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.