was really good at cutting cheese.

Interviewer:   Because of your experience with your grandfather, the roquefort.

Klein:  And my parents. So, you know, it was a really great time.  It was really great except we weren’t making too much money, and there was another friend of mine here in town named Susie Butramovitz.

Interviewer:  Say that again?

Klein:  Susie Butramovitz.  She was from Detroit.  Susie was nuts and she had a boyfriend named Yigh Gross. Yigh had a batik store on King Avenue and she sold flowers in front of the Statehouse, so I would go with Susie and we would sell flowers in front of the Statehouse and make money, and I also ran a hot dog cart on the OSU campus and made money selling hot dogs to students, and we had permission to sell hot dogs and Greenfield, who is currently the Basement Doctor.

Interviewer:  Greenbaum.

Klein:  Greenbaum.  Now he is, his brother had this store in the OSU Union and so he got the hotdog cart, so I worked for Bob Greenbaum’s brother to do hot dogs.

Interviewer:  Now there, later there was a Greenbaum who had a, who had the first vegetarian restaurant.  Was he part of this at all?

Klein:  Yep. Uhm-hm. I think so.

Interviewer:  Barney Greenbaum.

Klein:  Yeah.  Barney had the restaurant at the Ohio Union. Yeah.

Interviewer:  You were talking about ComFest. You mentioned Gellman being active.  There were some others in later years especially, the Mendelson Brothers?

Klein:  Oh, yeah.  Well, I met them at ComFest, you know, and I met them, later on, I think Rosie was here already and, I think, Daryl was still in New York and then came over, or was it the, oh, it the other way around.

Interviewer:  Two brothers.

Klein:  Yeah.  Daryl was here and then Rosie came because Rosie was younger, and then what happened was, in 1981, I became, well, even before that, ’79 I started going in to music business, and my first job was running a club called New York, New York with a guy named Cliff Hardy.  It was an R&B club and then, I was living on campus with an Indian professor and listening to a lot of Indian music and stuff. It was great, and the film company broke up.  We, we couldn’t get enough films because people were early on and we broke up the film company and I was sitting around wondering what to do with  myself and I had been reading Variety Magazines, all the trade journals for film and music, and all the Variety and Billboard always had a film section and a music section, so I would read cover to cover and I was into jazz a lot from living in Boston. I used to see Pharoah Sanders and McCoy Tyner, Gato Barbieri,  and all these incredible jazz  musicians, and one day I was sitting around, very frustrated, not know what I wanted to do and I saw an ad that said, “Music conference, Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC “ so I jumped in my car and I drove to Washington.  I’m 28.  I pay my money.  I just get there in the middle of the first session of the conference and I sneak in and I sit next to this guy because he looked like he was safe.  He had a maroon velvet shirt on and purple pants, and a big beard, so I figured, ‘what the hell’ so, I sit next to him and he turns out to be Polish and he turns out to be Michal Urbaniak and, at that time, I didn’t know who Michal Urbaniak was and he says, “What do you do?” I said, “What do you do?” “I’m a violin player. What do you do?” I said, “I want to be a band manager,” and he said, “Oh, I need a band manager.  I don’t have a band manager.  I’ll introduce you to my record label.  He’s running the, the first session.”  So, Michael and I talk and talk and talk and the session’s over.  He takes me up.  He says, “Hey, I want to introduce you. Irv, this is Gabor.  Gabor is a manager.  Irv, this is the president of my label.”  “Okay, get in touch with me,” blah blah blah.  I spend the entire weekend hanging out with Michael,  Irv Kratka, Ahmet Ertugun, his brother Nesuhi Ertugun.  They’re the heads of Atlantic Records.

Interviewer:  Atlantic Records.

Klein:  Yeah, so I’m sitting at tables with all these record companies – John Waxman, one of the biggest music attorneys in jazz in New York.  I’m sitting around with all these guys, so Irv, after the conference is over, he goes, “Why don’t you come to New York.  Come talk to me about managing some of my jazz bands.”  So, I go to New York.  I stay with Irv.  Irv says, “Here.  Here are a bunch of my acts that don’t have managers.  Pick five and tell me which ones you want to manage.”  So, I’m listening to music for two weeks.  I pick five.  He said, “Okay.  Let me talk to them and see if they’re interested in being managed.”  He comes back.  He says, “Okay we got, everyone agrees.  Go to my promo guy.  He’s going to make you some tapes for promotion and I’m giving you a bunch of albums, posters, Walkmans came out this week.”  He had a box of Walkmans.  “I’m giving you Walkmans, some video machines.  I want you to go and get them booked.”  Off I go.  I just had time to stop back in Columbus and I’m on my way to Overland Park to go to a booking conference.

