44 Facts About Victor Riesel

Victor Riesel was an American newspaper journalist and columnist who specialized in news related to labor unions.

Victor Riesel was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City to Nathan and Sophie Riesel.

In time, Nathan Victor Riesel was appointed a staff member of the union and elected secretary-treasurer and then president of the local union.

When Victor Riesel 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.

The family moved to the Bronx when Victor Riesel was 13 years old.

Academically gifted, Victor Riesel graduated from Morris High School at the age of 15.

Victor Riesel typed the same story over and over to make it look like an original, and earned a significant income from this work.

Victor Riesel enrolled in City College of New York in 1928, taking classes at night in human resource management and industrial relations.

Victor Riesel worked several different jobs to support himself, and found employment in a hat factory, lace plant, steel mill, and saw mill.

Victor Riesel was appointed director of undergraduate publications at the college, working as an editor, columnist, and literature and theatre critic.

Victor Riesel earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from CCNY in 1940.

Two additional events in Victor Riesel's life led him to a career as a labor reporter.

Victor Riesel saw a man weeping on the stairs because he had no job and his family had no food to eat.

Nathan Victor Riesel was now fighting organized crime influence in his union, and despaired of keeping his local out of criminal hands.

Nathan Victor Riesel was severely beaten by gangsters in 1942, and ultimately died from his injuries five years later.

Victor Riesel was hired by The New York Post in 1941.

Victor Riesel left the Post in 1948 after a change in management, and joined William Randolph Hearst's New York Daily Mirror.

In 1951 and 1952, Victor Riesel provided Senator Pat McCarran with information that led to a Senate investigation into communist influence in the United Public Workers of America.

On February 6,1953, Victor Riesel spoke with New York University philosophy professor Sidney Hook and others on "The Threat to Academic Freedom" in the evening on WEVD radio.

In 1956, Victor Riesel began working with United States Attorney Paul Williams to rein in labor racketeering in the New York City garment and trucking industries.

Victor Riesel had recently alleged that DeKoning was conspiring with Joseph S Fay to re-establish his father, William C DeKoning Sr.

Victor Riesel invited two IUOE Local 138 leaders who were challenging the DeKonings for control of the local union to join him for the broadcast.

Victor Riesel removed his eyeglasses, which he did by habit when in public.

Victor Riesel's eyes were flushed with water inside Lindy's, but patrons stopped administering aid for fear of doing further damage.

Victor Riesel was taken to St Clare's Hospital on East 71st Street, where doctors worked to save his vision.

Measures to counteract the acid were not taken until Victor Riesel arrived at St Clare's, 40 minutes after the attack.

In December 1956, Victor Riesel described the amount of acid as a "deluge" which covered most of his cheeks, eyes, and forehead.

Portions of Victor Riesel's face were permanently scarred as well.

Victor Riesel wore dark glasses for the rest of his life to hide his damaged eyes, which many people found difficult to look at.

The attack on Victor Riesel had significant implications for national American labor policy.

Victor Riesel began a regular television program on WRCA-TV, and a regular weekly radio program on WEVD.

Victor Riesel continued to write his column, typing it himself while his wife read newspapers and wire service articles to him.

Victor Riesel attacked folk musician Vern Partlow for promoting communism and undermining American national security with his 1945 talking blues song "Atomic Talking Blues".

At least one author alleges that Victor Riesel even cooperated with the Central Intelligence Agency beginning in the early 1950s, providing information on liberal politicians and union leaders.

Victor Riesel publicly called for a "preventive war" with the Soviet Union in 1951, and demanded that President Harry S Truman drop the atomic bomb on Russia and China.

Victor Riesel strongly criticized Malcolm X for meeting with Shirley Graham Du Bois and Julian Mayfield in the mid-1960s, and accused Malcolm X of fomenting communist conspiracies.

Victor Riesel supported Nixon in his column, discussed labor union issues and outreach to working-class voters with him personally over the phone, and occasionally met with Cabinet members.

Victor Riesel was intimately involved in the Hollywood blacklist of the late 1940s and 1950s.

Victor Riesel strongly criticized Samuel Fuller's 1951 Korean War film The Steel Helmet for promoting communism and portraying American soldiers as murderers.

Victor Riesel attacked the 1954 pro-union film Salt of the Earth as communistic, and implied that the production's on-location proximity to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada Test Site was a cover for Soviet spying on the American nuclear weapons program.

Victor Riesel saw it as his patriotic duty to publicize allegations of communist influence made against actors, directors, producers, and others.

Victor Riesel was elected a director of the Overseas Press Club in 1962, and the organization's president in 1966.

Victor Riesel married the former Evelyn Lobelson after graduating from college.

Victor Riesel died of cardiac arrest at his apartment in Manhattan aged 81.