A Goodbye/Una despedida

Dear Readers,
I physically left El Salvador yesterday and it was one of the hardest goodbyes I've had to make yet. Of course the work continues yet now I will be submitting these stories and memories from my first home, the United States.

Below, I am attaching my "Carta de despedida," that was published in this week's community newsletter based in San Salvador. Although it is limited to those who read Spanish, all will undoubtedly be able to gather the power of my experience through these simple words of gratitude. I can only reiterate in this entry the immense emotion and appreciation I feel towards the community which opened its doors to me for almost a year; they made this project what it is.

The letter is introduced by Rabbi Pablo Berman, a key spiritual and academic supporter throughout my Fulbright experience.

Wishing you the best of weekends. ...until Monday.
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A MANERA DE EDITORIAL

“Ish et shmo tijtob al mateu”

“Y escribirás el nombre de cada uno sobre sus varas”

Di’s le ordena a Moshe que tome doce varas, y en cada una de las varas escriba el nombre de cada uno de los príncipes de cada una de las doce tribus. Este pedido de Di’s esta relacionado con la rebelión de Koraj, una lucha de poderes que finalmente no termina bien. Pero en esta editorial quiero que tomemos este pasuk (versículo) y lo pensemos diferente. “Y escribirás el nombre” escribir nuestro nombres tiene que ver con el recuerdo, con dejar un legado de quienes hemos sido. Hay muchas maneras de escribir nuestros nombres, cada uno elige de que manera habrá de hacerlo y en cierta medida la vida nos va ayudando en este camino de “escribir nuestros nombres”.

Jessica Alpert nos acompaño diez meses en nuestra Kehila, escribiendo los nombres y las historias de muchos miembros de nuestra Comunidad. Historias de vida, identidades y relatos que son parte de cada uno de nosotros. Jessica se transformo en una parte de la Kehila, y la vamos a extrañar ahora que ha regresado a los Estados Unidos. De todas maneras los relatos continuaran siendo parte del “Yo También Cuento” el espacio de Jessica en El Kehilaton que seguirá relatando la historia de quienes hicieron y hacen la hermosa Comunidad Judía de El Salvador. Lo que sigue son las palabras de Jessica, y su “Carta de Despedida”.



Querida Comunidad Israelita,

Esta semana es diferente que las demás. Esta semana me despido de este rincón mágico para regresar a los Estados Unidos y una vida completamente diferente. He tenido una experiencia inolvidable en El Salvador y les agradezco por incluirme en esta familia, una familia comunitaria y espiritual, una familia única.

En estos últimos diez meses, he tenido el agrado de sentarme y entrevistar a 76 miembros de la comunidad. Desde Haifa a la Colonia Maquilishuat ustedes me han contado sus íntimos recuerdos, re-viviendo una vida en pleno proceso y compartiendo lo malo y lo bueno, lo difícil y lo maravilloso.

Este proceso no termina con la conclusión de mi beca; el trabajo apenas esta comenzando. Tengo tres ideas que estoy desarrollando incluyendo:

1. La creación de una página Web contando una historia breve de la Comunidad.

2. Editando los testimonios de audio y sus transcripciones para un “archivo
electrónico,” dando acceso virtual a estudiantes, historiadores, y miembros de
comunidades judías. Este archivo será protegido y hospedado por un centro
cultural judío.

3. Crear un documental para la radio publica en los Estados Unidos.

También continuaré escribiendo en EL KEHILATON semanalmente y en www.storylistener.blogspot.com cinco veces a la semana, cada vez incluyendo más pedazos de la historia comunitaria y también agregando noticias culturales no solamente dentro de El Salvador, pero también las del mundo entero.

De nuevo, les doy mis gracias por un año de amistad, compasión, conversación e historia. Sus testimonios me han enseñado que cada vida contiene trozos de inocencia, curiosidad, dolor, conflicto, sabiduría, y esperanza. Para esta lección y las lecciones que forman parte de su contribución, les agradezco no solamente de mi parte, pero también como representante de mi generación. Gracias por ayudarme con esta labor de preservar las memorias y las historias de La Comunidad Israelita de El Salvador.

Siempre con Ustedes,

Jessica Alpert-Reich

With a European tinge....

Short but sweet, this final post reveals the complex identities experienced by Andree.
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My mother did not adapt to the Salvadoran life. She retained her French habits.

(Was that challenging for you? Or did it not affect your perspective?)

Oh, yes, it did affect my perspective in the sense that, well, she was critical. She was quite critical of customs that were different.

(This is a hard question, and a lot of people—if you had to pick some adjectives to describe yourself in terms of ethnicity, identity, religion, what adjectives would you use and in what order? For example, for me, I think I would say I’m American, number one, and then I’m Jewish, and then—I’ve actually never done this before. I don’t know what I would say. Maybe I have some Latin American cultural background. That’s what I would say.)

I was going to say, well, it’s not an adjective, but I’m a woman. (laughs) Jewish. Salvadoran. With a European tinge-- French.

(Do you feel American?)

(pause) It’s funny. When I’m here, not really. I’m not really from anywhere. I’m really a hybrid. I’m really an aguacatera, a mongrel. (chuckles) English is my best language, the one I’ve worked and studied most. But I don’t feel—first of all, “American” is a term that I don't use. I think we should say North American,or person from the United States. The adjective “American,” I think, is for all of Latin America also. I don’t consider myself from the United States. However, when I’m in a Latin American environment, I realize that I’m not there either. I guess I’m a little bit of it all.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

The lakes...the volcanos....

In this installment, Andree remembers her Jewish life both in El Salvador and then in the United States.
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(Did you decide to join a synagogue here?)

No, we would go to high holiday services. We didn’t decide to join a synagogue at that time. It’s strange. I still felt that a Bat Mitzvah was not necessary for the girls, and they didn’t seem to feel strongly about it either. So they had a Jewish education and learned to read Hebrew. A rabbi came to our house and instructed them along with two other children. Later on, Lorena and Beatriz said,“Why didn’t we have Bat Mitzvahs?” But you know, at that time I didn’t think it was important, and they didn’t seem to indicate that wish either, although their friends were becoming Bat Mitzvah. But then for the boys, I mean, it’s not a sexist thing—although it is—but there was no question that they were going to become Bar Mitzvah. That had been part of the culture in which I grew up.

(Was Juan Alberto able to be here for that?)

Yes, yes. We had joined a Reform Temple a few years before their Bar Mitzvah. Eduardo and Enrique read their Torah and Haftorah portions. They studied the meaning of these and looked at how these readings related to their lives at that point. Juan Alberto was also given participation in the ceremony.

(How did you feel living here? Was that a huge adjustment for you?)

It was a tremendous adjustment, because in El Salvador I had very close friends. Here it was a totally different way of life. I made some very good friends, especially a friend that still lives across the street and has a child the same age as Beatriz. But it was just so different, because in El Salvador, we used to visit each other very frequently and spontaneously. Just the distance in itself made this harder here. The other thing is, Juan Alberto’s connections were very much with the Paraguayans, and at that point I didn’t feel that comfortable with them.

(Despite the Latin connection? That group didn’t help you feel closer to Salvador?)

I felt it was very different, they were very different, and I was an outsider. I was an outsider as a Salvadoran, as a Jew—

(Did you feel any anti-Semitism?)

No, but I have felt very much the difference. You know, one instance, for example, my brother-in-law and his wife are musicians, internationally known musicians. They have records and have traveled all over the world.

(What kind of music do they play?)

Paraguayan folk and international, but mostly Paraguayan. We were at a restaurant in New York when they were playing, and my sister-in-law says, in front of the whole restaurant, “Now we’re going to play music for my dear sister-in-law: Havah Nagila—” (laughs) You know? (laughs) I mean, my Jewishness is at the top of their thinking.

(That’s what made you different?)

yes, yes. And in Paraguay, there were some—I was at a dinner party where there were some “entertainers,” saying some not-very-nice-to-Jewish-people jokes.

(Did they know that you were Jewish?)

I don’t think so. And I wondered, should I make a big issue about this, or should I just, you know, not laugh? (laughs) And I didn’t think it was appropriate at that time for me to make a big fuss. I think many years later, with more maturity I probably would have made an issue of this. I have taken on a role of making people aware of anti-Semitic (and other) biases.

(Did you see your parents when you were living here? Did you see them often or not so much?)

When we came here we went every winter holiday to El Salvador. The first few years we spent the whole summer there.

(Before the war?)

Oh, yes. I just couldn’t wait for the kids to be out of school and go for the summer. Then Juan Alberto would come for a while. When my parents traveled, they would stop by on their way.

(After the upheaval in Paraguay, did it ever occur to you to go to Salvador at that point? To go to Paraguay? You just thought you would stay here?)

No. We ended up separating. So at that time I wasn’t going anywhere else.

(Did you feel like that was home?)

(pause) I don’t know where I feel from. I feel Salvadoran.

(How often do you go back?)

Not often. Not often. El Salvador is in my heart. (laughs)

(And when you’re there, what do you feel?)

I just love it. I love the people, they're so friendly and warm. I love the land—I see those volcanoes, those lakes, it just really makes me feel great.

(What do you feel about the Jewish community there? Is that a big part of Salvador for you? Is that peripheral?)

It is a big—it was a big part. I’ve been out of it for more than thirty years, you know? It’s more than thirty years that I’m here, so— (sighs) (pause) When I go, I go to services and I love seeing people there. But it’s not my place any more because I’ve just been out for so long. While there are many people that I know, there are also many I don’t know.

(When people ask you, “Where are you from?”—?)

El Salvador.

(Do they often seem surprised?)

Depends. Oh, yes, mostly they do, yes. Salvadorans, for example, the people who look mestizos would say, “But you don’t look Salvadoran. You can’t be.” Americans, too. Americans also have the stereotype of the mestizo looking Salvadoran.

(How do you react to that? Do you go into explaining how—?)

With people that look mestizos, I don't bother. I'll say, “Oh, I don’t? Oh.” (laughs) With other people, or with Americans, I say, “My parents were not Salvadoran. My parents were French. I’m first-generation.”

(Do you feel that the Salvadorans consider you Salvadoran, your friends, people that you grew up with, María Elena Rodríguez, those people?)

(laughs)

(The sort of typical Salvadorans, do you think they think of you as Salvadoran?)

That’s interesting. When I was—in the early years of our marriage, we had some very, very good Salvadoran friends, and I sometimes said, “I feel that I don’t belong.” He said, “Why?” I said, “I just don’t feel that you consider me Salvadoran. I feel that my Jewishness makes me different.” “But it doesn’t, he would reply.” And this was a very good Salvadoran friend. But I felt that it did make a difference. I don’t know what it is, but this group, when we had gatherings they would sometimes use inappropriate language. Someone would invariably say, “Oh, excuse me, Andrée." I wondered why they would excuse themselves to me, when there were many other people present. So you know—how are you not going to feel different that way? I don’t know, was I younger, better bred? (laughs) I don’t know what. I didn’t use bad language. But it pointed out my difference.

(Something was there.)

Yes.

(You said something a ways back about how you ate very European food at home and your mother still doesn’t recognize some of the native dishes. Where did you learn about these native dishes?)

When I came back to El Salvador and when I lived more among Salvadorans.

(So it took you—you had to get married and have your own life before you were living…….)

Before I started living…..really a Salvadoran life.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Languages and Diplomacy: A Sensitive Balance

In the next excerpt, Andree remembers her time as a newlywed in El Salvador. Later, she explains her family's momentous move to the United States.....and why they stayed for longer than expected.
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(Tell me about the man that you met and eventually married.)

I met Juan Alberto Llanes. We met the summer that I came back. We started going out. I was not quite eighteen.

(And he was how old?)

He was twenty-five.

(And did your parents know him?)

Actually, my father introduced us. I don’t think he had the intention of the relationship going where it did. (laughs) My parents were very much opposed to it because I was so young. They would have hoped for me to marry a Jewish man, and later. We were married within six months of knowing each other.

(In El Salvador?)

In Salvador.

(Where did you-all live? Did you live near—you had your own home, but did you live near your family?)

No, when we got married Juan Alberto had been renting an apartment from a person who rented the second floor of her house.

(Like a pensión?)

Like a pensión. When we got married, we had this small apartment, which was very nice. Meals were provided for us. The owner was very friendly and affectionate. We kept contact with her for a long time.

(Was Juan Alberto interested in you being Jewish?)

Oh, yes. He valued my Judaism very much and respected it. Actually, he supported very much the Jewish education of our children. He never converted, but he—

(But he was supportive?)

He was very supportive.

(When did you have your first child?)

Lorena was born in ’62, four years later.

(And then you had—?)

Beatriz in ’65 and Eduardo and Enrique in ’71.

(Twins.)

Twins.

(By ’71 you have four children.)

Yes.

(How is life at this point in Salvador?)

Well, when we got married, (pause) regarding the Jewish community, people were friendly and I didn’t feel that, “Oh, you went and married outside of your faith,” you know? I didn’t feel that much. People took us in. And Juan Alberto was a very friendly, outgoing, gregarious man.

(And so did you take your kids to the youth—were there youth programs at that point?)

Oh, yes, yes. The children—well, Lorena and Beatriz, because we came to live in the States—when they were nine and six. So Lorena, especially, participated a lot in the youth groups, just like everybody else. We didn’t feel that they were looked upon as less-than. Eduardo and Enrique were only 1 year old when we came here.

(With Juan Alberto you spoke Spanish all the time?)

Mm-hmm.

(Did you decide, “Oh, I want to speak a certain language——to my children”?)

With Lorena I spoke in French, and she went to the French nursery school. And I spoke in French to Beatriz also. But when Lorena started going to the American school, she didn’t want to speak French any more. She wanted to speak English. So Beatriz did not really pick up French that well, until later on. So we spoke Spanish at home. Then Eduardo and Enrique were born, and I thought, “These children are going to be trilingual,” and I spoke in French to them. They were a year and four months when we came here, and they spoke their twin language of French and Spanish, which nobody outside of the family understood. So I dropped French. I thought these kids have to speak something that the world outside of our home understands. I went on with Spanish.

(Why did you move here, of all places?)

Juan Alberto was a diplomat. He was a diplomat for Paraguay. That’s how we met in El Salvador. He was transferred to Washington.


(He was transferred to the embassy here?)

He was— He had been assigned to the first legation (which ranks below an embassy) in El Salvador. Then in '72 he was promoted and transferred to the Embassy here in Washington.

(How long did you expect to be here?)

Wishful thinking. I thought that we would go back to El Salvador. I thought that Juan Alberto would do a few years here and we’d go back to El Salvador. (chuckles)

(And what happened?)

I thought that Juan Alberto would go into the family business at some point. And what happened was that he did try some time while we were in El Salvador, working afternoons at the business, but he wasn’t cut out for that. That was not his field. So we stayed here.

(And he worked as a diplomat? And he was able to stay here—?)

He was here for about seven or eight years in that position, got promoted also to Ministro Consejero, and then he was given the position of Ambassador of Paraguay to El Salvador. That was in the late ‘70s. Bad time, bad time to go back to live in El Salvador because of the political situation. I stayed in Washington with the children.

(So he went by himself?)

He went by himself. yes. He stayed there for about seven years.

(And he came back and forth?)

Yes, he would come at times, like, every two or three months he would come for about three weeks or so. And then (pause) he was promoted back to Washington as Ambassador to set up a new office for Paraguay to the OAS (Organization of American States.)

(For Paraguay? That’s a huge job.)

Right. So he came back here.

(What year was that? In the ‘80s?)

The ‘90s. Because in the late ‘70s, at the height of the war is when he went to El Salvador for another seven years, more or less, and then he was sent back here. Then his government went through an upheaval and Juan Alberto's job ended.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Andree Salomon: An Introduction

Andree Salomon de Llanes is the daughter of Yvonne and Georges Salomon and the sister of Helene and Roberto Salomon. Andree married Juan Alberto Llanes, an Paraguayan diplomat in El Salvador and together they had four children. The family later moved to the Washington, DC metropolitan area where Andree still lives today.
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(What is your first memory from childhood? It’s a very complex question. If you think of your childhood, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?)

I have a lot of memories from photographs, so I’m not sure what’s the memory, what’s the vision of a photograph. (chuckles)

(That’s fine.)

I see a picture of myself as a baby giving a kiss to a stuffed animal. I think it’s purely a picture. I have a picture of Hélène and me. She had hair down to her waist. We were about five and three. I have a picture of Roby when he was born and Hélène and me bending down to look at him. Something about our first house on the Avenida Roosevelt.

(What was your home like in the early parts of your childhood? Were there a lot of people running around all the time? Was it a social life, or was it more of a calm home? I’m trying to get a picture of your home in words.)

Well, one thing that comes to mind is, my father wanted lunch at a very rigid time, so lunch had to be ready on the dot at 12:20. In that sense it was not Salvadoran, because Salvadoran people were not punctual. We ate food that was mostly European, so much that my mother still doesn’t know some of the Salvadoran foods. And there was a lot of bustle with three children within five years.

(What did you speak at home?)

With my mother I spoke French, with my father a mixture. He spoke a lot in Spanish to us. And when I went to the Escuela Americana with my brother and sister, we spoke in English.

(So by a young age you were already speaking three languages?)

Three languages, right. When I was seven, at the age of seven I was speaking (or understanding three languages.)

(Did you have a favorite language? Did you feel more comfortable in one language or another?)

Certainly not in French. I mean, French was just what I spoke with my mother for everyday matters. But I did not have a deeper knowledge until I studied it in high school and college.

(When you were young, were you aware that you were Jewish, was that discussed in the home? “Oh, we’re Jewish, so we go to synagogue.” Was it a big part of—?)

Oh, yes, it was a big part, my being Jewish. I don’t think that we went to the synagogue that often, but certainly food was very important for my parents. Friday night there was always a nice clean tablecloth and food that was more special or fancy. My father always went to synagogue, so we knew that. But we didn’t go that often. We always went for holidays.

(In school, did you ever feel left out because you were Jewish?)

Oh, yes, oh, yes.

(How so?)

Just very different. And my name, also. I remember, Andrée Salomon, I wished I was Ana María Hernández or something. (laughs) María Elena. Something. Nothing to do with María, but, you know, just a more common name. I was very, very aware of being Jewish and different. For instance, when we went to High Holy Days services, I was really embarrassed to be out of school. If the school bus passed, I wanted to just hide and not be seen "playing hooky".. (chuckles)

(Is it because you didn’t want people to know or you just—?)

No, I think people knew. I don’t think it was that. I just thought it was really bad to be out of school. (laughs)

(Did your classmates ever ask you questions about being Jewish or make comments?)

I don’t remember much of that. I had a classmate—Miriam Lewinsky was in class with me. Let’s see, Dicky Schoening was I think a year ahead, maybe.

(So there were a few of you?)

A very few. We were very, very few Jewish kids. Yolanda Rosenberg was a year or two behind me, and so was Ruth Baum and your mother. There were few of us. But I did go to first communions and later on to more Catholic weddings and christenings than Jewish life-cycle events.

(As time went on, did you feel more comfortable with being different, or was it always a challenge as you got older?)

We’re talking about ten, twelve years. (pause) I’m not sure.

(What about even older, adolescence?)

Well, I went away when I was about fifteen. At that point I was in the States, it was no longer so special to be Jewish, so different to be Jewish.

(And that was a good feeling?)

yes, yes.

(How did you like being outside of Salvador? Did you miss home? Did you want to go back?)

I was very, very homesick, very homesick to go back, so much that I rushed through high school and I chose not to go to college. I wanted to come back to El Salvador. I missed my family very much.

(In the Jewish community, did you have a lot of friends? Did you feel like it was a very close-knit group?)

Yes, yes, we were all very close, like I said, with Miriam Lewinsky, Yolanda Rosenberg, Dicky Schoening, Arturo Falkenstein, Ruth Reich, Ruth Baum, the Lewinskys. We also saw Raquel and Roberto Liebes.

(Would you say it was a very unique childhood, the things that you would do together? I’m comparing it to maybe a childhood in Europe or the States.)

I think we were very privileged. We had the Deportivo (Círculo Deportivo club.) For instance, I was a swimmer. After school my mother would often leave us at the club and we would swim. Just the privileges that we had, signed "vales"for the food that you got (on credit ). The piñatas that we had, the parties, the gifts, traveling. We were very privileged.

(And you knew that when you were growing up, or no?)

I did. Because I had a lot of awareness of the poverty around me. From a very young age I was struck—I remember one of the things that really just still moves me very much, is people’s shoes, people’s worn, worn shoes, or lack of, that really—and a certain style that the poorer children used that really made very clear to me the differences in economic status. Such as the food also. I just could not imagine that somebody could grow up and grow bones and become an adult on the little food that they had. I was very much aware, very much aware of people living in shacks, even very close to our wonderful home.

(Did that bother you?)

Oh, yes…..Oh yes.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Yvonne Salomon: A Despedida.

In this final excerpt, Yvonne Salomon remembers the beginning and end of her years in Salvador.
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(Let’s go back a little bit, and tell me about the Jewish community when you arrived. Were they welcoming to you?)

Oh, you mean, in San Salvador

(When you arrived for the first time?)

Yes. They made a very nice reception, congratulating us, the whole community. There was a dinner dance at the Club Deportivo. That was very nice, yes. We made the same thing for everybody who arrived afterwards.

