Lore Schoening: From El Salvador to London

Lore tells us about her father's business and her first time away from El Salvador for an extended amount of time.

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My father was a very loving person. He was very—he was the PR man of the family. Everything was always—he was always a very happy person, I think, anyway. He was very wise. Yeah. We had a good thing going.

(Did he work for Casa Mugdan?)

No, my father worked at the Libreria Universal when he came out. This belonged to an uncle of his who was already established in El Salvador, a man by the name of Franz Kauders. My father worked in his Libreria. It was like a school and office supply store. And then he started his own business, El Siglo, together with his partner Victor Steiner and later on he was joined by my Uncle Fred Falkenstein. So the three of them were at the store. It was a very nice store.

(What did they have, what types of things?)

It was the first department store in El Salvador. They had toys. They had clothing for men. Very exclusive, very nice clothing for men. They had cosmetics and perfumes and they had office supplies. They even had some magazines. There was a magazine corner, I remember that. They had beautiful gifts for the home. The partners used to go—one year they used to go shopping in New York, and the next year the other one would go shopping in Europe. So they used to bring things from Europe and New York. It was very nice.

(So your dad liked going back to Europe?)

Yes, he did. He particularly enjoyed—as far as I can remember, he particularly enjoyed—well, he used to go to Germany. I think he enjoyed going back to Hamburg. I don’t think he had bad memories. Because he left Germany when he was young—he could feel that something was going to start happening. He was looking for a better future. But whenever they went to Germany, he loved to show my mother around. He also enjoyed going back to London. He met my mother’s good friends and they had a wonderful friendship going; also —my father had his sister living over there, her name was Ilse. As for their friends, there were two couples,—the women were friends of my mother’s, to start with, and then they all became very friendly. So whenever my parents went to Europe, they used to see their friends and family. The first trip that they took back to Europe was 1952. My mother hadn’t seen her friends in many, many years, but she was able to link up with them again.

(Amazing. In the meantime, you went to school here?)

Yes. I went to the American school. By the time I graduated from middle school, the American high school had already opened and offered from ninth through twelfth grades, so I graduated from high school here.

(And did you go—afterwards, where did you go?)

After that I went for one year to London, to St. Godric’s secretarial college. And I studied, evidently, secretarial courses. I graduated as an executive bilingual secretary. I came back for a few months holiday, or a couple weeks holiday, whatever, and then I got my working permit and went back to London to work for another year at the Bank of London and South America in their research department. But I was a secretary. I wasn’t doing any researching. It was a very, very interesting job. It was really very nice. I would have loved to have stayed there, but my parents wanted me to come back. If I wouldn’t have come back then, I don’t think I would be living in El Salvador, ‘cause I really loved London. It was really nice.

(So you eventually came back. What year was that when you came back?)

I came back in 1965—no, 1966.

(And then you got married. What did your parents say? Were they upset that your future husband wasn’t Jewish?)

No, no, they weren’t upset, not even my grandmother, who was still alive. No, I’m sorry. Oma Carry was not alive any more at that time. But Oma Paqui was alive, and she liked him a lot. She was not upset. I guess she understood that, you know, that’s the way it is. The one thing she asked me was, if you have children, are they gonna be brought up in the Jewish religion? I think that was very important for her. And evidently they were going to be brought up in the Jewish religion, so they—yeah.

(So you have these three boys. Were they interested in having bar mitzvahs?)

Oh, definitely. Eric at that time went to live with his father after we got divorced. That was 1988, quite a few years ago. Eventually Eric went to live with his father, and so I didn’t see very much of him for four years. I shouldn’t say “very much.” I didn’t see him for four years; it was not easy. He was more independent than his brothers. But the two, Philip and William, they were definitely interested in celebrating their bar mitzvah. Eric never did celebrate his Bar Mitzvah, and he was sorry forevermore. But he understood because it was because he had not been in touch with us. He decided that this is what he wanted to do for a while, just be with his father. However, we get along very, very well. There are no hard feelings for the fact that we didn’t see each other, and he’s doing well. The two younger boys each had a very nice bar mitzvah, both of them studied a lot. I would dare say that maybe Phillip studied a little bit more. He used to go to synagogue on Saturdays and read from the Torah. They also, the two of them, were members of the Noar Shelanu. They were madrijim. I think they had a good time.

(How do they feel today? Do they feel Jewish today?)

Definitely. They definitely feel Jewish.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC