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Louis Ziskind interview, 1993

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Louis Ziskind interview, 1993

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Content Louis Ziskind Interview by Marj Schwarz
August 11,1993

SCHWARZ: the first part of the tape he goes into great
detail about his family and his early schooling. When we
pick up on the tape he is just getting ready for his first
job with the - when he is going to apply to the SLA. From
then on, I think the whole thing is there, but the machine
was not recording. It was only playing for the first part
of the tape and I’m very sorry about that. But the
relevant material is as follows.
ZISKIND: I got my teaching credentials, but I couldn’t
get a job in social work. So I did many, many things. I
worked in a box factory, I worked as a houseboy, and I
worked as a special delivery boy. I never was without
work, but I never had anything that I knew I wanted to
continue. All along this time, I had a girlfriend. My
first wife was my girlfriend. I courted her for five years
before I married. So we were worried about my situation and
what I was going to do.
At that time, my brother was established in the
practice of medicine, and he said to go back to school
since you want to do medicine. I’ll help you financially.
I said all right, and I accepted the idea. I talked it
over with my wife. When I got my teaching credentials, I
got married. My wife was a librarian with the city library
system, making all of 80 bucks a month. That was her
income, our income. But I was never without work. I was
always doing something. I coached the city fire department
in basketball. In the police, I played baseball, went out
and did one or another. I always had some money coming in.
It was a meager life, very unsatisfactory. One thing
playing athletics when you love it, it’s fun. It’s another
thing when you’re making your living at it. If you didn’t
feel like playing it, you have to go out and play it any
way. So that didn’t please me too much.
This opportunity to go back to school came along. I
went and talked to the Loma Linda people, because Eugene,
at that time, was also teaching at Loma Linda on the
medical staff there as well as at general hospital. They
encouraged me. If you’re pre-med, we’ll find a receptive
group here. So I went to UCLA. Now I had gotten my
undergraduate degree and my general psychotherapists ??. I
went to UCLA because it was ??. I had to make up courses,
which was very difficult. If I took physics, I had to take
the course that was offered at that time and it may be
intermediate rather than beginning physics.
SCHWARZ: Oh.
ZISKIND: But I couldn’t get around it, I had to take an
intermediate class.
SCHWARZ: Yes.
ZISKIND: I had to take what was offered to fill in. My
study habits were not the best anyway. I did all right,
but I never did what I was capable of doing. This made it
very hard. I got through my pre-medical except one course
and that course wasn’t being given for two years. I
would’ve had to wait two years to get that course.
By that time, I had had about six years of college.
My wife said I had to do something. I don’t like the sight
of you going back to school for another five or six years.
She had a sister, a lovely person, who was a social worker
in the county. The State Relief Administration started up
and they needed workers. How do you develop social workers
overnight? You can’t, so anyone with a college degree was
accepted as a social worker. Through her I got to know who
the director was of a district in the State Relief
Administration. I got a job in Highland Park.
The first time I hit that function, I knew this was
what I wanted to do. It was like love at first sight. I
said this is what I want to do and I want to go back to
school and get my credentials. I didn’t want to be
uncredentialed. That was due to my first supervisor who
was a little Jewish girl who came from Chicago, and she got
her degree at the University of Chicago. She used to talk
about social work and I liked what I heard. My wife
disagreed that I would go back to school and in those days,
you could go to school part time and work part time. I
enrolled in a school of social work. They accepted me.
This is at the graduate school and it took me four years to
get my Master’s for that.
I have to slide over and tell you another little
story. You know Mark ? (sounds like Ruterman)?
SCHWARZ: Certainly.
ZISKIND: I met Mark as a kid: he lived on Temple Street.
I went to Belmont High School, which is right off Temple
Street. When we came to Los Angeles, I had an aunt that
lived in Edendale. We went to stay with her for a while;
that’s how I got into Belmont High School. I got to know a
lot of kids on Temple Street, and Mark was one of them. We
had a friendship, if one could call it that. We did not
mix socially or were seen together at all, but we liked
each other spontaneously. He had an athletic build and an
athletic ?? at times, so we had something in common.
Whenever I would see him, we were very friendly with one
another.
I didn’t see Mark until I got to USC. There Mark was
enrolled in the School of Dentistry. The dean of the
school of dentistry, in those years, was an anti-Semite,
openly. At one time, he had refused to admit, or kicked
out, a number of Jewish students. There was quite a rally
about it. They didn’t know where to go, they didn’t know
what to do. Mark and I didn’t see each other for a while,
and then I saw him one day. He was very depressed. I said
why do you look so sad? What’s happened? He said, “Well,
I left the School of Dentistry and I went into social
work.” Every thing I knew about social work was that I had
a sister-in-law that was a social worker. What it did, I
didn’t know. He said he was going to take an examination
for the county clerk job as a social worker. He said, “ I
wish I knew some body who could help me with that, study
for that.” I said, “I’ve got a sister-in-law. I’ll talk to
her.”
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: I talked to her and she said sure bring Mark
over and I’ll show him what to study and how to study.
Then I didn’t hear any more about it. I went to work for
the SRA, I hear that Mark is Sacramento. I said, “Yes,
Mark is up there.” I didn’t seek him out or anything and
of course time went by and I told…
SCHWARZ: You met Charlie Shepherd in those days?
ZISKIND: Oh, yes, I met them in a different way.
SCHWARZ: Oh.
ZISKIND: That’s a different story. Let me finish this
one.
SCHWARZ: (Laughter) Well I’ll let you get done with this…
ZISKIND: If you want to know how I got into social work,
I went back to social work and met a number of friends that
were in social work. A number of my ?? at that time were
in the same spot that I was in. They couldn’t get a job,
so they went into social work. In those days, the public
agencies were not considered the best from a quality
standpoint. They were interested in budgets and release
and work and so forth. The private agencies were the cream
of the cream; they paid better. I worked for the SRA, and
it was a very interesting job, and I must have done well,