(And did you find you had a lot in common with the other women?)

There were almost no women my age. There were no women my age. None of all these young men who were there were married.

(So you were one of the first women who arrived?)

In this generation, yes. I knew Lucie Frenkel, Evelyn’s mother, and the boss’s wife, of course. I met several of Evelyn’s school friends, and now the daughter of one of them lives here and is friends with Andrée. (laughs)

Another one with whom I was friends is Alice Liebes. She was so different from your grandmother, completely a different kind, but the three of us, we spoke German. Your grandmother spoke French, but Alice didn’t, so I learned German over there. (laughs)

(Amazing. So you spoke German with certain people and you spoke French with your husband?)

Yes, I always spoke French at home.

(And what about with your children?)

I always spoke French to them. The three of them speak it fluently. They have maybe a little accent, but they speak it fluently, all three of them.

(And when did you learn Spanish?)

In San Salvador. Trial by fire…. (laughs)

(So you learned Spanish as you went along?)

Yes. I had some Spanish lessons in Sarreguemines before I left. I asked wherever I could: is there somebody who would teach me Spanish? And finally they recommended me a young man, and he came and gave me a few lessons, and I found out that he didn’t know Spanish either. He had to use a dictionary all the time. Whatever he told me was wrong.

(So you lived in Salvador and you raised your children in Salvador?)

Yes.

(How was that, raising your children in Salvador?)

Well, Andrée always spoke French. She answered me in French, not always, but most of the time. And she went first to the French kindergarten, when she was five, I believe. This is maybe why she’s fluent now. Hélène and Roby never answered. I spoke always French with them, but they always answered in Spanish.

(And they went to the American school, all of them?)

Yes. Afterwards, when the American school started, Andrée started one year, I believe at the same school Evelyn was. I believe she was there for one year. I have to ask her. I don’t remember. It was nothing much. But then, when the American school started, Andrée went directly to first grade. Hélène went to kindergarten.

(And did you enjoy your life?)

(pause) Whenever I was homesick, I tried to convince myself that I’m lucky to be out, away from all that. Well, it was difficult in the beginning, very difficult. The habits, the food, the fashion, what is done, what is not done, speaking to people—it was difficult, very difficult.

(Did it ever get easier?)

Oh, yes, yes, afterwards, yes. When I started being more fluent in Spanish, yes. I forced myself to read Spanish, a little bit, not much. I was often homesick.

(Did you think you would always live in El Salvador?)

Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think so far. Afterwards—sometimes when we were in France, later, when the children were all away at school, we went more often to France, Georges and I, and we rented an apartment on the Riviera and we stayed there. That was very, very nice. But, when you are not in your home, I—for example, I like being for vacation somewhere else, but then I’m looking forward to go home.

(So Salvador was your home?)

Yes. Yes. At that time.

(Did you ever become a Salvadoran citizen?)

No. No.

(You were always a French citizen?)

Yes. French. I’m not changing.

(So even after the war, how did you feel about France? You felt—?)

Liberated.

(You felt proud to be French?)

And how! And how! Georges became Salvadoran. I didn’t.

(So you felt like you had France still, you hadn’t lost your country, that France was still your country?)

Yes, absolutely, yes. Georges, I’m sure he had planned to remain in Salvador, traveling, because he loved travel. We traveled very often. But then there was a time when suddenly there were menacing letters sent out to people. Many other people had left, and then Georges got one, too. And he said, “Out. Now we go.” We went to Miami. That was in ’78 we left, ’76? No, no, no. Yes, I believe it was ’76 or ’78. I don’t remember exactly. We went to France in the spring and rented an apartment there. Then we went back.
We went to the Riviera, in Beaulieu. We liked the place there. It was very quiet and nice.

(Did you want to come back to Salvador, or you couldn’t?)

Oh, yes, we could, we could. Georges——was Salvadoran.

(But were you afraid to go back?)

To Salvador? Oh, no, no, we went back to Miami. We didn’t come back to Salvador. Georges went back to Salvador—I went back first maybe a few months after we were there, because Georges said, “It’s so ridiculous. We have all the furniture there and nobody takes advantage of it. Let’s bring it over.” Hélène and Roby were still there. They didn’t want to leave. We had asked them to leave, but they didn’t. Then I went down to Salvador. One Sunday we were having lunch at Roby’s theater in Salvador. He had arranged a theater in an old house. Suddenly there was somebody at the door, a military man, together with somebody from the Salvador Guards, saying, “We want to visit the house. You’re hiding pistoleros.” I said, “There is no pistolero in this house, but if you want to come in, come in.” So they came in. There were two trucks in front of the house, and about fifteen soldiers. “Everybody against the wall.” Roby had invited a group, we were about fourteen, fifteen people having lunch there. They took us out, two at a time always, and put us against the wall with the hands out. Boris Gabay was next to me, and he said, “Don’t look in front of your left leg.” Of course I looked. It was a bullet.

Roby told them, “I’m going to let you visit every corner of this house. I’ll open it. You enter. You look around. This lady’s going to lock it again.” Roby didn’t want anybody to be hiding there. Then finally they told us, “OK, you can go,” after standing two hours with our hands against the wall.

I called Georges when they arrived. His phone did not answer. Then I called Henri Weill, his partner. He thought I was joking. “Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, sure, there are soldiers there.”

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Camouflage

Now married, Yvonne Salomon remembers her first home in El Salvador...and the war back home that changed her family forever.
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(Once you were married, where did you live?)

In San Salvador. First we rented a furnished—Georges had rented a furnished house at the place of an elderly lady, Mrs. Drews. She was very, very nice. It was a very old place, with a palm tree in the middle of the patio, and as soon as the sun went down, lots of animals came out of the bushes. It was not very nice. There were no windows.

(You were uncomfortable in that setting?)

I was very disturbed sharing space with so many animals. Then we found a house which was just recently built, a small house and we moved there. There were no apartments in San Salvador at that time.

(Were you in touch with your parents during this time?)

We were in touch with them just for two months. When the big rush started, on the 10th of May, the invasion started, in 1940. Then my parents, like everybody did, went as far down south in France as they could. They landed—they stopped when there was no more gas. They rented one room in a small village, Cousex, and the furniture was the back seat of the car, and the two front seats. The people from Strasbourg, my cousin’s family, were two kilometers away. That was good. It was very near Limoges. All the people in Strasbourg were directed to Limoges. My parents and my cousin’s family could get together.

My mother went to see the priest of the village. She told him that they are Jewish. When there is a—what do you call it? When suddenly the soldiers arrive to check, how do you call that?

(The Gestapo?)

No, the French troop from Vichy who had taken over, under German orders.
My mother asked if there was a raid, would the priest permit her and her husband to move in. Would he pretend that her husband was the gardener and she the cook. She talked a good while with him, and he agreed, and they did it for the whole war.

(And he knew they were Jewish?)

Yes. My mother told him. “First of all, we are Jewish.”

(And he treated them well?)

Very well.

It was one kilometer away from Limoges. So sometimes during the spring and summer they walked all the way to meet acquaintances from Strasbourg who were on the other side. And one day they went there. There was a religious Catholic procession. And my mother looks, and she sees a friend of mine called Yvonne Moise, no less. She searches around and she sees Yvonne looking to a certain side. My mother looked to that side and saw a lady who was crying. It was my friend's mother. Yvonne had made believe that she’s Catholic, she went into Catholic school and she was in the procession.

Well, they made it through the war.

(Did her entire family survive?)

No, no, no. I don’t have any close family beside my father and my mother. My cousins were the nearest ones. Bertrand and Alice were brother and sister of my two cousins from San Salvador. They were with their mother. Bertrand was for a time a prisoner of war, at the beginning. But as he spoke fluently German and French, he was hired by some official at a place in a town in Germany where he was, and that man needed a translator. So Bertrand was well off. One day the man didn’t need him any more, so he said to Bertrand, “I don’t need you any more.” Bertrand said, “What are you going to do?” “Do you want to go home?” He said, “Yes!” “OK. I’ll send you home.” He sent him home. Just like that. Bertrand must be one of the few ones who has been sent back. So he went near Limoges, where his mother and sister were. The sister's husband, who was not Jewish, was still prisoner, as long as the war lasted. Then afterwards, Bertrand joined a group of—

(Resistance?)

Resistance. He stayed in the mountains with them for a time.

(But you don’t hear any of this until after the war?)

Absolutely not. We heard—I told you there was one strictly kosher family in Sarreguemines. They went to Switzerland when the war started. They had relatives already in Switzerland. They could stay with their relatives. My mother had devised a way to communicate with us. You had no right to send closed envelopes, letters. Everything had to be open. So she wrote the address on a postcard. So my mother and my aunt sent each other postcards, writing very near the stamp. They would say things like, “We are all right, the weather is good. We have whatever we need.” Then they cut out the stamps and gave them to the man going to Switzerland, who sent them to us to El Salvador. This way we could see some of their handwriting and know that they were alive at that date. People used to carry stamps to collect.

(Camouflage.)

Yes. Camouflage, yes. And they sent it to us and my cousins in El Salvador. That was the only thing we heard from them for two years. Then suddenly, Uncle Sam woke up.

(What about your first child?)

My first child was born May 25, 1940, just during the invasion. In every business place, if there were several Britons or French or Italians, whoever was in the war, one has to stay. One could stay, the other one had to leave—could leave. And Georges and Enrique decided between themselves, and Enrique said to my husband, “You are married. You have a child. I go. You stay.” But before they had decided, we had all been ready. We were supposed to be sent to Martinique for training. None of the people who were in El Salvador, nobody had military service. They didn’t have to, being out of the country. And so we had already started selling one lamp and we were going to sell everything and leave for Martinique.

And then Pétain declared “peace.” Pétain stopped the war. He didn’t stop the war, he gave France away to the Germans. We decided to stay where we were, and then De Gaulle did his famous declaration, “La France a perdu une bataille, mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre.” You understand? (France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war.) So we all joined, naturally, De Gaulle’s party. Everybody but my husband’s boss. “Uhn-uhn, no, no, he has nothing to say. Pétain is the one who is—”

(So you joined. And what year is this?)

’40.

(So you’re still in 1940. And your first child is born, and her full name?)

’40. Andrée.

(And then 1942?)

1942, Hélène. Hélène Sophie. Andrée is Mathilde Andrée.

(And then in ’45?)

’45, Roby. Robert Samuel, after my father-in-law’s name.

(So at the end of the war, you have three children, and you’ve had no contact with your family?)

No, we only had contact with them after the war. France was liberated almost one year before the end of the war.. Immediately after the liberation, my mother wrote to the family who was living in their house in Sarreguemines. The Schmidts answered her in a very friendly way. My mother told them that she and her husband had both survived and were coming back, and they wanted to enter into their house. And—

(They owned the house?)

Yes. But at that time you couldn’t tell where things stood. It happened that Mrs. Schmidt had been a school mate of mine. She was terribly shy and withdrawn. She didn’t live in Sarreguemines, and she came on her bicycle, bicycled six or seven kilometers every day to come and go. Mr Schmidt was an employee of another butcher shop in Sarreguemines, and my father knew him. They wrote back, “Very happy to know you made it, and of course you will recuperate your house as soon as we will be able to leave it for you. Please come and we’ll receive you with open arms.” They were received with open arms. In spite of all restrictions, those people made them a meal. My mother was so touched. Then Mr. Schmidt asked my father, “Do you plan to work again?” My father said, “No. Now I’m too old. I haven’t done anything for four years. I wouldn’t start again.” He said, “Would you rent the entire house to me?” So my parents were happy to go back and live in their building. The Schmidt stayed there, and later they bought the house and my parents were overjoyed. They stayed in their apartment throughout their lives.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Getting Married

In today's excerpt Yvonne Salomon explains how she met her future husband while also remembering that first very long boat trip.
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(How did you meet your husband?)

My husband is from the same town, from Sarreguemines. He had left in 1928 to El Salvador, being employed by an acquaintance of his mother. The son of the shamas from the community (Enrique Weill) was already there, and he was one year younger. So my husband thought that if Enrique can make it, he will be able to do it, too. Because El Salvador was really an unknown place. Before plane traveling, for their vacations, they had to accumulate one month a year for four years in order to get four months. It took almost one month to travel one way, another month back. They had two months vacation every four years. My husband came back in ’34. I hadn’t known him before. He was a friend of my cousins. So I met him, but we met a little more seriously in ’38. Finally we decided to get married, and his mother was very sick with cancer. She as a matter of fact she passed away the day his telegram arrived that he had arrived safely in El Salvador.

He was not going to come back to France for the wedding. We were going to be married in El Salvador. So we wanted to make—my parents asked to make the engagement ceremony, and we made it. My cousin, who is a chazzan, made the prayers and the design on the floor. I don’t know if you know it. For the engagement, you make a big circle with two Hebrew letters with clay on the floor. The two people to be engaged stand on that. He says some prayers and declared that we were engaged to be married. We did that in George’s mother’s bedroom. She couldn’t get up any more. It was a very moving ceremony. Then we had a big luncheon at my parents’ place.

(What did they think of your husband-to-be? What did your parents think?)

They would have preferred maybe somebody —who was more in their crowd. But the political situation being what it was, they were almost happy to see me go. That was in ’38, the 30th of July, can you imagine? The war broke out on the 3rd of September, 1939.
Then Evelyn (Frenkel's) parents had decided that the situation was too bad to leave their daughter in Europe, and they wanted her to come back home. So their aunt got together with us, seeing when I was going to leave for El Salvador, and they booked the reservation for Evelyn on the same boat. Her aunt and my mother took us to the boat. I see them both, and the boat going slooowly away—that was something so nerve-wracking, you know? In the plane it’s fast. But in a boat, it’s so slow. It took about half an hour to be out of sight.

(And how old were you?)

Twenty-two. And Evelyn was seventeen. So we went on a nonstop trip for two weeks, three weeks, to Panama. In Panama we went aboard and did a lot of shopping, things like that. We stopped in Venezuela, one port, and there we were received by big shots from the city. Then going up, on the Pacific side—

(“Big shots from the city”? Who?)

Well, people from the town hall, things like that. I don’t remember who that was.

(It wasn’t people from the Jewish community?)

No, no, it had nothing to do with it. That was the Transat, the French Transatlantic Company, which goes from Le Havre through Panama and up all the way to Vancouver.
Then we stopped—we didn’t stop at other places until we reached the first one in Salvador, Cutuco. I was in the swimming pool, and Evelyn comes running! “Yvonne, Papa et Georges sont la— are here!” They had rented a car and they drove, it took them, I believe, twenty hours, something like that, from San Salvador to Cutuco. There were no roads in the republic at that time. They were in a small boat—because there were no ports in El Salvador. The boats could not come in all the way. People had to disembark into a small boat and be on the not-so-well-named “Pacific,” jumping from wave to wave.

So they arrived. OK. Now one more day on the sea and we arrived at La Libertad, the port of El Salvador. The boat people had put the staircase on the side of the boat, and there were two sailors taking one person at a time into a little boat, two people and three sailors at a time. Thank God we were no more than twenty aboard. They grabbed—when I arrived there, each sailor grabbed me on each side and they ran down! I never put my foot down. They carried me. They ran down, and then it was calculated: the big boat was going like that, and the small boat was going like that. And we had to be on the same level, to jump into the—I just closed my eyes. OK. We landed, and they ran up to get Evelyn. Same thing. Evelyn was screaming her head off. They put her in the same small boat. Then we bounced around, I don’t know, it must have taken about ten minutes. To me it was like ten hours.

(So they walked you off the—when you went down some stairs in another boat?)

In the little one, yes, they walked us—they carried us! Two big sailors. I didn’t put my foot down. I cannot run down a staircase, especially not when the boat goes like that all the time. It was the 14th of July, France’s national holiday. Waiting there at the port were my two cousins, Fred and André Joseph, who were also Evelyn’s cousins. They were there in their smoking, tuxedos. They were going to the Embassy to the reception for the 14th of July. It was very formal at that time. You went in the very best dresses. Men wore all their decorations and things like that. It was very formal. But that we didn’t know yet.

When we arrived at the port, we saw a wall, maybe four houses….that was the port. That’s all. Up there we saw something with string coming down. The boat got under that thing with the string. One of the sailors pulled it open, and the other one grabbed one of us, pushed us in. There were two little benches. The string, a bag made of cord. Evelyn sat on one, I sat on the other. They closed that thing, and they pulled us up by a machine, like a pail of sand.

(You were in a basket, it sounds like?)

That was the most awful thing! And that thing was—rr-rr-r-rrr! Going like mad! Evelyn was screaming. She didn't stopped screaming until we arrived in Salvador. And she said, “Never again I’ll set foot in that country!” OK. It was raining like mad. In July it rains very often. It was raining, pouring. We didn’t see in front of the car, driving up to San Salvador. It was the most horrendous thing!

Then my cousins had invited me to stay with them until the wedding day, because it was during the nine days between—I forget all the names--Tisha b’Av and—so we had to wait about two weeks. My parents said, “No, you’re not going to stay at your cousins’. There is no woman in the house.” Big deal. So Georges’ boss was there with his wife and their oldest daughter, and there was a baby. They invited me to stay with them.

(Who was that? What’s the last name?)

Simon. Luciano Simon. I stayed with them. Then there was no synagogue. My cousins and Georges had checked, looked around what they could find, and finally Mrs. Mugdan offered us to have the ceremony at her place.

(Paquita?)

Paquita Mugdan. I see you are aware of the people there. Your grandmother and she were good friends. So that was on the 14th of July, and on the 30th we are married. Then we left for Guatemala. Oh! Georges’ boss was a very headstrong man. He was against everything and everybody. Nobody was kosher enough. He didn’t know that much about kashrut or whatever, but he felt as if he was the Pope of the Jews. He said no, he is not going to that dinner, he doesn’t stay for the lunch at Mrs. Mugdan’s. “That’s not even kosher.” Mrs. Mugdan was strictly kosher. “We should make believe we are eating with them and then we should disappear and go home and have lunch.” His wife would have a special luncheon for us. I thought that was horrendous, after having prepared so much. And anyway, we had to do it.

(You had to do it?)

Yes, we had to do it. Georges said, “He’s the boss. I cannot say no.”

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

It was just a group of Jewish girls....

In this excerpt, Yvonne Salomon remembers her schooldays in France and Switzerland.

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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(And you were the only child?)

Yes. They had a son before me. My mother had pneumonia at the time of her—how do you say, when a child is born?

(Birth?)

The birth of her child, she had pneumonia. That was before penicillin, of course, and the doctor gave the customary question to the husband. “You have to decide: your child or your wife.” Of course he said, “My wife.” So the child was born but lived only three days, a boy. It would have been a butcher more. So that was in 1914, and I’m born three years later. And when I was four, my mother had another pregnancy, but she had to be operated and for that, in Sarreguemines the hospital was not good enough. They took her to Strasbourg. I remember having gone there with my father and my great-aunt and seeing her all the way up behind a window. But she had that terrible thing which happened some years later….I don’t know what it was. But she had to be operated on, and of course then she couldn’t have any more children. So my great-aunt lived with us, and my mother was completely free to order around the store and the house. There were a lot of people working there.

(And your great-aunt took care of you?)

Yes. Completely. She took care of me and nothing else. My mother took care of all of the rest. There were a lot of people, men, who were working there. Because my father also made the whole—what do you?—charcuterie, how do you call it? Salumeria in Spanish.
The smoking and making sausages and prepared meats.

(Prepared meats.)

Yes, for the wintertime we did a lot of baking and pastries, things like that. That my mother did, on top of all this.

(Amazing.)

Yes. When you think of it, it’s amazing everything she made. There are very few things she did not make.

(Did you grow up in a very religious home?)

No. It [the store] was open on Shabbat, closed only on Sundays, and even in the morning it was open. Most food places were open on Sunday mornings. It was before the era of refrigerators. My father used to say a few pages of the benshen (the blessings after every meal.) And my mother, who was raised an Orthodox, didn’t have time for that. We went to synagogue only on holidays, and then only my father went. Sometimes my mother went, but just for an hour.

(Did they ever send you to religious school?)

There was no religious. We had a rabbi and a chazzan (cantor.) He gave religious lessons, which were really quite bad. Later we had two hours every Thursday. Thursday was a school-free day in France at the time. In Protestant school, we had two hours of lessons with the chazzan.

(When did they send you to school? How old were you?)

Six.

(And they sent you to the public school?)

No. There were two public schools. There was a lycée, only for boys. But some girls were accepted. But God forbid that they would let this little girl near a boy. God forbid. I went to the so-called École supérieure, which was not superior at all. My great-aunt had taught me reading. I was reading already when I was four years old. And then I went to that other school, which after four years, at age twelve, so after six years, we got what’s called certificat d’études, (certificate of studies), which was already at that time good for nothing. But it permitted anybody to go on studying. I didn’t plan to—I didn’t like studying. My only good subject was French and composition and whatever around the language, and history.

(In school, did you experience any anti-Semitism?)

Yes. All over.

(Can you give me some examples?)