Interviewer:  Overland Park…

Klein:  Kansas.  There’s a booking conference, so, I set up a booth.  He bought me a booth at all these booking conferences and next thing I know, I’m booking five national acts.

Interviewer:  So, your job at the booking conference is to get them a gig in Boston, get them a gig in Cleveland…

Klein:  Everywhere, yeah, at the unions, at schools.

Interviewer:  Oh, at schools, at universities.

Klein:   This was a university conference.

Interviewer:  Because the university students were big on jazz?

Klein:  NAPA.  It’s called NAPA – National Association of Performing Arts Conference and unfortunately, the universities are not that much in to jazz, and I have, I have to really push it and then, I went to a bunch of conferences and I came back to Columbus and I started booking my jazz bands in Columbus, of course, and at Oldfield’s on Fourth, and I got heavily involved in the jazz scene in Columbus.  I knew all the jazz people in Columbus.  I still am friends with everyone.

Interviewer:  Did that go pretty well?

Klein:   Oh, yeah.

Interviewer:  As, you as an agent, booking.

Klein:  It went okay.  It was a little bit hard but I had some really good acts and I was connected up with a lot of good people.  In New York, when I was in New York, I went to John Waxman because I really didn’t know how to be a manager.  So, I went to John, the attorney, and I said, “John, tell me exactly how the money flows in the music business, royalties, booking, what percentage.  I have no documentation.  I need booking forms.  I need…”  So, he fixed me up with all the documentation.  Irv paid for everything, so, I had all the documentation from a real New York attorney.  I was managing real signed bands, some of whom played internationally, and all of a sudden, I was thrust into that, so, in Columbus, I was the only real national level agent in Columbus.  I mean, before me, there were some people in Columbus who were in the music business, most notably, Leo Yassenoff.  You remember?

Interviewer:  He owned theaters, too, didn’t he?

Klein:  Yes.

Interviewer:  But he also brought performers?

Klein:  Sure.  Yassenoffs and the Yassenoff Center in Columbus is named after him.  He was a really nice man.  He was very open to helping me and I had meetings with him.  My bands never really were able to pay but he was very nice and I used to go visit him.

Interviewer:  So, this was in the, was this in the 1980s and ’90s that you were bringing jazz acts to Columbus and elsewhere?

Klein:  I’d say ’79 to ’81 and later into early ’90s, but then what happened was I was always in to every kind of music.  I was into Led Zeppelin in college and I was into Yes and all the rock and roll acts, even, you know, everybody.  I was in to all kinds of music and I was into Indian music because my roommate was Indian.  I was into jazz.  I was into rock and roll, and so, I walked in to Stash’s one day.

Interviewer:  Stash and Little Brothers, at one point, it was called.  It was a bar and performance space.

Klein:  Right. Right.  Actually, before Stash’s, I’m trying to remember.  Yeah, it was Stash’s.  So, I walk in and there was this band playing and blew me away – saxophone, guitar, it was Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires.

Interviewer:  That was a local group.

Klein:   Yeah, managed by Rosie and Daryl.

Interviewer:  The Mendelson Brothers.

Klein:  Yes, and they were trying to get their business off the ground and they were having trouble with the guys and so, I went and saw this band.  I thought they were tremendous and then I really wanted to manage them and I went to see them at another club called Mr. Brown’s Descent, and that was like at what was, 7th and High Street, 8th and High, and so I would go backstage and everyone would hang out backstage and I didn’t do a lot of drugs at all, and, you know, and people were sticking cocaine up the noses trying to get them to, you know, be their buddies and work with them and I didn’t do that because I didn’t have any cocaine and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t, I wanted, I was always trying to be clear-minded.  I drank a couple beers a night.  That’s it, only when I went out.  When I was at home, I didn’t drink at all.  My father and mom were teetotalers, you know? And, so, Ronald and I would talk and he was impressed that I wasn’t shoving cocaine up his nose so, we would, I would give him a ride after work, and he, we’d be at his house ‘til four in the morning talking and I got to know Ronald really well and then the rest of the band and so, sure enough, I became the manager of the hottest band in Columbus at the time, all new wave band. So, I kind-of switched from jazz to rock and roll, and so, I continued working with jazz, but the rock and roll was more exciting and…

Interviewer:  Was this still in the ’80sor are we…?

