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.