Well, I remember once—my parents closed the store only for Yom Kippur. And I remember going to the synagogue after my parents, so I was alone. I passed two girls on the street. I was probably dressed a little more fashionably than they were on that day. One saying to the other in a loud voice, “Gucke da, a Jud!” “Here’s also a Jew.” It was not official, the anti-Semitism, but you could feel it. France being a republic, religion is not taught at schools. Private schools can do whatever they want, but in some state schools, they had asked for the privilege of one hour a week lesson, a religion lesson. So the rabbi, the Catholic priest, and Protestant pastor came for one hour. That was all. We were terribly ashamed, because our rabbi was a disgusting person. Dirty, dirty! Shocking! I tried to never be seen in his company.

(And he was the rabbi for Sarreguemines?)

Yes, only for Sarreguemines. Yes.

(And tell me, you were in this school until what age?)

Fifteen.

(And then you went to a different lycée?)

No, I went to a private school in Switzerland, in Lausanne. My mother wanted me to go to a private school. My parents were really not very much aware of what was being taught there, but it was not very much. It was English, German, French, and I took a course in artistry, and what else did I have? That’s about it.

(Did you enjoy going?)

Yes, I enjoyed it there. I had two good friends, the only two who spoke French. (chuckles) Everybody else was usually from Russia, Bulgaria. It was a Jewish place. Everywhere Jews were in danger. People sent their children to internes, how do you say it? Boarding schools in Switzerland.

(Did you feel that you had something in common with those girls from Bulgaria or Russia?)

Nothing at all. And they treated us also like people from outer space. The three French-speaking were always together. There were one from Colmar in Alsace, myself from Lorraine, and another one from Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg. That was all.

(And tell me, what was the name of the school?)

Pension Bloch. Bloch, like your grandmother’s maiden name.

(Did you take Bible lessons there? Was it very Jewish, or no?)

Nothing like that.

(It was just a group of Jewish girls.)

Nothing whatsoever. On Saturday, we didn’t even go to synagogue but we did go to dances organized by the Jewish community.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Yvonne Joseph de Salomon, An Introduction

I interviewed Yvonne in a suburb outside of Washington, DC. Luck and geography were on my side as she had recently moved from Geneva to live with her daughter Andree in Maryland. I spent most of the late morning and afternoon with Andree and Yvonne, interviewing a mother and daughter whose life experiences could not be more different.

In this first excerpt, Yvonne remembers her early years in France.
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My full name is Yvonne Yolande Joseph Salomon. I was born January 29, 1917 in Sarreguemines, France.

(The names of your parents?)

Camille Joseph, and my mother, Claire Levy.

(Can you tell me about your childhood in France?)

With my parents and me, lived my great-aunt. She was my mother’s aunt. She had raised her from birth. My maternal grandparents died very young, so my mother was raised by her mother’s sister. They lived in Reichshoffen, a small town, between Haguenau and Strasbourg.

They were Orthodox people. They had a lot of children, of course. And when they arrived in Niederbronn, another Orthodox widower, he was from the neighborhood—I wouldn’t make you write the other name: Gundershoffen! They seem to have only mile-long names. He was a widower. He spent his whole life in Brazil. He was supposed to be very wealthy. He needed—he wanted to establish his residence in Niederbronn. For that he had to have a woman living, a Jewish woman living in the same apartment, and he did. And for that he had first to marry her. An Orthodox cannot have an unmarried woman at his place. So after asking around, he went to my great-grandfather and introduced himself and said that he’s looking for somebody to look after him and wants to marry one of his daughters. My great-grandfather asked him which one. He said it doesn’t matter.

(chuckles) After this romantic beginning, he told my great-grandfather, “Ask your daughters who wants to be my wife.” There were three of them left, the others were gone and married. Finally my aunt Sophie decided, with her sisters, that she was going to try it. She told her father that she was going to do it.

Her father told Alexander Dreyfuss that one of them had decided. So he came and my aunt asked something unheard of. She wanted to talk to that man. So she told him that she agrees to look after him and his belongings, his place, on one condition. She wants to take her niece along, and she wants him to name her niece the only inheritor of his fortune. Because they were very poor people.

He said, “All right.” He agreed to everything. “All right.” My aunt was born in 1854. So she must have been in her—my mother was born in 1890. She was a baby, or very small, when my great-aunt married. So my great-aunt was already aged. But he agreed. He didn’t have any children or any family, so he didn’t mind who was going to inherit his fortune afterwards. That was how my great-aunt married. Alexander Dreyfuss lived for several years. And my great-aunt stayed with my mother all the time, and when my mother was an age to be married, she had the visit of the usual shadchen, how do you call it?

(Matchmaker?)

Matchmakers, yes. A funny thing, she—they proposed one man from Haguenau who was also looking for a wife, but she heard that he had a glass eye, and she said no, she couldn’t. OK. Many years later, we were invited to an engagement party for my cousin, and that girl my cousin was going to marry was the daughter of that man! So he would have been related to us anyway! (laughs) But that is a different story.

So my parents were married.

(So they were introduced by a—?)

Yes, a matchmaker, yes. As it was customary at the time. It was not easy for my mother, because my father married her because she had good dowry. And she was a very pretty girl—good-looking. I wouldn’t say “pretty,” but very good-looking girl. She was taller than my father. My father was a very good-looking boy, man. He was already about thirty years old. My mother was nine years younger. She knew that she would have to work in my father’s place. My father was a butcher. So no joke. There was another thing who was no joke: my father’s mother! (chuckles) My grandparents on my father’s side had seven children, five girls and two boys. The two boys, nobody asked them what they wanted to do. They were told. “Your father is a butcher. You will be butchers.”

With the older one, who was not my father, he became a butcher, but he never did anything. He was lazy and just didn’t want to work.

My father was more obedient. He had a stormy youth. They had a lot of fun, the boys in Sarreguemines and the community. They had a good youth. My mother knew that she was to work in the store on top of all her duties, like making a home for her husband, she had also to work with him at the store. At that time, my grandfather had already died, so my grandmother was leading the store, and my father was doing the manual work.

(It was a kosher butchery?)

No. It was not strictly kosher. We had one side kosher, kosher meat, beef and veal, and the other side was pork. But for kosher conception, that doesn’t exist. There were two butchers of that kind in Sarreguemines. The other one was Simon Stern. They had the same thing. There was one strictly kosher family in Sarreguemines. That was all, so they didn’t buy their meat at our place nor at Mr. Stern’s place, but for everybody else, it was OK. Nobody took it very seriously.

My mother told me sometimes about the beginnings of her stay at that place with my grandmother sitting on the throne by the cashiers and ordering everybody. One day, a customer told my grandmother, in front of my mother, “Well, your young lady is doing very well, isn’t she?” And my grandmother answered, “She will never amount to anything!” So that was what my mother needed. “Aha! We’ll see.” And that was the beginning of—she became much better than her mother-in-law, she inherited the place. She never did anything my father could find—what do you say, minimizing him. She always said, “I have to ask the patron.” The “patron” is the Big Boss in French. The patron thought it over, and after two or three days, he gave his answer. “I have decided …” And it was exactly what my mother had said. And my mother said, “You are wonderful! Nobody could have thought of that!” He never noticed. But he always gave us as his answer what my mother had suggested.

Everybody knew about that but my father.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

LECTURE TO TAKE PLACE IN SAN SALVADOR

Dear Readers,
For those of you living in El Salvador (or nearby), please note the following invitation to my outgoing lecture. I will also give various lectures in the Houston area throughout the month of August. Details to follow.
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La Comunidad Israelita de El Salvador: An Oral History
June 22, 2006 @ 7pm
Centro Cultural Salvadoreno
www.centroculturalsalvadoreno.com

With the first documented Jew arriving to the shores of Cuscatlan in 1868, La Comunidad Israelita de El Salvador is young but vibrant. Jessica P. Alpert, Fulbright Scholar and Oral Historian, will present a summarized history of El Salvador's Jewish community through photographs and audio oral testimonies. Changed and challenged by two world wars, conflicts in the State of Israel, and a violent war in their adopted home, this small community presents a fascinating study for any historian, storylistener, and curious citizen. Highlighted topics will include issues of nation and identity, conversion and intermarriage, migration and exile. For more information on the project, please visit: www.storylistener.blogspot.com

Jessica P. Alpert is originally from Houston, Texas. Her own mother Ruth Reich de Alpert, the daughter of German immigrants Ernesto Reich and Wilma Bloch de Reich, was born and raised in El Salvador's Jewish community. After studying political science at Columbia University's Barnard College, Jessica moved to Washington DC to work for the United States Department of Justice. After two years dedicated to the area of international legal development, she decided to pursue the Fulbright Award. Other oral history projects and publications include "Las Curanderas: Indigenous Female Healers in Chile's Atacama Desert and Patagonia Regions;" "Muted Testimony: Rape and Gendered Violence During the Holocaust;" "Weaving Stories: The Arpillera Women's Cooperative Pre and Post-Pinochet;" "A Shtetl Marriage: Jewish Hasidic girls and their Matchmakers in Crown Heights Brooklyn;" "We Are Running: Women Reflect on 9/11;" and "Mosaics: The Oral History of Wilma B. Reich."

Jessica will begin her doctoral work on the history of Central American Jews at Indiana University-Bloomington in August 2006.

Daniel Cohen: "I'm just an aguacatero..."

The Palestinian population in El Salvador is growing each day. Powerful in the areas of business, politics (President Tony Saca is of Palestinian descent), and culture, the Palestinian population that was once the target of racism and hatred is now regarded in a different light (sometimes better/sometimes worse).

A personal interest is whether the Israeli/Palestinian conflict equally affects populations abroad? If so, have tensions become worse since the election of the new Hamas led government? Does the Palestinian Christian Diaspora (like the community in El Salvador) feel isolated from the conflict? Daniel Cohen touches on the subject in this final excerpt.
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The business world here, your family business, does it ever come into play that you’re part of the Jewish community, that you’re Jewish?)

No. The thing about being Jewish here is that there’s a super-strong Palestinian community, so that all of a sudden you get a Palestinian plaza and then you get a Yasir Arafat plaza. Um, sometimes you truly feel like you’re a minority. You feel like—you feel like—or you hope like the situation over there doesn’t become the situation over here. You hope that the Palestinians here don’t try to recreate what’s going on over there. Or sometimes I hope they don’t try to get at the Jews here for what’s going on over there.

There’s so many Palestinians here that we’d be outnumbered. But in the business world, there are some Palestinians that may not like Jews, but most of them, —most of my colleagues that are Palestinian, I can call ‘em a cousin, joke around and be like, you know, “We’re cousins.” I’ve been in an association, on the board of directors of an association of importers of spare parts where the president is a Palestinian, and I’m vice president. We can joke around, when we disagree, you know, we can joke around and say, “This disagreement isn’t recent. It’s millions of years old.” (laughs) So we can joke around about that and we can talk and we can freely be president and vice president and have no problem.