because they kept putting me in positions of
responsibility. In those days, they had offices all over
the county and Long Beach and they needed a medical social
worker. I didn’t have ? My only qualification for
it was that I had done pre-medical (laughter). So they
asked me if I’d like to go out and do that and I said yes.
They put me in Long Beach. Remember the earthquake in „34?
SCHWARZ: I lived in Long Beach during that time, but I was
in Pomona that year.
ZISKIND: Well, that earthquake hit and I was brand new in
my office. The community descended on me. I didn’t know
what to do, but I learned and I learned fast. At that time
I decided that I would try to get out of it. I had done
two years now: one with family and one with medical work.
So I moved on to career possibilities. An opening had
opened up at Big Brothers. I saw a Rabbi at Sinai Temple
at Third…
SCHWARZ: Bob ?
ZISKIND: Bob ?, I left the job to go to MIT. He was a
math genius, as you know. He apparently wanted to go in
that area. Know they needed someone, they wanted a male in
the first place. Males were hard to come by. Social work
was still considered, in many circles, a woman’s
occupation. They wanted one with this new thing called the
Master’s degree. They wanted - they said they would settle
for someone who’s in school. I was going to school at
night. So I got the job. How I got the job is a whole
different world, if you want to go into that…
SCHWARZ: Let’s skip that and go on with it, to progress.
ZISKIND: …that’s how I got into social work, and I want
to tell you before my folks died they relaxed a little bit.
They thought I would be all right.
SCHWARZ: Who was the executive then? Edward ??
ZISKIND: Edward ??, yes. We got along fine. My next-
door neighbor was Jason Slope. In the Jewish Community,
for Personal Service, and next to him was Lawyer ??, who
was the head of the Jewish Free Law. I also made friends
with Donna Baris (sp) who’s a counselor with the Jewish
Community…
SCHWARZ: Yes.
ZISKIND: With Seda Moore. It was an arm’s length
relationship with Seda. Now I’m getting into some trouble
so I have to go ?? if you want me to I’ll do it.
SCHWARZ: We can keep on going. Or maybe we shouldn’t.
Should we put it in? Wouldn’t it be interesting to the
teacher?
ZISKIND: It has terrible parts.
SCHWARZ: But it’s primitive.
ZISKIND: The Jewish Community of Los Angeles is lots
different than the Jewish Community I’ve found anywhere
else. I’ve been in many of them throughout the country and
out of the country. Part of the reason was that the
leadership in the community had complications. The
agencies, instead of being cooperative one with the other,
jealously guarded their own turf. When you’re in to go for
a budget allocation, you were in open competition with 30,
40 other agencies. Everybody played everything close to
the chest. They kept their own counsel, and they strived
to get the kind of people on board that had influence on
the allocations process, budgeting process.
These people, to me, were very bright and well
educated and competition was their life. For instance, who
was to be the head of the Federatio? I didn’t know Irving
Lipshitz, but that was about the time I’d seen him at Big
Brother. When he died, who was going to be the head of it?
Arthur Greeley and Sully Sutton (sp), she’ll move a part of
this to Vista Del Mar. Go up there and ?? all declare a
tight ship maneuver over the other one to give in. Sully
Sutton was one up, I don’t know how but…
SCHWARZ: We have a long interview with him. A couple of
days, I think.
ZISKIND: I have to learn from watching Sutton, because he
was, when I was a teenager, lived in Boyle Heights, head of
the Mexican ? Center. Now I’ve been raised that welfare is
for poor people. You didn’t go to the agency, because you
wanted to be as far away from being identified with the
poor as you could. So I went to the center to play
basketball and clubs and so forth. But my mother didn’t like
it she said, “You’re not poor.” Yet, we didn’t have the
money to pay for a facility, we wanted it public. We used to
go out to China Town and go crazy. I wasn’t a member of the
center yet, but I used the center for this sole reason. I
played and we caused him a lot of trouble. He was always
kicking me out of the place. Thank God Sully didn’t remember
us. In later years, we laughed about it.
I didn’t know anything about the Jewish Community. My
folks were not observant to, so although they’ve seen full
families of orthodox, they were so-called deliberated.
Intelligence came from ??, and we were raised in a curious
and questioning family. If I came home and talked with my
mother about what was at school and American Heroes, she
looked at me and said they were involved in this
infanticide or they were involved in this war and they
killed people. We learned not to take for granted what
people said, it has a way of turning over in your own mind
and you make your own decisions.
So then I, although we always lived in Jewish
communities and all of my friends were Jews, I would run
into the ???? (center?) and pull the kids out of the play.
Mine and my family and my mother, father didn’t want to
speak Yiddish to us. They always spoke English to us, and
they always tried to get over their accents. We tried to
speak Yiddish; they said come on speak English. But they
talked and their friends talked, so I gathered a smattering
of it, and that has come into activity in my life, time and
time again. Came into my professional life, time and time
again, too. When I was at Solis (?), I said that increased
my Yiddish (laughter)…
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: My German professor used to say to me…
SCHWARZ: At Pacific High School?
ZISKIND: My German professor would say, “For God sakes,
quit talking Yiddish.” (laughter)
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: Where was I?
SCHWARZ: You were, Sully became the head of Federation.
ZISKIND: Yes, Sully became the head of the Federation and
his wife, Edina (Edna?), and I were at Belmont together. I
was the school hero in athletics, so she took to me. Edina
has always liked me, and when I got to Big Brothers, that
was what I considered my first center ?? to equality social
work job. I’m of the nature that I like to be the idealist
in the profession. I think about laws, I think about the
majesty of law, I think about its weakness, its faults. I
think about medicine, I think about the majesty of it and
the noble purpose of it and so forth. Not about the
fleeting flame that most doctors have. In social work, I
think if a person is going to come into this field, he has
to dedicate his life to it in a certain way. You’re not
going to become wealthy, you’re going to make a living all
the time. There are certain ethical concepts that you must
prevail or you’ll be a lousy social worker. I’ve had my
share of both in my lifetime. This has always filled me
with enthusiasm for the field of social work.
SCHWARZ: Have you encountered many obstacles along the
way, once you got into the field?
ZISKIND: Well, human beings are of the nature that the
first priority as a rule is self-interest. Anyone who
tells me otherwise is sadly?. You look for your career,
you look for the opportunity to have a family, to raise a
family, to educate your kids like everybody else. The
obstacles are really the personal lives that you live. How
you try to improve yourself is a constant one. Yes, there
were many obstacles and some of them were funny. When I
was hoping for a job in the - at the time, I was looking at
Big Brothers. There was an opening in city health
department and a woman by the name of ?? (Zadanta Bouvic)
who was a very lovely, really a nice person, advertised for
a social worker, so I applied. We got through the
interviewing and apparently she liked what she saw. She
says, “I want to tell you something. I know your brothers,
you come from a nice family, what the hell are doing
applying for a job in social work? This is a woman’s
business.”
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: She said, “I’m going to do you the best favor of
your life. I want you to go about doing something in life
that is male-dominated, orientated and you go ahead and do
it.” My father told me many years ago that if you’re going
to make a success in life it’s not going to be with your
hands, its got to be with your head, and you’ve got me
worried (laughter)…
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: Business was, I never was a good businessman.
So I knew I had to do it in some type of intellectual
person, I had to do it. Obstacles of all kinds, in the
first place in the work I chose which was the Jewish
Community for Personal Service and areas with criminality
and mental illness. You’re always working in somebody
else’s home. We didn’t have a hospital at that time. I
had to go into institution after institution and it’s just
increasingly different. In some you had people who were
very narrow-minded. Some, you had people who were so ill
fitted for their jobs, it was pathetic. But you had to
work in their areas and you had to work according to their
policies, which was very difficult for me. If I agreed
with something or I didn’t like something I was attitude
I’d say something about it. Although I knew I couldn’t,
because if I did openly, I was not going to have a job. So
I’d get many anti-Semites, openly anti-Semetic. I’d get
many people who didn’t like the Jewish community and I’d
get Jews who didn’t like the Jewish community and so forth.
That was a part of my professional life.
I must say that the main obstacle was the hierarchy of
leadership within the Jewish community. They were a bunch
of people that I did not understand. They were affluent,
they were open to the ?? and I thought there was little in
top. In the two area that I chose to work in, mental
health and criminology, in themselves were obstacles,
because people did not think well of these areas of service
in the first place.
In mental illness, it was so stigmatized. The average
family, Jewish family, had manageable children didn’t want
to admit such a thing existed - not in their life, not in
their children. The common concept at that time was that
if you had mental illness, your bloodline was tainted and
you opened it up to the community. Who wanted to marry
into a family that had mental illness in it? So generally,
if you came in and you tried to talk to them about their
problem, they would invariably say to me where were you
when I needed you? When I had no problem here, now I have
and their placing us in a state hospital. It’s no longer
threatening my family and work now. Now you’re opening up
something we don’t want to open up, we tried to close it.
The persons in the prison, you want to talk about it? My
mother and my father were in prison, this that and the
other thing. Both of these areas were not pleasant, polite
talk.
SCHWARZ: That’s socially acceptable…
ZISKIND: That’s right. Now, so I was born in a hurry to
get out in this world and I don’t now why. Still can’t
answer that question. But I never was in this world at
peace with either myself or the world. I was fighting all
the time. I went to bed at night I had to think about
this, I had to think about that.
Now we were, our agency was low man on the totem pole
of support. If you take all these federation agencies, you
rank them, we were the last to be considered. If we got
cut, our agency got cut at the maximum level. If we had
good years and United Way was ready to give us some extra
money, we would get a lower percentage than our colleagues
at other agencies. I think one of the big obstacles to
overcome, I don’t know that we really overcame it, when I
came in the Federation, an agency got the kind of support
according to the influence that it had. It paid its
workers more than the others could afford, we couldn’t
afford to pay high salaries. So with competition for
workers, the higher workers we were always behind.
SCHWARZ: Yes.
ZISKIND: I don’t have to tell you, it went from the top
to the bottom. My salary was lower. I used to think, in
those days, as I said, my wife was making $80 a month and
nurses got $80 a month in those years. The State Relief
had benefits, and I was making $90 a month and I could
afford obviously nothing. I Came to Federation making $120
a month. I used to think in those days, dear God, if I get
$200 a month, I’m going to retire (laughter)…
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: When I got to $200 a month, everybody else was
getting much more than I. I realized, early in my life,
that if I want to make myself unhappy or that kind of
thing, just try to compare yourself to others. Otherwise,
put on the blinders and do your job in whatever it is you
do. Whatever you do you get, you choose where you’re at.
I choose to face it, but nevertheless, it was there.
It not only was there at our respected agencies, our
main office for the Jewish Community for Personal Service
was in San Francisco. San Francisco paid higher salaries
than Los Angeles…
SCHWARZ: Oh my goodness.
ZISKIND: So, as a matter of fact, in those days, I used
to rant and rave about taxation with out representation.
We had to send all of our money to the San Francisco office
and they sent back to us what we approved in the budget for
us. It caused a lot of unhappiness. While I’m generally of
an optimistic nature, I thought, well I could hit my head
on the wall, but it’s not going to do any good, so the
thing I better do is pay attention to my business and do.
Now that was changed when Maurice Carp came to be the head
of the Federation. When he came to be the head of
Federation, he accepted the principal, “equal work deserves
equal pay.” Under that rule mark, we got the same salaries
that were paid to other workers in similar categories in
the Federation. With my Northern office, we got to be
strong, we grew, and then we dictated. We said no more
let’s do it according to ?? and we did. So it straightened
out, but it took many years. You’re talking about
obstacles, so… SCHWARZ: Yes, because you were not the
only agency to suffer the same way.
ZISKIND: That’s right. Now when it came to Federation,
every head had a variation, he had his own personal
philosophy. Freda Moore did not believe that any specialty
agency should exist in the Jewish Federation, if the family
agency could do the whole job by departments. In all the
years I worked with Freda, she never once referred a client
to us. She didn’t want to go into prisons and she didn’t
want to go into mental hospitals. We had many a battle
about it.
Also, it was dictated somewhere in the past that our
agency should not handle relief budget. I presume this was
on the basis of our people who were institutionalized and
they were taken care of and they didn’t need it. I don’t
know any other logical reason for it. The fact remained
that these people came out of institutions and they needed
relief so the channel that was set up was I had to go to
Freda and ask, hat in hand. She wanted to know the case
and the particulars. Okay, you don’t want to give money
unless you know that it’s proper so we had to do that.
However, we could not depend on that same situation being
funded the next time around. The processes are pretty
similar for one person and another. Maybe last week she
gave me money for this problem, but this week, she got up
on the wrong side of the bed in the morning and didn’t want
to give it.
I finally got to the point where I brought it before
Federation before Dr. ??. He had reviewed the situation
and came to the same conclusion that I had, she couldn’t do
it. She snubbed her nose at that. She said “I’m a social
worker and I’m not going to give money if I don’t have the
case under my control.” For the first time, they gave us a
budget. Twelve hundred dollars a year (laughter).
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: It never grew. That’s one of the reasons I went
out and raised and developed my own volunteer groups and
had my own money coming in. Federation didn’t like it, but
you were in competition with it. I said come on little
fishes like us, we’re not on top. I said if you want to
stop it, pay us the amount that we raise, then we don’t have
to raise it. No, because they’d have to do it for all the
other agencies. All right I understood. But these are
obstacles.
SCHWARZ: Did you have the same obstacles with the United
Way?
ZISKIND: At times, not anywhere near that degree.
SCHWARZ: Okay.
ZISKIND: United Way knew they were getting a bargain.
They pretty well handled us. United Way was a different
thing, they wanted me to go out and do fundraisers.
SCHWARZ: It was Community Chest?
ZISKIND: I didn’t fight any more, I had enough of trying
to do my own and keeping my own head above water. I wasn’t
about to go out and they didn’t like that. It really hurt
me and I sensed that sometimes in my relationship. But
then each person, Joe Bonaparte (sp), Joe Bonaparte would
not accept a referral from us. When I would tell a client
when they went to Bonaparte, don’t tell them you know us.
Just go in and make your application. They would go
through the process and get in. ?? was a ?, she was an
attorney and you talk to her with your problems. She
reached out ?? was a gem. We sensed another problem what
we had was assistant Pauline, who I’m very fond of.
Pauline uses a ? so all the men circle to get that ?.
SCHWARZ: Did she ever marry?
ZISKIND: Oh yes…
SCHWARZ: Okay.
ZISKIND: She married Lilian’s husband. When Lily died,
her husband married Pauline.
SCHWARZ: I see. I never knew it was ?
ZISKIND: Really wonderful people, just wonderful people.
The fact of the matter was that these people - Freda Moore
is a wonderful person. I’ve got to tell you a story. In
those years, there was a character named Fome, remember?
SCHWARZ: F O M E?
ZISKIND: Yes.
SCHWARZ: No.
ZISKIND: During the depression, Fome became quite a
character and they made a movie about it. She sold apples
in the state building in the first of the - against the
wall. There is a wall that says you cannot sell unless you
have a license in the state. She was there with her apples
and she was quite a character. She was a bawdy looking
woman and she always was high. Today we’d say she was a
bag lady. She was a client of family services. You’d
imagine the kind of living you could make selling apples and
begging for money.
When she did make money, and Freda found out
about it, she cut her off. So Apple Annie would yell at
her. One time, I’m minding my own business, in the office on
Temple Street, nobody was in the building, I thought. It was
after hours. The janitor comes up and said, “Wow, am I glad
to see you.” He said, “Go down and help Freda Moore.” I
said, “What do you mean help her?” “She’s got a woman here
threatening her and doesn’t want to go out of her office.
That woman’s standing right at the doorway.” Lesson number
one, I learned then, never to have just one door out of your
office (laughter).
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: Then he said, “Will you go down and escort
Freda?” Freda lived in the neighborhood, not too far away.
She went by bus because it was more convenient. She went
to walk from her office out of the building to the corner to
the bus and she’s afraid this woman will assault her. I come
down stairs and I see this bawdy lady there. I knew her by
reputation so I said what can I do for you, you’re standing
here and we don’t want to call the police. She said, “Boy I
like you, you’re a gentleman, but that SOB, if I ever get a
hold of her…” I got another lesson - number two, I learned
you use tough words. We reached an accommodation, and she
said, “If you will let me silt(?) her,” silt is curse for
her, “I won’t touch her, I won’t spit on her, you can walk
us to the bus but I’m going to silt her every step of the
way into the bus.”
SCHWARZ: (Laughter).
ZISKIND: I heard a flood of Yiddish curse words I have
never heard before. ?? (Yiddish words) you know all of
them. You should burn like a fire and go out like a light
(laughter). Just a constant stream of it. It would have
made a spectacle, but Freda, in her way, was a very hard
lady. She was very nice, she was educated, and she was a
good social worker. Just idiosyncrasies, she had it, Joe
Bonaparte had it. He didn’t believe, although he ran a
specialty agency, he didn’t believe our agency should exist
except as a department of the family agency. Now there is
nothing wrong with that, that is a possibility. But the
powers that be didn’t set it up that way. I was made
executive of that agency and ordered to run it, not to see
it go out of business.
SCHWARZ: We’re talking about?
ZISKIND: The Jewish Community for Personal Service…
SCHWARZ: The Jewish Community for Personal Service, at
this point, which later became Gateways?
ZISKIND: Yes, yes. Well Gateways…
SCHWARZ: We haven’t gone over the history of all of this,
of the agency itself. That we’ll have to take up.
ZISKIND: That you’re going to have trouble with me because
my memory goes (laughter).
SCHWARZ: But you started with the State Relief…
ZISKIND: State Relief, then Big Brothers…
SCHWARZ: You went to the Big Brothers and then to
Community for Personal Services?
ZISKIND: Yes, I used to, you talked about Nathan Sloan
and we were great friends, colleagues.
SCHWARZ: He was the one who used to actually go to the
prisons and the…
ZISKIND: Yes, that’s right. Now when that job came up I
was a male, and I was working for my Master’s degree. That
got me the job, however…
SCHWARZ: Was that about the time that I knew you on campus
in ‘34?