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  Still in the ’80s.

Klein:  Yeah, and then Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires broke up and Ronald Koal Band started in 1987 and in between, I started managing other bands, so, I managed The Fifth Wheel, World Gone Wrong in Dayton, the [Fitz?] in Cleveland, Blue Karma in Dayton, and I managed Elisa Nicolas, the [group?] LA etc. etc., and then Ronald came back and said, “I’ve got a new thing.  Let’s go.”  and I started managing Ronald again and off we went until ’92.

Interviewer:  Let me ask you this. You’ve mentioned a few of the other people you’ve worked with in the music field and in the counter culture movement, I guess, for lack of a better term. Were there a lot of Jews involved in these two fields, or a disproportionate number, or…?

Klein:  Oh, I think there were a lot of Jews, disproportionate number, and the film industry and the music industry is like that, so, for instance, Bruce Garfield who, right now runs a Columbus music group here in Columbus right now, Bruce Garfield was at Capitol Records in New York when I knew him in New York and Bruce is Jewish. 1:12 [   ?  Robrovsky?  ] Bruce Dickenson is not Jewish, so, I would say, a good third, third to a half were Jewish in New York and L.A.  In between, not so much, but even in between, Irv Azoff, one of the biggest managers in the world, is Jewish and he started in Bloomington, Indiana.

Interviewer:  Do you have any analysis on why it is that Jews have been particularly disproportionately active in the field of film, music, the kinds of things that you’re active in?

Klein:  Well, first of all they’re all machers.  Do you know what machers means?  It means “maker.”  They make things happen so their parents instilled in them the ability to make things happen, so, they all wanted to be doctors, lawyers, accountants and managers, and because they make things happen, real estate people.  There’s a disproportionate number of them and partially because at that time we couldn’t really do very much else so, we always tended to be independent minded.

Interviewer:  You mean, when you say they couldn’t do it because they were discriminated against?

Klein:  Yeah. This was a time still when the east coast was very Protestant and they discriminated against people so, in New York, everybody started belt factories, and shmata factories, textiles, and, you know, and their kids went in to creative fields.  Yeah.

Interviewer:  Where did you live in, where have you lived in Columbus?

Klein:  I started off living on Neil Avenue when houses cost $24,000 and were, it was a terrible neighborhood but that’s where we lived and that’s where all the creative people in Columbus lived.

Interviewer:  Is that the area that’s now called Victorian Village?…

Klein:   Yes.  Uh-hunh.

Interviewer:   …but back then it had not been fixed up.

Klein:  No, and that, when I lived there it started, Battelle had a consent decree against them and they had to invest twenty million dollars in the neighborhood and they’ve started fixing it up, so, that was where I started.  Then I lived on campus for a while on Iuka Ravine with the Indian guy, [Chandra Belakrushna?] and that’s when I met Candy Watkins who later became the head of ComFest. Candy lives a few blocks away from me right now and she lived with Steve Canneto at the time, and I was friends with…

Interviewer:  He’s a sculptor.

Klein:  He is, a really good one, and I lived with, near them and I was friends with them, and Steve, by the way, at that time, he was not a sculptor. He was a jewelry maker.  He was experimenting with making some larger jewelry pieces that became a sculptor and later on, of course, he created the sale at Franklin Park Conservatory that is still there.  It’s beautiful, and so, from there, I finally moved out of there and I felt like I needed to get away, again that getting away, the expansiveness.  I wanted to experience new things so, I moved to Worthington, to Rush Creek Village and I lived in the basement of a house in Rush Creek Village and it was wonderful. You could walk to downtown Worthington.  There was a grocery store, post office, a hardware store.  It was still “old town,” and so, I lived there for two and a half years, and then I moved back in to town, and lived on Franklin Avenue, right around the corner.

Interviewer:  Here on the near east side.

