Stories Archives - The Inside Press

Archival image of the Powerhouse Photos courtesy of Sing Sing Museum

In 1929, the New York Yankees played an exhibition game in an unusual location. It wasn’t a major league stadium or even a famous park. And Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and their teammates weren’t playing a team known for its athletic prowess.

That game on September 5th was between the Yankees and the Ossining Orioles. The venue? Sing Sing Prison.The Orioles were the best team in the Mutual Welfare League, a.k.a. a prison team.

The Yankees toured the prison before playing in their iconic pinstripes. One man who was incarcerated at Sing Sing was too ill to watch the game, so Ruth autographed his cell wall. Apparently, the Yankees signed a number of baseballs and handed them out. One ball from that momentous game, signed by Ruth and Gehrig, was acquired by Sing Sing Prison Museum just before this past New Year at an auction in Seattle.

The baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during a game between the Yankees and the inmates. The ball was recently acquired for the museum.
Photo Credit: MBA Auctions

Brent Glass is the Interim Director of the museum which will open in part in late 2020. He says that ball, which will be on exhibit along with its history, is significant to the museum because it connects several prison stories.

The ball will “help us tell the story of one approach…to try to encourage men who are incarcerated to partake in recreation, and to become integrated in society when they leave.”

It also helps tell the stories of Sing Sing in popular culture.

Glass says Warden Lewis E. Lawes, who was in charge of Sing Sing at the time of the game, implemented a progressive theory about the importance of rehabilitating the men under his watch in part by making life more interesting for them and giving them recreational and athletic opportunities. He was also connected to Hollywood; Lawes had written several screenplays including, “Over the Wall,” about a man incarcerated at Sing Sing of course.

Over the prison walls is where three Ruth homeruns landed that day in 1929. The Orioles wore hand-me-down NY Giants uniforms to face their professional opponents, but that didn’t help. No surprise– the game was a rout. The Yankees won 17-3. And they gave the men of Sing Sing a great show.

A rendering of the powerhouse
Photos courtesy of Sing Sing Museum

A New Cultural Institution

When we think about Westchester’s many cultural institutions, Sing Sing Prison does not come to mind. It doesn’t make any Hudson Valley must-see lists, yet. But that will change in this next decade, with the creation of the Sing Sing Prison Museum, opening in full in 2025. The museum’s founders are on a mission to make the museum one of Westchester’s great cultural tourism destinations.

You might go for the history, or you might go to gain a greater understanding of America’s prison complex. You might be interested in the more macabre aspects of the fabled penitentiary. Or you might go for the baseball.

The Sing Sing museum will be devoted to telling stories like the Yankees game, as well as the full story of the institution and its evolution. It will highlight stories of its brutal past and most infamous prisoners like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and those of the ordinary men incarcerated there, as well as their families, and the rehabilitation work occurring there in the 21st century. And the museum’s installations will be designed to encourage visitors to examine the greater social justice issues of the prison system.

“That’s one of our major goals for the museum is to challenge people to reimagine the criminal justice system and to take action to create a more just society,” says Glass.

Glass, who is also Director Emeritus of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, says all stakeholders will be included in the creation of the museum. “We want to tell the story of how incarceration has affected everyone at Sing Sing. We want to talk to the men who are incarcerated. What stories do they think are important to tell? We want to talk to people who have been victims of crimes. We don’t want to leave their stories out.” And he says the museum will include the stories of the people who have worked there over the years.

Why build a museum at Sing Sing now? Glass says, “Every chapter in criminal justice history has a few pages written at Sing Sing.” Unlike a popular museum like Alcatraz, Sing Sing is still operating. And he adds that its proximity to New York City and historic sites in the Hudson Valley makes it a perfect location. It will also bring tourism and millions of tourist dollars to Ossining. The museum founders estimate that 260 jobs in the museum and the wider community will be created, as well as 100 construction jobs.

The Sing Sing Prison Museum will open a preview center in 2020 at the Powerhouse on the prison campus. The Powerhouse provided electricity to the prison from the 1930’s to the 1960’s and will be repurposed with the construction of exhibition spaces, classrooms and a theater, as well as space for re-entry programs to help released prisoners acclimate to society.

When the full museum opens in 2025, Glass says visitors will be able to enter the historic cellblock. “We would break into the prison in effect through a secure corridor that would connect the Powerhouse to the historic cellblock which is about 100 yards south of the Powerhouse. The historic cellblock, built in 1825, would be the centerpiece of the visitor experience because it is an extraordinary ruin that nobody gets to see at this point.”

Sing Sing has a notorious past–including 614 executions in the 20th century–but it is working to bring a sense of humanity to its prisoners through a variety of arts and educational programs. Rehabilitation Through the Arts provides year-round theater workshops and performance to the prisoners of Sing Sing. They also run workshops in dance, visual arts, music and creative writing. Hudson Link for Higher Education provides college educational opportunities to prisoners through private funding. The correctional facility has a garden and a professional master gardener, Douglass DeCandia, who works with the prisoners. There are also programs for the families of prisoners.

Perhaps some of the families of early twentieth century prisoners might still have their signed baseballs from the 1929 game against the Yankees. Glass is hoping the museum might be able to acquire a few more. In the meantime, this one will be on view at Sing Sing’s new museum later this year, a wonderful testament to the idea that people who are incarcerated benefit from the occasional diversion and a reminder of what’s possible on the outside.

Six Tidbits About Sing Sing

The 1,200 cells in the historic cellblock built in 1825 were seven-feet long, six-and-a-half feet high, and three-feet, seven inches wide.
In the 19th century, some prisoners were subjected to punishments like the “shower bath,” similar to waterboarding.
David Berkowitz, aka “the Son of Sam,” was incarcerated at Sing Sing.
Some Hollywood movies filmed scenes at Sing Sing including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed at Sing Sing
Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Harry Houdini and B.B. King have all performed at Sing Sing

(L-R) Ruth Bachner, Fred Bachner and Ellen Bachner Greenberg

Ellen Bachner Greenberg, a Scardale-based life coach, clearly remembers the first time she saw the Holocaust documentary, Night and Fog. She was 10-years-old, and tried to avert her eyes from the screen, which featured raw footage from the concentration camps.

All she saw were emaciated bodies and mass grave pits and she knew that both of her parents were Holocaust survivors who had endured unbelievable hardships. Greenberg recently spoke about her father, Fred, at Congregation B’nai Yisrael Synagogue (CBY) in Armonk as part of an initiative called GenerationsForward launched by the White Plains-based group The Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center (HHREC).

GenerationsForward was created two years ago. Members of the group are either 2nd or 3rd generation, meaning that they have a connection to the Holocaust through their parents or grandparents. All members participate in an 18-week workshop called ‘Safekeeping Stories’ which helps them learn how to “tell their family’s Holocaust story in a powerful yet concise manner that is suitable for school aged children as well as adult groups,” said Millie Jasper, HHREC’s Executive Director.

Members have had about 20 speaking engagements at synagogues, public and private schools as well as civic groups. Many of the speaking engagements including Greenberg’s coincided with Yom Hashoah, the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day in late April. Jasper said HHREC has received increased requests for speakers from local middle schools and high schools who have seen anti-Semitism or other hateful acts within their schools.

Greenberg’s father Fred was born in Berlin in 1925. Greenberg’s speech was interspersed with photos and video of her father who had participated in The Shoah Foundation’s taped video interviews with Holocaust survivors years ago. In 1935, Fred’s family was stripped of German citizenship as part of the Nuremberg laws and eventually exiled to Chrzanow, Poland when he was 15 years old. Everyone was forced to work and Fred eventually found a job delivering soda and beer to German Army posts, restaurants and even Trzebina, a labor camp.

In 1943, Chrzanow was evacuated by the Nazis and Fred was sent to a concentration camp. He eventually spent time in several concentration camps including Dachau and endured death marches.

Although Greenberg knew that her father had participated in the Shoah Foundation’s project she refused to watch the videotapes. “Those tapes were just too personal and painful for me,” but she had a change of heart following the death of Elie Weisel, an author who wrote prolifically about the Holocaust. When Greenberg initially watched the video footage of her father, she was struck by how many times he used the word ‘lucky.’ “I survived on hope,” he said in the video. Greenberg always marveled at her father’s optimism, perseverance and positive attitude that helped him rebuild a life in America.

Remarkably, Fred was reunited with his brother in Dauchau. His mother did not survive the war. In 1945, Fred and his brother were transported in a railroad car from Dachau that was eventually ambushed by English fighter planes. Fred and his brother decided to jump from the train and they did successfully escaping to freedom.

After the war, Fred and his brother lived in a displaced person camp in Munich. They also decided to return to Berlin where they reunited with their father. The family then immigrated to Washington Heights in Manhattan, an area that at the time was populated with many Holocaust survivors. Fred eventually found work as an automechanic and met Greenberg’s mother Ruth at a Hanukah party in 1951. Ruth also was a Holocaust survivor and had spent her time during the war in Belgium hidden in a convent.

The Bachners ultimately settled in Hartsdale, an area where very few survivors lived but Fred never forgot the experiences of his past. He was very involved in his temple, the Greenburgh Hebrew Center, and often retold his story at other HHREC events. Even prior to his death in 2008, he had purchased a marker for his tombstone that said Holocaust survivor.

Greenberg retold how her life in Hartsdale was a typical post-war suburban upbringing but there were “subtle ways” that her parents’ past was different from her peers. For example, every Thanksgiving her parents would steadfastly refuse to serve sweet potatoes because it reminded them of how they had survived on spoiled potatoes during the war, which eventually turn sweet when rancid.

Greenberg recounts how her father also fought Multiple Sclerosis and leukemia in his old age but whenever she called to speak to him, his reply was always the same. “What could be bad? The sun is out and the sky is blue.”

Other GenerationsForward speakers will be recounting their parents and grandparents stories in lectures throughout the county this year. For a list of speakers and upcoming events, visit www.hhrecny.org.

Stacey Pfeffer is a frequent contributor to The Inside Press; she has written several articles on the Holocaust.