ZISKIND: Could be, could be.
SCHWARZ: Could be because I was there from ‘34 to ‘37.
ZISKIND: Could be. There was a man by the name of Ruben
Resnick (sp) does that ring a…
SCHWARZ: Yes, oh sure.
ZISKIND: I met Ruben first when I was at the university
and he was a Pi Epsilon Phi, and they had decided they
wanted to rush me. Ruben was given the responsibility for
it. I’m of a nature that, you want to challenge me, then
tell me of something I can’t do or shouldn’t do, in which I
don’t believe (laughter). I won’t take it. Ruben was
telling me a lot about the EPS and how wonderful they were.
It’s just contrary to my upbringing. I didn’t believe in
superior people. I believed in everybody being the same.
The Tao Delta Phi was another organization that wanted me
and they were more closer to my things. They needed an
athlete because, in intercollegiate athletics, they needed
to fill the teams, so it all appealed to me, and I went
there. Ruben never forgave me, he said, “That was my
responsibility, I thought you were coming to us.” He tried
to get me to change my mind, but I wouldn’t change it.
Little did I know that later in life, I’d meet up with him.
(laughter)
SCHWARZ: (Laughter).
ZISKIND: Ruben was the executive of the Jewish Community
for Personal Service almost from its beginning. That’s why
the Rabbi had served only six or seven months, and when he
died, Ruben came in. Ruben did a terrific job. Ruben was
an attorney in addition to being a…
SCHWARZ: Social worker…
ZISKIND: Social worker. Now in the Jewish Community for
Personal Service, in their criminal justice work, being an
attorney came in very good. Now for many years we hired
attorneys; people just getting into practice or attorneys
who wanted to get into the public defenders offices, the
district attorney’s office. They used us as a stepping-
stone as others did to get to judgeships. Dave Coleman -
there are a whole string of them that went from our agency.
So it had a useful purpose in that sense.
Ruben had a brother who was an attorney, also a very
fine very intelligent kid. Must have been about my age.
Knew my brother, Eugene, treated a member in Ruben’s family
very successfully, so there was a close tie there. When
this opening opened up, so they urged me to go for it. So
I talked most of it over with my brothers. He says, “Yes,
I know the Resnick family. If they don’t want the job,
then you pursue it. I’ll talk to Ruben and see.” He
talked to Ruben and Ruben said, “No, his brother is no
longer being connected with this big firm and that big
firm, he won’t want the job.” So, I went ahead and threw
my hat in the race. There was a member of the board then
by the name of Harry Bolter (sp).
SCHWARZ: Harry Gram Bolter.
ZISKIND: Harry Gram Bolter. Now Harry, the Bolters were
related to my wife’s family. The old folks were very close
but the younger are not. Now I knew Sandy Bolter because
he was a hero at Roosevelt while I was at Belmont. So we
knew each other. So Harry Bolter says yes, I’ll support
you and about three or four days before the board met to
consider the applications, Ruben’s brother decided to
change his mind and threw his hat in the race. Ruben had a
powerful influence with that board. But Harry, and, of all
things, Lily Ladine, (sp?) said that wasn’t right, have
this job ?? She said, “I’m going to give him a ??.” She
put her hands and fingers on the result, I had one vote
(laughter). I still think that Resnick owes me a favor
because he went on to do nice things in law and was very
successful in law.
But I mentioned this because all my life in Federation
I felt that it’s the same for neighbors that we don’t
cooperate, one with another. We’re colleagues, we’re
professionals and how much more effective would our service
be if we used one another services. Instead of finding a
closed door, we would be welcomed. I found that in
Federation almost all the way through my professional life.
I had colleagues come to me when I dreamt up the thing about
Gateways, you’ll never make it. Why even try
it, the Federation doesn’t want you to, they don’t need
another area of service to raise money for. United Way
doesn’t want you, because they don’t need the money.
Another money draining on them and very seldom have I found
them to be helpful. Very unusual. Joe Goldberg in the
Jewish Free Law, he was a great help. He used his agency
to meet these, that what he was there for and he did it…
SCHWARZ: Yes.
ZISKIND: I have great respect for that agency, although
it was relatively without influence. It’s a smaller
agency. But I have great respect for them because they
don’t necessarily give money and grants, they do some of
that, they also loan it at an interest that is…
SCHWARZ: Payable.
ZISKIND: Payable.
SCHWARZ: Affordable.
ZISKIND: Affordable. So there are relatively few. Dora
Barris (sp) was such a person. She wanted to help. But
the politics in the Federation were such - there were
obstacles. In a sense, you were afraid of what was going
to happen. Policies were interpreted selectively, they
didn’t all fit for everybody. In my buildings were
socially minded people. They were - most staff, I had a
tremendous respect for the trustees and the board people
because they were giving of themselves and their substance.
But I really feared going before Federation budgets
and the budget year. I’ll never do that. To this day, I
have no fear. I never know and the stories are legion. I
watched ? (sounds like king), a prominent jeweler in our
community, got into trouble and got into prison.
Unfortunately for him, in the course of events, the victim
was injured. It was the wife of one of the board members
of the Federation, an influential person. I came up before
the allocations committee. This husband gets up and says,
“The Jewish Committee for Personal Service, you work in the
prisons?” I said, “Yes.” He says “Did you help so and so
who was in the prison?” Well, in the first place, it was
confidential. I didn’t know what to say. I said, “Well,
yes, I did.” He said, “For that you’re not going to get a
penny out of this place. I’m going to see to it,
personally, that you get no budget. Not only won’t you get
an increase, but you’re not going get any budget.” I said,
“Mr. Salsa, (sp?) you’re talking to the wrong person, I
didn’t hire ?? trust, and I’m running it. You don’t like
it, that’s all right. You do have your rights. But I have
a duty to perform. I was hired to do something and I must
do it. If it injures you, I’m sorry.Let’s try to talk it
through and see if we can arrive at some understanding out
of it.” Fortunately, other people got on the seating, you
cannot do that, you cannot threaten an agency. You can
vote against it because they’re not doing there work
properly. This agency is there to help the people and the
prisons. These are obstacles. I don’t know what kind
of obstacles you want, but I’ve had them all. (laughter).
SCHWARZ: You’ve had tremendous success too, actually.
ZISKIND: Well, you break through some, you win a few, you
loose a few, but the regrets are always there. I’ve always
had the feeling that if somebody had my opportunities, they
would have done lots better with it than I.
SCHWARZ: You’re very modest.

