Home is where the house is?

In this final entry, Miguel dicusses his experience living in the States, subtle and not so subtle anti-semitism in El Salvador, and his feelings about nation and identity.
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(Did you feel like you were living in exile when you were living in the States?)

Yes. I didn’t make many friends. My friends were Salvadorans that lived nearby... Guillermo Lassally and people like that. We would get together once, twice a week. That was our big social event, dinner party at this house, dinner parties with Salvadoran people. I did not make one friend in our neighborhood, which is still our neighborhood, because we still have the same house. In my work, I would go, work, talk to everyone, do my work. But it was a tough, tough job. Growing mushrooms is not easy at all. So it was a blessing to come back to El Salvador and be with my friends, be with, really, my people, in a way.

(And then a big moment happened, right? When you went to a wedding?)

Yes, yes, when I went to Danny Cohen’s wedding. As I said, I would go to bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. The service was long. I didn’t understand it. Still it’s long and I don’t understand. But Gustavo [Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, former Rabbi in San Salvador], there was something that clicked.

(With the rabbi?)

With the rabbi, with Gustavo. It was Danny Cohen’s wedding. A beautiful guy sang from Costa Rica. It was very inspiring, very nice. I enjoyed it very much. And I said, “Well, Delia, would you like to go and study a little bit of Judaism? I don’t know anything. Let’s see what it’s all about.” I still don’t know. Delia knows. I still don’t. (laughs) And I will never learn, probably. She said, “Yeah, I’ll go with you.” You know her religious background and everything…. And so I asked Gustavo, I said, “Look, rabbi, when are you gonna give classes?”

And she [wife Delia] said yes. Don Chepe Baum. We used to go to Don Chepe and Doña Mercedes’s house from time to time to say hello. They enjoyed my bad vocabulary and my jokes, my way of being. We would spend some time with them when Ruth was here. He would always say, “Look, you’re going to go back to your roots, to Judaism.” I’d say, “All right, Don Chepe, please, no, established things are not for me.” And they’re still not. “Please, Don Chepe.” Doña Mercedes would say, “Ah, I know, Miguelito, you’ll go back.” That was a joke between them. So I went to class. He said, very seriously, he was not very friendly towards me—

(Gustavo?)

Gustavo. He said very seriously, “Call me after the Fiesta de Agosto.” After the Fiesta de Agosto I called him. “We’re gonna start classes such and such a day.” So we started going to synagogue, not knowing diddlywink what was going on. And we started going to classes and we started with Jonah. And it was so interesting, because he was so interesting. He was the life of the whole thing. I couldn’t—my personality came out in classes, and it did a beautiful thing with Gustavo. There was a rapport. I would say jokes and I would answer things funny, I don’t know, the way I answer, and he would answer me back. It was pleasant times, you know. Delia would bake cakes and things like that. Gustavo left, and the rest is history. We kept going to synagogue. Delia converted, out of her own free will. I didn’t have anything—being I’m not pious, how could I say, “You convert or—”? Not at all. That’s not in me anyhow. I’m not going to force anybody into doing anything they don’t want to do. So she converted. Being studious, I tell her, I put my years of study when I needed it. I don’t want to study now. So it’s, “OK, I know what that is.” So we go too and I participate as much as I can. She learned how to read, as you know. She’s much more into it than I am. But I would be a liar to tell you that I would ever be pious. I don’t believe in praying the same thing every week and reading the same thing every week, I don’t care what it is. I just don’t believe in an established—that I have to go to this place to be a good man.

You don’t need to be religious to be good, or be a participant of Shabbat to be good. That’s Miguel talking. I don’t believe in that. So I think who believes, whoever believes in it, great. I’m very happy for them. I can’t. But I enjoyed the classes.

(How do you feel now?)

I like our new Rabbi. He prays, he sings with his heart. I believe in that. He’s a very good teacher. I’ve never been to one of his classes, but when he talks, he’s a hard worker. Everything that—I cannot compare it to Gustavo, each one is their own. But I like him very much. I think he’s gonna be very successful in the community, very, very much so. Because of the—and she [Rabbi’s wife] is also very, very nice, very down-to-earth, not presumptuous, not wanting to prove anything. Wanting to do good, wanting to teach good, and wanting to do everything the good way, the nice way.

(What does being Jewish mean to you?)

Oh, my God! (chuckles) I don’t know. I was born into Judaism. I was born. I mean, it doesn’t mean more than I am a Jew. I am Jewish and that’s it.

(Do you volunteer that information when you meet people?)

Oh, yes! Now, yes. I’m very—I shouldn’t, but I—

(Why shouldn’t you?)

You can get into a lot of trouble by being so vociferous about Judaism.

(Really? Tell me, how can you get into trouble?)

Oh, my goodness, gracious, yes. In a way, I was at a dinner party one night, before I started going to the synagogue, so this is before, and they were talking about Christianity and Catholicism and Jesus and I was outside and I didn’t say anything. I had my Scotch, drinking it, and all of a sudden—and these are professionals, they were not any—they were professionals, and I got in one moment so upset, I turned around and said, “Look, what religion was the Virgin Mary?” They said—this is 11 o’clock at night—he didn’t even blink the eye, this is an architect, he said, “Catholic.” I said, “Oh, my God! Look, she was Jewish. She was born Jewish. She died Jewish. And when little Jesus was sick and had a cold, she gave him matzo ball soup, chicken noodle soup with matzos inside.” People’s hair went like this, like saying, “What an intruder!” They never invited me again with those guys to that house with that group of people. I encountered many, many, many people which just don’t—they don’t know first of all their Christianity, their religion, at all, because they think the Apostles were Catholics. That type of thing. I’ve encountered that many times, ignorance.

One time, many years ago, ’79, ’78, we were at a party. Naturally, ninety percent of our parties, I’m the only Jew in town at the party. When I’m lucky we’re two. Now with Delia we’re two. One girl started talking, she started talking about how wonderful Hitler was. She knew I was a Jew. She was sitting behind me talking. How wonderful, and too bad that Hitler did not exterminate all the Jews. At that moment I said, “God give me—illuminate me. I cannot turn around and cuss her. I have to turn around and say something. I have to talk.” So I turned around and I said, “I agree with you. Too bad they didn’t exterminate all the Jews. Naturally, as you know, I would have been exterminated, because my mom and dad—I would never have been born. Because my mother and father were Jewish. They would have been killed. But let me tell you, after exterminating the Jews, he would have come here, to America, and you would have been exterminated, too, because you’re not Aryan. You have Indian blood in you, and that’s not Aryan. You don’t have pure blood.”

So yes, I’ve encountered that, even, as I said, 1979.

(But you don’t mind? You still tell people, “Oh, I’m a Jew”?)

That’s right.

(You’re ready for it, I guess.)

That’s right. Why, why not? I mean, you know. And—there’s nothing to—it’s not a disease. It’s the basis of all the other religions that they all are boasting about. That’s it. And I always tell ‘em Jesus was a Jew, and he never preached anything but Jewish things. He never preached about Saint Augustine and praying to saints….Other people talked about ‘em, but not him.

(If someone went up to you and asked you, “Where are you from?”—?)

From Santa Ana, El Salvador. Definitely.

(Or if they said, “What are you?” what would you say?)

Salvadoran. What religion? I’m Jewish.

(You’re Salvadoran?)

Yes. What else am I? What can I tell them, I’m Jewish? I’m not. I was born into the Jewish religion. But I was born in El Salvador. I have a Salvadoran passport. So therefore I’m from El Salvador, of Jewish descent, Jewish parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Yes. I can’t say I’m Polish. I’m not. I mean, I come from Polish parents, but I’m not Polish.

(These are your people?)

These are my people. These here are my people. I’m from El Salvador. This is my home. This is where my father made his living. This is where I studied. This is where I met your mother and my classmates. And we spoke Spanish. We didn’t speak Hebrew. We didn’t speak Yiddish. We didn’t speak anything but Spanish. This is my home. I can’t be anything else but Salvadoran, of European descent. I get very upset when they tell me, “Oh, but you’re Polish.” I say, “No, I was born in El Salvador, so therefore I’m Salvadoran.

….That’s my answer to people.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

We Went for Six Months but Stayed for Ten Years

In this excerpt, Miguel tells us how he decided to leave El Salvador during the Civil War.
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(And things get a little tough in 1979?)

Yes, very. They got very tough, principally for me. Why? Because I was fully bilingual, you could say, and they were starting to—you know, I was lighter [skinned] and I had a better education and I had probably a better social position than ninety-five percent of teachers there [the University]. And there were students that were already very leftist, and professors that were very leftist, so I had to quit. I didn’t want to continue studying—working. I started working on the farms with my father, but also we were kidnapped inside the farm and all this stuff of the time.

(You were kidnapped inside the farm?)

Yes. The first day—yes, it was 1980, and the first day of coffee picking, and when we came in, they didn’t let us into the Casco de la finca, the main part. My father said, “Why so many people?” I said, “I don’t know.” We just wanted two hundred or so, a hundred and fifty to two hundred. There were more than three hundred. So we walked, “Good morning, good morning, good morning!” with money in an envelope. They probably didn’t think it was money. And all of a sudden, the guerilla was there. So they had us for about eight to nine hours on the farm until they let us go, but we had to give a job to three hundred and some-odd people. That destroyed the farm. That started the destruction. Then they started letters of ransom, and said they were gonna kidnap the kids. So my father decided, “Let’s go for six months.” We went for six months and it turned out to be ten years.

(When they had you in custody, did they treat you well?)

Yes. Well, they kept on giving us threats. “If you all don’t do it by the good side of things, there’s always, we could burn the house—with you inside, naturally.” That type of thing. Intimidation more than anything else.

