Helene Salomon: We Girls Were Evacuated...

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