"After returning to Salvador, I packed my bags every week."

This excerpt remembers Ruth's experiences in boarding school, college, and early married life.
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(What was boarding school like?)

There were very few Jews. Sunday, everybody had to go to services, except the Jewish kids, we were like fifteen and we used to have to stay in study hall all morning because we did not have a service to attend. Nobody would take us to Friday night service or
Saturday morning service. Instead of staying in study hall every Sunday I began attending different services every week with different friends. I had to be all morning, studying in study hall because I didn’t have a place to pray.” So I started going with different friends to their different services. I started learning about religion and realizing the beauty of religions. Those exposures took me on a road of deciding to minor in religion when I went to college. It made me a stronger person spiritually and more understanding the differences in people. It also made me stronger in my own beliefs. When I went to college I had no inkling what I was doing in college, because the only thing I wanted to do was to get out of high school, which I did in my junior year. I never was a senior. I just wanted to go to a kibbutz. My father said, “No, you’re not going to a kibbutz. You’ll finish college, and when you finish college, then you can go to a kibbutz.” I guess I hated high school so much that I decided, “Well, I’ll do whatever he says, I’ll go to college.” But I had no inkling what I was going to study. I didn’t know about counselors. My parents had never gone to college.

So I went to the college that I chose and hoped that the four years would pass fast so I could go to a Kibbutz.

SMU, yes.

(How was that adjustment? Here you were in Pennsylvania, now you were in Dallas.)

I adjusted well because college was so different. I liked the warmer weather and having my mind challenged. Remember, I had no one guiding me. So I chose Dallas, not knowing anything. I came by myself. My uncle just dropped me off in the front door there of that dorm.

I did not have the pampering of someone taking me to the dorm and helping me out. I had one trunk that we sent from Ellis, and I was on my own, by myself. The girl that lived across the hallway was a Jewish girl from Panama and it was her first time away from home. She was from a very religious Jewish family. She was just as lost as I was, maybe worse, because she had never left Panama. What we realized was that no sorority wanted us because we were Jewish. And there was no Jewish sorority, and it was a big sorority campus, huge. Not only huge sorority campus, but also you had to have oodles of money.

(Still is.)

Oh, it still is. I joined what they called the Independents. The Independents were all those who did not fit in with the Greek standards the Jewish students, Arabs and all the rest of American students who did not have the right credentials/. We had a lot of friends and I really had marvelous four years. To this day we still keep very close contact with friends that we made during those years.

(So it was a type of organization?)

No, it was—it was, very loosely. They just called us the Independents. We just had a mind of our own. —I couldn’t have functioned in a sorority . If someone had told me what to do and how to do it, how to dress, how to speak, and how to act, I would have run the other direction. I think I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had when I came in. I would have done probably much, much better if I would have had guidance, but I didn’t. It wasn’t the fault of my parents. They did the best they could. They told me, “There’s your school. Go for it.” That’s all they could do. They had no knowledge of what to do.

(When did you meet your future husband?)

I met him on the second night of Rosh Hashanah in a little synagogue outside Dallas called Mesquite, Texas. I went there under duress, because the guy who was driving refused to go to big, organized synagogues. He said, “If you want to have a ride, you come with me.” I went with my friend that always spent the High Holidays at my uncle’s house that was from Panama. So we went there together, and I saw this very good-looking guy in uniform. I told him, the uniform made it. I fell in love with the uniform. But what I really fell in love with was that all the little kids in synagogue were surrounding him, and that told me he was a neat guy. That’s where we met, and the rest is history.

(Did it ever occur to you that if you married an American man you might not be able to live in Salvador? Or you didn’t think that far ahead?)

I didn’t think that far ahead, I really didn’t. I didn’t even know at that time that I wanted to come back to Salvador, and to tell you the truth, my father went ahead and spoke to Paul, as I know him now, he’s a very adventuresome person, he will throw himself into situations. He’s one that thinks like me, you bloom where you’re planted, but he’s the one that takes the leap. My father spoke to him and he said, “OK, I will be down there for two years and see if it works.” I wasn’t here for seven years, so when I came down here, I packed every week to go back. I hated it. And the only one really at that time that was so wonderful and was always around was Andrée. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t drive. I got pregnant right away. I was feeling miserable. And lost.

We lived in our first house that was in the complex of the Widawers, who the average age there was maybe eighty-five to ninety. My neighbor was the mother of Niña Paulita and the sister, and they lived in another house there. All day long I would hear whistles all around, and I would say, “What’s going on?” And I finally found out that it was Don Alfredo that had a whistle around his neck, and if he whistled once it was for Doña Paulita, if he whistled two it was for the gardener, three was the maid, I don’t know, four was his sister-in-law—I’m not sure. But the whistles sounded all the time. We got out of there as soon as possible. We only lived there for about four months, and I said, “I better find another place to live.” And we did. We found a place where we lived for ten years, and all our three kids were born there before we moved to the house we built in Colonia Maquilishuat.

(How often did you see your parents?)

My parents? All the time, ere you saw parents all the time. My mother I saw all the time. My father would come in and out after work sometimes. And then at the farm we saw each other, because we lived under one roof when we first got there. Later we built another house. But when we first got there, we lived under one roof.

(You built another house at the farm?)

Yes, yes. Yes. And so then we had two separate ones. My kids really grew up with their grandparents, very, very close. Friday night they stayed to sleep at their house. We had Friday night dinner, and after dinner we would either go to a movie it was our own time. But our kids, every Friday night they spent with my parents.

(Now when you say you packed every week to leave, what did you hate about Salvador when you came back?)

I’d feel I was asphyxiating. I didn’t drive. I didn’t work. After having been in the States and having worked in New York City, and here I come to hear whistles all the time, and living the end of the world. I didn’t have any freedom to come and go. At that time, if there were four restaurants in this country, that was a lot. I was gone seven years. I didn’t know anyone. But little by little after that, through Paul, we made a lot of the new friends that became like family. We had our close friends in the community. They were always my constant connections but our new friends (now a 42 year friendship) have become family just like the Jewish community. Our horizons were expanded to greater dimensions and our lives enriched.

(In what way?)

I learned more about more people around me, and it was like a different family that you join in, with all their ins and outs. They really took us in and it wasn’t only one family but all the aunts, uncles, cousins etc... So we suddenly had our Jewish community and this enormous family outside.

(And what was in your opinion, how did they look at the Jewish community?)

Oh, we would invite them for our seders here at home. They would participate to the point that one family is so religious, Catholic, yet they would send their kids to live with us in the States. They knew it was the thing of family, how our values of family, our values of people. Our friend Carlos Antonio, he read in my father’s eulogy for his funeral. He was the one that was beside my parents when they were sick. He’s the one I would call and say, “Help,” and he was always there. So was she. That doesn’t mean the Jewish community wasn’t there, but they were the ones that were constant—and being a doctor, he was able to jump in all the time.

(I’m jumping a little bit, but we’ll come back. When you went to Dallas, were you able to have those types of relationships with different types of people, or did you find it to be more challenging?)

When I left after here? First of all, that first year was extremely challenging because I myself was in a very grieving mode. It was a year that was very traumatic. I had lost my Camelot. I was grieving. My kids were grieving. My husband was grieving. We had to quickly jump in. It was like being thrown into a pool and not being able to swim and saying, “Swim or drown.” And again, I had to see what I was going to do.

I was not in a very good frame of mind. We left in that year, ’78, the farm was lost. In February I had lost a fifth pregnancy of five months and had gone through a full delivery. I got to the States and was told that I needed hysterectomy right away. I had no help. I had my kids that were crying every night because they want to come back home. It was very hard especially coming from a place where birds sing and people used to come by the door selling oranges and everything. We used to have people in and out of our house, because I used to sell veal and all the fruit from the farm. We always had a commotion around. And I go to the States, where you cannot even hear a dog bark. You could go in the middle of your street, which was a beautiful neighborhood, in the middle of the day, and scream your head off in the middle of the and no one would come out. People in suburbia do not live there. I don’t know, they come in at night. It was traumatic.

So my survival was that—we laugh when I do trainings for new immigrants, I tell them, because I know how it was. I spoke with every salesman that would call. I tried the bread that became very big, the Home Pride, when it first came out. We used it for a month. I would see vacuum cleaners. I would see cooking utensils, everything, just to talk to people. Later I realized why in the States there are so many psychiatrists. People just go to them to be able to talk. There’s nobody to talk to. If you can talk to a friend, that friend can put you in even keel. If that friend is sincere, he can tell you, “Look, this is what I’m seeing in you.” So I said, “This is why they pay so much here. They need somebody to talk to.” You need to talk to someone. I used the salesmen that would call me on the phone.

(And what about your parents? Did they stay behind?)

My parents stayed behind. They moved out of the house, because it was dangerous, and they took an apartment in the only apartment building here in San Benito, and then they went to Guatemala for two years and lived there in an apartment. Mind you, again coming back with the closeness, when I moved out of the Widaures complex, I went to Escalón, and about a few months later, who moves in across the street from me? Yolanda. So we lived across the street from each other for about eight years that we lived across the street. Once again, it’s this thing of somehow the community-family is always there.

(When you were in Dallas, did you think that you would ever return to Salvador?)

I wished, I hoped. I guess a big part of me knew that one day we had to end up here, for our own sanity. Because look at this house. We never sold it. We could have, many times over. I just couldn’t do it, Paul either. And we decided that at one point—things worked out. I couldn’t tell you that I thought everything out, because I didn’t. Things just happened and we had to make decisions at the time they happened and move with it. And I think we’ve made the best decisions possible.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

How did she survive those first years?

In this second excerpt, Ruth discusses her earliest memories and her first encounters with anti-semitism.
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(Your mother came from a Catholic background?)

She came from a Catholic background after spending all those years in a catholic school.

(Did she have to convert?)

She converted. I think she was the first convert here in El Salvador. It must have been very scary for her, I would imagine. Lonely in a way, because all the other women that were married came from Europe, and they were Jewish from birth. She was, as far as I know, the first convert. Eabbi Alex Fréund did her conversion.

(I mean, here she is, the first convert. She comes from a completely different world than, let’s say, some of the wives that came from France or Germany.)

Right.

(How did she survive those first years?)

You know, I think that she was able to survive those first years because she had still connections with that beautiful neighborhood which was Flor Blanca and friends like Noy Gabay , who used to live across the street. Also Dra Estela Graboski, who did not convert, she was married with Herbert Graboski, my father’s friend. It was a nice community but she always felt like an outsider. It wasn’t because people wanted her to be an outsider; it was hard for her after having been raised in great poverty to feel comfortable in a different place. My father truly loved her and helped her adjust.

(Can you give an example?)
He tried to please her in all he could and tried to show her the world that he had experienced. He was proud of all her efforts. She went to the Centro Estados Unidos and learned English and taught herself German from records. She loved to learn about different countries and she was fortunate to travel to most places she had dreamed of going. My parents used to travel three months at a time. That was once they were able to do it financially.

She was always extremely careful of what she spent. She never threw anything away. It wasn’t that she required great china and linen and all that. It wasn’t something that was required by her. My mother grasped the Jewish religion with all her heart and to her last days she always was waiting for Fridays and Saturday’s services to go. Shabbat observance was very important to her and it was her strength that helped me through my father’s death. The first Friday after he died I was unable face the service at home without him. I asked if we could skip it and she said NO, we would light the candles, which she did and we did the Kiddush and the rest of the service. She asked us to sing the songs after dinner. It was the toughest service to sing and to this day I thank her strength. Since she died I began kissing the Torah twice once for her and once for me. As sick as she was at the end of her life she always wanted to go to services on Saturday to kiss the Torah. She and my father were always there, sitting, holding hands. And Friday night candles, and the Friday night dinner with white tablecloths was a must for her.

The Friday night before she died, she requested for us to go to her room, even though she hardly could talk. She requested for us to pray with her. We thought she was already unconscious but something inside reminded her that it was Friday night.

(So she really did connect with the faith?)

Oh, very much so, very much so. Many ways, deeper ways than what I am now. She was in a deeper way, in a different way, but much deeper, absolutely.

(Now, you girls were the children of the first convert in the community. How did that affect you?)

You know, I look back and I always ask myself. Kids could have been very cruel, but they were not. I’m only talking to you about my experience. I had a wonderful relationship with the kids in the community. I always felt that it was one big family. I never felt threatened or being out of place. We never went to other people’s home for Shabbat. We had our Shabbat dinner as a family every week. We always included inter marriage families. It was a community that felt like family with its pros and cons.. Everybody felt connected and everybody, I guess, was needed. We were the first generation and to the present we have close ties to one another. We call each other. If someone needs us, we’re there.

My father, even though he was a very, very tough man and rough man, he did beautiful things. He had time for us. I remember he always had time and always was teaching me something. The farm was one of our most cherished places, and he would take your mother, Hélène, Andrée, Arturo Falkenstein and many others. He would pick everyone up at 5:30 in the morning in his camioneta and we would go to spend the weekend riding horses, milking cows, swimming in rivers, etc. Arturo went on most weekends.

He always was with my father. When he died, my father really felt it so much. So did we, but he was very close to my father. On Wednesday nights he would take him to watch the soccer team practice. My father had a small part of the Santanita Soccer team. That was the big one then. Every Wednesday night we used to go and see them practice. We were fanatics of soccer. We used to go and see them train, and on Sunday when we could we would go to the games.

(Now, you mentioned these trips you used to take to Talcualhuya. All of the kids that you mentioned were all Jewish. Let’s say you had a friend, you had Yolanda, who is now Yolanda Cohen, and let’s say you had Yolanda Mayora back in that day, do you think they would have mixed?)

I think they would have mixed. We were a very mixing community. But somehow the children that were always going were the children of his friends in the community. They had experienced all the same traumatic experience of leaving everything they knew and coming to something so unknown, so it was like, the children of cousins or someone very close. We did take others outside the community.

(Did you realize that everyone was Jewish in the group?)

Oh, yeah, I realized everybody was Jewish, but we had a lot of friends who were not Jewish. We faced the world as the community that we lived in. We saw our friends as individuals and developed strong bonds. My maid of honor was Erika Michiels de Brodersen, she joined our fourth grade class when she returned to Salvador after World WAR II and she is a close friend of Ruth Reich Alpert. There were other kids that were from Arab descent, and we were close friends.

(You went to the American school?)

From kindergarten, yes.

(Until which grade?)

Until ninth grade, at that time we had to either go to Europe to a finishing school or to the States to high school. I had the luck to go to a boarding school, with Yolanda Rosenberg Cohen. Her grandmother Doña Irma de Liebes and my father drove us from New York to Philadelphia to school. I cannot say I enjoyed those years of boarding school.. That’s where I found anti-Semitism already. I did not know what that was.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Ruth Baum de Feldman: An Introduction

Last week, the blog featured Susie Baum de Khoury, Ruth's younger sister. This week, we hear about the life, family, and history of Ruth....the eldest of the four Baum sisters. As usual, reading the memories of siblings provides the reader with a fascinating study of memory, experience, and perspective.

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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(So you were born in San Salvador. Where did you live as a child, what part of the city?)

I was born at home in a place called Mejicanos and moved at nine months to the Colonia Flor Blanca. It was a beautiful quaint home and we lived there till I was 6 years old. Then we moved to a bigger house in Flor Blanca that I recall it as a huge house, without much of personality. The other one had personality and warmth.

(And you lived there until—?)

I lived there till I was eleven and then at that age we moved to next door to the Lewinsky's in La Campana area., waiting for our new home to be finished

(Can you describe your home to me, what it was like to be there and to live there?)

The home? Our home was a very warm place full of trees. Different than the first one in Flor Blanca where my cousin Martita Gabay lived next door and we knew all the neighbors. It was full of children and most of us went to the same school.

I used to go to farms with my parents since I was little. First to the farm that he had with Jaime Gabay called Las Dos Jotas and later to Talcualhuya, At three years old I used to ride my horse for about 3 hours to get from the closest town to Talcualhuya. At that time there was no road and the only way to get there was by horseback or oxen cart.

(Do you know how your father got to Salvador?)

My father was in Brussels waiting for a visa somewhere in the world, he couldn’t care less. His twin brother and his sister had already gotten a visa and had gone to Palestine. But he did not get one, for whatever reason. Maybe he came out a little bit later. So he spent a year working in Brussels waiting for a visa. This engineer that used to travel on boats, he got a contract to go and work in Mexico in a sugar mill. My father knew nothing about a sugar mill, but it was an opportunity to be able to get out and go.

So he did. His hope was not really to get to Mexico. His hoped that when the boat stopped in New York City, that his cousins in New York City would be able to get him a passage to stay there, but they were not able to do that. On the way down to Mexico a hurricane hit the area. I not sure about the date, I think it was 1934, or ’32. I’m thinking it’s ’34. The boat had to stop in Cutuco and couldn’t go further. The boat stopped and sent all the passengers in a little rickety train through jungles. My father recalled seeing monkeys in his way in on top of heavy rain and wind from the hurricane. Now a poor guy coming from Fulda, Germany seeing monkeys, and the only thing he got from his bags was a small hammer that he used in Germany decorating store windows. I have that hammer at my home and it is a reminder of how brave all these immigrants were to survive in new land. I guess all immigrants have great survival skills as we are seeing today with our hermanos lejanos.

He got to the city under that big storm—no money, no Spanish—and he offered to help in the kitchen. He peeled potatoes the first night to be able to stay at the only hotel in the middle of the city. The next morning he decided that he would go walking and see what he found. He found Casa Mugdan, who had a lot of people who spoke German and he told them who he was, gave as much references as he could and that is how he stayed in El Salvador. They gave him a job as a traveling salesman.

As a traveling salesman he had to ride a mule for hours every day and have fourteen mules behind and only one helper. That’s how he started in Salvador, traveling from one end to the other and that’s how he got to know every little piece of Salvador and its people. He knew many of the merchants of the country and their families. He was not the only one that started as a traveling salesman. Most of the foreigners and the Jewish young men started working by traveling. They would meet in all the towns as they would criss-cross and spend their evenings playing, drinking, talking and whatever else they were doing. These were the young men who books can be written of because they were coming from a different culture to one that was so different. It was quite a start and most became very successful but many paid a high price.

(What about your mother’s start?)

My mother’s start was a very humble one. My grandfather was a politician from Guatemala. He was running from bad political time. His great-uncle was Justo Rufino Barrios, who was killed in Santa Ana when he was trying to conquer all of Central America to be a stronger united area than five countries standing alone. He unfortunately was killed and he is still called El Renovador, because he had great new ideas. He is the one that they have built the imitation of the Eiffel Tower in Guatemala City. My grandfather was a politician and at the time he escaped to Salvador to find refuge. My mother was born then of a Guatemalan father and a Salvadoran mother in Olocuilta. My grandfather was a teacher and had a good education. All his family came from San Marcos, which is Los Altos de Guatemala by Quetzaltenango. His father was a Spaniard, and his grandmother, which means my great-grandmother—or great-great-grandmother, I’m not sure—was a Mayan. The strength of the Mayan is what you see in my coloring and the love for politics came from that side. From my father’s side came the strength of religion and love of business.

So that was my mother. She grew up in great poverty, great poverty. She lived with an aunt for her first few years of life and later she received a scholarship to go to Maria Auxiliadora’s boarding school. That’s where she spent the happiest times of her youth. She had food, studies and felt protected. Her young life had been very sad and hard.

(So that’s how she got to San Salvador, was through this boarding school?)

No. Through Olocuilta they moved into San Salvador. They were between San Salvador and Santa Tecla. She got her scholarship and she was placed in the boarding school.

(So how did she meet your dad?)

She met may Dad when she went to live with her older sister, who was Martita Gabay’s mother. Jaime Gabay was a good friend of my father. My aunt was like my mother’s protector. One day she came from work and my father walked in and said—he was not a very gracious person and he did not know about niceties of being a gentleman. My mother did not like him at the beginning and thought he was a rude German. They started seeing each other when my father came to town and the rest is history.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Susie Baum de Khoury: Closings and Introductions....

In this final excerpt, Susie Baum de Khoury remembers her father's last days and at the same time recounts the beginning of a momentous reconnection with the land in which she was born.

All questions in parentheses are mine. Mentioned frequently in this excerpt are Susie's sisters; Doris, Ruth, and Raquel "Kelly."
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(How does life continue for you?)

Well, we continued our life—we got married in the Episcopal Church. The reason we didn’t do it in the Greek Orthodox Church was because of two things. First of all, the services in the Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, were all in Greek, and I really wanted to understand what was going on. I wanted to be able to bring up the children in a religion that they could understand or learn the language.. And second of all, John only had vacation in August. And in the Greek Orthodox Church they don’t marry in the month of August, something about the Virgin Mary. So they don’t have any weddings on that month. John was a foreign student with a full scholarship at SMU, and he had room and board with a family in Dallas, a very prominent family. So when she knew that we were looking for a church, she suggested that we could be married at the church they were members of called St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopal Church, in Dallas.

And so we went and spoke with a priest and we found them to be so generous and such—a loving place, and so there’s where we got married, August 9th of 1969.

(When did you decide to come back here? I mean, tell me about your—the big chunk of your life in Dallas, your kids, once they were in high school or grown, were you seeing your parents more often?)

Yes, I was seeing my parents more often. Naturally, the war had come here, and I believe it was in 1978 or thereabouts that my sister Ruth and her family moved to Dallas. And my sister Raquel, whom we call Kelly, she had moved to Dallas before that. What year? Let’s see, in the 1970s some time, but before Ruth. So now I had two sisters living there. Ruth and Paul bought a house near us, about two blocks away from our home. So now, my parents, who were traveling nomads during the whole time of the war, between Guatemala , Germany, the States and Costa Rica, they would come to Dallas and spend a chunk of time. John and I even purchased a condo and my parents would stay in that condo. And they did so for twenty years.

(So they really came back and forth?)

They went back and forth, back and forth, until the situation here stabilized .Once my father started dialysis, he was not as mobile, so we were coming here. But I think the big turning point of our lives, maybe, was in, I think it was 1996. My father wanted to go on his last trip to Germany. He asked John’s permission for me to accompany them on this final journey to Fulda. By this time, John and my dad were best buddies, you know. Sometimes I would tell my dad, I would tease him, and I said, “I think you like John better than you like me. He’s more like your son than me.” But he asked John’s permission for me to go with them on this trip, just the three of us, that I would take care of them, be the chauffeur, be the baby sitter, be the whole thing. So we went for five or six weeks to Germany, just the three of us, and it was—it was absolutely the most amazing trip, in fact , I think it was closure. Finally, it gave us total closure.

(That was what year?)

I believe it was 1996.

(When did your father and mother become ill?)

Well, my mom was the one that was ill. I think, let’s see, my mom got ill maybe in 2000, where she needed a nurse. She had a nurse at home. My father had to undergo dialysis. I think he started dialysis around the year 2000, or maybe late 1999. But he was doing well. My Uncle Salli, his twin, had been on dialysis for quite a while. So we thought this is going to solve the problem, just being on dialysis. He was still strong. He was still doing Friday night sermons. He was still advising people on business matters and being an elder in the community. When he died—we all expected my mom to go first, because she was the one that was in the most delicate condition. My father’s death was unexpected, really, from an aneurism.

He died February 12th, 2001, a day before the second earthquake that hit El Salvador. (pause) And one important thing, or one—at least to me, because on the morning of January 13th of 2001, it was exactly 5:10 in the morning, I had a dream. I was sound asleep and I had a dream that my father was on the floor and that he had fallen and he was asking for help. So I passed by and I still remember that he stretched out his arms and said, “Help me get up.” So I pushed and pulled and propped him up, and then he put his arm around the back of my shoulders and we walked away together, telling me “Thank you.” I got up crying at 5:10 in the morning that day. I was screaming from the pain on my stomach, on the mouth of my stomach. John said, “What’s going on?” And I said, “I think I tore up my stomach trying to pick my dad up.” And he said, “You were dreaming. Your father is in El Salvador. That was just a dream.” I said, “No, it wasn’t.” I kept insisting that I had picked him up. And he said, no, it was a dream.

So he went and got me some medicine for my stomach. And so I said, “My goodness, I’ve never had such a vivid dream.” So he said, “Well, sometimes it happens.” At 11 o’clock that morning there was a massive earthquake in El Salvador. I didn’t know there was an earthquake. I received a phone call from El Salvador, from my dad around 11 something in the morning, that day, and he said, “Just wanted to tell you that we’re all right.” And it gets disconnected. I go, “What?” So I tried calling and calling and it kept saying, “All circuits to that country are busy.” Then we turn on the news, and they showed that there had been this massive earthquake. So then I told myself, “Well, maybe that’s why I had that dream, but my dad said that they were all right.”

So anyway, I had just been in El Salvador in November to visit my parents, and this was the—this was January, you know, the earthquake in January.. So, I was very upset the whole day, even though I had heard from my father and I was able to talk to them later on that night. He said, “Well, there was not much damage. There was little damage to the muro in the house and the tanque de agua and some other things.”

But that dream was still in the back of my mind. So about a week later, I told John, “You know what? I can’t stand it. Something is weird.” And so he said, “Well, you know, you should go home and maybe help your dad with some of these things that have come up.” So I came, and we did so many things with my dad, you know, arranging everything, fixing the house. There were some things at Ruthie’s house that were damaged, and we went and looked into that, because she was renting it.

And then my father, all of a sudden said, “You know, there are some things I really want to do that I haven’t done in a long time, like I haven’t been to the deportivo.” So I said, “OK, so let’s go.” So we went, and I remember, he said, “And you know what? I feel like having escargots with garlic.” And he had a whole dozen. I still remember that day! It was so sweet. He was enjoying it so much, eating the snails. And then he said, “I want to do this and I want—” He wanted to do all these things that he hadn’t done in a long time, and we did ‘em. I said, “Well, let’s go and do that.”

He had had dialysis on the 5th of February, which was their anniversary. So we were going to go out for dinner that night. He said, “You know what? I don’t feel good. Can we do it tomorrow, the 6th?” And I said, “Fine, because I’m leaving on the 7th.” And so we went on the 6th to El Bodegon and we had their anniversary dinner. Everything that he wanted to eat was for two, like the chateaubriand he wanted, and it was for two, so I said, “OK, I’ll have it with you.” I think the dessert was for two. Everything was for two, and we shared it. And then the—it’s hard. (near tears) (pause) (crying)…

The next morning at 5 in the morning he got up, because I was leaving on the early flight, and usually he would never get up. I would always go and say good-bye at his bedside. And he got up. He was wearing his little pin-stripe housecoat, bathrobe. And he sat with me while I had breakfast. I said, “You want to eat something?” And he went, “No, don’t feel like it, but I wanted to keep you company.” I said, “Oh, that’s sweet, but you didn’t have to get up.” So he said, “I want to give you a blessing before you leave.” So he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and he put it on his head and he gave me his blessing. (crying) And he said, “If something happens to me, be sure you take care of your mom.” I said, “Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing is ever going to happen to you. You’re all right. But sure, I’ll take care of Mom.”

I left on Thursday, and he got sick Saturday night. He was in pain the whole day. Sunday they took him to the hospital, and Ruth was on her way down here.. My father went into a coma before she got here. When she got here and she talked to the doctors, they said he was really gone, he was on life support, so to please inform the other sisters to come. So we all came on Monday and he was already in a coma. It was the hardest thing. My sisters and I had to go and look for a coffin, while Doris went and did the write-ups for the newspapers. Then we had to give the order that you had to disconnect. The doctor said it was going to take a long time because he had been given so much medicine, so it would take something like eight hours, which I thought was a lot. But then, I don’t know very much about medicine.

So, being that Ruth had arrived the day before and she had been doing things, and my mom was sitting there, she was not aware of what was going on. She thought my dad was just sick, that he was going to get better. She didn’t know how dire the situation was.. And Kelly, who’s diabetic, she had to go back and get her medicines. It was about 5:30 in the evening, and I said, “Why don’t you all go back and take a shower and have dinner and then come back here, and then I’ll go and do the same. Right now I’m not hungry.” So I stayed there, and after everybody had left, it must not have been more than half an hour, my dad passed away. I was there, and my cousin Rafael was there with me, and Lorena Hirst was there. The three of us, that’s it. All I remember were the bells and the alarms on the machines, and the doctor coming and closing his eyes.

So I called them. They were barely sitting down to have dinner, and then they all came back. But he was gone.—The doctor explained to us that an abdominal aneurism was what had burst. And there’s where I had had the pain in my dream. It was an unbelievable realization!.

And then I started sharing with my sister Ruth the six months out of the year being with my mom, taking care of my mom. At the beginning, after my dad passed away, I stayed for a month and we got the visas for the nurse worked out so she could go for three months to the States to take care of my mom. We had my mother staying with us and with Ruthie in our homes, being that they were two blocks apart. And we did this twice, but then it got very hard with the nurses and with my mom. She had her doctors here, and taking a nurse to the States for three months was pretty difficult.. So we decided that we would take turns taking care of my mom here in El Salvador. So I did that for two years.

While being here, I kind of got acquainted or reached out to my roots again and loved El Salvador. John loved El Salvador too. He’s been coming here on business for—over twenty years, or even before that. He’s in aviation. So we saw this lot up on the volcano and we just fell in love with the view and the climate and the tranquility, and I found peace.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

A First Trip to Israel

Susie remembers her wedding in 1969 and the first years of her marriage.
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(So you go back your spring semester of your sophomore year and you continue seeing him?)

Yes.

(John. When did he propose?)

John proposed in October of—let’s see, we got married August of ’69, so he proposed October of ’68.

(And did he ever say to you, “I need you to convert, it would be easier if you converted?”)

No, he never said. We talked about it, that there would be consequences.—I had seen what had happened with me, because I was always confused of who I was. Was I half this? Was I half that? And then in my mind, it was that there’s only one God. The religions, all the other religions, are just a means to get to that same God. It’s what people feel comfortable with, in praying to this one God. And so as long as you always respect other people and their values and their religions, then everything is all right. Plus the fact that Jesus was Jewish and the Catholic religion or any Christian religion is based on the Old Testament. Without the Old Testament you can’t get to the New Testament. So I figured that I already knew so much of it, I had taken religion at SMU, both the Old Testament and the New Testament. There was a saying at SMU that if you want to become unreligious, you only have to take those courses. But that wasn’t really true—you just study everything in such depth. But it helped me understand that all religions are good.

(So when you were married, you were married—well, before that, I assume you saw your family once you were engaged?)

Yes. John and I flew to New Orleans. My father felt comfortable coming to New Orleans and meeting us there. He knew that John was coming to ask for my hand, and I knew it was not going to be an easy thing, knowing my dad and how he felt about him.. And so John went and asked for my hand. It was a very difficult time. It was extremely difficult. My father didn’t see it our way, and my mother had to support what my father was saying. He gave us a blessing of sorts, but he did not agree with the marriage and he said, “If you do go ahead and get married, then we won’t see you again.” Which was very difficult. He said, “On your wedding day, there will be nobody.” And so it happened.

Well, John’s mom had passed away when he was only fifteen. His father was not able to come from Israel. Backtracking, John had come on a scholarship when he was sixteen years old to the States, and he had not been back. He had not seen his father for seven years until he graduated in 1967. One year before his graduation, John had started working with Braniff Airways, or Braniff International as an aeronautical engineer. He was able to bring his dad over for his graduation in 1967, and that was the first time he saw his dad in seven years. When he left Israel, John wasn’t even shaving. So when his father saw him as an accomplished man, it was quite a beautiful moment. John wanted to go back to Israel after not being there for so many years.

So in 1969, when we got married, we agreed that we would go to Israel as part of our honeymoon. So that’s why his father didn’t come. But all his three sisters made it, and the children, the ones that already had children. And the one person present on my side of the family, was my Uncle Martin. My Uncle Martin, who is my father’s brother, and who’s still living in Dallas, he was there. He was always telling my dad, “Don’t be that way.” Because my Uncle Martin also married a Catholic, a German Catholic, and she converted to Judaism. So in his family there was—you know, my mother. So I thought, “Goodness gracious, all this happened, so why can’t I?” And at one time, my father had asked John if he would convert to Judaism. But that was almost an impossible thing. John was the only son. He only had sisters. And their last name means “priest,” because his grandfather was the Greek Orthodox priest of the village where they grew up. So it was an impossibility. It was just totally impossible for him to become Jewish. And I said, “I don’t mind. I really don’t mind.”

(When you went to Israel together, how were you received? Did they know you were raised as a Jew?)

Yes. His father could not have been nicer. I met his father in 1967, and John already introduced me as his girlfriend. I met him, and he was so sweet. He was the nicest man, really, and so accepting. I mean, this is his only son, and so it was a lot to him, but he was just—I mean, I don’t have words to explain how nice he was. His sisters were very loving. They’re a very close-knit family. What else did you ask?

(Just about Israel.)

Oh. So when we went to Israel, nobody ever touched the subject of religion or anything like that. I was very well received everywhere we went. Naturally, we got to meet the whole family that was still there, and his friends from school and everybody. And Isaw another side of Israel, because when they were growing up in Haifa, their neighbors next door were Jewish, , Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Anglicans, etc. Nobody seemed to mind the religion issue!

(How did you feel in Israel? Had you been raised to think about Israel?)

I don’t remember my father talking about it that much—all I remember was that he contributed in different ways...adopting a child in Israel, where you send money to help that child. But that was the extent. Also, the planting of trees in Israel. But he never mentioned us moving to Israel .

(So it was more like just a visit when you went?)

It was a visit. We went to a lot of places. We went to Jerusalem, which I loved. I thought it was really beautiful. Later on, we made trips with our two children showing them both their ancestral, cultural and religious roots My kids thought that one of the neatest things that they had in their lives, that makes them so special, is that they had a Palestinian Greek Orthodox grandfather and a Jewish grandfather. They had the best of both worlds and of both religions.

(So once you had your children, I’m assuming that your parents finally met them? )

Not till Michael was nine months old. So that was four years after the wedding. Michael was born, and I was awfully sick when he was born. I had pre-eclampsia. Then I had all these surgeries after that. I had a pulmonary embolism, and surgeries to prevent further complications. So it was touch and go for quite a while. Unfortunately, I was not able to see my parents. Then when Michael was nine months old, my father was up in New York with my mom having I think his second eye cataract surgery. In those days they didn’t do laser, they would cut out the cataracts.. So he was not supposed to lift anything or do anything like that. But he did, and so he had a hemorrhage. So my mother, not knowing what to do without the language, she decided to call me. And she said, “We’re in New York. This happened to your dad, and I need help.”

So I said, “Fine.” And I was on the next flight out from Dallas to New York, with Michael, who was nine months old, who they had never seen. And so I stayed, oh, maybe about ten days there with them, going to the doctor’s and helping in whatever way I could. So that was the beginning. That was the first step of a long journey.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Dating in Dallas

Susie describes her student years at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
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I stayed all four years. I graduated with a double major, a B.A. in education and a B.A. in Spanish.

(And you also met your husband at SMU?)

Yes.

(Can you tell me how you met him?)

It was a blind date. That was the beginning of my sophomore year. During my freshman year I had met—my roommate, as a matter of fact, my roommate at SMU was Jewish. She was from New Orleans, Elaine Stern, and she was my roommate all four years, and we’re still in touch. We’re close friends. And I also met a young lady from Illinois, Barbara Rhodus. Barb was on a scholarship, and so she had to work at a little drugstore that was across the street from SMU. And a lot of the foreign students that worked would go and cash their checks at this store.

So she met my husband, my future husband, there at that store when he would come and cash his checks and buy chocolates, etc.. They started talking, and he told her that he was from Israel. So she immediately thought that he was Jewish. So she wrote me and she said, “I have this wonderful guy I want you to meet. He’s so cute. I think you would be great together.” Blah-blah-blah. So I was really looking forward to meeting him. And she told him that there was this beautiful girl from El Salvador, that we would be so cute together. She never mentioned religion or anything like that to him, only that I was from El Salvador. Well, he never imagined that somebody from El Salvador was Jewish.

So when I arrived in August of ’66, back for my sophomore year, he called me the very first day I arrived. I was awfully sick. I had bronchitis, tired from traveling and all this. He says, “I’ve waited for three months for you to come back to school, your suitemate has been telling me all about you.We have to meet.” I said, “I just feel terrible. I can’t meet you.” And he kept insisting. So he said, “Well, can we just at least have a cup of coffee.” I said, “Well, OK, you know, but I feel ugh, and I probably look the same.”

Anyway, we went out for coffee, and I kept coughing and coughing. I thought he was great. He was good-looking. He was wonderful. He was sweet. It was a very short date, but I still remember that I went back and I told my roommate, I said, “I just met the guy I’m gonna marry.” And we got married three years later.

(How did you just know?)

I just knew. It was a feeling the minute I saw him. It was just like this—like I’d known him all my life, I don’t know. It was this weird thing.

(And in that first meeting, did you figure out that he was a Christian Palestinian?)

No. You know, it never came up. That was the funniest thing. It never came up. And like I said, maybe because when I grew up I never—all my friends were Catholic and Christian and their parents were from different backgrounds, , that I never was into the: Who is—? By the name knowing where they’re from or whatever it is. It didn’t click inside. Even if he told me his name, I wouldn’t have known what religion he was. So I was happy-go-lucky. “Hey, he’s from Israel! My father’s gonna be so happy!” (laughs) Never knowing that he was a Christian.

(What happened next?)

