Helene Salomon: Leaving the Light On for Now

Helene remembers the war years and after....

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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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.