Victor Riesel - Early Life

Early Life

Riesel was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City to Nathan and Sophie Riesel. The family lived in a cold water flat near the elevated tracks of the subway. The Riesels were Jewish, and their neighbors were primarily Jewish and Italian American. Victor's father, Nathan, had helped organize the Bonnaz, Singer, and Hand Embroiderers' Union, Local 66, of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1913, and held the Card No. 1 in the local union. In time, Nathan Riesel was appointed a staff member of the union and elected secretary-treasurer and then president of the local union. Victor attended elementary school at P.S. 19 (now the Judith K. Weiss School).

When Victor was three years old, his father taught him to make pro-union speeches and would take his son to rallies and union meetings and have the boy recite the speeches for onlookers. Attending union meetings, indoor and outdoor rallies, and standing on street corners promoting the union formed many of Victor Riesel's childhood and teenage memories. In the 1920s and 1930s, Nathan Riesel successfully opposed Communist Party USA attempts to infiltrate activists into the local union and turning its purpose to promotion of the party (a strategy known as "boring from within"). Throughout his childhood and teenage years, he saw his father come home bleeding many times after fistfights with communist activists or gangsters. This conflict left a deep impression on Victor.

The family moved to the Bronx when Riesel was 13 years old. Academically gifted, Victor Riesel graduated from Morris High School at the age of 15. While in high school, Riesel began typing stories about the American labor movement and sending them to English language newspapers around the world, charging $1 for publication rights. He typed the same story over and over (sometimes as many as 15 times) to make it look like an original (his goal being to sell the same story to many newspapers rather than many stories to a single newspaper), and earned a significant income from this work.

He enrolled in City College of New York (CCNY) in 1928, taking classes at night in human resource management and industrial relations. He worked several different jobs to support himself, and found employment in a hat factory, lace plant, steel mill, and saw mill. He was appointed director of undergraduate publications at the college, working as an editor, columnist, and literature and theatre critic. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from CCNY in 1940.

During his undergraduate years at CCNY, Riesel began working as a gofer at The New Leader. After graduation in 1940, he became the magazine's managing editor.

Two additional events in Riesel's life led him to a career as a labor reporter. The first occurred on March 6, 1930, during a visit to his father's union offices. Riesel saw a man weeping on the stairs because he had no job and his family had no food to eat. The second occurred in 1942. Nathan Riesel was now fighting organized crime influence in his union, and despaired of keeping his local out of criminal hands. Nathan Riesel was severely beaten by gangsters in 1942, and died five years later (in part due to the injuries suffered during and surgeries related to this attack).

Riesel married the former Evelyn Lobelson after graduating from college. The couple had a son, Michael, in 1942 and a daughter, Susan, in 1949.