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.