(Do you sometimes feel like those conflicts are brought in from outside or that they do start here, like the Palestinian plaza? Or the Plaza Arafat?)

From the outside? Oh! I think it’s on their radar. I think wherever a Palestinian plaza pops up, they hear about it. Or wherever a Yasir Arafat plaza pops up, it beeps on their radar.

Towards the end of the interview, Danny and I started to talk about identity.

(When someone asks you where you’re from, what would you say?)

I’m from El Salvador.

(And you feel completely Salvadoran?)

No. I feel like I’m a aguacatero ,[Salvadoran slang for “mutt”]. I’m Salvadoran. Grew up in the U.S., grew up in New England. My father’s from North Africa. My mother’s from El Salvador. My grandparents are German. I was born here, but I don’t feel like I’m from anywhere in particular. If you ask me what culture I can relate to the most, I’d say American. I guess if you ask me what I am, I’d say I’m Jewish.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Proof

In the following excerpt Daniel Cohen discusses an issue that is very relevant in contemporary Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Jewish communities: intermarriage.

Daniel and Nathalie Cohen's wedding was the second union of two individuals born and raised within the Jewish Community of El Salvador.

The second in the community's entire history.
********************
(So Rabbi Gustavo [Kraselnik] married you. And this is the same rabbi who wouldn’t marry your brother because he was marrying a non-Jew?)

Right.

(How did that make you feel?)

(pause) It made me feel a little strange.

(Did your brother get married after you or before?)

Before. It made me feel strange. It was tough to accept. It’s tough to accept somebody—I really like him. I really like him. I really respect him. I enjoy his spiritual leadership. But it’s also hard to accept somebody that does not understand your brother, or doesn’t quite understand where your brother’s coming from. So I had to put that aside.

(Now, your kids are very involved in the synagogue, but their cousins are not. How do you feel about that?)

I hope they get more involved. I think they will. I think my brother’s missing in his heart a little bit of the Jewish tradition that he wants to pass on to his kids. I hope they go. I hope to go to Noar [Shelanu].

(Do you ever talk to him about it?)

Yeah, yeah. We’re working on, like, you know, patching things up a little. It was tough for him to find a hard stance, like we spoke about, here in El Salvador, so that created a few antibodies in his heart towards the community. But I think we’re ready to move on.

(How do you feel?)

It’s tough. It’s tough, because I really enjoy the Jewish community, but on the other hand, I really hope they can accommodate my brother’s situation.

(Do you think there are a lot of situations like your brother’s here in Salvador?)

Yes.

(It’s a tiny community.)

It’s a tiny community. It’s tiny and lively. It’s different. People come here from other countries and I don’t know if it’s too, you know, compliment because they’re here as guests or if they’re really saying it from the heart, but people come here and they say it’s completely different. Here, it’s like going into somebody’s house. It’s lively and there’s kids running around and everybody knows each other and a guests come along and everybody starts talking to them, everybody’s like, “Where are you from? What do you do? What are you doin’ here? Come over for dinner.” That’s what it’s like here. So it’s small, but it’s good that way, too.

(And you think the community is capable of breaking down these issues regarding intermarriage?)

I think it’s gonna have to. I think it’s gonna have to. It’s tough for me to think also like, you know, can we let everybody in? It’s also tough for me to think, can you exclude anybody?

(It’s hard. How do you feel, though, about intermarriage generally? Here in Salvador it’s almost necessary.)

Yeah, it’s tough. It’s super-tough. The way I feel about it is that it’s super-tough to marry a Jewish person here. If you don’t import, where are you gonna find one? I feel really lucky that I was one of the few, one of the only people that found somebody from this community to marry.

(There’s only been two marriages like yours, including yours. You and Nathalie and Lillian and Jack Davidson.)

Yeah, that’s it.

(So it’s living proof that—)

Yeah. Living proof. Living proof that it’s really hard.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Moving Back Home?

In this excerpt, Daniel Cohen discusses his desire to return to El Salvador after spending the majority of his adolescence and young adult life in the United States.

All questions in parentheses are mine.
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(Did you always think you were would come back to Salvador, or did you think that you would live in the States?)

Didn’t think about it much. I did feel like I didn’t know my family, because I left when I was thirteen, and I was in my twenties and I’d never really lived with them, and I realized that, you know, during the holidays that I saw them, that wasn’t, like, their real life, that was just holidays, and since my family was happy to have me around, I was happy to be around with them. So it was kind of like a holiday time. It wasn’t real. So I did see that I didn’t know my family. I did kind of want to have that feeling of coming back.


(After Northeastern [University], you went to—?)

Dallas.

(And what did you do there? Did you have a job?)

I had a job. I worked for a family entertainment franchise, you know, like Chuck E. Cheese. It was international. A lot of their franchises were in the UAE and in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and all those places.

(How was that?)

My boss—the owner was Jewish, so he’d tell me, “You can’t go. I can go, because I know the partners over there and they’d take me in. But I don’t think they’d take another Jew in.” (laughs)

(And that just made you laugh?)

It made me laugh, because it was a Jew telling me this. It just made me laugh. He sent me to Mexico, to work in Mexico.

(What about living in Dallas? What was that like?)

Since I knew it was only transitional, it was fun. Dallas is really nice. The Texans are nice. It was nice. I was living there with a girlfriend. I moved there with a girlfriend. We were planning on getting married. We graduated together from college and then we were thinking about getting married and she said, you know, “Let me practice what I studied in the U.S. for a couple of years, and then we’ll go to El Salvador.” She’s a physical therapist. So we went to Dallas. We kind of closed our eyes and put our finger where it landed, and it landed in Dallas. Neither of us had ever gone there. So we went there, and then after two years she got cold feet and I was sad. But I was like, “You know, it’s better for her to get cold feet now than coming with me to El Salvador and then two or three years later, two or three kids later, her being, ‘I want to go back to the U.S. with my kids. You can come see them whenever you want.’” (laughs)

(So after that, you moved to San Salvador?)

Right. I went home. I lived at home.

(Did you join the business? What did you do here?)

Yeah. I got here on a Sunday, and on Monday morning I was, like, here, (laughs) at the office.

(And who was working here at the time?)

My father and brother Pierre.

(How was that, joining a business working with your father and your brother?)

It was good. It was fine. It took me a while to get used to. It took them a while to get used to me.

(And then what about the Jewish community? When did you start getting involved again?)

From the get-go. I got here and I started going to the synagogue. I don’t go that often. I didn’t go that often before. But I always wanted to be part of it. I always liked to go the Shabbat and to the holiday stuff. So since I got here, I just started going to the synagogue.

(And what about your wife? How did you meet her?)

I met her in college, like ten years before we got married.

(Really?)

Yeah. My wife’s family has been friends with my family forever. My grandmother tells me stories about my wife’s grandmother. So we actually met when I was in college in Boston and we started going out and we went out on and off for ten years.

(Was she living here at the time?)

No. She was living in Paris.

(Did she move here?)

She moved here eventually.

(So when were you married?)

In 2001.
(2001 you were married. You were married here?)

Here.

(Who married you?)

Gustavo [Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik] married us.

(Your wife Nathalie was born to—?)

Gerard and Monique Schwartz.

(Did the rabbi make her go through some sort of conversion [since her mother did not officially convert to Judaism]?)

Yeah, confirmation. Before we got married.

(So what does that mean exactly?)

You know, She was like, “I’m a Jew, why are they making me do this?” She doesn’t like ceremonies, and this all involved going to the lake and being kind of like dunked in the lake. She didn’t like the idea. I would relate to it as, “OK, you know you’re French, but if you don’t have a passport, you can’t be French. So this is just like getting a passport. It’s just a piece of paper, and that’s that.” And she knew that she had to do it and she went ahead and did it. The good part about it was that she got a piece of paper that said that she got confirmed, so it’s put away. And she has a piece of paper that says she’s Jewish. I don’t. So she’s kind of like a documented Jew, whereas I’m not. That’s a funny thing that I find about the Jewish religion, is that you kind of go on hearsay. (laughs)

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Daniel Rosenberg Cohen I.

Daniel Cohen, the youngest of three siblings, is the son of Yolanda and Claude Cohen. Married to Nathalie Schwartz, Daniel is the father of Ariel and Nina. Here is your introduction.

My name is Daniel Roberto Cohen Rosenberg. My date of birth is July 18th, 1970. I was born in San Salvador, Hospital—I forget the name of the hospital.

(Gine—)

___ Ginecologica.

(Everyone’s born there.)

(Did you go to the American school?)

I went to the American school.

(And what was it like being a Jewish kid at the American school? Did you ever think about it?)

Never thought about it. Never thought about it. Ever since I can remember, from being a Jew, I never felt that confusion, for some reason. I don’t remember exactly why or why not, but I never felt any confusion. I never felt like, why Santa Claus or why not Santa Claus for me? or why Christmas for other people, why Hanukah for me? It was always very clear that I had a religion that was good and other people had other religions that were good, and that was that. I never felt different, though.

(You never felt different?)

I knew that I was different, but I never felt like I was, um, oddly different. I never felt confused.

(Do you feel like other kids your age that were Jewish were feeling confused, that it was a little more challenging for them?)

No, I don’t have any recollection of ever having a feeling for other people’s feelings for growing up Jewish.

(How—what was your home like at this point in time? You were born in 1970 and you stayed in Salvador until—?)

’79.

(—1979.)

We were Jewish. A typical family, you know, went to school, came home, practiced the Jewish religion. Like I told you, I remember going to Sabbath on Fridays and Noar. We did have a Hanukah bush, and we used the Hanukah bush to put the presents and we opened it during Hanukah days, if I remember correctly. That was my feeling.

(And your father is not from Salvador?)

No. My father is Tunisian, from North Africa.

(Do you identify with that side of your family, the North African, Sephardic side?)

Yes. I identify much more with Sephardic than anything else. My grandmother on my father’s side, she would—she’s kind of quiet, but she cooked Sephardic meals, like couscous. My father’s philosophy, which he passed on to us, has been Sephardic. So that’s what I assimilated the most.

(And you as a Sephardic family are a minority here?)

Yeah, totally. I don’t feel like I missed out on anything, but I do think about the Sephardic tradition. I would have liked to have learned more about it. I do get a sense that it’s a little bit more colorful, a little bit more— (pause) I don’t want to say lively, but yes, lively. (chuckles)

(Have you ever been to Tunisia?)

About six years ago I went with my father. We stayed there for about three weeks. He hadn’t been there in about thirty years, so he was really excited to go and I was really excited to be there with him. We rented a car and went all around. I love the desert, any desert, and we went to the Sahara. We went to see what they say is the first church, the oldest—I mean, the oldest synagogue, in Djerba, which is called in English “The Stranger.” In Arabic it was called “la griba.” Super-colorful synagogue. It was all different-colored tiles, painted with reds, blues. It wasn’t white like the ones we know. It was all different colors. It was all tutti-frutti, (laughs) with a part of the synagogue, a little nook where people would stick their notes and prayers and wishes and all that. It was interesting to see where the Sephardic in us came from.

(In 1979, how did your life change?)

We moved to Miami. We were on vacation. Up until now, I don’t know if it was that we were moving and our parents told us that we were gonna go on vacation, or if it was really supposed to be a summer vacation. And then while we were there, I think an offensive went on here, and we stayed. We just all of a sudden stayed. Then I started going to school in Miami. You go everywhere, there was a whole bunch of other Salvadorans there. In the school bus that I was in, there were about twelve Salvadorans in the back. So it felt kind of like it was what everybody was doing. So we stayed there, like, in ’85, maybe, ’84, my brother and sister went off to boarding school—in ’83 I went off to boarding school, when I was thirteen. And then kept on doing my studies, you know. Boarding school from sixth grade to ninth grade in New Hampshire, prep school in Connecticut, then college in Boston, and then I worked two years in Dallas and then came back here when I was twenty-six. So basically I left here when I was nine and came back when I was twenty-six.

(And when you think about New England, it’s quite a change from Salvador. Maybe Miami was a good stepping stone. But how did you feel in Miami when they told you that you weren’t going back?)

Coming back here? I thought it was gonna be like—I was like, “Oh, wow, this vacation turned into, like, a long vacation.” I liked going to the U.S. I liked being there. So I was—it was no big deal. And my whole family was there. It’s not like some of us stayed here and others went over there. Everybody was there. So it was a little easier, since we were together. And my uncles were there, and like I told you, a whole bunch of other Salvadorans were there. It was no problem. I spoke English, I spoke English just fine.

(So when you went to boarding school, what was that like? You were pretty young.)

At the beginning homesick. Being homesick takes a while to get over. Like maybe, like, a year, a year of really feeling homesick. And then after that, I really liked it. I really enjoyed it. It was a privilege growing up. It was in New Hampshire, where it was super-cold, it was in the mountains. But the school that I went to was in the mountains on the lake, and it was I don’t know how many acres of land, but it was just a whole—it was huge. It had its own ski mountain.

(What was it called?)

Cardigan Mountain School. Even though it was a hundred and eighty boys, it just didn’t seem to bad at the time. Sometimes we didn’t leave the campus for, like, you know, a month. But it was nice. There was one other Salvadoran there, too, He’s still a good friend of mine.

(How did the other kids treat you? Did they think you were different?)

You know, there, I did feel a little different, because there was a whole bunch of kids that weren’t—like, the Miami kids, being Latin over there was normal, and there was a whole bunch of other kids that weren’t used to seeing Latin kids. So there I felt a little different, I did feel a little alienated. El Salvador was going through a war, so they associated the war with me. They’d tease me a little. It didn’t bother me that much, but I remember being teased. It was a whole bunch of American kids that maybe never realized what life outside the U.S. was.

(And then you went to—?)

Loomis Chaffee in Connecticut.

(How was that?)

That was a lot different, a lot more diverse. They had people from all over the world. And when I got there, I had an advantage: that I was used to being in boarding school. So I wasn’t, like, a newcomer to being away from home. I was already used to it, so there it was easier for me than from anybody else. And since there was people from all over the world, and it was kind of liberal school and everybody was kind of maybe, like, a little hippie-ish, they took Latin Americans normal.

(What about Jews?)

The funny thing about Cardigan Mountain School is that it was like a—being Jewish there was kind of funny, because there was chapel every Sunday before dinner. Everybody wore gray pants and a green jacket and a green tie and a white shirt, and we all went to chapel. And they gave a sermon, which was, I guess you’d call it non-denominational, but it was a reverend that gave it. And I kind of saw the good in it and took that. But we did sing hymns, like “Kum-bay-ya,” like other songs that didn’t mention God in a way that it wasn’t my God. So I took it as my God and did that. It did feel kind of funny going to a chapel on Sundays. But I didn’t let it bug me. And everybody knelt, which I didn’t do. I just sat. At Loomis, being Jewish, it was normal. I mean, there was a bunch of Jewish kids there. I was one of ‘em.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Closing Credits

Roby's final excerpt. Powerful memories mix with tales of exile culminating in a theater production honoring and remembering some of the worst years in El Salvador's history.
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We came back to Salvador and we stayed in Salvador until 1980. We left in December of 1980.

(So now you have a European wife. How did that affect your coming back?)

Difficult. Difficult for her. Difficult for me. A whole different adaptation. That’s a culture shock which continues till now for thirty-five years, thirty-two.

(Were you here when Ernesto Liebes was killed?)

Yes. Wait a minute, what year was that?

(’79.)

Yes, I was here. Mm-hmm.

(When the tension began, when would you say that started?)

I think the social tension in Salvador for the Jewish community began in—I can pinpoint the day. I can’t remember the date, but I can tell you about it. It was 1972, and it was Ernesto Regalado Dueñas kidnapping and subsequent horrible death at the hands not of those who kidnapped him,. now it apparently is proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was kidnapped by a group of university students who were involved in a relationship with the Communist Party but were much more to the left of the Communist Party, which is where the extreme leftist groups came from, the Trotskyites and the Maoists, etc. And the prisoner that they had was stolen from them by certain military and then horribly tortured in order to pin the blame on the communists. It’s in the papers. It was in the papers two weeks ago. This is something that a lot of us have known for twenty years. This kidnapping completely jarred—because it was the first time that somebody from the dominating class had actually been kidnapped and killed, and then the kidnappings started after that. Even when Kidnappings were politically motivated, they were still motivated for reasons of money,—and there were other kidnappings which were only commercial ventures.

I mean, who was kidnapping? There were five different leftist groups with five different ideologies who were fighting against each other. There was the government. There were the dissident militaries of the government. There was the extreme right. And there was the Mafia. So how can you know who for sure was kidnapping who?—or “whom,” I never know.

(Your friends, no one felt safe?)

No, no one felt safe. And I think at the moment—let me see, let me just try to get this straight. My parents left because of the kidnappings in ’77. Ernesto Liebes was kidnapped in ’79. Ernesto Liebes had left because of the kidnappings. And if I understand correctly—you can get that story much better from people in your own family—Ernesto Liebes, they agreed with all the family that he was not to come back, and then he decided to come back. Which is very significant to the love of country. My parents left in ’77. My father got a kidnapping menace note, in other words, “Give us so much money or we’ll kidnap you.” He got it at 8 o’clock in the morning, and at noon he was in Guatemala and didn’t come back for twenty years. And my mother was out, too. You never know if that was a real note or a false note. But my father—it was clear that I was never gonna go into the business with him. He had already closed the door to my sisters in the business. There was absolutely no chance of their going into the business, even though they wanted to- My father was seventy years old and he had had enough and the violence in the country wasn’t pleasing him at all, and he wanted to leave anyway, I think. I think the ransom note was just a catalyst that served its purpose at that moment.

(So they went to Guatemala but you and Hélène were still here?)

I was—we were—Naara and I were in Europe at the time. We were in Berlin visiting friends. Yeah, you know, in ’76 there was a kidnapping, no ’75, ’76, or was it ’77, that’s easy to find out. There was a kidnapping and a death which was very traumatic to me and to the entire Salvadoran society, which was Roberto Poma. That was really a terrible blow, because not only was he a friend, somebody I had gone to school with, somebody my own age, somebody who I had shared an awful lot of childhood with, but after he was kidnapped , he was returned to the family -after ransom was paid- as a corpse, which of course goes against any ethic of any kidnapping. What happened was that he resisted the kidnapping and was mortally wounded. When they realized they couldn’t save him any more, they had already given the names of the people they wanted freed in exchange for him, because it was a political changeover. So of course if they announced that he was dead, all these leaders who are big leaders today would have been killed, big leftist leaders today. And central, not so leftist. One of the heads of the Christian Democrats going to elections tomorrow is one of them.

And so this of course was an enormous blow. To me personally it was much more important than Ernesto Liebes. I’ve always thought that Ernesto Liebes was kidnapped more as Liebes coffee than as Consul of Israel. I’m convinced of that.
But I have no proof of that.

(When did you decide to leave?)

We decided to leave when Jorge Weill got kidnapped. We didn’t decide to leave. My parents had been harping on Hélène and me to leave since they had left. So it was a very difficult time, extremely difficult time. I’m very glad that we managed to ride through that and keep our very close friendship with Jorge, because Jorge is my baby brother, really. We were brought up very close, and we always have been.

(Were you involved at all in helping out with that?)

With Jorge’s kidnapping? No, no. I was—no, that was handled by three people and I was not part of it.

(You decided to leave in 1980.)

At the end of 1980, uh-huh.

(And you went to—?)

We went—Jorge was kidnapped at the time, we stayed some time in Miami because his father was dying. Naara was 6 months pregnant at the time. One of the reasons that we left was, we had a theater, and people were having a hard time getting to the theater. The day that we decided that this was it was one day when we had to go to the theater and we couldn’t get to the theater because there was some sort of street warfare going on, and we were blocked in one section of town, and there were people actually coming to see a show and we had to leave them outside and they were caught in a crossfire right in front of the theater, and they came running into the theater and the theater was closed because we had not been able to get there. So that’s when we said, “We can’t go on. We can’t go on with the theater now.” And we decided to close it. So there had been—there’s something that was called the ofensiva final, which was going to be a power takeover of the left.

So this was announced. And we would get also at the theater daily threats from government-close people saying, “tomorrow we’re having a march. Close the theater to show that you support us.” And the next day we would get a message from the left saying, “We’re having a march. Close the theater to show that you support us.” And all this sort of thing. So actually we were always really caught between two fires. So we decided, since the ofensiva final was announced, we decided this was a good moment to close the theater and to make—I think I’ve got my years mixed up. This was after Jorge’s kidnapping.

(’81?)

No, this is ’80. We decided to go on tour. There was a big problem also that we were expecting Mateo, our second child, and Naara was afraid that—you know, there were cases of people who had not been able to get to hospitals, things like that, and she was six months pregnant. If we waited two more months, she couldn’t be able to travel. She just had had enough of this, and she said, “Let’s go.” So we left. We ended up in Geneva, which was logical because we had—we hadn’t thought of going anywhere, so the fact of going to Geneva was logical since she had family there. So our two children, Ariella, who was born in Salvador and didn’t speak a word of French and was five at the time and Mateo, who was born in Geneva, were raised in Geneva.

And then while in Geneva, I decided to make this tour that we had talked about before and bring four of our actors here who were doing theater with us here and bring them to Europe and tour Europe with them, with the company. So that’s what we did.

(You were able to get them out of Salvador?)

Yeah, mm-hmm.

(Did they end up going back eventually, or they stayed in Europe for a while?)

Two of them live in New York and two of them live in Geneva.

(They never went back?)

They did go back and forth, but mainly stayed over there.

(So you were in Geneva for how long?)

Twenty-five years.

(You didn’t come back?)

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. I didn’t come back for about four years. And then—or three years, something like that. And then started coming back once every two years and then after ’89, every year. No, after ’90 every year, once they—actually the war went on and on and on and on, and in 1991, I was asked by a festival in Spain, the Festival Iberoamericano de Cádiz, to do a play in Salvador about Salvador and about the war. And so I came here and did that in ’91 and we took it to Spain. The play ended with the signing of the peace, which was signed two months after we finished the play. The play was called Tierra de cenizas y esperanza, “Land of Hope and Ashes.”

(Who wrote it?)

Naara. It was an idea of Naara’s, based on a play that we had done in 1975, which was Eric Bentley’s play called A Time to Die, based on the Antigone myth. She developed the idea with me and then we did it on the basis of improvisations. Two Salvadoran actor-writers codified the text.

(What kind of a story did it tell?)

It was the story of three women who take their clothes down to the river to wash them and all of a sudden the river is littered with bodies. We were very impressed with the massacres of the Río Sumpul at the time and had photographs of that in Europe, which we did not have here. And the three women get totally traumatized by this. One of them goes crazy. One of them leaves for the North , the other one stays. that part of the story is told through letters they write each other. But then, the one who stays, all of a sudden travels through time and is privy to different myths that formed Salvador. And the river becomes the river gods and the spirit of the river and then the play goes into the Conquest and the history of violence in Salvador and ends with the fight between the tigre y el venado which is a folklore theme from here. Of course it was obviously a guerrillero [guerilla fighter] and a soldier who finish up killing each other and then the historiantes [historians] come in and sign a peace. [chuckles]

(Has it been performed again?)

No. We performed it in ’91 and ’92.

(Here, or in Europe?)

We performed it here, in Europe, and in South America.

(How was it received?)

Very well everywhere. Very well. It went over very well. It was very, very strong. It was strong stuff, and it was a nice production. Maybe we should do it again.....

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.

Creating Theater. (literally).

In the following excerpt, Roby explains his entry into the Salvadoran art-scene.
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There I met Roberto Huezo, Roberto Galicia, Magda Aguilar, David Escobar Galindo, Bobby Murray, and people who—Carlos de Sola, and people who became extremely important in the fact that they were all people who were looking to do something in Salvador, but from a Salvadoran standpoint. I mean, Walter Beneke had started this entire dynamic of young people, young idealists, people working in a totally idealist way towards bettering education and bettering social conditions in Salvador. He offered me a job as—he said, “You’re going to—” Didn’t ask. He said, “You’re going to create a theater department at a new National Arts Center which I’m founding as of last—it’s been working for six months but doesn’t work. I need somebody to run it.” I had never done any teaching.

(How old were you at this point?)

Twenty-four. Twenty-three. Magda Aguilar, who was sixty-five at the time, was the woman who was organizing all of this, and she of course was an extraordinary woman with extraordinary connections and just an extraordinary know-how of Salvador. We started this National Arts Center, which is mythical today. That’s all they talk about. There’s a big article coming out in the papers tomorrow where we’ve been interviewed for the past couple weeks because it was the first time that artistic education was being given at a secondary level, intense artistic education and over a long period of time. This was the bachillerato en artes, which was a three-year program in the educational reform of the time.

(When you say artists wanted to approach—or when you were saying about Huezo and all these different artists that wanted to do things from a Salvadoran perspective, in a Salvadoran way, can you tell me what that is exactly?)

In other words, let’s not copy models. Let’s invent our own thing. My friendship with Roberto Huezo was probably one of the most important factors in my rediscovering—discovering Salvador, really. I mean, I had known Salvador all my life, but only on the glossy side. I didn’t know the other side of Salvador. With Roberto Huezo I went, so to speak, through the mirror and really got involved in this mass of people that I didn’t know existed. Before that nothing existed outside of Escalón, San Benito, and the Deportivo , you know. That’s what life was basically about. We had lived this very sheltered life. And then I discovered this whole new world which was fascinating to me.

(It was fascinating, it was exhilarating?)

Absolutely exhilarating. Like, you know, I never heard of the Indian uprising of 1932. And here we were, we were going to find the roots of the Nahuatl culture. We actually had teachers come in and teach you Nahuatl and all this sort of idealistic rot which doesn’t work, because you don’t—I mean, we left with this idea that the—oh, you can only be twenty-three to do that. (laughs) The conquest burnt bridges. So we were gonna go back where these bridges were burnt and rebuild these bridges that were burnt, which was a completely inane historical way of doing things, right? But that’s what we were doing at the time.


(So here you are, exploring a new Salvador, working at this National Arts Center, but are you living with your family? Are you living at home?)

Yeah. I am for a year. And then of course (pause) of course I wanted to move out. And then I got married for the first time, got married to Elisa Archer, who is a painter today. We got married in—I forget the year. Didn’t last very long. We were married for eleven months. And so of course I moved out of my parents’ house when I got married. After we divorced—Elisa was from an extremely Catholic family. They weren’t so thrilled about the marriage, and neither were my parents. And as my sister remarked, they’re the only wedding pictures where the bride and groom, instead of facing each other, they’re back to back. (laughs) So there was something obviously symbolic in that. She was working with me as an actress at the time. I was very much in love with her. But the marriage lasted a year. We were both extremely young and very, very immature. After that, I shared houses and apartments with different friends who were working with me at the time, mainly one artist who was also very important to me, Pedro Portillo, who worked with me at the National Arts Center and was also—still today he’s considered one of the major authorities on pre-Columbian vase painting. It just generally moved around. It’s funny, because I never left the glossy Salvador that I knew. I sort of—I never lived, like, alternate lifestyles. The glossy Salvador and the earthy, rooty Salvador: I never separated them. I mixed them inasmuch as they could mix. I mean, I never left my friends from childhood. I actually tended more to bring my new friends to meet my old friends and vice versa, and when it worked, it worked. When it didn’t—like I said, I’m very adaptable. (chuckles)

(Politically, how did that shape you?)

Oh, well that’s a whole other story! Politically, politically.

(Maybe before you go into how that shaped you, maybe you can just briefly describe the political environment in which you were surrounded as a child, or just if there were political conversations that took place, if that was a topic that was discussed.)

Not really, not really. The big gash in the Salvadoran psyche is the 1932 Indian uprising, right? And I’ve found friends now who say that their grandparents had photographs of the ones who rose up being—you know, them standing like trophies over their dead bodies. These were postcards, not photographs. They were postcards made at the time. This is all part of a memory that has been completely obliterated in Salvador. I’ve been trying to find some of these postcards, because I’ve seen them. But they were lost during the war. I know they were postcards, because I was shocked when I saw them, and I must have seen them in the early ‘70s. In the early ‘70s this awakening was done, because I think it’s the event that really is the profound trauma in Salvador today still, the Indian uprising of 1932. It’s never been talked about. Other than from one side saying that it was the other side that did it, it’s never been really analyzed. Was it an Indian uprising? Was it a communist plot? Was it a mounted thing in order to take land away from other people? Even our foremost historian, Pedro Escalante will not venture a flat answer. Is there a flat answer? I don’t know.

Be that as it may, it is THE event of the twentieth century which molded people’s minds and people’s politics. My father arrived in 1928, and the Indian uprising happened in 1932. My father’s version of it was that the dictator at the time, who was Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, saved the country because it was—the communists had gotten the peasants drunk and told them to go out and kill all the landowners. This was the version that I got as a child. This is a version I never repeated when I was politically savvy in the ‘70s, because of course this was the version of the right. But in the ‘90s, all of a sudden, there’s been a new way of looking at history, and it’s this dictator who was—he was a dictator, there’s absolutely no doubt about it. He was a dictator. He ran Salvador with an iron fist for twelve years. I mean, he had his own son shot at one point. He was a very blood—how do you say that, not bloodthirsty?

Blood-oriented dictator, but he did found the central bank, which is something that’s coming out now. He did—there’s a whole new light on Martínez. He did completely—what’s the word I’m looking for? dismantle the—my father used to tell me that when he got here—my father talked to me when he was much older, that’s when he told me these things—that when he got to Salvador, los peones, peasants on the farms were paid in money that was only valid in the farm, so they could only buy at the general store of the farm, which of course the owner would stock with things that he would put exorbitant prices on and he would pay them horrible wages and then on top of that charge them double for whatever goods they needed. Martínez eliminated that completely by creating the central bank, so he really did enormous social things in that sense.

(We were talking about the way you were raised.)

Right. So you learn about these things. I wasn’t conscious that I was living in a military dictatorship that went from 1932 to 1979 until 1980. (laughs) There was a military dictatorship from 1932 to 1979, but I became aware of that after the coup in 1979. That’s when we all became aware of it, except for the people who were militant on the left. But basically, that’s how we were brought up, in this—in Lala-Land. I don’t know if that—

(But did it work for the Jewish community, that type of—?)

Absolutely, absolutely, for the Jewish community it worked. The Jewish community here was and is—no, was, I don’t think that applies to it any more—was a community that boomed in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s with the arrival of a lot of Jews from Europe. They got here in an atmosphere that welcomed them very much, did not embrace them, but did not ostracize them, as opposed to the Arab community. And the reason, I suspect, and this is my opinion, it’s not historically-based, but I suspect the reason the Jews here were not discriminated against is because the oligarchy of Salvador was completely oriented towards France and Germany culture-wise, and the Jews that were coming here were French and German Jews. So in other words, the fact that they spoke French and German, even if they did not have a very high educational level, which some did, but most did not, gave them a sort of stamp of approval. I mean, they spoke the language of the gods, as it were, so they could be part of Olympus. It’s completely different in Costa Rica, where most of the Jews who went to Costa Rica were Polish and Russian and were terribly discriminated against. I’m sure their education level was not lower. It’s just that Europe being Europe, Europe being what it is, that’s what counted. What counted was the language and the culture. It’s just like any vulgar American can come down here and do a lot better just because he speaks American. (chuckles)

(It’s true. In 1979 you were here still?)

Yes. I was back. Actually, I directed the theater school from 1969 to 1975, and in 1974 I went on a tour of Europe with an Argentinean company that was working with me here, six Argentinean actors who were working with me at the school. Our last stop was Geneva, and that’s where I met Naara, my wife, and fell madly in love with her at first sight, discovered incredibly, to my surprise, that she was Jewish, and so did she about me. And then six months later Naara came—this was ’74—with me to Salvador. We got married and she came with me to Salvador. She was nineteen at the time.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.