L.Jack Davidson Part II: Traveling North

Jack now tells us the history of his grandparents and parents and later shares the story behind his own journey north.

*********
Just before or just after Kristallnacht, I’m not sure, she (grandmother) and her three children immigrated through an underground channel to Cologne. They left on a Shabbat, because the Nazis weren’t looking on for Jews on the trains on Shabbat because they didn’t travel on Shabbat. They left on Shabbat. They went to Cologne, spent two days in some hut, a place outside in the countryside until the rain was right, the night was dark, etc., and then they crossed the border to Belgium—walking. They arrived one Sunday morning at her brother’s apartment in Brussels, where they stayed for a year, more or less, until another brother of hers, who had immigrated to Chile, sent them visas to Chile. This other brother, my great-uncle who lived in Chile, sent visas for my grandmother and her three children and his other brother and wife, who lived in Belgium. Unfortunately, they weren’t very insightful, and they decided they were well off in Belgium, that Hitler wasn’t coming to Belgium. They had a new apartment and a good job, etc., etc. They weren’t going go to Chile. But my grandmother and her children did go, and that’s how they got to Chile.

(And the others—?)

The others died in Auschwitz, or in one of the camps, I’m not sure if it was Auschwitz. So my parents met in Chile. That’s how I ended up that long-winded, long story of how I was born in Chile.

(Now, your grandmother, your maternal grandmother, what was her name again?)

Her name was Rosa Rosler Grubner.

(So your mother emigrated with two siblings?)

Two siblings. She emigrated with her mother and two siblings, Joachim and Günther. Very German names.

(Your father arrives. What does he do?)

From the best of what I’ve heard, he became a salesman in some men’s haberdashery or something like that. And my mother got there with her mother, she was still a teenager at the time. During that year that she was in Belgium, she studied how to make ties and belts and how to do manicures. There were, I think, institutions or something for German Jews or Jewish immigrants to learn some trade, I know Lillian’s grandfather learned to make jelly and ice cream and stuff like that, so that when they got to wherever they were going, they would at least be able to make a living of some sort. So once they were there and settled in, my mother, in the garage of the house that my grandmother rented, put up a small belt factory. When my mother and father were dating, they would go on the weekends and sell the belts. She did quite nicely. She made belts and sold them.

(They were married in—?)

They were married on May 2nd, 1943.

(In Santiago?)

In Santiago.

(And they lived—?)

They lived in Santiago until they were divorced in 1953, late ’53. At that point, my father left Chile, when they were divorced, and went to Guatemala, where his mother—at that point his father had died, in 1942—and his sister and brother were living.

(And you were born in ’46?)

I was born in ’46, so I was eight years old. I turned eight in Guatemala.

(So you must remember some part of Chile?)

Oh, a lot, a lot.

(Can you tell me about those early years in Chile, where you lived, what your life was like?)

Oh, I have very fond memories of my childhood in Chile. You know, I was the oldest child. I was the first child born in the Western Hemisphere in the family. And since I was the first one, I was really born in a German-speaking family, so I started speaking German fluently as a small child, because of course everybody in my family spoke German. The children that came later on spoke progressively less because they were other children and other people, but I had to communicate in German. We lived in a small house which still is there. I was my grandmother’s absolute favorite, the apple of her eye, so I went every Friday night to Shabbat dinner at her house, and my fondest memories are—to this day Shabbat dinner is the one thing that is the thread that has gone through my whole life, and that’s because of my memories of those years of childhood. After school on a Friday, I would get a little suitcase and the maid would take me over to my grandmother’s house when she was preparing for Shabbat dinner, because the whole family came over, and usually I stayed to sleep there on Saturday. That was very—we had a very nice childhood.

(This is your maternal grandmother?)

Maternal.

(What was your father doing at this point?)

He had a business of representations—representaciones—of some sort, I don’t remember exactly what. But I know we used to go to his office and use the typewriter. One of the big things of my childhood, I remember one year, for my six or seventh birthday, the gift was an old typewriter from his office so I could have one at home. That was a big thing—--that I enjoyed very much.

(And your sister was born—?)

My sister was born in December 1947, a year and eight months after I was.

(Very soon after.)

Her name is Monica.

(Monica, right. Davis?)

Now Davis.

(In 1953, you pack up.)

In 1953 we went to Guatemala for my grandmother’s 70th birthday. At that point my parents left us in Guatemala. They went to the US, and then my father came back alone. They separated—I mean, they were already in the process of separation before that. My father took us back to Chile, and my mother stayed in the US. And then my mother came and took us—no, then my father took us from Chile to Guatemala, where he went, and then the battle over the children started, to Chile, and to Guatemala, and then in April 1954, my father got an offer—actually, my uncle, Freddy Koenigsburger, got an offer to buy into a business in El Salvador from a Jewish man called Salvador Schaps [?], who had gotten the representation of Ford cars. He asked him if he wanted to invest, and he said he would be willing to invest and he thought his brother-in-law, who had just come from Chile, would have some money to invest as well, that he would also be interested in participating in the business. So my father got an offer, and that’s how we came back to Salvador. And I say it was “back” because his father had left in 1913, and then in 1954 he came back.

(With the two of you?)

With the two of us. We lived, you know, part-time with my father, part-time with my mother, back and forth, but eventually—

(She was still in the States?)

She went back to Chile. She remarried and went back to Chile, and then we lived between the States and Chile, took us back and forth until 1957, when my mother finally won out and took us to the States, and then we started living in New York.

(So you were in Salvador on and off?)

Three years. Well, it was almost permanently the first three years, from ’54 to ’57, and then I lived in New York from then on, but always came back at least twice a year for vacations, for Christmas and for summers, until 1962. In 1962 I guess I must have been very rebellious, because my mother couldn’t take me any more and sent me down here to Salvador to live with my father for my last year of high school. The only years of school I did here were third, fourth, and fifth grades, and my senior year of high school.

(At the American school?)

At the American school. I graduated in the American school in 1963, which is actually one of the biggest favors my mother did me, because of that, my bond to Salvador, to the community, and to my friends of my life was really firmed up, during that last year of high school. From childhood I had kept some friendships, but they were not as strong as they became in that last year of high school, and they’ve lasted me to this day.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC