Helene Salomon: Part III

Helene remembers those who were part of the Community but generations later became Catholics through marriage or conversion.
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There were other people who at that time were not necessarily active in the Jewish community, but who were known to be of Jewish descent, or part Jewish, some of the who started to disappear, or rather merge into the Christian society.

(Can you think of any of those names?)

You were thinking of the name of people who were involved in—)

I was thinking of people such as the De Sola girls, Anita, Inez, who was my classmate, and Sylvia. Their father was Ernesto De Sola, the architect. He was Jewish. His wife was Alicia Oppenheimer, who was also of Jewish descent. But they were moving in a non-Jewish world. This always left me a bit confused, who was Jewish, who was not, did it matter, etc., etc. The De Solas were all Jewish, and the Sola men of the older generation never pretended not to be Jewish, but they didn’t go to services that I remember.

(So those girls didn’t—?)

They didn’t go to synagogue, they may even have been baptized. But we were friendly because we all went to school together, or to the clubs, the Circulo, and then the Campestre, which was called “el country club” at that time. The new generations became Catholic. Don Chico De Sola, the father of Chaco, married a Christian woman. I don’t remember who was baptized in that family, but I always thought of Chaco as Jewish at the time he was growing up, though not today. Then there was Orlando, Marion Liebes’ first husband. Was he Jewish? I guess he was at the time he married Marion. All very confusing. The patriarch don Herbert usually was present at important synagogue events, I am thinking of the time Golda Meir visited Salvador in the late 50’s, he was there. I remember him being at the table of honor with my parents and with Alice and Ernst Liebes, Inge and Carlos, el rabino Granat, and others.

There was another family, the Henriquez, both parents Mario C. Henriquez and his wife Daisy were Jewish. The two boys, men older than I…one was really handsome… I think they were originally from Curacao or Aruba. I remember the story when he married a beautiful Christian woman, and the priest, I understand asked him to stand to one side of the altar, proceding to marry her only. Those are things that impressed me growing up..

(Henriquez with an H?)

Yes, M. C. Henriquez, was a successful business firm. The “C”, I understand, stood for “Cohen”.


Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.