Well, can you believe it? I met him in August, and I came back for my Christmas holidays here to El Salvador, and we were coming back from the airport, and my father said, “How are things?” I said, “They’re great!” He said, “You look so happy.” I said, “Yes, I met this wonderful young man.” And he said, “Really?” I said, “Yes, he’s from Israel.” And he said, “What is his name?” So I told him, and we almost had a car accident. He says, “Are you crazy?” (laughs) “He’s Palestinian!” And at the time he said “Turco,” you know, because that’s what they call them here. And I said, “What? No, he’s not.” He said, “Yes, he is!” He was so upset. My dad was so upset. He made me promise that I would never see him again.

(On that car ride home?)

Yes. That whole Christmas vacation was really pretty bad. Because, everybody was trying to convince me that this was the wrong thing, that if that was the case, I might as well stay here, not go back, if I was going to continue seeing him. I wanted to go back, so I lied. (pause) I did. So I thought, “Well, if he’s not the one, I’m going to find out by myself.” And I didn’t think of the consequences. I didn’t think of anyone, really. I guess when you’re in love, you just don’t think.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Half-Jewish?

In this second excerpt, Susie Baum de Khoury remembers her father and schooldays in El Salvador.
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(Tell me about your father....people called him "Don Chepe," no?)

Don Chepe was bigger than life. I mean, he—to me he was huge. He was a big bear, a big teddy bear, really. He seemed like he was so rough, but really he was very gentle on the inside. He was very caring. He was very generous. Although he never wanted to show people how he really was, I think. That was his (pause) image, what he represented from the outside, you know. It’s not what he really was inside.

(How did he get to Salvador?)

When the Nazi regime started in Germany, he and his twin brother, Salli, and my Aunt Ellie left Germany. My uncle Salli and Aunt Ellie went to Israel. My father ended up in Newcastle, England first, with his Uncle Joseph, for a very short period of time, and then he went on to New York, where there was a cousin already, his cousin Ferdy. My father worked decorating windows for about a year. But he was not making enough money. Somebody told him that if he would go to Mazatlan, to the oil fields in Mazatlan, that he would make more money. So he decided that there’s where he was going to head to. So he took a ship, and aboard the ship, he met this German fellow who was living in El Salvador, and I don’t recall his name, but he was the owner of the Hotel Nuevo Mundo.

He was telling my father that there were a lot of foreigners here in El Salvador and that he would have a great opportunity here> But my father kept saying, “No, I’m going to Mazatlan. There’s where the money is.” So as luck would have it, or maybe God’s intervention, there was a hurricane that year, and they had to stop and they had to get off the boat, get off the ship, in—I can’t remember if he arrived in La Libertad or Acajutla. But he ended up staying with this gentleman, the owner of Hotel Nuevo Mundo, and the rest is history, because he never made it, ever, to Mazatlan. He stayed here in El Salvador. I think his first job, I don’t recall exactly, but I think it was with Casa Mugdan, and then with the Freunds, and then on his own.

(I think you’re right, because Max Freund worked with him and then went out on his own..)

Yes. And we have lovely pictures of him as a traveling salesman on a mule. Those are wonderful. He looks like Indiana Jones, really, when I look at the pictures, with the hat and the gun and seven mules and a mozo, to help him with all the animals. They used to sell añil, which is indigo, which is very popular now.

(So you lived in your home until the end of high school?)

Yes. I was lucky enough that the American High School had just opened a few years before. Before that, everybody had to leave to go to boarding school, like your mother or my oldest sisters. So I was so happy, because I couldn’t imagine leaving home when I was thirteen years old. So I was able to stay here and graduate from the American High School. I left August of 1965.

(And when you were growing up, did you go to the synagogue a lot? Were you involved in youth groups?)

I went to the synagogue, not a lot, because when I was little, there wasn’t very much of that [youth groups]. And then when I was older, I don’t know how old I was, when Rabino Granat came, but he was the first one that really gave us lessons and religion classes. And so, I would stay after school. He had several groups, the older kids and the younger ones. So I guess I must—I was in the oldest group, and so it must have been after sixth grade One day a week we would stay after school and have religion classes and Hebrew classes. So I did learn to read Hebrew, which I still do to this day, and study the Old Testament.

But we didn’t have youth groups. The only time that we had any contact with somebody that was Jewish was during this class. I did not have a lot of classmates that were Jewish, other than Evy Gunn, Monica Davidson, and Isaac Sztarkman ,who were in my class.

(So would you say that at the American school, being Jewish was a challenge? Or did you not think about it?)

I didn’t think about it. I really didn’t. I don’t know how to describe it. I guess I was just like a regular child. People to me didn’t have a title, like, you were Jewish or you were an American or you were Catholic or you were this or you were that. I mean, to me they were all the same. A child is a child. I didn’t see people with labels.

(Did you ever experience any anti-Semitism as a child?)

No, not towards me. But the very devout Catholics would always say that the Jews killed Jesus. So knowing that my father was Jewish and that I was part Jewish, well, I was Jewish because my mother had converted before I was born, I didn’t want them to know that I was [Jewish]. I didn’t have anything to do with killing Jesus. We just went along and—but then, I had so many friends that were Catholic, and I would go to all their First Communions and things like that, and I also knew all the prayers of the Catholic religion. So I was exposed from a very young age to both religions.

(You just said just a few minutes ago that you were half Jewish. It kind of slipped out. Did you feel like you were half Jewish?)

Yes. All my life, yes. Because I felt that even though my mom converted to Judaism, I think she did it because that was something that she wanted to do, but deep down, her upbringing in Maria Auxiliadora and her family ties, I felt that she still thought about her Christianity. Because in her times of trials and tribulations, she would go back to that place, to what felt safe for her, that she could pray in the way she was taught as a child..

(That was just something that you felt as a child? Did she ever say anything?)

Well, she would pray. I know that she would pray. It’s just an instinct I felt, almost. [In my opinion] if you were raised that way since you were a child, and that was your protection, that was where you found solace when you were growing up, well, then you will always go back to that. So there was almost no doubt in my mind that I was half Jewish and half Catholic. It was a part of me. I knew all the prayers. I knew what to do. I knew everything. And more so, I understood them. On the other hand, I had a hard time—I mean, I understood the history of the Old Testament and everything, and I could read phonetically, and I still do, but I don’t know what I’m saying.

(So after you left Salvador, where did you end up?)

I ended up at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

(How did you get there, of all places?)

Well, my father’s brother, Uncle Martin, lived in Dallas. He still is the only sibling that is living of my father’s family. He’s still there in Dallas. He just turned eighty-five years old. Also, my sister Ruth had graduated from SMU in 1961, I believe. So she had been there, and my father gave me a choice when I was going to graduate from the American high school. It was either to go to Texas or to go to New Orleans. And I went and interviewed with Sophie Newcomb, which is the girls’ part of Tulane, and I found it—I didn’t feel like I wanted to be there. I didn’t fit in. It was not my cup of tea.

Also, my grandmother, my Oma, lived there and my Aunt Ellie also had settled there. My Uncle Carl had settled there, all my father’s siblings. So I thought, “Uh-oh. I don’t think I want all that supervision.” So I went to see UT, University of Texas, and I thought it was so huge, it was unbelievable, and I would be lost. And when I went to SMU, they had 7,000 undergraduates. I came from a graduating class of nine at the American high school. So I thought that this was a better fit.

(How was your English at that point?)

My English was all right, but not great. I still would translate everything, and it naturally came out backwards, my sentence construction came out backwards, because I would totally translate from the Spanish to the English.. So people thought, “Either she is very dumb, (laughs) or I don’t know what’s her problem.” Because I didn’t look Hispanic. That was my problem. And I was only the second student from Central America. I mean, my sister had been also from El Salvador. But when I was at SMU, there were only two from Central America, myself from El Salvador, and a young man from Panama. So we looked around and we looked like everybody else, I guess....

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Susie Baum de Khoury: "I think my mother was the first Salvadoran to convert..."

This fascinating interview with Susana "Susie" Baum de Khoury begins with a description of her parents, Jose "Chepe" Baum and Mercedes Lopez de Baum. "Nina Meches" as she was called, was born in Olocuilta, El Salvador. "Don Chepe" was born and raised in Fulda, Germany. In this first excerpt, Susie tells us about her mother.
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(What was your mother like?)

My mother was (pause) was so sweet, she was devoted to the house and to the children. I mean, she was always baking, I remember that. Unfortunately, none of us learned to cook as well as she did, because she was scared that if we would come into the kitchen we would get burned or something hot would fall on us, grease or something like that, so she would always make us step outside the door. But every day when we came back from school, she had baked a cake or cookies or el pie de nata, that was so delicious. I mean, she was just amazing. She could taste something that she ate on one of her trips, and she would know how to make it. She would know what the ingredients were and she would try to imitate it. So she had quite a talent for that.

But she was very loving and I know she was very religious. She believed in God, and she was very spiritual in that sort of way. And most of all, I remember, the unwavering love between my parents.

(Tell me about their story. How did they meet?)

There was a Frenchman here, well, he was really born in Turkey, Don Jaime Gabay. He was a dear friend of my father’s. They had met each other as traveling salesmen throughout El Salvador. His wife was Ofelia, who was my mother’s oldest sister. My mother was living with them when she was a young woman, eighteen, nineteen, or something like that, she was living with them.. I mean, a single woman, and she was the youngest, so she was living with them. And then about a year after my father had been here, he was invited to Don Jaime’s house for dinner. My mother was there. He saw her in the kitchen or something like that, and he said, “Me gusta!” “I love what I see!” I want to meet her. And he met her and—my mother thought, “How rude of him!” to say, “Me gusta,” and thinking that she’s gonna just swoon over him or whatever.

But he prevailed and they got married. Right before he passed away in 2001 they had just celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary. Luckily I was here for that celebration.

(Unbelievable.)

Yes. This happened—their anniversary was the 5th of February, and he passed away on the 12th.

(So your mother was Catholic when she met your father?)

Yes.

(He was a religious, learned Jew.)

Yes.

(Can you talk to me about how they got married and if there were any conflicts surrounding that marriage?)

My mother was Catholic, and you needed to convert in order to have a religious ceremony performed, and I think the rules were you had to be converted by an Orthodox Rabbi. My mother did take all the instruction. She learned to read Hebrew and she learned all the history and the Old Testament and things like that. She took classes with the Rabbi—I think he was a relative of the Freunds, maybe that was his last name.

(Did she ever talk to you about the process, how she felt?)

I remember she talked about the day there in Los Chorros (the mikvah process) and receiving lessons from Rabbi Freund. But she always talked fondly of her schooldays at Maria Auxiliadora. Those memories stayed in my mind more so than when she converted. She was in boarding school there since she was a little girl until she graduated, and she had a very close relationship with the nuns at Maria Auxiliadora. They were really sweet. And they kind of took over, like, being a mother figure, especially one nun, Sor Celia who was a very important part of her life. We all got to meet her, and we used to love to hear the stories from Sor Celia about what kind of a child my mother had been in school. She was not a troublemaker, because she was very loving about it, but she was always up to something. And she was so creative. I think they both had a great imagination, both of my parents, and they both were dreamers. They both had a lot of creativity, and maybe some of the younger generations inherited that from them. Members of the family that are creative or their right side of the brain is working is because of them. (chuckles)

So we used to love the stories. She was a jokester. She liked to joke around and make practical jokes on people. I remember one time we went to visit Sor Celia with my mother. We went to Maria Auxiliadora, and sat in a little foyer where you wait for whomever you’re going to visit. So I think it was just my younger sister and myself, and we went with my mother. So one nun came and said, “Who are you here to visit?” And my mother said, “Sor Celia.” So she said, “Oh, we’ll go get her.” So while we were sitting there, the Mother Superior of all the Escuelas Salecianas—of the world maybe, she was from Italy, I still remember that—she came into the room to speak with us and greet us . She asked my mother who were we there to see. And she said, “Sor Celia.” And she said, “Oh, you know her?” And my mother said, “Yes, she’s the grandmother of my children.” And the expression on the lady’s face (laughs) was priceless.

Mother Superior just walked out of there. There was just this silence. And when Sor Celia came in, she said, “What have you done? What did you say to Mother Superior?” But I mean, she would forgive her everything she would do, because she knew my mom. She didn’t do it to get her into trouble or anything. It was just the way she was. She liked to play little jokes like that on people. Those are the things I remember.

My mother taught herself German by listening to language records. She had this whole collection of records, and every day she would listen to them, and she learned German that way. As my mother aged her looks became Asian in nature. She said that she inherited that from her father (who had some Indian blood). One time, they went to Germany and this lady came and asked her, in German, if she was from Japan. And my mother bowed like she was from an Asian country, and she said, “No, I’m from Korea.” And the lady believed her. And they went and told my dad, “Oh, you’re married to someone from Korea.” She was always up for practical jokes!

Unfortunately, people never got to see that playful part of my mom. I think she was always kind of a child at heart.

(When she converted, did she tell her mentors like Sor Celia?)

She did tell Sor Celia, and I think Sor Celia met my father, and she thought he was a very good man. A gentle, and yet a strong man, who truly loved my mother. I know my father had a great relationship with Sor Celia till she died a very, very old lady, just maybe ten years before my dad passed away.

(What about your mother’s family? How did they react?)

I think her oldest sister Ofelia didn’t mind, because, you know, she was with Don Jaime, and they had had a lovely daughter, Martita, my first cousin. And my grandmother, although at first they didn’t get along or didn’t see eye to eye with my dad about certain things, I think—she accepted, that my mother had married a Jewish person. But I don’t think it was an issue, really. It was not a religion issue. I don’t think there ever was an issue with my mother’s side of the family.

(Do you know if she was the first Salvadoran to convert?)

I think so. I believe that she was the first one—I believe that’s what I heard, that she was the first Salvadoran to convert. And she really did it the right way, because he was an Orthodox rabbi, which in Israel, I know, the Orthodox branch believes that that’s the only way to convert.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Helene Salomon: Leaving the Light On for Now

Helene remembers the war years and after....

All questions in parentheses are mine.
*****************

Came to Salvador for the summer thing, and Gerda Guttfreund—I didn’t grow up in the Gerda-Perla years, but Roby and Jack and Lillian were very friendly with Gerda, and so I also became friendly with Gerda. In one of these conversations, she said to me, “You know, there’s this...... an important group of people from Washington DC, Robert Nathan Associates, and they’re doing a study here and they’re looking for an architect. I know this guy called Ed Canino, and I’d like to introduce you to him, but if I introduce you to him it’s because you are willing to stay in Salvador to work with him. I said, “Gerda, I don’t want to live in Salvador, but let’s meet him. I had become very close to the Davidson’s and the extended family that developed between both of our families, my brother was here, and somehow Salvador started to feel “good”.

I went to the appointment, Canino was adorable and gave me the job right away. So lo and behold, against my better judgment, I found myself living in Salvador in the first month after I graduated from architecture school.

(With your parents, or in your own place?)

I lived with my parents very briefly and then I moved to a house in Santa Tecla, which I then bought, and I started living on my own. That was also not very common, because people didn’t do that. But my parents were always very trusting in that sense. When my Salvadoran friends like Ana Julia were prevented from living in an apartment in Philadelphia, her parents had said, “Absolutely not. Proper young women do not go out and live by themselves”—my parents always said, “Go ahead.” So I was given a lot of freedom in that sense.. I came back to Salvador, I got my own place, worked here as an architect from 1975 to 1980, and it was the first time that Salvador started feeling right to me.

And then the war came. First: before the war in ’78 my father had received one of those threatening letters. As he was feeling like retiring anyway he left for Miami with my mother and then insisted that Roby and I leave with them. We stayed up there for about a month and then we said, “Sorry, but our life is in Salvador, and we’re going back.” So we still managed to stay here for an extra year. And then in 1980 it was when Jorge Weill was kidnapped—we finally did go.

(Do remember also the kidnapping of Ernesto Liebes?)

Mm-hmm. Very much so.

(Did that make you think, “I’ve gotta get out of here”?)

No, no, absolutely not. Because the kidnappings here started in a very orderly way in the sense of the economic and political ladder. . First it was Ernesto Regalado and then it was—I don’t remember-Chico de Sola? Mauricio Borgonovo? Roberto Poma. I was neither very wealthy or politically involved. When they took Ernesto Liebes, I never thought of it as a Jewish thing…I thought they had decided to kidnap a very wealthy man who happened to be Jewish. People in the States always associated it with his being the Consul of Israel.

Shortly afterward, I remember, Frankie (Rosenberg) saying, “I’m leaving,”. That shook me up. I was working as an architect with Alberto Harth. I thought he was the best architect in Salvador and felt good about working. ” But that one (Frankie) gave me a movida de piso , I thought to myself “this is getting bad.” That was when the joke started about “last one to leave turn out the lights”.

(So when Jorge was kidnapped, that very much affected you?)

Absolutely. Jorge and—Enrique and my father were equal partners, and I thought just as it could have been Jorge, it could have been my brother. Besides Jorge and I had grown up as brother and sister, though Jorge is much younger. We very conscious that if we stayed we would be threatening our parents economic security if they had to pay a ransom. —we tried all sorts of things. We would say to my parents, “We’re going go to Salvador, but tell you what, if we get kidnapped, you don’t have to pay.” (laughs) But of course that was baloney! So it was too much guilt to handle.

(Where did you end up going, then?)

In Jorge’s case, he was supposed to come—we used to get together at the Davidson’s practically every night and shoot the breeze. Jorge was supposed to come over that night. He didn’t show up. We started thinking it was strange, and all of a sudden, I think it was my brother-in-law who came around and we realized that Jorge had not come to the house or gone to his. I think it was the next morning or maybe two, that we got in a car-Roby and family Lillian, the four Davidson kids, and me. Jack stayed behind for a month or so. We went to Guatemala in a car. And very sadly, the driver that took us to Guatemala never made it back. He was killed on the way back.

(By—? You don’t know?)

I don’t know.

(So you stayed in Guatemala for a month?)

No. We just went to Guatemala because at that time people were very nervous about going to the airport, being caught at the airport. We flew out from Guatemala to Miami.

(And then—?)

(Lillian and Jack [Davidson] and their kids eventually settled in Scarsdale?)

Yes. So I found myself in New York again, and I was angry…I had finally found a little niche in Salvador, and I was doing my profession. I was happy doing what I was doing. And then the rug was pulled out from under. So I arrived in New York and I went to Columbia. The Dean told me, “Go visit this guy, go visit the other guy and get yourself a job.” I landed a job—I landed two jobs. One of them was a firm called Beyer, Blinder, & Belle.

(Huge firm.)

And I thought at the time, competitive as I was, “Gee, it’s not as prestigious an architectural firm as IM Pei or Richard Meier where my some of my fellow students worked. Maybe I shouldn’t take the job.” The pay was measly. So I turned it down. What a mistake! They became the architects who redesigned Grand Central Station in a beautiful way many years later, (laughs) which made me feel like, “Oh, boy, Hélène, you really did it this time!” So that’s what happened. I put my career aside. I was just angry, and it was a difficult situation.

When I came from New York to Salvador what should have happened didn’t. I should have had to start slowly and surely from the bottom and learn the ropes of design and construction.. But this is what always happens in Salvador, you land in a higher position than you should given your experience (or lack of it). I found myself in Salvador being a project architect, telling drafts people what to do at a time when I really didn’t know what to do myself.

So first I had to hide that I wasn’t prepared to do what I was doing, and now five years later and now I’m expected stop being “Arquitecto” and start from the bottom New York. “I hadn’t drafted anything for years!” (laughs) So I got scared thinking that I wouldn’t succeed, and decided to look up my friend Giorgio again and say, “Oh, I’m gonna do something else.”

I moved to Scarsdale right away. I. I couldn’t imagine living in a studio apartment again in Manhattan. I was also very close to the Davidsons and they were moving to Scarsdale, so I said, “I’m just going to get an apartment out there, too.”

(What year was that?)

This was 1980. I lived in Scarsdale from that point on.

(You haven’t really come back? You come back every once in a while?)

Yes. After I left Salvador became again a strange land. But then in 1985 I had the opportunity to come back in 1985 and I got very excited about being here, I said, “This place means something to me.” And as time went by, I realized that Salvador was really home and that the only French thing about me was my passport (and a certain love of food) .I’m really not French. My parents are French, but I’m Salvadoran. But then, I’m not Salvadoran either, I go everywhere in El Salvador and people say, “Oh, you don’t look Salvadoran at all!” Me? No, no, no. Now I look just like an old Jewish woman from New York. (laughs)

(But you didn’t move back here in 1985?)

No. I’ve stayed in New York ever since.

(Why didn’t you move back in 1985?)

Well, I had a business in New York. I thought I was doing what I wanted to do. I liked being in New York. I took a bit of advantage of the city. There’s a certain finality of packing your bags and saying, “I’m going to move to Salvador” that I have never been able to do. I think if it hadn’t been for Gerda that year, I wouldn’t have done it either. It’s something that keeps me away. I have often thought about coming back to Salvador and picking up my career as an architect again.” I still think………..

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Helene Salomon: Anti-semitism, Guatemalan Fabrics, and Vogue Magazine

Helene eventually moves to NYC and discovers the world of high fashion.
***************
(Tell me, then, what happens after those four years in Philadelphia?)

After my “socialite” life in Philadelphia, I came to grips that this was in fact an anti-Semitic world. All of a sudden Philadelphia started looking small, and I started to resent it.

(Did you ever have any direct experience of anti-Semitism?)

I would go out to parties or events and someone in my group of friends would say something about New York Jews, adding “You know, you’re not like that so don’t consider yourself included,” that sort of thing. At the beginning, I thought, “Oh, how flattering, I’m not like one of them.” But then I realized how insulting it all is. I thought all of Philadelphia was like that, and it may or may not have been true. This atmosphere may have been limited to the upper crust of the main line, they were mostly non-Jewish…they, who looked down on Jewish issues and people. So I started to feel that it was time to go.

(Was that the first time you’d ever heard any anti-Semitism?)

You know, Ruth [Reich] and I compared notes over the years asking each other the same question. “Did you feel any anti-Semitism growing up in Salvador?” She responded, “Oh, not at all!” And I say “Well, I think there was.” I think there was, although it may be that my family was especially alert to the possibility of its existence.

For example, if I didn’t get invited to one of my classmate’s parties, because maybe that person didn’t like me, then my father would say, “Ach! They’re anti-Semites.” Where it may not have been that problem at all. I didn’t really feel it, but there was a consciousness in the house—I think my parents were carrying on their backs the 5,000 years of rejection of the Jewish people, and I think they did transmit that. So I guess I set out to prove that I could participate in the non-Jewish world, but then it started feeling uncomfortable. On top of which, my mother would say, “And that ring? (A ring from my friend Biddle) What does it mean? Who gave it to you?” A friendship ring that I would have gotten from my friend in Philadelphia or whatever.

After four years in Philadelphia, I said I’m moving to New York.” My father was concerned, “What’s going on? He thought this whole thing was crazy. ” There were not too many people in my circle living on their own in apartments. So he said, “All right. You can go to New York. But I expect you to get a job right away. No more fooling around.” I remember being in New York, arriving the first day and saying, “I’ve gotta get a job, gotta get a job, gotta get a job.” And I walked into Conde Nast Publications and I said, “I need a job.” They said there was an opening at Vogue magazine. They had this editor that couldn’t keep anybody working for her so they decided to get somebody from the outside. I said, “I’ll try it.” And that was the beginning of my career at Vogue magazine.

So I became very sophisticated. (laughs)—I was sort of “way out” dressed to the T with the latest fashions Lillian and everybody else kid me about this period. I would arrive in Salvador, she says—I was four years older than all of them, and they would all sit there, these young girls from the Jewish community, to find out what the latest thing was to wear, to see how I was arriving from New York. I thought I was the “cat’s meow”:

(What type of work were you doing?)

I was in the editorial department, in accessories... we would prepare for a photo shoot, get the models together with their clothes and accessories, visit suppliers, stay up all night to make sure you could meeet Diana Vreeland’s latest thought about where fashion was to go. I was about to move into an editor’s position, remember feeling, ‘this is not for me’…The editors at Vogue at the time, all of them were big socialites, you know? They were women who really didn’t need to work and just had to spend a proper time in the workplace. I started feeling unreal. And just at that time, I met this fantastic clothes designer called Giorgio Saint-Angelo, who was very famous. He was an architect, had worked at some point with Picasso, and was the “darling” of Diana Vreeland, He asked me to leave Vogue and to go with him to Europe. To see what we could do there, expand his world, etc. So we went, he and his partner and myself, his business partner and live-in partner. Very chic. We went off to Rome, set up an office in Paris. I worked with him for a while. I was doing the fashion world successfully.

Felt as though I was getting to a career. But I thought “I can’t be a career woman and not have more education under my belt.” Inspired by Giorgio who had an amazing sense of color and textures, I decided I’ll become an architect. As I though of myself as too sophisticated (!) to be anywhere other than New York I applied to Columbia, thinking if Columbia takes me— . I had completed but one year at Penn so I ended up going to Columbia for three years of undergraduate school and the whole of graduate school, spending six years at Columbia.

(So you finished your undergrad there?)

Yes, went to Columbia from ’69 to ’75. I was already thirty-some when I got out of Columbia. It was a great experience.

(Were your parents relieved?)

Well, who knows, it was a bit confusing. My parents were proud that I became an architect. My father, even to his dying day, addressed his letters “Arquitecto Hélène Salomon.”, even years after I had interrupted my career to do fabrics in Guatemala (I guess I also had developed a good color sense with Giorgio). Still, I was unmarried, without a family, so I wasn’t doing my Jewish responsibility and that is always a bit of a conflict in a Jewish home.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Helene Salomon: We Girls Were Evacuated...

Dating in El Salvador? Think again...
************

(You were saying about girls being evacuated?)

Girls being evacuated. You see, what happened was that my mother, when we started being of dateable age—well, my sister was two years ahead of me, so whatever happened to my sister would happen to me only at a much younger age because we usually experienced things together. (laughs) But anyway…my sister was very popular here. She was “de novios” with this guy and my mother decided it was too serious and the guy wasn’t Jewish and the whole thing. So lo and behold, fifteen years old, my mother says, “This is too much and you’re leaving.” My sister was evacuated. She left. They thought my sister had to break away from this chico, so all of a sudden there was this terrible need to go to France. The joke was that a few months later and she deplaned with a baby in her arms. And the young friends talked. But the baby was Monique Weill, who she was carrying in her arms.

(laughs) (That’s great! That’s a great story!)

Yeah, isn’t that cute?

(At what age were you sent to boarding school?)

As I told you, my mother didn’t know what she was going do with us. There was no American High school. Because what did you do? We could only go to La Asuncion or another Catholic school. My mother was friendly with Herta Freund and knew that Martita had gone there and survived, after Herta had made an arrangement with the nuns that she would not have to cross herself.

(Do the sign of the cross?)

Do the sign of the cross or whatever. I don’t know if she succeeded or not. But those were the issues. My mother turned to the mother of some other non-Jewish friends-the Novoas- the wife of the dentist……they had just sent two of their daughters to a boarding school in Pennsylvania.

So when my sister was “dating” with this “not so desirable” young man (not her husband, another young man) at age 15-not dating but being courted, she was sent away. Within half a year that my sister left, I was sent away to the same boarding school.

(And where is it?)

The school was a boarding school for girls called Penn Hall in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. My sister was absolutely miserable, couldn’t live without her mother, cried during the entire time that she was there. I arrived six months later, a semester later, and I couldn’t have been happier. I was so glad to be out on my own and start my life.

(Did you have any trouble transitioning to this totally different world?)

Not at all. It was a necessity for me to get out of Salvador. I felt very constrained here. I don’t remember having an unhappy childhood, but when I left, it felt right. And I really never came back. For years and years and years. Except for vacation of course. We’re talking about 1956, I’m fourteen years old. Shortly afterwards your mother was sent to Putney, and Frankie was at Putney, and Roberto was at Putney. And then I said to myself, something’s wrong with me, I’m not at Putney! So I applied to Putney but didn’t realize that it was a sort of agricultural school. And I told them I couldn’t stand rural areas and didn’t like cows. Then I was surprised when I got rejected. (laughs) So I ended up back at Penn Hall. It was a sort of finishing school, and I said, no, no, no, I have to do better than this. I was very ambitious. I thought I was very bright, anyway. So I applied to a better school in Philadelphia, and got in there. But by that time I was already terribly involved with my life at Penn Hall, and stayed the rest of my time there.