ZISKIND: No, it isn’t a question of modesty. It’s a
question of true fact. I could be going with stories all
day. What’s missing?
SCHWARZ: We have the history of your various agencies and
you’ve talked about each one of them as we’ve gone along.
But I do think we need to know a little bit specifically
about the history of Gateways itself …
ZISKIND: Yes, I will talk about that, it will be my
pleasure. But I want to tell you that if I think of
accomplishments, it’s not the things that I’ve done for
people and the certain circumstances I found them,
necessarily. The big obstacle, the big thing that I
think, at least in a personal sense, is that I went up
against bureaucracy, solid and big. These were some
of the most influential people in the Federation.
Without influence, after 13 years of
knocking my head on the wall, I broke through. I got
what I think is right.
To get to Gateways, let us understand some things; the
times the nature of the times. One of our primary
functions was to serve the people in the state hospital,
the state mental hospitals. The average length of time
that a Jewish patient was in the state hospital was nine
plus years. Within four years, they lost contact with
their families on the inside. Most families they’re taking
care of, they withdrew. They were locked away in public
institutions, which had great difficulty treating them
humanly. I don’t say this with anger, I say it because I
recognize the problems these institutions had. State
hospitals then, as today, were not used as hospitals are
now. They were used as the end result of people that they
didn’t know what to do with. There were no facilities in
the community for treatment that these people could afford
or could access. There were no agencies that would take
them because mental illness in those days was a reason to
refuse accepting a client. Jewish Family Service would not
accept a person that was mentally ill, and the home for the
aging would not. That was the norm, not to accept them.
The only place left to dump these people was in the
state hospital: the misfits, the trouble seekers and the
desperately ill. They were bunched and put in the state
hospital. If you went on a ward in a state hospital, it
was ??. You weren on a disturbed ward, you could see
people taking off their clothes, people defecating on
things. It was not a nice thing. The best thing that the
state hospital could do was to keep them in decent clothes,
give them food and a ??. The ?? was another situation.
Those that needed long-term care was another situation,
those that needed short-term cares were another.
The tragedy of it was if you had mental illness and
could not afford private care, regardless whether you were
middle class, you went into a state hospital. Once those
doors closed, you waited until a doctor said you were ready
for a trial out in the community. That was our area of
work. We would go in and get those who were ready for a
trial. We’d take them out and we’d find them jobs, if we
could. We’d find them housing and we counseled with them
about their daily problems. To you, as I speak to a normal
person, it would not be a big deal. We all have to do
these things. But when you have a person that is so
handicapped that they cannot implement their best interest,
they have to be grateful for whatever anybody was willing
to do for them. This included the family. This included
parents for children and children for parents and children
amongst themselves.
The average family – and it is still a complaint today
- what happens to my mentally ill child if I die? Who’s
going to take care of them? I’ll tolerate them in the
home, I’ll do everything I can, but if I die, who’s going
to do it? Families, brother and sisters, if they’re
raising their own children, they’re not quite sure if this
mental illness is not familial in nature. It is not the
kind of thing you can catch. They don’t want them around
their children, our children are growing up well and they
don’t want them associated with a mentally ill person who
fears catching and they’ll catch mental illness.
Whatever the reasons are, there are many, but the
point of it is, the state hospitals perform a function, it
is a hotel where people need care and there are no
facilities in the community to give it to them. You talked
a lot about ??. This to me is one of the great tragedies
of our life. My big job was to go in there and convince
the state hospital that I’m a responsible person and I will
not exploit the patient when I take them out on leave.
They were so grateful for this, because there was nobody
else around, that anytime I came to the state hospital, it
was as though they were walking me through the flowers of
spring.
The first place we got a good history on the patient.
We developed a system: we had heavy postcards in those
days, and when a Jewish patient came in, we got a penny
postcard from Camarillo or whatever hospital was saying we
admitted so and so on this date, here is his address. We
would go to the address and talk to the family, see what
resources they had and what happened. Get a history and we
would come to the hospital with a 10-, 12-page history of
the individual and of the family and the familial patterns.
Sure they were glad to see us, otherwise they had to wait
for a relative to come, if a relative came, or they had to
depend on what the patient could tell them and the patient
was irrational. This was a real service.
SCHWARZ: Oh, yes.
ZISKIND: I saw this and it bothered me. Fortunately, I
have a brother who is a psychiatrist, a teacher. Taught a
lot of the interns and the residents. He was the Chief of
Psychology at Cedars, and he was Chief of Neurology and
Psychology at Medical School at USC and General Hospital.
He had years of experience and he taught me all the things,
all the things, the few things, precious few I heard about
or dealt with in school, went out the door. It was more
misinformation than information. But being close to my
brother, I got the experience and he would take the time
and trouble to explain it to me. I must tell you, when I
went to Belmont High School and lived in Boyle Heights, the
General Hospital was in-between. On my way home from high
school, I’d stop off and see my brother. Not only my
brother, but the superintendent had two kids and we played
tennis together.
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: So I would come in when I could. My brother
would say, “I have a clinic in epilepsy. Come and sit in
and see me.” I’d see epileptics, and I knew what to do
with an epileptic when he was having a fit. Eugene would
take me on his rounds and I would see this and see that.
As a matter of fact, he began to realize I was interested
in girls, and he took me to the syphilis wards (laughter).
Okay the point is that I had am exceptionally good
background. I knew what I was looking at, I knew the
different points of the rule. I had my own prejudices. I
still have them…
SCHWARZ: You’re entitled.
ZISKIND: Yes, Eugene was one of the first in the
community, and the only ones in the United States, that
handles convulsive therapies commonly called shock
treatments. He did a lot of research with it. He kept in
touch with the research centers around the world so I would
get to know a lot. I’d help him. I’d help him at the
table getting the ??. I was his best gofer, go here, go
there, and I did it. It was almost when I came into the
system - it was more than just having feelings of pity, I
was curious.
How can you improve the situation? Eugene was a
great one in believing what we call rapid treatment program
center: the reason some mental illnesses are recovered
pretty rapidly, if you do certain things to do it. Now
that had a ?? because if you went to the psychopathic
court, which you had to go to if you didn’t have any money,
you went to General Hospital, and they put you in the
psychopathic ward.
Some people, when they enter court in full blown
symptoms, no doubt about their being psychotic, went into
the state hospital. By the time they go into the state
hospital, it would be a week or ten day later, the episode
blows over and they would no longer be with symptoms, but
they stayed in the hospital for nine years. There was no
place outside that they could get rapid treatment. So
it didn’t take much to realize that there was this big
gap, let’s have some rapid treatment.
We could see the patients instead of at General
Hospital or in addition to General Hospital or before
General Hospital saw them and determine if they are
suitable for rapid treatment. Then we wouldn’t send them
over to the state hospital. We have a way station that
would give the rapid treatment. The first name of the
hospital that we thought of was Midway House. But there
was a Midway House already, and they threatened to sue us
if we took the name. Therefore, we had a raffle amongst
our women’s groups and they came up with the name The
Gateways. That’s how The Gateways idea got formed. Me,
with Eugene’s help and tutelage, drafted the whole program.
In 1941, I first came up with a plan and presented it
to the United Way mental health section, and they were
delighted. So I said I’m just going to go for it. I
can’t, without influence, with no base for financial and a
hatred for fundraising, no knowledge of fundraising. What
would I do? I showed it to Rabbi Mayor, he says, “It’s a
very good thing, but I don’t think you’ll be able to get it
through Federation.” Talk to my board of directors, they
didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I had to
educate them. It’s like a dog with a bone, I was wearing
that bone, I wasn’t ready to drop it. I kept it, going
through obstacle after obstacle, coming back being
disappointed.
When I first came to work at the Jewish Community,
Rabbi Magnin used to say to me, “Ziskind, whenever you talk
about something, think about it. Putting your mind to only
one or two ideas, three at the most. Come to those three
ideas and stop, get off. I’ll tell you something that came
from my depth of experience, if you’re a lousy speaker,
you’re not interesting, you’re boring, the fact that you
get off quick is in your favor because the scene changes
keeps the interest of people. What’s next, says what you
have to say and get off.” The fact is that he never
followed his own advice (laughter). The fact is that as I
got older, I couldn’t follow his advice anymore, because
the memories got in on me.
SCHWARZ: (Laughter)
ZISKIND: Nevertheless, I saw them. Another thing, I said
to the Rabbi when I came in, in the early days, mostly, we
went into the hospitals and met the comforts of the
patient. We were bringing them matzo ball soup, and we
would bring them pungent sandwiches…
SCHWARZ: Jewish food.
ZISKIND: Jewish food basically. Sure people like it, but
you weren’t doing anything for the people. Matzo ball soup
wasn’t soon enough and we had forgotten egg salad. We’d
bring them cigarettes but the ??. So I went to Magnin and
I said, “Rabbi, I’m a social worker, what did I go to social
work for if I’m to run errands - only to bring them these
things? I want to do something.” He says, “I have a
suggestion: go to my wife, Evelyn, and tell her to help you
raise a group for women.” Incidentally, there are always
women on the board of Jewish Community for Personal Service
and those women were the core that made up the food stuff
that we brought to the hospital. Baskets of this and
baskets of that. But there were none that really go into
the operation of the agency.
He says, “You go to Evelyn and tell her to help you
develop a support group, a social support group of women.”
I went to her, and she very graciously helped me out. We
saw through, we canvassed by letter and follow up, only
temples in the community. The response was excellent. We
got a large number of women. There was a wonderful lady,
her husband was a federal judge, the only Jewish federal
judge of his day, ? Rosencranz (sp). Her husband - and she
was a very wonderful lady. I don’t know if you know her…
SCHWARZ: I never knew her, but I heard a lot about her.
ZISKIND: She was a Dutch girl; Jewish, but from
Netherlands. She was the epitome of refinement. You came
into her house like this, it was something to look at, very
lovely. She would spread a table and women would want to
come just to see what she did. Her husband died in an
accident, and years later, she developed a very successful
business, a party, arrangements and things like that.
SCHWARZ: Yes.
ZISKIND: We opened it up and the first response we had
close to 300-400 women signed up. Of course our
objective was to have fundraising. I hate fundraising, I
don’t feel comfortable at it. But nevertheless, these
women made a ?? out of me. I saw what could be done and
they did it. I saw what that money did. In the fist
place, it was the first moneys that I didn’t have to
worry about how I spent. I could spend it for
administration, I could spend it for my things that
ordinarily you would say money’s scarce, so I better not
put it in there. We’d put away - my mother always taught
me, you make a little salary, you put a little bit away.
Just take it, you don’t know when it’s going to come in
handy, but it will come in handy…
SCHWARZ: Always save some.
ZISKIND: One of these days, sit down, and if not, write
the history, I’ll write an anecdotal stories about the old
timers and what happened.
SCHWARZ: Well if you don’t want to write it you can
dictate it on tape.
ZISKIND: Yes, but I have a certain block on dictation.
SCHWARZ: Oh, (laughter) so the other’s easier.
ZISKIND: Yes, so I don’t know. I’m now looking for
somebody who would do it as a volunteer. I finally
decided, after the last five or six years of experimenting,
that I had better do it in something I know and I like ? in
mental health. I have gone through the State Department of
Corrections, local county ?.
The question really resolves itself is how much time
do I want to give. It’s difficult and now, as a matter of
fact tomorrow, I do some things of mine. Very busy talking
to these departments. All of them want ?? like me because
of me, but they want my background and training in a
variety of ways. I’m trying to figure what makes sense,
not to get overwhelmed.
SCHWARZ: Just please remember that if you had papers that
would be of interest to future generations, send them down
to the archives. We just want you to remember that one
thing. We are very grateful for your time and…
ZISKIND: I don’t think they’re that good (laughter).

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

California Social Welfare: Oral Histories

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Description

Ziskind, Lou - Transcript Oral History Interview - CSWA ❧ Lou Ziskind. Social worker. Lou Ziskind Interview #1. Interviewed by Marjorie Schwarz. Date of interview: 8-11-93. Length of interview: undetermined. Transcript only: 39 pp. ❧ ADDITIONAL MATERIALS: 1. Note from Ed Hummel to Ruth Britton re interview. 2. California Social Welfare Archives Oral History Interview form, with notes by Marjorie Schwarz on interview. 3. Lou Ziskind Interview #2. Interviewed by Ed Hummel. Date of interview: 5-14-97. 1 cassette tape (1 duplicate tape). Length of interview: 1 hour and 33 minutes. Transcript of interview: 97 pp. CD containing interview and transcript.

Asset Metadata

Creator Ziskind, Louis "Lou" (interviewee)

Core Title Louis Ziskind interview, 1993

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest

Format 1 transcript (39 pp.) (format), application/pdf (imt), Interviews (aat), oral histories (document genres) (aat)

Language English

Contributor Schwarz, Marjorie "Marj" (interviewer)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/cswa-c34-446

Unique identifier UC1591061

Identifier cswa-ziskind-1993-transcript.pdf (filename),cswa-c34-446 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier cswa-ziskind-1993-transcript.pdf

Dmrecord 446

Format 1 transcript (39 pp.) (format),application/pdf (imt),Interviews (aat),oral histories (document genres) (aat)

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Type texts

Copyright Distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ ) which permits others to remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as they credit the University of Southern California (California Social Welfare Archives) and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Source California Social Welfare Archives (collection), California Social Welfare: Oral Histories (subcollection), University of Southern California (contributing entity)

Access Conditions All requests for permission to publish or quote from the collection must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections department, USC Libraries. Permission for publication is given on behal...

Repository Name USC Libraries Special Collections

Repository Location Doheny Memorial Library 206, 3550 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, California, 90089-0189

Repository Email specol@lib.usc.edu

Inherited Values

Title California Social Welfare: Oral Histories