Klein:   Yes, on the other side of the freeway, so, I lived on the west side of the freeway, on Franklin, near the Players Theater, and so, I lived there.  I bought the deli behind my house.   I used to go eat at the deli behind my house and the guy used to be upset all the time because he had to get up in the morning and make breakfast and he said, I finally told him, “You know, you’re bitching every morning. Why don’t you just sell the place?”  So, he turns around to me.  He says, “You want to buy it?” and I looked at him.  I said, “Yes.” and by 3:00 that afternoon, I bought the deli.

Interviewer:  Now where is this deli located?

Klein:  It used to be 555 East Broad Street diagonally across from the Museum.  There’s a parking lot there now, and it was called Salvadore Deli, and I painted it chartreuse and I had ballet dancers for waitresses and Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires were working there and I was open every day from, ‘til three for lunch and then I’d open at five to seven to serve the CCAD students and the ballerinas because they had no money, so, I would make two dishes, just cheap, really cheap, I mean, you know, and I’d serve that and then I was open to weekends, Friday and Saturday from midnight ‘til four in the morning and all the bands would come after their shows because they all knew me, so, we had a great time, so bands would come and police, so, we had a good time.

Interviewer:  So, all the places you’ve lived that you’ve mentioned, so far, you have not lived in Bexley or Berwick or Eastmoor?

Klein:  No.  Then I moved over here to 17th and Bryden on the corner.  It’s for sale now if you want to buy it, and then I met someone, and, a woman named Amy and I fell in love with her and I never slept in my apartment again for eleven years, so.

Interviewer:  So, you’ve never lived in Bexley Berwick or Eastmoor.  Those are the three neighborhoods that for many decades were considered the Jewish neighborhoods, where most of the Jews in Columbus lived in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s.  Now you are located on South 17th Street, near east side…

Klein:  My aunt and uncle lived on Wilson right near here. I kept, I, of course, went to the Jewish neighborhoods all the time.  Salvadore Deli used to have pastrami and I would buy pastrami from Irv…

Interviewer:  Irv Szames.

Klein:  Yeah, because the only good pastrami was Vienna pastrami at the time, which was kosher, and Irv would get Vienna pastramis sent to him from Chicago and I would pick it up and we had the best pastrami in town.

Interviewer:  So, your current location, you’re very aware that this used to be somewhat of a Jewish neighborhood in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s.

Klein:  Yeah, and some of the buildings here are still the shuls which were sold to people.  Yeah.

Interviewer:  So, it’s kind of a cycle, not that today there’s a lot of Jews here in this near east neighborhood, but a few.

Klein:  Yeah.  There are.  Tom Haus lived here. He’s Jewish.  Joe Sniderman lives in my mom’s condo, which is Park Towers condos.  The Foyers live there now.  He used to live on Merkle, so, there’s a lot of people that are coming back in because this neighborhood has gentrified, and like many old neighborhoods, and it’s good and bad.  Charlie Einhorn used to live here.  He’s Jewish.  He was part of ComFest.  Lynn Stan lives here down the street. She’s part of ComFest and she’s Jewish, and her sister is a rabbi, so there are some Jews around, and a lot of other people that you know.

Interviewer:  How do you classify yourself as Jewish?  In what way are you Jewish? You mentioned, of course, you went to Jewish day schools when you were young and you came out of an Orthodox background.  What do you, how do you classify yourself now?

Klein:   You know, I’m not religious, but when it comes to, my mother moved here 18 years ago.  She had a heart condition so, she moved here when she was 80 and since that time she lived at Bexley House, and Bexley House, as you know, is right next to Agudas Achim and Ahavas Sholom is up the street, so I used to stay with my mom for every holiday.  I would stay in her apartment and so, when it came to going to shul she wanted to go so, she wanted to go to Orthodox shuls.  Agudas Achim is more Conservative and almost Reform really now and before that, it was more of a modern Orthodox shul while Rabbi Rubenstein was alive and so far, it’s changed over the years, and so, we were, had to find a Orthodox shul and I went to Ahavas Sholom and Ahavas Sholom was more like the shul that I went to in Cleveland and I can’t really go to a Conservative or Reform shul.  They don’t feel right to me, so, when I go to temple, I go to an Orthodox shul, like I was used to being brought up and I still donate money to Ahavas Sholom.  I can’t go there because I don’t want to drive to Ahavas Sholom, obviously, so when I was with my mom, I used to walk with my mom.  We would go to Ahavas Sholom and walk back and participate in everything there and I still donate money to them.  I still buy matza from them.  I would have gone to Purim except my mom couldn’t go so I stayed with my mom at her house.  I read her the Megillah.  We read Sephardic Megillah over the internet.