(And when you got out of there, did you think, “That was a close one!”?)

Yes. But we had—no, they told us we had to go there every week and we couldn’t tell the police anything or security anything. So we’d go every week, and we encountered big, enormous problems and they’d throw ants at us. It was very, very sad. It was sad.

(So you basically left, and you left your farm?)

Yes.

(You didn’t have anybody looking after it?)

No. Yes and no, but the person looking after it was not very good. And to make a long story short, my mother was getting old. Ten years after, my father had already passed away, and he was either staying in the States and working or coming back and getting back the farms and start working. So I decided Mom is not getting any younger, she’s already 85 or 86, we might as well go back to El Salvador and make our lives there and see the farms. And we did, and thank God, because my mother spent the last years of her life very happy here. Not that she wasn’t happy in the States. She was happy wherever we were. She was happy. She was not—she would conform, she would be happy, but she was happier here, sitting in this chair, for instance, and she would say, “This is the biggest terraza I know.” And I would say, “¡Ay, Mami! I wish it was true, but it isn’t!” (laughs) But she’d say, “Oh, it’s so beautiful sitting here.” So she really had a good time. She had a very good old age in El Salvador. So I’m very happy. I’m very happy to be back here. I wouldn’t go back to the States for the world.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Community Member Wins National Prize

Ernesto Freund was awarded a prize by the ASI (Asociacion Salvadorena de Industrias) for his work as a leading businessman in El Salvador. Here he accepts the plaque from President Elias Antonio "Tony" Saca.

Kosher El Salvador

In this entry Miguel explains in his own way and in his own words how the Cukier family adapted to their new lives in El Salvador.

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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I don’t like to talk about religion. I don’t know enough about Judaism, a little Gustavo [Gustavo Kraselnik, former Rabbi in El Salvador] taught me. But that’s all right, I was born a Jew, you know, but that’s it. Some get confused. They get more confused when I say that I eat—that I’m kosher. And they say, “Oh, yeah?” I say yes, I eat only circumcised pork. Then they really get confused at that one. (laughs) I was never—it was probably coming from a very unreligious bunch of people. Kosher was not part of the household at all. Basically mainly in El Salvador. I mean, they were a little bit religious. It would have been very difficult to be kosher in the 1940s and ‘50s. The rabbi told us that that was not because—I always thought it was because of disease. No. God made it, he said, because he wanted to see the people obey. He said, “Don’t eat this.” You obey his law and you don’t eat that. Well, to each his own. Good.

But I do eat circumcised pork. I do. Blessed by the rabbi.

(When you saw kids at the American school, Jewish kids, did you think, “Oh, I’m like them”? Or that didn’t cross your mind?)

That didn’t even cross my mind. I was just a young kid having fun in life, like I’m an old kid trying to make the best of the days that I’m gonna be here and I’m gonna enjoy every second my way. Each one enjoys their life the way they want to. But it was confusing why everybody surrounding me was Christian—Catholic, not Christian, Christian is evangelical—Catholics, and we were Jewish.

(So you didn’t celebrate Christmas?)

Oh, yes!

(You had a Christmas tree?)

Oh, yes. Lily had a Christmas tree when she was little, too, in college. My grandmother—the factory was huge. They had a huge garden. She let one of the peasants from the mountain bring all his Christmas trees to sell in Kalisz. She gave him a little piece of land so he could sell his goods, among them our Christmas tree. She wouldn’t charge him anything. And in gratefulness, he would give her a tree that was put for Lily. And I always had—I loved Christmas. I loved Christmas—not that I—I don’t believe in—

(It wasn’t Jesus’s birthday to you?)

No.

(It was just Christmas?)

It was just a tree full of decorations and the house was joyful—it was a joyful time. It was not even—he was not even born, if he was born. Who tells me he was born? I don’t believe it. Maybe he was born, but nothing like the story. I don’t believe in that story at all. But if he was born, he was not born in December anyhow. So I don’t put a Christmas tree now, because there’s only Delia and myself. This year, my son came and his wife and the kids. We had a Christmas tree upstairs, not down here, upstairs because the kids like Christmas. They’re not Catholic or Episcopalian. I guess Delia told you, Juan Miguel is a free thinker, in a way. So a very good man, my son. Both. They’re both free thinkers. They’re not—you know, there is a God, but that’s about it. They respect very much the Jewish religion.

(Your son is quite an artist who makes beautiful Judaica.)

Yeah.

(It’s very interesting.)

I’m the one that started the whole thing. They said, oh, no, no. I said, “Look, try a few pieces of Judaica. Jewish people like to put decorations in their house.” I explained it. “Maybe you’re gonna be successful, highly successful.” They’re calling him from Judaica shows from all over the US to show their art.

Which is good. I’m glad.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Miguel Cukier, An Introduction

Back in January, I interviewed Miguel Cukier and his wife Delia within a span of three hours. It was a fascinating afternoon, one that illustrated the remarkable closeness of a couple with such dramatically different personal histories and backgrounds.

Miguel was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador. The son of two Polish emigres, his experience is a unique one.
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(Where did your father come from?)

From Strasbourg, where he was studying medicine. My mother came in 1936 with my father when they got married in Poland on one of his vacations. They used to have three months vacation every two or three years, something like that. ‘Cause they couldn’t—you had to travel by boat, so therefore you couldn’t go every year back to Europe. So they gave him one month, two months or so vacation. They took the boat and they went and they stayed two or three months at a time and they came back. He got married in 1936 and brought my mother. Two years later my sister was born, and six years later I was born.

(And where did they meet, what town?)

Kalisz, the oldest town in Poland.

(Was your father born in Kalisz?)

Yes.

(So he met your mom in his hometown?)

Yes. She was living in his hometown.

(And she was from Kalisz?)

She was from Warsaw.

(And both your parents were born Jewish?)

Yes, they were.

(And were they observant?)

Not at all. I asked Lily [a cousin] about my grandmother and grandfather on my dad’s side. You know, they would go to Yom Kippur and from time to time, but no, they would go to a wedding, a bar mitzvah in the town. They did not even live in the Jewish section of town or anything like that. They lived very close to the park, relatively walking distance to the factory, as a matter of fact, because the factory was on the outskirts of Kalisz. And from my mother’s side, they died very young. She was an orphan by the age of nineteen or twenty. I asked her, not religious at all, not at all. None of them spoke Yiddish at all. They spoke Russian, they spoke Italian, they spoke English and everything like that. My father had a teacher from England, brought from England to teach him English, a governess. She was English. Yiddish was not the language for them.

(Do you think they did that for their own protection?)

No. I asked Gustavo that. No, because with the name of Meissner, you know, it was a very Jewish name. It was not a Christian name at all. So I don’t think so. He [maternal grandfather] was a doctor. They were very, very—she was very wealthy, my grandmother. They traveled through Europe. My great-grandparents had an apartment in Monte Carlo and in Paris. They were very, very well-to-do people. As Gustavo said, I understand, they were not integrated with the Yiddish-speaking people that were—

(It was a different class.)

Class, culture. They spoke many languages, but not Yiddish. And they were not religious at all.

(So when they were married, they were probably married—?)

Under the chuppah, yes, they did.

(Oh, they did get married under the chuppah.)

Yes, they did get married, and then we found out in a paper that Lily translated for us from Polish that—

(Was that a ketubah, or not really?)

Not really, I don’t think so, it was not a ketubah, not at all. I can show it to her again and find out. But I don’t think so.

(So you’re being raised in Santa Ana, and your family is not observant, but you knew you were Jewish?)

Yes, yes, all the time.

(You went to school?)

I went to the American school, with your mother’s who’s ten years older than me. I’m not gonna admit to that age.

We were probably—there was confusion, because most of the people that surrounded us were Christians, naturally, you know. The maid, the people in the farms, the people in the stores, you know, but we knew, I knew I was Jewish all the time.

(And you were born in ’42, so right during the war.)

Yes, yes.

(Did your parents lose a lot of family in the war?)

Yes. The whole—everyone. Except for Lily, his mother. My grandfather, his father, had died of cancer in 1928 or so. My mother’s twin sister died during the war, which was very traumatic to her. Only my great-uncle, my grandmother’s brother, was living, lived, and I met him. They lived in New York. He married a baroness, but he became Christian, Catholic, because she was Catholic. He was president of the Red Cross in exile for Poland. But the rest, Lily’s father, Lily’s mother, my aunt, they were all—and Pupik, which was my father’s cousin he adored—they all died.

(Do you know where they were taken? Do you have any of that information?)

No, I don’t. Treblinka or Auschwitz. I don’t know. I don’t want to go to any of the concentration camps. This time we went, Lily didn’t want to go, so therefore I said, “Why am I going to torture myself going to something that I know I’m gonna be tortured by?” Because I was haunted by this all through my life.

(How so? Was it discussed in the home?)

We couldn’t talk much about it in my childhood because we didn’t want Lily to relive—

(Because she came to live with you?)

Oh, yes, she came to live with us.

(You were the only people she had?)

Oh, yes. That she says in the book. We were the only people she had. She came to live with us and then she married in 1952. She went back to the States and lived a very happy, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful life. Which is good, because she didn’t have it good when she was little. But why, that’s the question I always ask, not being pious—and I shall never be pious, never...—why kill somebody just because he’s from the same religion that Jesus was born in? For me, it’s baffling. That’s—they go to church, I say, and they pray in front of a statue that’s a Jew. And they killed them [the family] because they were Jewish, and they spit at them, and they discriminated. And the older I got, I got to think about that thing. Why? Why kill ‘em? You can dislike ‘em, just dislike ‘em. But don’t kill ‘em. Don’t make ‘em suffer, you know. I don’t know, my grandmother suffered, but she was not a bad woman. She was a very good woman. Why suffer, you know? But through the years it has haunted me. Why? And a lot of times when they ask me what religion I am, I say “Jesus’s religion.” Because it’s true. He was a Jew!

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

el Museo

Tonight I spent one hour with the five oldest teenagers in the Jewish community, five girls whose personalities create a great mixture of sensitivity, energy, opinions, and experience. Rabbi Pablo Berman and his wife "Mora" Perla de Berman, have been working with the group on identity projects since the beginning of the school year. We are now working together to create a hands-on experience for these five young women.

I thought it might be a good idea to combine my final "audio" presentation for the community with five mini-exhibits from each member of this group. I suggested they pick a "theme" and from there, I would set up research outlines with each one (on an individual basis) and recommend that they speak with certain community members, etc. Their personal goals are different but the overall group goal is to present the community history of their chosen theme.

When we started brainstorming about different theme options, the conversation became very animated. Some suggested topics like: intermarriage, conversion, marriage, community relationships, relationship with the Evangelical Christian and/or Catholic majority, immigration, rituals, youth groups, leadership, relationship to Israel, gender relations, etc.

Next Monday, we get started.....

Enrique Guttfreund: A Final Entry

This week, an interview of Enrique "Quique" Guttfreund by Lea Freund has been featured. This interview was conducted March 2, 1981 in Miami.

All of Lea's questions are in parentheses.

Again, many thanks to Lea for granting the necessary permissions to publish her work online.
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(Where did the majority of the people come from that made the Jewish community possible?)

Well, a great part came from Alsace-Lorraine, and from Germany. They spoke mostly German and French,a newly acquired language. There was the Frankel family. You have to even talk in translations because then they branched out. Let's say the daughters married somebody else but there were, I remember many French, but mostly Alsace-Lorrainer. There was the German-Jewish community, but it was all in one because it was all from the same background. There wasn't much difference between having lived on the left or the right of the Rhine. They weren't ;t diverse. There were one or two families from Rumania or Besarabia, Mr. Gould, who married a girl, a lady from Chile. I would say the census that was taken would be the best source of information. Most of the people who came because of Hitler during the war, or before the war, they didn't stay there because they couldn't get work permits or it was difficult, and they moved on. Some stayed two or three years, but they moved on as soon as they had the opportunity because to get work or make a living was very limited.

(When did the Jewish community in Salvador have the synagogue and how was it built? What was the economic position of the community, and how did they come to building the synagogue?)

Well, we had this house. It was not meant to be a synagogue where you could have meetings. They younger people worked it out so a meeting room could be established. Maybe in 1945 or 1946, land was bought for the synagogue. Mr. de Sola was the only Jewish architect and drew the plans. A little house was added for Mr. Freund, the Rabbi, to live in and that served as a community center and then it became too small for parties or the things for the younger people. So Mr. Eugen Liebes and his wife donated the back part and the kitchen. A complete kitchen was added. Then it became a real community center. To separate the sanctuary from the rest, a movable wooden door was made. It was a sliding door, so whenever we had activities which had nothing to do with the religious part it was closed. We had very nice parties for official things like when Golda Meir was the foreign minister of Israel and she came to Salvador.

(What was the reason she came to Salvador?)

I knew she would be going to Guatemala and she hadn't scheduled Salvador and I thought we were overlooked. We had worked a lot for Salvador to never vote against Israel in the United Nations, or to at least abstain. I know that we influenced the 1948 vote to abstain, I think, but Guatemala was very affirmative. At that time, the United Nations delegate in Guatemala was Garcia grandson, so she made a thank you trip and Salvador wasn't scheduled. But I worked hard for it. I was so dismayed that Golda Meir should be so near and not come. We moved a lot of levers. She came it was a big boost to the community.

(When did you have the cemetery?)

Mr. Liebes, who lived from 1888 to 1911 in Salvador, told me he doesn't remember any Jewish life of this time. Since he had lost two children to the very poor sanitary conditions of the time, his wife, my aunt did not want to have any more children in Salvador. Not bring them up or anything. They went back to Hamburg and then he returned to Salvador because of Hitler in 1939. The first thing he said when spoke about the community, was that we needed a cemetery. He made the donation for it and he was also the first man to die and be buried in this cemetery. That was in 1949, the same year Max Freund died. He died in 1949 so he was in Salvador from during Hitler until 1949 and that was the beginning of the cemetery.

(How was the situation of the Jewish community with the Salvadoran community?)

Well, all of a sudden there was a cable at the Hamburg consulate: NO Jews admitted. That was in the time of General Martinez, who was the dictator for 13 years (Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez ruled from 1931-1944). He respected Germany and we read about it from other communities. Through Germany and Hitler [German] ambassadors told them; "What are you doing? Why do you take in the scum of the earth. The Jews. Who we are throwing out and you take them? Be very careful." This was the reason for the cable stating that nobody else could come to Salvador.

I never detected any social anti-semitism. We were accepted in all the clubs. Arabs living in Salvador were called "turkos." They are called "turkos" because they were from a program against the Catholic Arabs in the Ottoman Empire. Since the Turkish empire was in Bethlehem in 1911, most of those families came in 1911. There were many large families, but they were never admitted to clubs.

(Were Jews admitted)

Yes. I was among the founders of the sports club [Club Circulo Deportivo]. When I was secretary, I spent practically all my free time for years trying to bring in a family from Lebanon, the Siman's. There were Rotarians and there were the Lions. When the Lions club came there was never any discrimination. Even in government. I think it was that they didn't know who was Jewish. We were Germans to them. The ones who came from Germany and talked Spanish with a German accent. There were always good relations between Israel and Salvador on both the commercial and diplomatic fronts.

(So right now the Jewish situation....)

So I would say that one of the disappointments is the tragic disappearance of such a wonderful community. We still have some hopes that it is not permanently disappeared.

We can still hope for not only the community, but for the Salvadorans who are wonderful people. We must hope that the Salvadoran people can find a solution for their deep political difficulties. It is now a house divided, which cannot stand.

I can see that the Jewish life could flourish again, once it's become more peaceful, and thus open to a pluralistic approach to society, as it was when we were there. Ojala, as they say in Spanish....

Transcription prepared by the University of Florida Oral History Program. Interview conducted by Lea Freund

Acculturating and Acclimatized

Lea Freund conducted this interview of "Quique" Guttfreund in March of 1981. Please scroll down the page to see additional entries from this particular interview.

All of Lea's questions are in parentheses
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(Was there a normal Jewish life of Friday night, or Saturday morning? Or a synagogue?)

No. That started in 1938. Mr. Liebes was the prime mover of the Zionist group. He knew whom to write and we got some literature. Some people travelled. You could take an airplane from Guatemala to Salvador. I don't know when the first Sheliach came. I do know his name was Joseph Tornitzky. He was very helpful and showed us songs and how to work with the children if any of us would have the opportunity, what to do, what to read. He sent us material.

We had this Zionist organization which was small but active. A group of us attended the meetings in 1937; Mr. Ernesto Liebes, Mr. Francisco de Sola, Mr. Carlos Bernhard, and myself. We decided to call on the elder of the Jewish people. The people we contacted were Mr. Freund, Mr. Liebes and Mr. Widawer, I think. I cannot remember it, but we must have done that because in 1938 the Jewish community was formally established. At that point, Mr. Widawer had a cousin who was a Hebrew teacher....and came out as the last Jew from Germany before the war broke out in autumn of 1939. At that time, Salvador was already closed for Jews. I know that very well because my father was taken into a concentration camp after Kristallnacht. I had gotten a visa for him when he went to Hamburg. He showed a cable to the Gestapo, his permit to go to Salvador, and was released from the camp. But when he came to Hamburg the council told him that they were very sorry but they had a counter order that nobody would be admitted to Salvador except Rabbi Alex Freund and Mr. and Mrs. Schoening who had a very special sponsorship. So my father could not come to Salvador.

(I would like to go back a little bit. Did you have Pesach in the private home of Mr. and Mrs. Widawer? Were Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur celebrated in private homes also?)

Also in private homes, yes.

(And who made the prayers? How did you organize yourselves?)

There was a Mr. Lewinsky who worked for the firm of Gunter Liebes in a branch in Cincinnati, he came especially for those occasions. He was about the only one who knew how to lead in singing and chanting. I understand that before that a Mr. Lowenstein did it. He died of tuberculosis when I was there, but he was too ill to do any services in the last years. He performed some marriage ceremonies also. I know that Ernesto Liebes and Alice Liebes got married in our house. It was the biggest and most luxurious. With this marriage in this beautiful house our cozy arrangement ended. We had to look for other houses. When Mr. Alex Freund came we looked for a house which was suitable. We found one and then regular services started.

(The house was for Mr. Freund and in his home....)

....It was 1938. Freund was there, in this home. It was one of those big old wooden houses which had sufficient room. I am not too sure who gave or bought the Torah scrolls, but we had three or four. I remember Mr. Baum donated one. He came about the same time....not in the same boat but around the same time. More younger people came. I remember Hans Wiener from Breslau and Jose "Chepe" Baum from Fulda, who was by far the most knowledgable about Jewish traditions and religious things but he didn't read [Torah] often. He was a travelling salesman when he came. He was there [at religious services] maybe only twice a month. You could not go back every day or every week and there were no good roads. There were no cars and you had to go on mule back and things like that. So in 1938, it started in a real formal way. Mr. Freund was a very good Jew who was limited in his ability to teach the children later on. He always prepared the sermon. Little by little he learned Spanish, never very well, but he did what he could.

(This is the way you started the Jewish life with Mr. Freund?)

