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.