Helene Salomon: Part II

In this next excerpt, Helene discusses her childhood memories including visits to Europe and experiences with friends from the Jewish community.
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So the three of us siblings, my father and my mother went to Europe on one of these long journeys. It took three days. It was after the war, and my grandparents had gone to Paris to a relative’s house to greet us there, and that’s where we met my grandparents for the first time. Years later my grandparents came to El Salvador in 1951 and spent some time here. Then we went again to Europe in 1953, all of us. That was another six years later. That’s when I saw them again. After that it became easier to travel, so we would see each other every year. And they would sometimes come to El Salvador.

(Did they like El Salvador?)

I think they loved El Salvador. They were very happy in the Jewish community there.

(But they never thought to move?)

No, they were very independent, and they didn’t want to come to El Salvador, no. They were very involved in their own Jewish community in Sarreguemines.

(What about your father’s parents?)

My father’s father, as I mentioned, died as a French soldier, or was it a German soldier? I get confused because my father who was born in 1908—his first language was German, because at that time Alsace-Lorraine was occupied by the Germans. So his first language really was German. My father’s mother, I never met, she died in 1938 after my parents were engaged. My father was the fifth one of six children.

(Of natural causes?)

Mm-hmm.

(What about their siblings? Did they survive the war?)

One of my aunts was in Bergen-Belsen; the others, they all were hiding, but they all survived the war.

(So one actually was killed?)

No, not killed. She survived Bergen-Belsen.

(What about on your mom’s side?)

My mother’s an only child.

My father, as I said, was one of six. The first two were girls. The second born, her name was Juliette, was the mother of Jean-Claude and Roberto Kahn.

(So they’re cousins, too?)

Yes they’re cousins, too. My father actually invited Roberto first to come to live and work with him in El Salvador, he came back with us from Strasbourg in 1953 and started working in the firm. Many years later, Roberto brought his brother, Jean-Claude, who also became part of the business, they were employed by my father and his partner at Weill Salomon y Cia, Enrique Weill.

(You were born in 1942. What’s your first language?)

I always think that my first language is French, though we lived in a Spanish speaking country, but spoke French at home. My mother insisted on speaking French to us, she still does. At the beginning we spoke French with my father as well, and eventually, we addressed him, primarily in Spanish. But the language of the house was French. French is actually my worst language, and Spanish is second-best. But still, when I think about languages, I think of French is my first language even though it is the language I know least well. The older I get, the more absent-minded I get, if I get stuck on a word it comes out in French…this annoys the hell out of some people s who think I’m putting it on just being snooty. But that’s the way it comes out.

(You studied in English?)

Yes, I learned English early, went to the American school in 1946. I was very proud to have been there at the very start of the American school in 1946. The school was located on a dirt road right off the Avenida Roosevelt, (Who are your friends? Who are you associating with? Just kids in school? Are you going to things at the synagogue already?)

Oh, yes, the thing at the synagogue was a constant. My father was very active at the synagogue throughout. . As you may know, he was president of the Jewish community for a very long time. Whether they were religious or not, people went to synagogue… to support each other and to have minyan. I don’t think we went as a family every Friday night.

I think the awareness of what had to be done for the survival of the community was cemented at that time, or even before. These men and women did a lot to cement a community that should always be inclusive, even though there may have been personal differences, it was important to show a unified front, especially to the outside world. It was also important to have rabbis that could represent us well, that could have a high level interchange with the non-Jewish society of which we were a small part.

It so happens that my really good friends in the end, through no conscious decision on my part, were part of the Jewish community. At the time we first went to the synagogue, I can’t even remember where it was, in any case, it was before the synagogue near the Colegio de la Asuncion (with the Aloha restaurant on the corner.)

(Downtown? Or at someone’s house at that point?)

Maybe somebody’s house, yes. You’ll have to ask an older person. But our lives really rotated around the house and in the Círculo Deportivo. Any many of the our friends who also went to the Circulo Deportivo were the same people we saw at synagogue. You know, the Circulo Deportivo was established by people, Jews and other foreigners, who felt they needed a new home, or at least didn’t feel comfortable in the Club Internacional and the Salvador Tennis Club at the Campo de Marte. I understand several of these men, including my father, Quique Guttfreund, even don Chico de Sola, went to dig to start the first pool.

My mother’s friends were the mothers of other people who had children the age of her children, for example, Alice Liebes. These were kids with whom we were friendly as a family. Then there was the Schoenings, and their cousins the Falkensteins. Arturo Falkenstein who died at 16 was a close friend and classmate. Dicky Schoening and my sister had were born ten days apart. In fact, there was a story where Dicky was supposed to be born around the 25th of May and my sister was supposed around the 10th of June, she was early and he was late so we joked that they have beem confused at the hospital— (laughs). Dicky, Bobby, and Lore. Then there were the Bicards, who were sometimes at the synagogue. Leopoldo was my age, and then there were his older brothers, Mario and René. Then there was somebody called Pupps Widawer, who was the adopted son of Alfredo Widawer and la Tia Paulita. Yolanda Rosenberg de Cohen was my age, her brothers Ricardo and Frankie were closer to Roby’s. There was Olguita Goldschmidt, her mother was Rosita Oppenheimer, later de Benitez, and her cousin Torta (Elizabeth) Rosenthal. And of course the Baum sisters…Ruth, Raquel, (and later, Susie and Marta Doris) let’s not forget your mother (Ruth Reich) who was my closest friend off and on, mostly on.

I was trying to think of all these stories about the Jewish community of El Salvador, and I wondered—how is Jessica ever going to find out about the early, early people ? Because you’re already coming into the history several generations past its beginnings. I, of course, wasn’t there either. And while I was thinking about how you would write this history, I asked myself how will you would ever get to the stories of people who were here during the early years? I thought of how I would go about researching this topic and came up with the possibility of dividing divide this span of time into several periods, for, example: There’s 1860—maybe you could even identify more than an additional etapa in this period starting in the 1860’s and ending in the mid 1920’s. The 1860’s and forward would be characterized by people their fortunes in coffee.. Ernesto Liebes’s father, León Liebes, and several others. To this period would belong Benjamin Bloom who must have been an interesting figure. People who were here during the First War. The following period would group those who arrived as of 1925 and extend to the period preceding the second world war. People like my father (1928) Enrique Weill 1927, Jaime Gabay, Quique Guttfreund, Miguel Weil (Chepepolo’s father), your grandfather Ernesto Reich, Carlitos Bernhardt, the Joseph brothers, etc. Among them there were a lot of young men who came from similar areas, either from France or Germany.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.