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was coming and our cover story was that we were doing research
on fertilizers. They came and left and, of course, they winked.
They knew what it was all about, and we knew what it was all
about. As soon as they left, everything went in reverse. All the
stuff about fertilizer went into the drawers, and the materials
we were working on came out.

I was appointed to be in charge of burning the garbage. I was a
young man with a bit of an ego and so I thought to myself, “this
is why I studied chemistry for four years, to burn the garbage?”
I reluctantly threw the garbage outside and threw a match into
the garbage bag. The engineers start to scream, “run, run!”
So I ran. A few moments later the garbage blew up; it was all
combustible materials that we were using to develop the bullets!
I barely saved my life because I listened to them and ran.

(PHOTO: YESHIVA UNIVERSITY) Everyone in Yeshiva was involved in some way with the war
effort. It was a great opportunity to express our ahavat Yisrael
come over here immediately!” I’m not accustomed to that kind
of talk and I was taken aback, but I just did that. I shut up and (love of Israel) and Zionism in a very practical way. Again, no
I went down to see him. When we met, he apologized. He said: hora. No, heveinu shalom aleichem, rather real serious stuff. Did
“The reason I was so abrupt is because our wires are tapped, we succeed? I think we did in the end. We got the formula and
and what we’re doing is none of the FBI’s business.” I began to the Israelis were able to manufacture the bullets, which is
understand the nature of the project. something which made us very happy and pleased.
Well, Katz and Frank were assigned to do some work at a
storefront in the West Village, and Sprecher and I were sent up
to East Fishkill, New York, a small town in the Catskills, but not
in the Jewish part of the Catskills, to a home owned by a Zionist
sympathizer. I walk into this place and I see a little man lying on
his back underneath a frame of a bed and he’s painting. He said,
“Hello, zis is okay, no?” I said, “No, it’s not okay.” He was very
upset, though I was just being funny. Turns out that this man
was Professor Ernst David Bergmann, who would later become
the head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.

What struck me immediately was that my Zionism was a Hava
Nagila, singing and dancing Zionism – which is important, but
not very serious. But here I found people who never talked about (PHOTO: YESHIVA UNIVERSITY)
Zionism or patriotism; they just did very good work.
Israel had some guns, and they had the Davidka. But they How long were you there for?
needed to manufacture bullets. They didn’t have enough natural Several weeks. In order to do it, we had to prevail upon the dean
resources then, so our mission was to develop a bullet that could of the college to let us go and not take finals, but to still give us a
be produced from the material available to the Jews in Israel. passing grade for our courses. I was worried because the dean,
Each of us had our jobs, and we did them well. Dr. Moses Isaacs, was an Agudah-nik (a member of Agudath
One day there was an alarm and we all scrambled – we had to Israel). But when we told him the story he gave us permission
quickly put away all of our papers and chemicals and take out to go. Surprisingly, he was the first Republican I ever met; I
some books and papers relating to fertilizer. It turns out the FBI couldn’t imagine how a Jew could be anything but a Democrat!

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