Interviewer:  What kind of Megillah?

Klein:  Sephardic.

Interviewer:  Oh, Sephardic.

Klein:  Yeah.  It was beautiful.  Man, the, the singing was really amazing.

Interviewer:  So, you feel most comfortable in an Orthodox synagogue…

Klein:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  …but do you consider yourself to be Orthodox in terms…?

Klein:  No.

Interviewer:  Explain that.

Klein:  I don’t know how to explain it I other than that I was brought up a certain way and I’m still connected to that way, but not in a religious way, more culturally, and so, I just don’t go for all the changes in, I don’t know.  I just was brought up Orthodox and I’m not comfortable with all the psychological and, what’s the right word, justifications for changing everything, modernizing for the sake of modernizing.  I’m not comfortable with that.  I’m more comfortable with the way it is, the way it was, and keeping that part and not necessarily.  Now, I don’t mind people doing it.  I’m just not comfortable doing it and right now, my mom lives in Park Towers and I’m going, about to be there all of Passover.  I don’t drive to my mother’s on Passover.  I stay with her in the condo, and Tifereth Israel is two blocks away so, I could walk to Tifereth Israel even with a stroke, but I’m not going to go to Tifereth Israel.

Interviewer:  So, you consider yourself a cultural Jew but not so much theological.

Klein:  Right. Uhm-hm.

Interviewer:  And so, now there’s…

Klein:  I’m a Yeshiva boy at heart, but, you know, I’ll give you one example. I’m at a music conference in New York, in Chicago.  It’s called The Independent Label Music Conference and it’s in the late ’80s, and so, this is alternative music conference, so, there was a big storm in Chicago at that time and the people from New York who were supposed to be on the panels, they were all New York label people, they couldn’t come because of the storm, so, the organizer of the festival, Leo, was looking for people who would run the label panel, so, I said, “ Well, I guess, I could do it,”  and he got another guy from Chicago, Charlie, and he said, he was the manager, and he said, “Well, I guess I could do it,” so, Charlie and I both sit there an hour before trying to prepare conference agenda and Charlie and I talk and it turns out that he went to Yeshiva in St. Louis and I went to Yeshiva in New York, so, here we are in Chicago, at The Independent label Festival.  We’re doing the conference by two Yeshiva boys about the music business, so.

Interviewer:  So, in one way, you have one foot in the Jewish community, in Jewish history, in Holocaust history, and you have another foot very much in the secular world, in the music business, not the Jewish music business but the music business.  Your straddle, you straddle, your life is straddled  two worlds.

Klein:  Oh, yeah and big business, too.  I mean, music is a big business now and it’s a big corporate business where involved, anyone involved in the music business is also involved in the corporate business, so, we have to be very involved in the economics, philosophy, psychiatric, because the bands all have problems.  Everyone has problems and, so, I’ve kind of become everything to everybody, you know, in that sense, and I became a production manager for festivals also, and did Ohio State Fair for a year and a half, and did Stevie Nicks and Bob Dylan, major acts, so I’ve kind-of know how that works and how it works at a beginning level because I still work with young bands.

Interviewer:  As we wrap up this interview with you could you tell people what role has Judaism played in your life?

Klein:  It’s hard to say because I don’t think about it that much.  It’s just something that’s there and I don’t try to analyze it.  It’s there and I know it’s there, so, tikun olam, fixing the world is a big part, bringing light to darkness.  It’s been a big part helping people.  I am the founder of The Good Neighbors Picnic for the homeless in Wolfe Park.  It’s 25 years old.  I’m involved with homelessness now for 35 years, and that’s very Jewish, and trying to be positive, fixing the world, trying to help people wherever I can, being involved.  On the condo, I’m on the Finance Committee at ComFest.  I was the organizer of all the stages, so, it’s reaching out and touching people and, I think, that’s a very Jewish trait.

Interviewer:  Well, with those words, we’ll end our interview here with Gabor Klein on this the 27^th day of March 2024.  Thank you, Gabor, and this is Bill Cohen for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.

 

Transcribed by Linda Kalette Schottenstein