There came more and more people on ships during the war. As the war developed, whenever they could come out they did. Sometimes they would just unload or come to Salvador beacuse they had somebody to whom they could give two hundred dollars. So they were given a permit and a piece of land, and I was placed in charge to see them and to see where they could stay....and to send them on and write letters. Most of them did not write English letters so ...[I helped them] to get in touch with the family as they needed affidavits to move on. It really brought a lot of new blood and life into the whole community. First of all, to be together, to help them, they were there for a time, and most of them moved out.

I remember that the American consul, Mr. Melady, was very helpful and he accepted affidavits of people who could not write English, who only wrote half Yiddish, half English. I remember one family, the name slips my mind, but this man [their family member in the States] was a postal worker and wrote a letter that he was so glad that his cousins were safe and he would share with them whatever he had at his house.

Melady said if somebody is so dedicated, I'm sure he will do everything so that those people won't be a burden for America.....and I know they never were.

Transcription prepared by the University of Florida Oral History Program. Interview conducted by Lea Freund.

An Introduction to Tropicalized Judaism

Below, Lea Freund interviews "Quique" Guttfreund about his first years in El Salvador.

The interview was conducted in Miami on March 2, 1981.
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(What kind of a Jewish community did you find there? How many people lived there? How many families?)

I forgot to tell you that first of all, it looks like I wouldn't have had much interest in Jewish life at that point, but when I left Breslau, and I went to Guben, with the rise of Hitler, all of a sudden, I became aware (of my Jewish ancestry). I was already nineteen. I finished my apprenticeship in 1932. In Guben, life was either Communist or Nazi. It was heavily Communist. It had many factories. In our factory there were many Communists, and only later the Social Democrats tried to have a fighting force. There I was becoming aware that I was Jewish. I had to do something. I don't remember how, but I came to know a dentist, a very nice gentleman, Dr. Smoira, who later lived in Israel.

He had a little group to introduce youth into Zionist lore and history. I had to ask everything. I didn't know anything. When I arrived in Salvador, I came into perhaps the best possible situation to learn, because my cousin Ernest Liebes, lived in Hamburg and had been exposed to a much different Jewish life. Since we lived in Leobschuetz and that was the the biggest distance you could travel in Germany (between Hamburg and Leobschuetz), this kept us from being very close. But we became very good friends.

He had a house. Mr. Reich, Mr. Liebes, who was younger than I, Carlos Bernhard, and Mr. Meenen, who was not Jewish, could accomodate me because the man who lived there before, Mr. Lassally, had married the day before. The house was filled with flowers. They told me everybody had sent flowers and the whole presentation was just for me. It was the first of many practical jokes they played on me. But I then came unto this house which was, what they call in Germany a "Junggesellenhaus," a bachelor's house. We had a cook and everybody made up his own room.

It had belonged to a President who was replaced two years before. Prior to that, in 1932, there was the big revolution that everybody now hears about, when so many peasants were killed. I heard about 6,000 were killed and I believed was a reliable figure. But with the inflation and the passing of years it has grown now to 30,000 people who died in that revolution. I don't know which figure is correct.

(Were there any married couples?)

No, we are now talking about unmarried men. I was about twenty-two. At the time there was the Freund family. I think they were the ones that maintained whatever was left of traditions because they invited for Friday evenings. They also invited for Pesach. I remember my first Pesach was with the Widawer family. I would say that the main support of traditions was Mr. Alfred Widawer. He was a gentleman who had worked with the Jewish firm, Mugdan. Mugdan was one of the firms that brought many Jewish men out of Europe...same as Goldtree. It was interesting to see how little by little the Jewish core was built up.

I remember very well that first Pesach. It must have been 1934. We had some Jewish books. I had already bought the history by Kastein on the history of the Jews from a Zionist angle. But we also had the greats and we prepared lectures for each other. I still have the letters I saved from when I was forced to leave Salvador. I found one in which Carlos Bernhard was asking me what he would have to talk about. Essentially, we had to read extensively. There was some research and then the giving of lectures...usually on Friday evenings.

Transcript prepared by the University of Florida Oral History Program. Interview conducted by Lea Freund.

Quique Guttfreund: The New "Chele"

In this excerpt, Lea Freund interviews Enrique "Quique" Guttfreund about his first trip to El Salvador from his native Germany.

This interview was conducted on March 2, 1981. Mr. Guttfreund passed away in 1996.
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(How did you travel to El Salvador?)

It was a very nice little boat of the Hapag Line. It had twelve people on it, because over twelve they needed a doctor and they did not want that. It was a freighter. I had very nice company. We all fell in love with a very nice girl but the ship's doctor finally got to her, so we didn't have a chance. Not the ship's doctor, but the ship's officer or something. It stopped everwhere, and we sometimes went to Colombia. I was in Curacao for a day and Aruba (Netherlands Antilles), Cartagena, and we came even back to Cartagena. Whenever there was something to pick up the boat stopped or even went back when the load was good enough. I arrived in the night when I thought the whole world would go to pieces because of a terrible thunderstorm with lightning. Of course, I did not know that this was a very typical storm. I think, the sixth of July in La Libertad, I heard about the crashing of boats into big trees, and it happens I only knew later that an enormous tropical storm and rain had come over Salvador. The thing they still talk about today is that it washed away big bridges, and that the wind ravaged the entire landscape. When I arrived in Salvador, there was no light (electricity). I arrived in July, and we didn't have light until Christmas.

I didn't know much Spanish. When I wanted to talk to a lady in the market in Curacao, she laughed her head off. She could not understand a word. I remember that for instance, the word sons, which is pronounced "hijos..." I would pronounce it like it would be in German-- "eeyos" so after this disaster I gave up trying to learn Spanish by myself. English I knew and all that came by would say I was the "chele." "Chele" means in Salvador "the white man." I was the new white man for Goldtree Liebes, so it was already known that Goldtree Liebes would import somebody and that Mr. Ernesto Liebes, my cousin, was to await me at the pier. That was 1934.

Transcript prepared by the University of Florida Oral History Program. Interview conducted by Lea Freund.

Enrique "Quique" Guttfreund: The Early Years in Germany

As featured two weeks ago, Lea Freund's oral history project conducted during the 1980s is an invaluable contribution to the history of the Salvadoran Jewish community. This week, I will feature some excerpts from an intervew conducted with the late Enrique "Quique" Guttfreund, husband of Gerda and father of Andre, Noemi, Miriam, Ruth, and Daniel. Both Gerda and Noemi have been featured on the blog.

This interview was conducted on March 2, 1981.
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(Where were you born?)

I was born in a little town called Leobschuetz, in Germany. It is in upper Silesia near the Czech border. My family comes from the same region. My father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather in Leobschuetz. We could trace about five generations back to Zuelz--a very small, but famous, community in the middle ages, and Hotzenplotz, which was already over the border in what used to be Austria, and was then Czechoslovakia.

(What year were you born?)

I was born April, 1911. At that time the community was very small. It must have been very big at one time, because the synagogue was enormous for the small numbers that gathered during my time. It was very interesting for me to read in Gershon Sholom's book, "From Berlin to Jerusalem," where he writes that an uncle of his was an administrator of two Jewish homes--one for the elderly and one for the sick--in Leobschuetz. I cannot imagine how big a community it must have been to have warranted those two institutions. At the time we were living there, there was barely any Jewish life. I didn't know anything about Jewish customs. We had Easter. I did not know anything about Pesach. We went looking for Easter eggs. I have photographs where we were under a Christmas three, and I never knew about Chanukah. Yet, we knew we were Jewish. My mother came from Goerlitz, in Silesia, but her grandparents, I think, came from Kempen. She had a much better Jewish background than my father. I remember that she went to the synagogue for Yom Kippur and I always brought an apple spiked with cloves to sniff for refreshment. It seems to have been a custom in Germany, and that was about the extent of my participation in Yom Kippur. I did not have any Jewish comrades. When I started to get interested in why the community was so run down and that nothing Jewish was happening, I was told that the community embraced the Reform of Rabbi Abraham Geiger (1810-1874, a pioneer of the influential Hollander family). Felix Hollander, the composer, was one of them, and in 1905 and 1907 (my father wasn't sure about that), they were already converted to Catholicism or Protestantism. I don't think there were more than one or two Jews from Eastern countries [there]. I remember Mr. Silberberg, who came from Poland, and had the store next to ours, but that was about it. All the others were Germans.

(When and why did you go to El Salvador?)
It started with the visit of Mr. Ernst Reich. I was in my home town at the time. Since we had very little opportunity to study or learn something, I was sent to Breslau. I didn't want to study after finishing school, so I was apprenticed at the Jewish firm, M. Forell, in Breslau. In the evenings there were courses to attend even if you weren't admitted to the University, you could (audit them). I remember a very interesting man, Professor Cohn, who read on Faust. At that time I was living in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Glagaus, who were also Jews. I was renting a room there and we became friends. He came from Posen. They went to synagogue and I went with them sometimes. They were not as assimilated as we were, but there was no Jewish content either. That was in 1928. When I was there, I think it was in 1931, Mr. Reich came to see me. I had not known him before, but he knew of me because he was working in the Salvador firm of Goldtree Liebes. Reich was a brother-in-law to Mr. Eugen Liebes, who was the chief at that time. He asked me, "What are you doing here?" It was a rainy and cold day. "Why don't you go to Salvador? It is always sunny and there are palm trees and beautiful girls and you are sitting here in this ugly Breslau." Well, it was very intriguing to me; I was very young. You could see the crisis developing in Germany. Banks were closing and clients did not pay. I don't know how many millions of people were unemployed. I didn't know what I would do after the three years of this apprenticeship. At that time, and as I understand today, it was still the old medieval time of apprenticeship. You worked three years. It was all legalized. You were paid twenty-five marks a month for the first year, thirty-five for the second, and fifty for the third. I understand it is the same today, only then was it Reichsmark, then it was Deutschmark. It was good, but of course at that time nobody could promise [anything]. It taught me that there was a crisis, and there was nothing to be had. The founder of the firm in El Salvador was an uncle of mine, Mr. Leo Liebes, who was married to a sister of my mother. He did not take an active part; he retired in 1911. I wrote them and they said no, but much later in 1931 I looked for a job and luckily I got one after finishing my third year.-----------

So I signed on by the end of 1933. I told my parents I would go without their permission. My father called me and asked how could I have done such a thing? "How come you accept this when you are the only boy in the family?"

Transcript prepared by the University of Florida Oral History Program. Interview conducted by Lea Freund.

A State of Belonging

In this last excerpt, Boris discusses what it means to be "100% Jewish."
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(Do you feel like you have a very different life?)

Than they do?

(Not only because you live in the States and they live in Salvador, but the fact that you’ve adopted or really embraced your Jewish roots?)

Well, no, not necessarily, because I don’t feel that much difference. I don’t think that religion separates me from people. My dearest friend could be Catholic. My dearest friend could be a Buddhist. I don’t think that how he feels about God and about, you know, the origins of life and everything are going to make any difference. So I don’t think the fact that I’ve gotten closer to the Jewish religion has made me more distant from my sister. Absolutely not. Religion has really never, ever been an obstacle in my relationship with her.

(Do you remember any cases—I mean, you had an interesting childhood growing up religiously, back and forth a little bit, but do you remember any instances of anti-Semitism that you experienced?)

As an infant, a teenager?

(Any time.)

Yeah, there’s one particular funny story which actually goes both ways. In 1965, I was asked by the mother of my girlfriend, who was Jewish—in Washington, I was in Washington—I was asked by this lady if I could drive her to Cleveland, (that was not around the block) because she didn’t want to fly and she had a bridge tournament. And of course, since I was the son-in-law, supposedly, I said yes, and I drove all night to take her to Cleveland. And on that trip, she said, “Boris, I like you so much. You’re such a nice boy. It’s too bad you’re not Jewish to marry my daughter.” That was the opposite of anti-Semitism.

Then, about three years later, graduated from the University of Colorado, I had gone back to El Salvador, started working, started dating a girl, Catholic, and one particular week, she disappeared. Called her house. “She’s not here.” “What do you mean?” “She’s in Santa Ana with her grandmother.” “Well, what’s the phone number there?” To make a long story short, for a whole week—I could not get in touch with her. So she comes back a week later, and I said, “My God, what the heck happened? I have been trying to get in touch with you. I was desperate.” She says, “I’m so embarrassed, but I have to tell you. My grandmother, she doesn’t want me going out with you because you’re Jewish.”

I mean, that was a slap on one cheek and a slap on the other cheek in a matter of two or three years which made me realize what it is to be the product of a mixed marriage. Things like this don’t happen to a lot of people, you know? When you’re a Salvadoreño católico, blah-blah, that’s what you are. That’s it. If you’re a Jew, you’re a Jew, and your father and mother, that’s what you are. But when you’re half and half, you meet people like this in life that make you realize what you are is half and half. And I do keep that in my mind, very much. I mean, as much as I like the Jewish religion as a religion—and the traditions of the Jewish religion are beautiful, and I embrace them and I like them—but when it come to the more maybe racial or citizen aspect or whatever the mixture of the two produces, I’m still not comfortable, and I still feel I’m fifty-fifty. And I have to, because that’s the way the world perceives it.

Somebody might say, “Who cares how the world perceives it? It’s how you perceive it.” Well, it’s not that way. I still feel that you live around people and you have to know exactly what you are. And in a way, that’s why my wife converted to Judaism, to make my kids Jewish. In spite of the fact that she was originally Catholic, and that I was half, our kids, from the early age of ten, started getting a Jewish education in Miami. They both had their bat and bar mitzvah. They both consider themselves Jewish. Now, my daughter married a non-Jewish young man, and her kids are being brought up Jewish and they go to a Jewish school. So Judaism in the family has continued, mainly because of my wife, not so much because of me.

My daughter, I think, identifies much, much more and feels more comfortable being Jewish. My son, I think is more aware of things like I am, although he’s Jewish legally. I think he’s a little more aware of the fact that there are differences between people that come from a completely Jewish home and people that don’t.

(So that was important to you, to raise your kids Jewish?)

To me, it was not important. To my wife it became important, because she wanted to give them the identity that I didn’t seem to have or that I didn’t have, which is good.. They’re comfortable, more so than I have ever been. —When I have been asked, “Are you Catholic or Jewish?” throughout my life, my answer varied. If it was in a Jewish crowd, I was Jewish. If it was a crowd that was not Jewish , then my answer was not clear, like a chameleon effect, you know? Hiding from things that were not convenient.

(But you felt like the Jews in El Salvador considered you to be Jewish?)

Not a hundred percent.

(What made you feel that? Was there an experience you had, something that made you realize that it wasn’t a hundred percent?)

The fact that they— (pause) I’m trying to think. It’s kind of difficult, because it’s something that’s definitely—I definitely felt somewhat discriminated, but it’s kind of hard to pinpoint events. I don’t seem to have any special recollection like the one story I just told you.

(How did you feel discriminated against?)

Maybe because of the comments that were made. “If your mother’s not Jewish, you’re not Jewish.” That type of comment that I heard from different Jewish families as I went there after school, for dinners, for holidays, for whatever. So it always made me feel, “My mother’s not Jewish, I’m not Jewish.” And I tried to be Jewish, but I couldn’t be Jewish, because my mother was not Jewish. That type of thing.

(But you still had these close Jewish friends, these guys that you still talked to?)

Eventually, like I said, from late high school to date, so we’re talking from the age of sixteen to date, which is forty-some years, ninety percent of my friends, my close friends, are Jewish.. I do have a couple of friends that are not Jewish. So I eventually became very much part of the Jewish community, I guess.

(And when you became friends with these people, it wasn’t like you said, “Oh, you’re Jewish, I can be friends with you”? It was more, “I’m just naturally—we have so much in common”?)

What they thought of me, you mean?

(No, when you were becoming friends with these people, like, in your later years, maybe not your friends from childhood, but now you say most of your friends are Jewish.)

They’re mostly friends from childhood. Maybe much closer friends now than they were as children, ‘cause as children, they were more in the Jewish crowd, and I wasn’t. But with time, it sort of like, it was pieces of a puzzle. It all just kind of fit together, and when I became more of a thinking age, and when my personality was maybe more formed and it took shape, I seemed to identify more, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten so close to these people. And since there was that tie from earlier childhood, and of course my father, being a member of the community and everything, it sort of helped to make me fit in, and we have been—before marriage and after marriage, we have continued to be close friends. Some are now in Miami and after twenty-six years in Miami we are still close friends.

(So those people are Jack Davidson?)

Well, Jack doesn’t live in Miami. But the people in Miami are weekend people, the people that you see on Friday nights, the people that you see on Saturday nights, people that are always with you on your birthday. These are your friends, your close friends. And my close friends here are Dick Schoening and Betty and Frank Rosenberg and his girlfriend Annie.

Frank and I were partners in the business for twenty-one years. So we would see each other daily. We continue to be very close friends. Now Jack Davidson and Roby Salomon continue to be very close. Jack and I talk daily.

(Still today?)

Still. (laughs) When he’s in New York. When he’s in Salvador, he doesn’t call that much. It’s too expensive. (laughs) But when he’s in New York, we talk daily. It’s the kind of friendship that—and with Frank I speak almost daily also, and with Dick I speak at least three times a week and consult and whatever. We’re really close friends. We are really a community, separated geographically by thousands of miles in the case of Roby in Geneva, but we’re still a community. We get together, we visit them and stay in their homes, and they come to Miami and stay in our house.

I think that one of the things that has made me get closer to the Jewish religion has been the attitude of the rabbi in the temple that we belong to, Beth Am, in Miami. Rabbi Terry Bookman, is such a welcoming person. We received the Judaism course from him before we joined the temple. He never really forced me to convert. As a matter of fact, after I told him a lot of the things I told you on a personal one-to-one conversation with him, he said to me, “You’re a Jew. Jewish friends. You have Jewish kids. You have a Jewish wife. You have a Jewish name. You’re Jewish. That’s it. Of course, at one point, if you really want to be some day a citizen of Israel, you really should convert. Otherwise, you’re fine.” It’s a Reform temple. His attitude—and every time we go to temple, he actually goes out of the way to greet us with a hug and kiss. He’s a young, forty-five-year-old man, maybe younger. A very strong rabbi, probably the largest community in Miami. He makes me feel welcome. And I think that maybe that’s something that obviously was not present in my childhood, otherwise I probably would have felt more comfortable with Judaism at an earlier age. I think it’s important. I think that welcoming attitude is just something that’ll make you close to something….....

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Why we moved.

Boris shares more details about his father's background along with the story about the family move to the United States.
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(Did your father ever bring anyone over from Turkey?)

No. No other person in the family came after him. He only had one sister. Actually, there’s one interesting thing that I’m gonna tell you. He had one sister who moved from Istanbul to France. She lived in Toulouse most of her life after she left Istanbul when she was also quite young. She would visit us in Salvador quite often. My father would visit her also, but she never moved. She had her life set in France, suffered the war and luckily survived. But my father tried—he actually built a room in the house in Flor Blanca to move his father and mother from Istanbul to El Salvador in 1947. I was a little baby. On the way to El Salvador, with the intention of staying in El Salvador for good, they stopped in Toulouse to visit my aunt, and my grandmother died there, suddenly. She died at a relatively young age. She was in her fifties. Her name was Blanche Weill.

My grandfather continued the trip by himself. He came alone to El Salvador, lived there for four or five months. I think I was one and a half or two years old, from the pictures I see. And he couldn’t get used to it. He was a physician in Istanbul, and he worked at Hospital Rosales doing charity work. He was already in his early seventies. My father tells me that he just couldn’t get used to El Salvador. He didn’t like the life in El Salvador, and he went back to Istanbul. I think he tried again a second time a couple years later, and once again it didn’t work out, so he never came back. He lived a few more years and then passed away.

(So essentially your father didn’t have anyone in Salvador immediately related—well, did he have this uncle that brought him over?)

It was uncle Edouard, his mother’s brother. He lived until the late ‘70s. He was way into his eighties when he died. He lived in Santa Ana his whole life. He was very well-liked, very beloved in Santa Ana. He married a Swiss lady. He was from Geneva, and he married a lady from Lyon or some place close to Geneva. Once again, this is one of the Jewish ladies that came to El Salvador that we were talking about that was not happy at all. At all. She hated it. And she went back. They had a baby girl who lives now in the U.S. She went back to Switzerland and never came back.. He would go there to see her, but she never came back. They never divorced, from what I understand. They lived separated their whole life. The girl left with her, was brought up in Switzerland. And he lived alone. He lived alone his whole life. I’m sure he had his fun. (laughs)

(Company.)

He had a pharmacy in Santa Ana, Farmacía Principal, for many years, one of the largest drug stores in town—and he had a comfortable economic situation to a certain point, and then towards old age it started declining. He died not poor, but certainly not wealthy.

(What did your father do in Salvador?)

My father started working with my uncle—he had at the time—it was not a drug store, it was a store, a general store. Eventually he moved to work as a viajero, which were people that traveled the country selling merchandise from larger companies, which is what he did for his uncle originally. He worked for a couple of companies. I think one of them was called Casa Abadí They were also a Sephardic family. The Abadis moved to Argentina and never came back to El Salvador. Eventually my father ended up working for Casa Mugdan, where a lot of the Jewish people in El Salvador worked.

At one point in 1941, which was fourteen years after he had arrived in El Salvador, he met with Saul Gun. Saul Gun apparently was looking for a partner to start a business, and they started one together in San Salvador called Gabay Gun & Cia. It was a well-known name for many, many years, until the ‘70s and even later. They were partners from 1941 until about 1973, when the Guns moved to Israel and my father bought his part in the business. I started working for my father. I had been working for him for a while before that, and then my father and I became partners. The business evolved from a general merchandise business, schmattes—

(Textiles.)

....textiles to furniture, import of sewing machines, white-line refrigerators, etc. It was a credit business, mostly furniture and things sold on credit, and also an aluminum furniture factory. And he went through other things. Glass, at one point they were very strong in glass, big glass, imported from Belgium. When we moved to Miami in 1979, he moved also.

(Tell me why you moved.)

Well, trying to make a long story short, we really didn’t leave El Salvador with the idea of moving. We left El Salvador to spend two weeks in Miami on a vacation. Since my father and I were partners in the business, we didn’t want to leave the business alone, so he left a week earlier. We overlapped a week in Miami, and the other person would go back—yet didn’t go back. My father got sick. He had a checkup. There was a tumor in his intestine, and he had to have an operation. It was something that was done immediately. He had complications from the operation. He was in the hospital for a month. I had to stay. My mother never drove, and I had to drive her back and forth. My wife went back, and eventually the situation in El Salvador got bad. My wife didn’t think it was as bad as it looked from Miami, usually from far away things look worse. But I insisted that she should come up and maybe spend some more time in Miami. So they did, with my kids, my two kids. The kids started school in Miami. This is twenty-six years ago, and here we are, still in Miami.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Boris Gabay on Conversion

In this excerpt Boris shares experiences related to his early conversion to Catholicism and subsequent re-connection with the Jewish faith. All questions in parentheses are mine.
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(Was that very hard for you, to look at your sister, and she’s one religion and you are another?)

No, not at all. But at the age of eleven, I did get some pressure to convert, not from my sister, but from friends. Most of my friends in Colonia Flor Blanca, where I still lived until the age of seventeen, were catholic. I was a Cub Scout, and my best friend at the time was a Swiss Catholic. His influence moved me to convert to Catholicism.

I felt pressure with the fact that they all went to Mass on Sundays, and I decided to convert to Catholicism, at the age of eleven. Of course, how much you know of what you’re doing at that age? But I did, with a priest of the Cub Scouts at the Liceo Salvadoreño. And I went through all the rituals, learned a few things to be able to do this, and then I was somewhat oriented towards the Catholic religion for a few years, until the age of seventeen, which was, like, six years. When I went to college—I came to college in the States—I identified more with the Jewish American kids, this was the University of Colorado in Boulder, and I actually joined a Jewish fraternity. From then on, I started once again leaning more towards my original religion, and of course I would have needed to convert to be considered completely Jewish. I always had a little bit of a problem with that, because, you know, this whole thing about, if you don’t have a Jewish mother you’re not Jewish. Which I—I mean, I had to agree with it, because it’s what’s agreed with, but to me it really didn’t mean anything, because to me it’s the same to have one Jewish parent, whichever it is. I mean, I had a Jewish name. I had a Hebrew name. Gabay is a Hebrew name. There are other people that have Jewish mothers and they have a Christian name. So it really made no difference.

But I started identifying more with Jewish kids. Actually, it was before college. It was in high school where my best friends at that point were the two Jewish kids in the school. We were very, very close, and we still are. But religion really never had that much impact on my way of life, it was never that important to me. Religion was somewhat secondary, in my whole life it has been. I have my own. I mean, I am a believer. I believe in G-d and I believe in basically the Commandments. I respect the baruchim, you know. Now I feel more Jewish than I’ve ever felt before, because I’ve taken courses here in Miami. We also belong to a temple. I also belong to the Jewish community in El Salvador. I pay there. I pay here. (chuckles) I’m involved in more Jewish life than I’ve ever been before. You know, we’ve gone to temple every major holiday. This past couple of years we go often Friday nights.

I was saying that religion was never that important. But it was when I took a course in understanding Judaism a couple of years ago, two, three years ago—

Second voice: Last year.

No, two years ago. I realized that my religious feelings throughout my whole life were really what Judaism is all about. And I realized that I had, without really knowing it, been a Jew in my beliefs, in every sense. And then, at that point, I have—for the last couple of years, I’ve identified myself more comfortably as a Jew, although I am aware that if I ever want to be a citizen of Israel, I think that has changed, but if I wanted to be considered by an Orthodox Jewish community, I would have to go through a mikvah and convert.

(Is that important to you?)

Converting? (pause) I’m not sure. I’m not sure if it’s important.

I think that identity—
you know, sometimes not having a definite identity takes its toll on someone’s personality. It undoubtedly has—the roots of complexes of people are very much tied to a lack of identity. I think in order to feel completely comfortable in saying I’m a Jew and that’s it, I will probably have to go through conversion. And I’ve had intentions. That’s in a way why we took that course with my wife, although she converted in the ‘80s legally, and I didn’t, ‘cause I never felt that I needed to. But now, like I said, I still don’t feel I need to, but only because I would like to be considered Jewish by everybody. And even then, I don’t think you ever will be, you know. No matter what you do, you’re always half.


Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Boris Gabay: The Transcript

I interviewed Boris Gabay back in September and wrote an entry about him soon afterwards. Now the transcript is in my hands and I'd like to share this very interesting interview with you.
********************


My name is Boris Gabay. I was born on March 14th, 1946, in San Salvador. My father Jaime Gabay, originally Jacques Gabay, and my mother Leonor Olano de Gabay.

(Where was your father born?)

My father was born in Istanbul, Turkey.

(And how did he get to El Salvador?)

He was brought to El Salvador at the young age of eighteen by an uncle by the name of Edouard Weill, who lived in El Salvador’s second city, Santa Ana. He came from Istanbul to work with him.

(What year was that?)

1927.

(And he came alone, no family?)

He came alone, no family.

(And your mother?)

My mother is Salvadoran-born of Salvadoran parents

(Did she grow up in the capital?)

She grew up in the capital.

(And how did they meet?)

My father started building a house in a new section of town which was called Colonia Flor Blanca in those times. My grandfather lived there already with his family. The houses happened to be half a block away. My mother had just returned from the United States where she had lived for a few years with her mother , brothers and sister. She had just come back, and they met.

(That’s how they met.)

They were married in 1945.

(And you were born the next year?)

I was born in March of ’46.

(Do you have any siblings?)

I have one sister, and I also have a half-sister, from my father’s side.

(Your father grew up until he was eighteen in Istanbul, right?)

Exactly.

(And he was Jewish?)

Yes.

(And your mother was raised Catholic?)

My mother was raised Catholic.

(So in the home, did you practice any religion? Was it discussed?)

Well, it was somewhat agreed after they had two children, my sister and myself—I’m three and a half years older—that I would be Jewish and that my sister would be Catholic. I don’t know why. But my mother never converted. She never really wanted to convert. She was not religious at all. My father was more religious in his religion than she was, but my sister was Catholic even from birth. She was baptized Catholic. On the other hand, I had a brit milah with a rabbi, you know?

It was just their choice.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Election Day: El Salvador

 

Yesterday, the fourteen "departamentos" of El Salvador voted for their respective mayors and "diputados," or legislators. As of this morning, both the ARENA and FMLN parties claimed victory in the capital mayoral race. A recount is currently taking place.

Here is a picture that captures the first step in the voting process: finding your picture and checking in at the right kiosk. Suerte! 

Religiones por la paz

 



The Rabbi, Montsenior, and Imam shake hands after opening the meeting. March 9, 2006.
San Salvador, El Salvador 

Kehilaton Article: SPANISH

This week, my contribution to the community newsletter features Leonor "Lore" Schoening. For more information on Lore in English, please check out her postings in mid-February by clicking on the "archives" link.
***********************
Yo Tambien Cuento
por Jessica P. Alpert

Miembros fuera y dentro de El Salvador están interesados en las historias de nuestros antepasados así como amigos, vecinos, y familiares. Esta serie de artículos sobre nuestra comunidad será incluida en la sección “Yo También Cuento” dándonos la oportunidad de conocer más sobre la comunidad israelita. Como les he contado, mi trabajo durante este estudio esta basado en la historia oral, o sea, los testimonios de cada uno de ustedes. Con sus historias orales, textos antiguos, y memorias escritas cada día intento de entender más sobre la vida judía salvadoreña.

Leonor “Lore” Schoening nació en San Salvador, hija de Heinz Edgar Schoening y Lily Berta Falkenstein Schoening. Lore, la menor de tres hermanos (Bobby y Dicky) tiene tres hijos: Eric, Phillip, y William.

Su mamá nació en Berlin y su papá en Hamburgo. Edgart Schoening llegó al país en 1933, su mamá en 1936. Se conocieron en San Salvador cuando Lily estaba visitando a su madre, Doña Paquita de Mugdan también conocida como Oma Paqui. Doña Paquita era la esposa de Don Salvador Mugdan, dueño de la Casa Mugdan, una de las únicas ferreterías en aquel entonces.

Lore recuerda la historia de sus padres:

Y así conoció a mi papá. En aquel entonces, solamente habían cinco solteros judíos en El Salvador. Ella conoció a todos los solteros y me han dicho que fue amor a la primera vista. Yo entiendo que se conocieron el 5 de noviembre en 1936 y se comprometieron tres semanas después! Se casaron el 29 de marzo, 1937.

Mi papá era una persona muy cariñosa…siempre positivo y con una sonrisa perenne.. Nuestra niñez fue muy linda. Mi padre empezó trabajando con la Librería Universal. Después de un tiempo, abrió un almacén con un amigo y socio, Victor Steiner y posteriormente se unió mi Tío Federico Falkenstein a esta sociedad.. Este almacén, “El Siglo,” fue uno de los primeros almacenes al estilo “department store,” en el país. Vendían ropa, juguetes, cosméticos, perfumes, artículos para la casa, así como artículos para ingenieros y arquitectos y útiles escolares.. Cada dos años viajaba hacia Estados Unidos y Europa para comprar su mercadería. A mi papá le encantaban estos viajes, tenia muy buenos recuerdos de su vida en Alemania y nunca hablaba de la guerra.

Mi abuela Paquita era una mujer muy religiosa, una matrona de la comunidad. Ella celebraba el Shabat cada viernes en su casa. Todos los viernes celebrábamos el Shabat en su casa o, a veces ella venia a nuestra casa. Íbamos también a la sinagoga cada viernes. Siempre formaba una gran parte de nuestra semana, de nuestra vida familiar.

Luego, conversábamos sobre su vida durante la guerra. En sus palabras:

Éramos muy poca gente durante la guerra. Los servicios se hacían en diferentes casas particulares. De un momento al otro, tuvimos que mover los libros sagrados (Torah y más) desde la sinagoga ubicada en el centro, hacia la casa la Familia Freund. Después, Don Chepe Baum se le ocurrió mandar a construir un arco portátil para mover la Torah cada Shabat. Eventualmente, se alquiló una casa cerca del Deportivo y Claudio y Maria Kahn nos llamaban cada viernes para recordarnos de los servicios esa noche. Todo esto mantuvo a nuestra comunidad unida, conservando la continuidad……..

The Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims and the Buddhists and the Evangelicals and the Episcopalians and the....

Today was an incredible day for religious life in El Salvador. This morning from 10am until Noon, the third meeting for the religious leaders of the country took place at the Jewish synagogue. This effort, spearheaded by a group of clergy and lay leadership, promotes communication and national peace despite what Episcopalian Bishop Martin Barahona stated as our "less than peaceful worldly circumstances." These meetings will take place once a month, rotating from church to synagogue to mosque to meeting hall.

A few blocks from the much-disputed Plaza Arafat, the Jews and the Muslims sat down at the same table and discussed their future relationship within the country. Evangelicals and Catholics shook hands and gracefully allowed Bishop Barahona to lead the precedings. The Buddhists and the Lutherans sat next to each other while congregation members from every faith filled in the empty spaces.

The Muslim sheik gave an opening benediction and hoped that "some day we might be able to live as our brothers and sisters once lived in Spain from 711 until 1492." Not even the Montsenior lifted his head from prayer.

The press was in full attendance and I sat back and watched the cameras go wild. Maybe it was the shock of seeing everyone at the same table, but I had a hard time taking notes and snapping a few pictures. The harmony was almost unreal and most definitely surreal. I guess only time will tell if meeting face to face alleviates the centuries of tension groups feel when the cameras and laudatory speeches disappear.

The Hunters and the Hunted

This week has been a departure from the normal pace of postings on the blog. I've been discussing issues in El Salvador that affect not only the Salvadoran people, but also their big neighbor up north.

Today, I ran across a great radio story entitled "Sasabe," that shadows a "routine" crossing of the desert from Northern Mexico to the US. Scott Carrier, an independent producer, follows one group of people (mainly Mexicans) as they make this particular journey.

Mr. Carrier does not neglect the other perspective. The second part of the series, "Sly and Lisa," revolves around the day-to-day fears of one border patrol agent and his wife. No matter where you stand on the issue, these two groups' eventual reunion later than night will make you swallow hard.

To listen to both "Sasabe," and "Sly and Lisa," check out the following link:
http://www.hearingvoices.com/sc/mexico/index.html

An Americanized Deportee

Yesterday, I talked about elections and closed with a wild statistic: 700 Salvadorans leave for the United States every single day. That's illegally, folks. No visas. No secure passage. No guarantee you'll live to see the Rio Grande.

A young friend of mine has already paid her 10% of the final transportation cost: $6,000 cash. Her family will pay the balance when she gets to the other side. Now she is waiting for the coyote to call her and then she'll pack her bags and say goodbye to her two year-old daughter....for who knows how long.

Her final destination? Our nation's capital.

It is heart-wrenching to watch. But after spending time here, I cannot say I blame her. Like most places in Latin America, if you're born poor El Salvador, you die poor in El Salvador. She wants more for her baby and she'll do it the only way she knows how: hard work.

While people leave the country in droves, the US Department of Homeland Security replaces them quickly with fresh deportees each month. The worst of them all, convicted felons and vicious gang members trained on the streets of Washington, Los Angeles, New York, and Houston are led off the plane and then released into general society. The Salvadoran police force has dealt with their share of violence but they weren't quite prepared for gang warfare. From small towns to larger cities, gangs fight for territory, charge monthly "protection fees," and commit random violence for initiation purposes and even sometimes...."for fun," according to one recent report in a national newspapers.

While not all those sent back are gang members, many still fall into a larger, all-encompassing catagory I call "The Americanized Deportee." These are individuals who lived the majority of their young lives in the United States. Some have no living memory of El Salvador and some don't even speak Spanish. A radio documentary featuring the life of Jose William Huezo Soriano AKA "Weazel" follows a young man as he is deported "home," facing a new life, in a foreign place, completely alone.

"I've been banished from the U.S. you know. Like they used to do in the medieval days. They used to ban fools. I went to kindergarten in L.A., elementary school, junior high school, high school. I grew up singing, you know, My Country 'Tis of Thee, that little song America the Beautiful, pledging allegiance to the flag. I grew up with all that. You know? And here they are, 27 years later, kicking me out." -Radio Diaries Website

Radio Diaries is a phenomenal program that hands tape recorders to everyday people in order to approach oral history from a new perspective. Correctional officers, teenagers with terminal illness, community leaders, and even guys like Weazel carry these tape recorders from three months to three years, recording thoughts and experiences as they happen. Produced by Joe Richman, Radio Diaries has a fantastic website that features some of the compelling documentaries that have been featured on NPR in the recent or distant past.

Click on this link: http://www.radiodiaries.org/radiodiaries.html
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and listen to Weazel's story. Tell me what you think.

Who will it be?

This weekend was not an easy one as I (like many others in El Salvador) was infected with some horrific stomach virus. Despite my vigilant monitoring of all food and water (which, may I add, definitely gets old) , it got to the tummy through the wind....or something.

Therefore, I had many idle hours to consider my work and my ideas and my direction. I also had plenty of time to think about El Salvador; a country with such a rich history, a truly riveting present, and a somewhat tenuous future. This past month, CAFTA was ratified by President Tony Saca only a few weeks after the passing of Schafik Handal, former FMLN presidential candidate, former guerilla, and leader of the Salvadoran Left.

And now.....Elections are this Sunday and predictions are all over the place. Observers are flying in from around the world and I've been told to stay at home and lock my door.

After speaking with individuals from all over the political spectrum, it is obvious to any outsider that this election means a lot to many. What I found most interesting is that many of those with whom I spoke favored the FMLN and despite their pronounced political fervor.... they have no plans to vote. ARENA, embodying the majority of the Salvadoran Right, is the party to which the current president belongs. The propaganda campaign has been astounding. Flags drape every corner, electric pole posts are painted the trademark red, white, & blue (coincidence?). My favorite tactic: young men and women are recruited to wave ARENA flags and dance at every major intersection. By the end of the day, the pasted on smiles start to fade and the perfect ARENA facepaint has been dissolved by eight hours of sweat.

It's a serious affair. This small country has been through hell....and back. All I can hope for is a safe and free election this weekend...but one cannot help but realize that many people don't think the prognosis looks so good; 700 Salvadorans leave for the United States each day.

Kehilaton Article: SPANISH

This week's entry is found below. I decided to discuss my own grandparents' story and the real-deal version can be found in an oral history relayed through me by my grandmother, the late Wilma B. Reich.

"Mosaics: The Story of Her Life," is part of the anthology edited by Marjorie Agosin, published by Ohio University Press, entitled: "Taking Root: Latin American Jewish Women Writers.
******************
YO TAMBIEN CUENTO
por Jessica P. Alpert

Miembros fuera y dentro de El Salvador están interesados en las historias de nuestros antepasados así como amigos, vecinos, y familiares. Esta serie de artículos sobre nuestra comunidad será incluida en la sección “Yo También Cuento” dándonos la oportunidad de conocer más sobre la comunidad israelita. Como les he contado, mi trabajo durante este estudio esta basado en la historia oral, o sea, los testimonios de cada uno de ustedes. Con sus historias orales, textos antiguos, y memorias escritas cada día intento de entender más sobre la vida judía salvadoreña.

Esta semana, les escribo sobre mis propios abuelos, Ernesto Reich y Wilma Bloch de Reich. Wilma nació en la ciudad de Posen en lo que era Alemania. Era la menor de cuatro hijos (Maja, Max, Alfred, Wilma). Sus papas, Henry y Paula eran muy dedicados a sus hijos y mi abuela me contó una historia inolvidable para darme un ejemplo de su manera de ser tan suave. Mi abuela siempre sacaba buenas notas en el colegio pero un día regreso a la casa con una mala nota. Cada examen requería la firma de un padre. Al ver la mala nota, Paula le regalo un dulce a su hija. “Una buena nota es el regalo en si… Sé que siempre intentas de hacer lo mejor posible y en este momento, mereces algo especial por tus esfuerzos.”

La familia se trasladó a Berlín pero cuando los Nazis echaron a todos los estudiantes judíos de las universidades nacionales, Wilma se fue a vivir con su hermano Max, nuera Liza, y su pequeño hijo Tommy en Ámsterdam. En Ámsterdam también vivía Maja con su esposo Georg, con sus dos hijos Walter y Peter. Max era buen amigo de Enrique Guttfreund. Esta conexión es sumamente importante y pronto veremos porque.

Durante este tiempo, mi abuelo Ernesto trabajaba junto con otros solteros judíos entre ellos Enrique Guttfreund. Nacido en Breslau, Ernesto quería tener su propia aventura y se fue a América Latina en 1921 para trabajar para su cuñado, Don Eugenio Liebes en la Compañía Goldtree Liebes. A principios de 1938, Ernesto se dio cuenta que las cosas en Europa no estaban nada estables y con su pasaporte salvadoreño, viajo a Europa con la idea de visitar sus parientes en Breslau. También hizo escala en Ámsterdam para visitar amigos. Además, Enrique Guttfreund le había pedido que visitara a su amigo Max Bloch.

Estando en Ámsterdam, Ernesto toco la puerta del apartamento de la familia Bloch y quien contesto? Wilmita, la hermana de Max! Allí empieza la historia de mis queridos abuelos. Ernesto disfruto de una cena con la familia pero tenia que viajar a Breslau para visitar su propia familia. Ernesto tomo el tren hacia Alemania y se dio cuenta inmediatamente que la situación era muy peligrosa. Pasó unos días con su mama y hermanas (su hermano y papa habian fallecido años antes) y luego regreso a Ámsterdam. Al llegar a Ámsterdam, Ernesto se comunico con Don Eugenio Liebes y su hermana Irma de Liebes, sobre las condiciones de la familia en Alemania. Juntos obtuvieron las visas para mover a esta parte de la familia a El Salvador.

Entre tanto le quedaban dos semanas a Ernesto hasta que saliera su barco para América Latina y el tomo este tiempo para conocer la linda Wilma Bloch. Antes de irse, él le pidió que ella lo esperara. Después de su “si!” mi abuela regreso a su familia para contarles las noticias. Su hermano y nuera tenían sus dudas de que este soltero iba a mandar por ella desde el otro lado del mundo. Tres meses después, llego una carta desde San Salvador.

La carta contenía estas direcciones:
1. Vaya al consulado para obtener su visa que la esta esperando.
2. Con esta visa en mano, váyase a la oficina del barco “Criijnsen” y compre un boleto para cualquier puerto en Latinoamérica.

Al llegar a la oficina para comprar su boleto, Wilma encontró cientas de personas ansiosamente intentando comprar pasajes para salir. Hablando con el representante mi abuela calmadamente explico su situación y el señor respondió: “Señorita, todos los pasajes del barco han sido vendidos desde hace seis meses.” En este momento, el señor tuvo que contestar el teléfono y mi abuela empezó a salir de la oficina.

“Señorita! Espere! Espere!”

Mi abuela regreso.

“Hace dos minutos, una señora en Paris cancelo su pasaje. Usted tiene el dinero para su pasaje y una visa válida-- quisiera venderle este boleto a Usted.”

Un milagro. Mi abuela regreso al apartamento de Max y su familia con las buenas noticias! En tres días, saldría de su querida Europa, muy lejos de su familia. Hablo por teléfono con su madre, Paula, la noche antes de viajar. La despidieron en Ámsterdam con una gran cena y el próximo día ella tomo su maleta, un sombrero, unos libros alemanes, y su boleto. Todos la llevaron al barco y al entrar a su cabina encontró un gran ramo de flores “Para la futura Wilma Bloch de Reich.”

Se despidieron y Wilma empezó el viaje que iba a traerla a San Salvador.

Wilma jamás volvió a ver la mitad de su familia.


Esta historia, bajo el nombre “Mosaicos: La Historia de su Vida” es parte de “Taking Root: Latin American Jewish Women,” una antologia editada por Marjorie Agosin.

400 Matzo Balls.

In this excerpt, Herta tells Lea about her work in the WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization) of which she served as their first President. Below, she reveals the secret behind keeping the tiny community together despite the absence of a synagogue.

Lea's questions are in parentheses.
*********************
(First there was a synagogue and then there was a board of directors in the synagogue, but the WIZO itself had, as I remember when we lived there, a very prominent influence as far as making all the holidays happen, like Pesach. It was a community Pesach. Can you tell us a little about how you came into doing this in each one of the home and then having a community center? How was that transition?)

I don't know. There were many families already and many of the fathers of the children from the families did not know how to make it an effective Seder. I imagine that was the way the children wanted it and the community had the feeling to be together because at that time many of the single men had married Salvadoran girls not Jewish ones, so they were just...

(Anxious....)

...they were more than anxious.

(Willing?)

To have a new companion, which their wives could not give them. That,m I think was the idea when the first community Seder in our house. There were so many people we never expected, that we had to put a microphone on and had a number of tables, not only on this huge porch, but in the garden. The women prepared the whole meal. Nothing was catered and it worked out....

(And even then you had to make the matzo balls?)

Even then.

(Laughter.) I remember very clearly the women making the matzo balls in the afternoon at your home. How many did you make?)

Usually 400.

(Four hundred? So, before the synagogue was founded, the prayers of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were in your home?)

Yes.

(The WIZO, as an organization, was the link between the happenings of the community life, and later on was the Jewish holidays. Is that so? For instance, Chanukah and Pesach and all the holidays...Whenever there was a Chanukah party, later on when the children were making the place for Chanukah, the WIZO was the one to make the organizational part of that party. It was done not by the community as a board, but by the WIZO.)

Sure, because the women had time to do it.

(The women were the ones in charge of that. What is the situation right now or how did you find the situation in the last years of the WIZO in El Salvador? What has happened? When you arrived there was nothing and then there was. You were in charge, and then there was a board. There was a beautiful community life. How is it now? What happened to WIZO in El Salvador?)

How is it now? Well there is nothing.

(So they have closed the books and....)

Completely.

(Because there are not so many people there...)

Not enough...

Transcript prepared and provided by the University of Florida, Oral History Program.
Interview conducted by Lea Freund on May 19, 1981.

Borrowing a Torah from Guatemala

This excerpt describes El Salvador's first Bar Mitzvah, that of Ernesto Freund, Herta's son and Lea's husband.
*****

(When you had the children, what Jewish education did you give them? There was no rabbi. Just what they saw at home?)

Absolutely. I remember there was once a Jew who lived, many years before i met him, Moishe Levy. Moishe Levy had enough knowledge to give some preparation for the bar mitzvah. He could read Torah, etc.

(That was when they were preparing for the bar mitzvah. Since your son Ernesto, was the first one to have the bar mitzvah in El Salvador, how was that? How was it done? How was he prepared?)

He was prepared by Moishe Levy.

(Moishe Levy.)

We had no Torah. But Guatemala had several of them and we went by car to Guatemala. It took at least eight hours to drive to Guatemala and they lent us a Torah and that is how we did it.

(We are talking about fourteen years later. How many people were in the community?)

By that time, there was Felix Cohen who was married. There was Mario Henriques who was married. It is difficult to say off hand.

(The Liebes family was there when you arrived?)

Yes.

(And so by the time Ernesto was bar mitzvah'd in 1937 or '38--he was born in 1925--there were about twenty families, fifteen families?)

Maybe.

(And still....)

I remember that everbody stayed on in the Jewish community. The prayer part of the bar mitzvah as such, was the whole thing. Like in the synagogue, but in our big house. And everybody stayed on for lunch, I remember we had about fifty people there for lunch.

(With youngsters and children and....)

Yes.


Transcription prepared and provided by University of Florida, Oral History Program.
Interview conducted by Lea Freund on May 19, 1981.