(That was your world?)

That was my world.

(What happened after you graduated?)

After I graduated from Penn Hall? I applied to college. Of course, everybody said, “What for?” Young women didn’t go to college. I don’t think that any of my friends were going to college. Although I think your mother did go, but she was a year after me or something. Did I tell you about your mother [Ruth Reich]?

She and I spent a lot of time together. My friendship with your mother was always important—we were next to each other in school, and I was very competitive, we competed in sports and for grades, because we each wanted to be at the top of the class. And when your mother had her 50th birthday, or 60th, recently—

(60th.)

I remember writing a note to her saying, “My friend with whom always competed ” and she replied, “I never competed a day in my life with you.” (laughs)

Anyway, your mother and I became very friendly. And your mother would come to my house every other Saturday. Every other Saturday I would go to her house. That went on for a long time. My father very affectionately would say, “When is the Dritte Reich coming?” He called your mother the “Third Reich.” My mother tells me “Don’t tell that story, it isn’t nice”, but I think it was an affectionate comment. But as you see, always very political.

(What did my mother speak with your parents?)

Spanish.

(And what did you speak with my mother?)

Spanish. I would speak Spanish. We didn’t start speaking English—I think we all spoke Spanish. Yes! We grew up speaking Spanish to each other. It was only afterwards that everybody—I don’t remember. I don’t think we spoke English on a constant basis. I remember that we were better in English, because at the time the American school was four hours of English instruction and two hours of Spanish instruction. I for one was better in English. But I don’t remember speaking in English on a constant basis. I think in later years it became common to hear kids at the American school speaking English outside of class. It became kind of a status symbol.

My recollection is that I would have spoken in Spanish to your mother. And I must have felt left out of this German business, too, because at some point or another I said to myself, I need to learn German. And I went to Tía Wilma [Wilma Reich] every Saturday to speak German with your grandmother. I did learn a bit. She always said I was good. That was a big plus in my bonnet when she said I was bright and learned fast. She helped my self-esteem a lot.


(Tell me, where did you end up going to college?)

I got into the University of Pennsylvania, and I got into Duke. So my father said, “Duke? In the South? What are you going to do in the South?” He said, “If you have to go to school, you go to Philadelphia, because at least there you’ll meet a nice Jewish boy.” Right? That’s what it was. He didn’t understand, as most of his contemporaries, why women needed to go to college. At the Jewish community here, I think nobody even understood the need for men to go to college because the boys were coming back to take care of their father’s businesses. They were expected to do that. And the girls were expected to find a nice Jewish man and get married. Eventually, it was understood, the fiance, whatever his career was, would end up in your father’s business.

(Right. Did you end up at the University of Pennsylvania?)

So I ended up at the University of Pennsylvania, because I always did everything my father said. (chuckles) And that for me was freaky, because all of a sudden it was a big urban school after a very protected environment. And then all of a sudden it hit me: this is real life, and I couldn’t handle it. So I went to the University of Pennsylvania for just one year, dropped out thinking, there must be another way. Besides which, nobody else was doing it, so I decided to do something else.

I stayed in Philadelphia, got an apartment with friends and went to work as an “administrative assistant”. For several years I worked and partied. Lots of parties. I did that for a number of years.) I had a friend whose last name was Biddle, from a well-known Philadelphia family - mainline people. My mother was concerned that I would be mistreated as a Jew.

(Were people interested in you? Here you are coming from Latin America?)

What do you mean, in—?

(Were people mystified by you?)

In the States? Yes, people were usually interested. Fascinated by things that we all take for granted, for example, that we speak three languages, that we had been to Europe several times. People tended to treat me as though I were an odd animal from outer space or thought I must be extremely wealthy because I had traveled, and appeared sophisticated to them. I guess that is something that changed when we went away to school. You grew up thinking you are like everybody else, like my friend Ruth [Reich] and my friend Yolanda [Rosenberg], they all led the same kind of life. Suddenly in the States, you are made to feel that you are very privileged.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Helene Salomon: Part IV

Was the Holocaust discussed? Did Jewish community members mingle with non-Jews? These questions take up the majority of today's entry.
*****************

(Speaking of French and German, did you see that there was a big difference between the two sides, I mean between the French immigrants and the German immigrants?)

(Did I see a difference? I don’t remember feeling a difference. Not when I grew up, at least. Later, I began to sense there had been perhaps a bit of animosity, rivalry, etc. I had good friends among Salvador born kids of German descent, and later especially there was lots of teasing about differences.

(Did they seem to have different Jewish identities?)

Well, to me they did. I always understood it this way: my mother, for example, was very patriotic, very, very French. She also had difficulties adapting to Salvador and Salvadoran ways. She was very involved in what was going on between France and Germany politically since the beginning of time. And during the war she and afterwards, she expressed herself very strongly about Germans, just as she did about French collaborators, etc. In attempting to understand German Jews, however, we though that the main difference between them and the French Jews, was that as French citizens, we still were tied to France after the war; the Germans had lost their country. This could help explain why the Germans perhaps assimilated better in Salvador, if they did. They didn’t have a place to fall back on. They couldn’t go back to Germany, right?

Some people would also point out that the educational level among some of the German immigrants may have been higher as a rule than their French counterparts, allowing a certain amount of “looking down” by the Germans on the non-Germans. Also, I think there was more of a Zionist feeling among the Germans.

Also growing up in Salvador I think there was a certain uppitiness on the part of both the French AND the Germans vis a vis Jews from Eastern Europe. I know that it is popular in the Jewish community now to say we are all equal and do not differentiate between groups, but I do not personally think this is accurate.. The tradition, as I said before, was to leave differences aside so as to form a cohesive whole, which is not the same as stating that differences do not exist.

And of course a lot of the Germans, like your grandparents, for example,who had a lot of German friends who were non-Jewish, people with whom they shared a common German culture. My parents had no German friends and had difficulty even relating to people who were German.

(Did they have French non-Jewish friends?)

Yes. My parents were—my father in particular was an enterprising and ambitious man who thought it was important to LIVE in Salvador, to mix with all kinds of people. He was well respected and had friends from all socioeconomic levels. He always had good relationships with many people. I observed that my father seemed to be more connected with Salvadorans than most of the Jewish people I knew.

(Networking?)

Networking and doing what he need to do.”Becoming someone”. Discovering, opening doors. He had his fingers in a lot of pies.

(And your mother? What kind of a presence was she in the community?)

In the community? My mother was very different…a dutiful wife, and as my father was very involved with the community, she was an appropriate “president’s wife”, or at least I think so. She became part of the WIZO and I think she even was president at some point. As far as the Jewish community, she had friends there, went to services, but she wasn’t what I would consider “active”. Then again, I don’t think the men of the community at that time would have made room for a great deal of activity [for women]. Equal status for women was not yet an issue, the atmosphere was quite “machista”. It took the likes of Gerda [Guttfreund] to start breaking it down.

Back to breaking down the history of the Jews in El Salvador to phases. I would say that there’s a break between the first phase and the period from ’28 and ’38. That is when those young men who were looking to better themselves economically leave Europe out of their own free will….they have a certain drive and are looking to propel themselves into better economic situations. Then comes the period from ’38 to about ’48 when people arrive because of the events in Europe-the Holocaust. A time of people escaping. Must have been very difficult. It is in this period is where my siblings and I were born.

(Was that ever discussed in your home, about the Holocaust, the war?)

My mother was very conscious of the war, and very emotionally involved. It was a constant concern and discussion. My mother was also very affected by revolutions and uprisings going on in El Salvador, and about Martinez (the president). My father was frequently traveling “en el interior”, and this was also a source of worry. My childhood memories are of sitting in the garden playing while mother is talking about, “Oh, here come, the planes and this is what’s happening we have to go inside.” And now she’s crying because FDR died or really nervous because So-and-So invaded such-and-such a country. So the political situation was a very big part of what was happening at home. After the war, when we went to Europe, I think both my parents had feeling of guilt that they had not suffered like the people who had stayed behind. They also expected their relatives to be angry at them because they survived the war in all the glory of tropical El Salvador. I guess you can understand that, right? And they hadn’t been directly affected. To this date, I don’t know whether relatives were resentful or not, but the guilt was there….they hadn’t participated in the full sense of the word, that they hadn’t lost anything.

During the war, my father was drafted into the French army. I understand that at least one representative from every “French” business was to report for duty. Evidence of the great friendship that existed, Enrique Weill, my father’s partners, offered to go because he was not yet married, and my father already had a child. In the meantime, France surrendered and he ended up not having to go to war, but still, what an enormous gesture, don’t you think?

This is an example of the level of emotion and type of conversation that was usual, everyone was nervous. Later I came to understand how difficult this period was for everyone, I started to view my mother’s struggle more sympathetically. Here was a woman who leaves her family behind to start a new family in a strange land that she never gets to understand. My mother never really found her footing in El Salvador.

(Did that spread to you at all?)

Oh, yes. I thought about it today, and really, I have a very big love-hate relationship with El Salvador. Because you couldn’t grow up in El Salvador surrounded by so many doubts and not be affected by it. The line of who was acceptable as a friend was also very defined. It turned out to be easier to limit friendships to people whose parents were either part of the Jewish community or foreigners with similar values. Even the cook (whom I adored) when my Salvadoran friends arrived late as usual for lunch, would say, “ can’t you please invite foreigners” (laughs). The lines were drawn.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.