Metropolitan Tobacco Co. – East Williamburg, Brooklyn – Bennett Cerf Interview
© Frank H. Jump
LH
Interview #1
Interviewee: Bennett Cerf
Interviewer: Mary R. Hawkins
New York City
Sept. 20, 1967
Q:
Mr. Cerf, you were born in New York–you’re a born New Yorker–in 1898. Would you like to say anything about that?
Cerf:
I think I’m rather an unusual specimen in that all four of my grandparents and both my parents, as well as myself, were all born right on the island of Manhattan. My father’s family is Alsatian in extraction, and my mother’s family is German. My mother’s family were named Wise. Now, the background of the family is shrouded in some mystery. I’ve never bothered investigating very much my antecedents, except that I do know that my father’s father, Marcel Cerf, was a jeweler, and my mother’s father was in the tobacco business.
The Cerf family was always loaded with charm but not much money. The Wise family didn’t have nearly as much charm but a lot more money. My grandfather, Nathan Wise, built up in New York a very big tobacco company called the Metropolitan Tobacco Company. At one time a young man came to him and suggested a partnership that my conservative grandfather didn’t think was very good. The man’s name was Duke, and he became the great tobacco magnate. My grandfather thought he was a wild young fellow, which indeed he was. But at that, my grand-father when he died had amassed a million dollars for himself. In those days that was a great deal of money.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/cerfb/
transcripts/cerfb_1_1_1.html
Bennett Alfred Cerf was an American publisher, one of the founders of American publishing firm Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What’s My Line? – Wikipedia
Max M. Mandel – 110 Delancey Street – Victrolas, Radios, Pianos, Records – Featured Fade – West Farms, Bronx – Circa 1945 – Maria Sullivan, Guest Contributor
Maria Sullivan, a recent acquaintance of mine, sent me this image of her mother Jeanne Kottner taken around 1945 in the West Farms section of the Bronx. Maria’s uncle (Jeanne’s brother) was “Taxi Ray Kottner,” a New York City personality who gave cab rides for free and “annoyed the hell out of the TLC” according to Maria.
He knew everything there was to know about New York and people just tipped him as a thank you for his impromptu tours.
This story originally aired May 12, 2006. Since Steve Hartman first met “Taxi Ray,” the cab driver says his life has changed. With all the attention he got from being on TV, he says, his 15 minutes of fame is now up to a full 16 minutes. –
By JOHN KREISER CBSMay 12, 2006, 4:50 PM
Crabby Cabbie: A New York Original
Ray Kottner died in 2008.
Elly Berkovits Gross – Holocaust Survivor – Speaks to Fifth Graders from P.S. 119 Amersfort @ Flatlands Brooklyn Public Library
Elly Berkovits Gross is a survivor of the Holocaust who was deported with her family to Auschwitz by the Hungarian forces in 1944. By a strange twist of fate, Elly was transferred out to a slave labor detail in the Volkswagen factory in Fallersleben, Germany (part of the Neuengamme concentration camp’s 85 satellite camps). Sadly, her mother and brother perished within hours of arrival at Auschwitz, told to go right to the “showers” where they were gassed. Elly was ordered to go left and was spared immediate death, though the conditions at the Volkswagen plant were unsafe- she breathed paint fumes that later made her cough up globs of paint and gave her chronic respiratory ailments.
This past Valentine’s Day, Elly turned 90 years old and continues to speak to school children, which was her commitment she made after visiting Auschwitz and seeing a photo of her mother and brother upon their arrival in Auschwitz. Our class read her book and scheduled a trip to the Museum of Jewish Heritage/Holocaust Museum in NYC. We were asked if we wanted to speak to a survivor of the Holocaust after our tour. The staff asked if we wanted to meet Elly and of course I jumped at the chance. We had to cancel our trip but rescheduled it to May 2019 but arranged to meet Elly at the Flatlands Brooklyn Public Library on Flatbush Avenue where she spoke to the fifth graders of P.S. 119 Amersfort School about her experiences and atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.
