Isaiah Oggins - Early Life

Early Life

The third of four children, Oggins was born 1898 in Willimantic, Connecticut, the son of Simon M. Oggins and his wife Rena, both Jewish immigrants from the David "Reuben" Abolnik shtetl near Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, who had arrived in New York in 1888.

He entered Columbia University in February 1917 under current Jewish quota policies. Classmates included publishers Bennet Cerf, Donald Klopfer, and Richard Simon; historian Matthew Josephson; novelist Louis Bromfield, critic Kenneth Burke, and author William Slater Brown. Professors included John Erskine, George Odell, Robert Livingston Schuyler, and Charles A. Beard. After receiving his B.A. in History, he began a doctorate in History while working at history reader there, then night school in the New York Public School system.

In 1923, Oggins became a Communist by joining the Workers Party of America. The same year, he changed jobs to work for Yale University Press as a researcher. On April 23, 1924, he married Nerma Berman (1898-1995), a Rand School student and Communist activist originally born the Skapiskis shtetl (also near Kovno). She became secretary of the New York division of the National Defense Committee of the Rand School for Red Scare victims Scott Nearing and other professors.