Lester Berkowitz turns 100, but some stories still stay classified
Heroism and hushes collide as Squirrel Hill resident becomes centenarian
Lester Berkowitz isn’t sure what’s being planned for his 100th birthday. That’s all right — the Squirrel Hill resident is no stranger to secrets.
Speaking with the Chronicle from his home at Weinberg Terrace, the retiree, who seven years ago was recognized by the American Chemical Society for 70 years of membership, was mum about aspects of decades past.
What he did during World War II and in the preceding years, he’s happy to share; what followed, though, less so.
Berkowitz was born Sept. 30, 1925, at Carson C. Peck Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn and attended Erasmus Hall High School in the city’s Flatbush neighborhood.
According to the soon-to-be centenarian, the now-closed public school was founded about 10 years after the American Revolutionary War. Berkowitz said he used to joke that his former instructor “taught the first Latin class there in 1787.”
Ever studious and fiscally conscientious, Berkowitz realized higher education required academic excellence at Erasmus.
“I knew that if I wanted to go to college, my grades would have had to be good enough for me to get into City College where tuition was free, or I wouldn’t have been able to go to college at all,” he said.
Berkowitz approached his classes seriously, as he did religious studies, which he completed at the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center six days a week. On Shabbat, he and his family attended the Brooklyn-based synagogue.
“I tell people that our congregation was so Conservative, it makes Beth Shalom here look Reform,” he said.
At Ocean Parkway, Berkowitz learned to read Hebrew and lead services. Before using those skills overseas, the teenager enrolled at The City College of New York. He was 16. Berkowitz’s first math class, analytic geometry and differential calculus, was taught by a man named “Mr. Barber.”
The detail is essential, Berkowitz said, because two years after he took that math class he enlisted in the military. Berkowitz’s father was a WWI veteran and commander of his American Legion Post. Additionally, Berkowitz said he heard the military needed medical personnel. Despite interests in math and chemistry, Berkowitz became a surgical technician in the Army Medical Corps.
For nearly three years, the former New Yorker served in England, France, the Philippines and Japan. But before heading overseas on the Queen Mary with about 18,000 fellow soldiers, Berkowitz was called into his commander’s office.
“He told me, ‘We don’t have a Jewish chaplain in our outfit,’” Berkowitz said. “‘You’re it.’”
Berkowitz became the acting Jewish chaplain of the 224th General Hospital. One responsibility was familiar: lead services. Another duty was less common. On Passover, he was tapped to prepare and direct a seder for patients, doctors, nurses and Jewish enlistees. Stationed in Evreux, France, the Jewish chaplain faced a dilemma. The Army only delivered two bottles of wine for the 50-person gathering.
“I declared scotch kosher for Passover,” he said.
Berkowitz doesn’t remember whether the four-cup precept was fulfilled. He does remember a text he was given at the time.
The small hardcover copy titled, “Abridged Prayer Book for Jews in the Armed Forces of the United States,” remains tucked inside his navy blue tallit bag. Though he stopped using the siddur long ago, he still brings it with him, along with a yarmulke and prayer shawl, to Rodef Shalom every Shabbat.
Less a creature of habit than a conscientious practitioner, Berkowitz follows a familiar routine. Six days a week, he attends an exercise class at Weinberg Terrace. Every day, he calls his daughter, son and brother.
“I do that because I want to stay in touch, and when I say, ‘stay in touch,’ I mean not by email,” he said. “It’s important for me, and I hope it’s important for them.”
Hearing someone else’s voice has an effect — it does in 2025 and it did in 1946. After returning from Japan, years before meeting and marrying the late Nancy Gross, Berkowitz immediately registered for summer school at City College. The detail is significant, he said, because “when I walked into my first class — and the class was in partial differential equations — the instructor standing in front of the room was Mr. Barber, who was my freshman math instructor.”
Peering out from the front of the room, the teacher said, “Welcome back, Mr. Berkowitz.”
Barber’s words mattered because “you think of all the people he wasn’t able to welcome back,” Berkowitz said. “We all cared about one another in those days.”
Thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, Berkowitz later transferred to Columbia University. After completing his undergraduate degree, he earned a master’s in chemistry at the university.
Following graduation, he accepted a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory, established in 1943 as a secret site to design nuclear weapons.
“One of the things that I had to do in Los Alamos was Robert Oppenheimer came there, and I had to take him on a tour of the site that I worked at,” Berkowitz said. “It was just Oppenheimer and me.”
Berkowitz did not reveal what he and “father of the atomic bomb” discussed. He also did not share information about his other duties at Los Alamos.
“I was working on classified material, and I really can’t say, but it had to do with statistical analysis,” he said.
Having outlived nearly every contemporary, and nearly 80 years post-project, why stay silent?
The answer, Berkowitz said, is “I believe that when we have laws and regulations, it’s our responsibility to observe those laws and regulations. And I can’t say any more than that.”
Several months from now, Berkowitz will celebrate his 100th birthday.
Who’s on the guest list? Will there be a cake, a slideshow, speeches?
“We’re keeping that part of it quiet,” David Berkowitz, 61, told the Chronicle.
Seated beside his father, while visiting from Washington D.C., the son said he enjoyed hearing his father recapitulate old tales.
Repetition isn’t an irritant; in fact, it’s a pleasure and a gift, David Berkowitz said.
“There are times where he’ll repeat something to me, but I made a decision a long time ago that I wasn’t going to get upset about my parents getting older. I got to hear them tell the story a second time.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
comments