This Week's Kehilaton: English Translation

This week marks the beginning of a special project surrounding the history of the community. Members both in El Salvador and beyond are interested in the histories of deceased family members as well as friends, neighbors, and relatives. A brief article on different community members will be featured each week in "Yo Tambien Cuento." Like I have mentioned in the past, my work during this study is based on the oral histories, also referred to as testimonies, of individual community members. With your oral histories, old history texts, and written memoirs, I work each day to better understand and document Jewish-Salvadoran life.

I would like to write this week about our friend L. Jack Davidson. The big secret is that his name is actually Leandro Jack Davidson. At this time, Jack is President of the Union of Jewish Congregations for Latin America and the Caribbean (UJCL), representing the Salvadoran community with his tradement enthusiasm. He divides his time between New York and Salvador and is married to Lilian, has four children: Jan, Jaline (married to Manuel Chavanne), Jason, and Jessica; two grandchildre: Emilia and Rafael. His sister Monica lives with her family in the US as does his mother Liselotte.

Jack was born in Santiago de Chile, the son of two German parents. Although his personal history with El Salvador does not begin until 1954, the Davidson family became acquainted with the country much earlier....towards the end of the 19th century.

In his own words:

My grandfather, Leandro Davidson, was born in Lautenburg, Silesia, Schlesien. His cousin, Benjamin Bloom, brought him and his brothers to El Salvador. I don’t know the exact year, but it must be in the late 1800s, at some point, before 1900. They came, and eventually there were four brothers here. One went to the US and the other three remained here. My grandfather settled in Sonsonate. One brother settled in Santa Ana. And the other one settled in Ahuachapan. They were coffee growers and exporters.

My grandfather was originally Leiser, and changed (his name) to Leandro. He married Eva Loewenberg on September 4th, 1905, and brought her here to Sonsonate, which must have been quite something, because you can imagine Sonsonate now, and at the time, the only story I heard about it was that the first flush toilet of Sonsonate was installed for my grandmother, and apparently it was the sensation of the town. Everybody would have to come to see how it worked. (laughs) Because that didn’t exist at the time. So Don Leandro brought his chelita over from Germany in 1905. They lived in Sonsonate and had three children there, and in 1913 went back to Germany—my grandmother didn’t want to bring up her children in El Salvador. Of the four siblings, the only one that was born in Hamburg was my father, who was born in 1914.

Who knew that one day the family would eventually return.*******

Paraphrased by Jessica Alpert from the original oral history.