Ricardo "Dicky" Schoening: "I was very much Bar Mitzvah'd"

In the following excerpts, Dicky tells us about his experiences as a Jew growing up in El Salvador.

(What are your early memories of Jewish life?)

Early memories of Jewish life were, always around the family, always around the family table, always around the festivities. We celebrated everything. The only day that we didn’t celebrate was the second day of Yom Kippur. We celebrated everything. Grandmother, my mother’s mother, was a very religious woman. Shabbat dinner was held at her house every Friday night, come rain or shine. Sometimes—once a month it was at my mother’s house, and once a month it was at my aunt and uncle’s house, but really it was at my grandmother’s house. That was her evening with all of her children, all her grandchildren, many times my grandparents, many times the Steiners and other people. We celebrated every festivity that you can think of: Pesach two nights, Rosh Hashanah two nights, I mean two days, two nights. My early recollection of Judaism was in the home celebrating and eating.

(What about synagogue?)

Synagogue? My first recollection of synagogue was the bar mitzvah of a fellow by the name of Max Widawer. Max’s father, but it was really his stepfather, he was his adopted father, although they had the same name, he was his uncle, was a cousin of—was a distant cousin of the Mugdans. So there was a relationship there. And the synagogue was a very, very tiny house a block away from my grandparents’ on the 19 Avenida Norte. It was a very small synagogue with the—where you put the—

(The ark?)

The ark for the Torah, we still have it, it was a wooden ark. We had two Torahs, I think, which we also still have.

And our rabbi was Mr. Alex Freund, who had come from Poland or Rumania and later, when he left Salvador, moved with his wife to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had family living, and I know that they both died there. He was our teacher, he was our rabbi, he was our everything. He prepared us for bar mitzvah. He did the services. He was an elderly man. He was kosher, extremely religious, spoke a very poor Spanish, no English, yes German, probably Rumanian or Polish or something like that, and of course Hebrew. And he also gave us classes at the American school. So the American school did have a program for after-school religious classes.

(So there was a choice between taking a class with the rabbi and a priest? Or how did that work?)

Yes. You had—by the time I started going to religious classes, I was probably nine or ten years old. The Escuela Americana, maybe I was already twelve. The Escuela Americana had moved from the original location to its present location, where it has grown tremendously. You had a choice. If you were Protestant, the Protestant minister gave the classes, and if you were Jewish, a Jewish rabbi gave the classes; for Catholics there were priests who gave the classes.

(But that was optional, it was after school?)

After-school program. That was completely optional. I would say that more popular were Protestant and Jewish than Catholic, because I think the Catholics, they each went to their priest or to their church and the Protestant minister, there was only one, and the Jewish rabbi, there was really only one. (chuckles) And he just couldn’t cope with more than just giving—he probably had two or three groups in the week and really couldn’t cope with that.

(Were you bar mitzvahed in that synagogue?)

I was very much bar mitzvahed in that synagogue.

(I’m backtracking a little bit. In the home, did you mainly speak German?)

In the home we spoke a mixture. In the home it worked like this. We spoke English and Spanish. My parents between them spoke German, and when they didn’t want the children to understand, they spoke French. I learned French. I’m fluent in German and I still understand French. My sister understands German and I would say that my brother understands German, but they don’t speak it. We really spoke a mixture. My parents with their parents spoke German. My mother with her brother spoke German. With her sister-in-law, my uncle’s wife, she spoke English because she was an American citizen. The men between them spoke German. It was a mixture. It was really a mixture.

(Did they associate with Salvadorans, did they have Salvadoran friends?)

The chief of public relations for the Salvadoran community was my grandmother, my kosher grandmother. Because when she came to El Salvador and married Salvador Mugdan, he was a very, very important businessman in El Salvador. I mean, he was important to the point where he had, at that time, I would think, the biggest hardware store in the country, and they also imported and sold flour and cigars, everything under the sun. He also loaned money to the government. There were documents that—

we found after my grandmother passed away where he had loaned the El Salvador government 25,000 colones, which was equivalent to $10,000, which was at that time, of course, in the 1930s, a lot of money. So he would rub shoulders with the President of the Republic over dinner any night of the week, either at the President’s home or at his home. And that’s where my grandmother made all of her Salvadoran friends. I would say that although my grandmother was very, very friendly with the Jewish community of El Salvador, I mean, with people of her age, which were the Liebes, the Frenkel’s, the De Sola family, her real friends were the non-Jewish community, the people, the Salvadorans, the Salvadoran people.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC