‘Ziggy’ Klein

WW photo: G. Dunkel

His father was a rabbi and his mother was a communist. She named him Ziegfreed, not Siegfried. Ziggy said his name meant “much freedom.”

The place was Times Square, the decade, the 1960s. The event was a rally against the Vietnam War called by Youth Against War and Fascism, the youth group of Workers World Party. As Ziegfreed Klein observed the action from across Broadway, he saw YAWF being attacked by a gang of right-wingers. “When I saw how the YAWF people fought them off, I knew that was

the organization for me.”

He joined Workers World Party and soon after took up his “battle station,” as he called it, at the staffer’s desk in the headquarters—answering the phones, making sure people got their messages, handling the mail. He worked the afternoon shift for 30 years or more, volunteering to come in after his low-paid office job. After a while, he quit a second job—a needed income supplement—so he could fill another staffing slot on Saturdays.

In his earlier years, he walked from his one-room home in Brooklyn to his job in midtown Manhattan. As he grew older, walking became harder. But he worked it out. He took the subway to an uptown stop where there was an elevator and then took a cab back downtown to the party office.

He welcomed retirement because it meant he could come in earlier.

Ziggy had a powerful, tireless voice for chanting. As long as he was physically able, there were few demonstrations or marches he missed. He recounted with a proud smile a picket line on Staten Island, N.Y., of striking graveyard workers. “I was taking a break from chanting,” he recalled, “and one of the workers came to me and said, ‘Please, please, you have such a loud voice. Don’t stop now. The TV cameras are here.’”

He had a very nice singing voice. When the staffer’s desk was slow, he would sing out with a worker’s song or maybe just “an oldie but goodie.” Drawing from his encyclopedic memory, he might belt out a commercial jingle from old radio days.

If you stopped to chat with him at his desk, you would probably be greeted with a political comment or a question—he was intensely moved by the Palestinian struggle—but also with “Did I tell you this one about a rabbi, a priest and a minister?”

Back in the 1960s, YAWF put on several humorous political skits. Fifty years later, Ziggy could remember all the lines and songs, and would regale people in the office with them.

Over the past several months, his health failed to the point where it was impossible for him to reach the HQ and his “battle station.” But his comrades made sure he was kept in touch with. He died in his sleep early on the morning of Sept. 20. The evening before, he had listened over the phone to the weekly meeting of his beloved Workers World.

Ziggy wasn’t “cool” or “with it.” He was one of the countless people who find it hard to fit into this isolating society. But he was made less lonely by having comrades who deeply cared about him and by having an important area of responsibility, from which he contributed to the struggle for nearly 45 of his 79 years.

His favorite poet was Don West, who wrote: