After the birth of their last child (Esther Shemitz), they moved from New York City to New Haven, Connecticut, where they ran a candy store.

[7][5] Instead, Shemitz dropped out of school in circa 1916-1917[8][5] and joined the Troop A Cavalry of Connecticut to fight Pancho Villa in Mexico.

The corps overtook a reserve group of French and American tanks near Boureuilles on the road between Neuvilly and Varennes.

Though heavy machine-gun fire continued, Patton himself took no cover, claiming "To hell with them: they can't hit me."

The machine-gun fire quickly lessened as the tanks advanced, and Patton was moved by stretcher to the rear.

[14] When Shemitz tried to sign up again for World War II under his leader, Patton declined his offer but with thanks.

[8][9] In March 1921, while in law school, Shemitz (as "Robert Shemitz") and three other law students (Samuel Dilmer, Frank Edwards, and George Knob) found themselves accused as "conductors of the entertainment" during a police raid that arrested 125 people for a party on Third Avenue near Sixteen Street, New York City.

[20] In 1936, he headed a committee of the New York County Criminal Courts Bar Association to inquire into official conduct of Magistrate W. Overton Harris.

[23] In 1942, Shemitz represented plaintiffs in Home Owners vs. Mayer Cohen et al.[24][25][26] In 1943, he represented plaintiffs in Home Owners vs. Michael DeCandio et al.[27] In 1921, Shemitz listed his residence at 260 Rochester Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

By 1937, this home would belong to his older sister Sophia Shemitz Levine, and its dumbwaiter served as hiding place for the "life preserver" of Whittaker Chambers, a large manila envelope that contained both the Baltimore Documents and the Pumpkin Papers.

[28] In 1937–1938, while defecting from the Soviet underground, Shemitz's brother-in-law Whittaker Chambers and sister Esther used him as their attorney.

For the 1937 purchase of the "Shaw Place" in Westminster, Maryland (where Chambers would hide his family after April 1938), documents were signed "J.W.

[30] A few days later, he spoke to the press, stating that Grace Hutchins had visited his office several times in April 1938 with death threats against Chambers.

[33] Chambers recorded in his 1952 memoir: There strode into my brother-in-law's office one morning a rather striking-looking white-haired woman, about fifty years old.

In his private office, she came to the point at once: "If you will agree to turn Chambers over to us," she said, "the party will guarantee the safety of your sister and the children."

My startled brother-in-law, who, like most Americans, was completely unaware of what Communism is really like (we had never discussed the subject), tried to explain that he did not know even the whereabouts of his sister, her husband or their children... "If he does not show up by (such and such a day)," she said briskly, "he will be killed."

[44][45][46] In 1940, Shemitz was robbed in the seventh-floor washroom of 217 Broadway in Manhattan, where he was closing a real estate transaction.