Gerda Guttfreund I: From Romania to Brazil

Gerda Guttfreund is truly beloved in the Jewish community. The mother of five children (Andre, Noemi, Miriam "Mia", Ruth "Cuchi", and Daniel "Dani"), the wife of Heinz "Quique" Guttfreund and sister of Fanny, Gerda kept herself very busy not only as mother and wife but also as the resident co-director of community theater productions, member of Pro-Arte and various other non-profit organizations, and confidante/friend to countless individuals. Now a grandmother to nine, Gerda known by many as "Gush" or "Oma Gush", was born in what was once Romania.


I was born the 8th of June, 1922, in Chernowitz, at that time Rumania.

(And the names of your parents?)

My mother’s name was Rachel Tiger Menschenfreund, and my father’s name, Leo Schneider.

(And the name of your sister?)

My sister’s name is Fannie Weidergorn.

(How long did you live in Chernowitz?)

I left Chernowitz when I was three years old, and I came back with my son Dani, who invited me to go to the place where I was born and I went to school, which later was in Berlin, but we also went to Chernowitz, which is the Ukraine now, and I must say, I knew a lot about Chernowitz, because I grew up with all the stories from my family.

(Can you tell me a little bit about your family in Chernowitz?)

My family in Chernowitz had a little bar, I don’t know how you would call it, where people who came to bring their wares to the market would eat and drink. It was quite a good business, not very important, but enough to live on.

(And were you related to a famous rabbi in Chernowitz?)

Not in Chernowitz. My grandfather was a descendant of Levy Yitzhak of Berdichev, a Hassidic rabbi of the eighteenth century. And we loved his stories and we loved being descendants of his.

(There’s one beautiful story that you tell about Kol Nidre and this rabbi.)

The rabbi was a great defendant of the people, and he would even get angry with God if he thought He made them suffer too much. There’s a story that on Kol Nidre evening, he several times started to want to sing the Kol Nidre and he felt something was holding him back. And he looked at his community and he went up to a man and said, “Why is it that you disturb my praying?” The man said, “Oh, rabbi, I have so many worries! My wife died, and my daughter is sick, and I can’t think of anything else but them.” So Yitzrak went up to the bima and he said, “God, this is too much suffering for one man. There will be no Kol Nidre tonight.” (chuckles)

(I love that story! --So from Chernowitz you moved to Berlin. What year was that?)

We moved to Berlin 1925, which was a difficult period. Germany was a mess after the First World War. And we lived first in one room and then in two rooms that we rented from a widow. You could only rent from someone else who needed the money at that period. You were not allowed to have your own place. Neither could we afford it, I suppose.

(I remember you saying that this place didn’t even have its own bathroom.)

Well, the whole region, which was called “das Scheunenviertel”—

(Which means “the barn.”)

Ja. “The region of the barns,” which I imagine was the end of Berlin centuries ago, was a proletarian neighborhood, very old buildings, and they had a toilet, but not a bathroom.

(Tell me, you went to school during this time period, during these ten years you lived in Berlin. What was the name of your school?)

I’m sorry, I don’t know the name. I know where the school was situated. The Grundschule, the first basic years, I went to the Gartenstrasse. When we went there for a visit, I went to the house where we used to live, which now is very fancy, which it wasn’t in my time, and then I saw a small street just opposite our house, and I said, “My God, the end of this street is the Gartenstrasse where I went to school!” And we went there, and there was a school in the same place, but it wasn’t the same school.

Later, I went to the Sophien-Lyceum for one year, but it was very difficult for me because Nazism was already very strong and Jewish children could not sit with the Christian children and we were not allowed to go out to play in—how do you call it? die Pause.

(Oh, on the playground.)

Yeah, on the playground in the intermission.

(The recess.)

In the recess, yes.

(And then you finished?)

When I came home crying because—also because of the anti-Semitic remarks that the teachers always included in their teaching, my mother said, “Enough of that. You go to a Jewish school now.” My sister and I went to a Jewish school in the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. At that time the school was a hundred years old. I even recited a poem for everybody in the auditorium about this special Jubileum. When we used to come out of school, there were always children waiting to insult us.

(In 1935, your family decided to emigrate.)

Yes.

(Who was already in—?)

My uncle Hermann, one of the brothers of my father, who had lived in Berlin, like my uncle Rolf and my uncle Nathan. Uncle Nathan went to Israel and my uncle Hermann had two well-to-do friends who had left earlier for Brazil, and they sent him what was being called shamada. And as soon as he arrived, he begged us to please come, he needs his family and that we would be having a very good time, to be all together again. So he sent us the shamada, and in ’35, we left for Brazil with the help of two of my uncles that were brothers of my mother who were better off, one in Rumania and one in Italy. They helped us with the ticket for the boat, with the $50 per person that we were allowed to take out, and that’s how we emigrated.

(So you emigrated, it took you one month?)

One month, which I loved, because I had never been on a boat, and to see the sunset and the flying fishes, it was all very exciting to me.

(Tell me, what happened when you arrived in Brazil?)

When we arrived in Brazil, the first port was Rio de Janeiro. The entrance into the bay of the port was absolutely gorgeous. We were very excited. But when we stopped at the port and people from the first and second class went down to visit Rio, we thought of walking a little, because we had no money to take a tour, but the policeman stopped us from going down and said, “You are not allowed to go down. Hitler doesn’t want you. We don’t want to, either.” And my mother was terribly, terribly unhappy. She cried and said, “Where did we come to? It seems to be the same.”

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC