Lore Schoening Part II: Growing up in San Benito

Many of the Jewish families lived in close proximity to each other in the Colonia San Benito, a section of the city that is still the home to many remaining families. Lore now shares her experiences growing up in this section of town.

*********
(What are your brothers’ names?)

My oldest brother’s Ricardo, and he’s also known as Dicky. And my other brother is Roberto, also known to all of us as Bobby.

(Can you talk to me about what your house was like when you were young? What do you remember from those days?)

Well, we lived up in San Benito, in that very nice house which now is the international school, Colegio Internacional. What I remember from that time is that is was always very pleasant. It was a wonderful family life. I don’t remember having had bad times. I only have good memories. My parents were wonderful. It was great. I had little fights with Bobby; I used to have fights with Bobby. But Dicky and I were always very, very dear friends. Bobby and I eventually became very, very good friends as well. My grandmother Paquita used to live next door. She used to come to visit us all the time as she had built steps going from the garden from one house to the other, so we used to visit her also. She was very nice. She was very strict, a very strict person, but she was very nice. And then my parents’ grandparents—sorry, my father’s parents were just wonderful people. I had a very good relationship, especially with Oma Carry, who was my father’s mother. My grandfather Ernesto, he was wonderful, but he never really learned Spanish or English. He only spoke German. So we had to make do with our hand signs. I knew a little German, and I understood him very well. He was a wonderful person. Well, he died when I was thirteen, so I didn’t really enjoy him as much as I enjoyed my grandmother Carry And I also enjoyed my grandmother Paquita, but I think I had a better rapport with Carry.

(And you spoke—what did you speak inside the house?)

At home we spoke Spanish among ourselves, my brothers and I, and with my mother we decided we were going to speak English, because of her very strong German accent. And I think somehow we used to laugh a lot, you know, we used to make too much fun of her. And so we decided to speak English most of the time. My parents spoke German among themselves, so we learned German. I haven’t practiced it, but I know that if I would, it would be easy to express myself.

(So you really understand German?)

Yes. I do understand German, and I speak some. Not as fluent as Dicky, and I don’t know about Bobby. He used to speak quite well, quite good German. Dicky speaks good German.

(Amazing. Does he have an accent when he speaks?)

No, no, not at all. We learned German with a Hamburg accent I would say.

(How Jewish was your home?)

It was Jewish. It was very Jewish. My grandmother Paquita was very religious. She was one of the matronas, one of the—a very important piece or link of the community. She would celebrate Friday nights. Every Friday night we used to go to her house for dinner, or she used to come to our house for dinner, or we used to go to Uncle Fritz and Aunt Jane’s for dinner. So we celebrated Shabbat every Friday night. And of course the High Holidays; we also used to go to synagogue on Friday evenings. We never used to go on Saturday. Saturday, it wasn’t like—what would I say? It wasn’t una costumbre, it wasn’t the usual thing that one would go on Saturdays. At the beginning there were services, and then later on, after people started moving away, obviously the services stopped on Saturday morning because the rabbi had also left Salvador. But we were brought up in a very Jewish home, not overly Jewish, but definitely we had all the traditions.

(You knew you were Jewish?)

Oh, yes, definitely, there was no doubt in my mind.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC