Jorge Weill: An Introduction

Jorge "George" Weill, older brother to Monique, is the son of Raymonde "Raymunda" and Henri "Enrique" Weill. Born in San Salvador, Jorge continues to live in the capital with his wife Anny. They have two children, Alexis and Sandra, both of whom were raised in El Salvador but are currently living in the United States. Jorge was one of my last interviews in El Salvador, sitting down with me on the 26th of June.
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My mother and father were both born in Alsace-Lorraine in France. My father was born in a small town in Odratsheim and my mother was born in Strasbourg.

(Do you have a first memory of childhood?)

I couldn’t recall right now what my first memory is, but what I do recall is playing at my parents’ house, which was on the Doble Via in front of Cidema. We had a small driveway leading up to a cochera (Salvadoran version of a garage), and I remember playing there beside what seemed to be an enormous garden and what I’ve later come to realize was a very small place.

(What was your house like growing up? Can you describe it to me?)

The house, which at the time seemed very big, had red-tiled floors. It was built in the colonial style, and it had an arch with a wood frame carved around at the entrance of the dining room. I remember that in the back of the house we had a place where we kept the chickens. At the beginning, if I remember correctly, we had a wood oven. We had a small refrigerator which I knew well because my mother kept it for nearly 50 years. It was a very nice house, and as a matter of fact, my good friend Bobby Cohen lived right next to us, the Guttfreunds lived two houses away, and the Geismars lived about a block and a half away.

I remember I used to be very good friends with Andres (Guttfreund), and we used to play together a lot. We didn’t pay attention to his sisters and my sister. They were too small, they were at least three, four years younger than we were.

(Tell me, what about the ambiente. What was the community like?)

Well, you know, I always remember Salvador in my youth as being very friendly. Everybody was very friendly. My parents’ friends were primarily from the community, and I remember them being very sociable, people being very very nice to me. I don’t remember having any type of sad or confrontative moment. I remember that people used to go visit each other and I used to go see my friends, whether it was Andres Guttfreund, I used to go over to his house whenever I wanted to, or I would go to—I remember going to the Geismars’ house about a block and a half away. I was young and the maid used to take us. I lived in that house until 1956, when I was eight years old, and then we moved to Colonia Escalón.

(To the house that your mother still lives in?)

To the house that my mother still lives in. And then again, we had the Rosenbergs that lived right around the corner, and we again had the Geismars about a block away and the Salomons, my father’s business partner, that were two blocks away. So we used to just walk over and go say hello whenever we wanted to.

(Why did your father come to Salvador?)

My father came in 1926-1927. At the time, what foreign businessmen usually used to do was to go back to their home town and find some young men who they thought had potential and bring them back as salesmen. There was a gentleman called Lucien Simon who was from Sarreguemines, where my father grew up. He came over and asked my father—who was 17 at the time if he wanted to come to America. And at the time Sarreguemines was poor—France was poor. So my father thought, “America, that’s the land of the future.” So he came to Salvador. He didn’t know he was going to Latin America. But he loved it from the beginning.

(Exactly what year did he arrive?)

He arrived in 1927. And then about two years later, his partner George Salomon came, also from Sarreguemines, to work for the same gentleman.

(What did they do for Simon?)

Both of them were salesmen, and my father told me the first month he came over he had to—he worked in a textile wholesaling business-sleep in the store. After a month they told him to go to a pensión, which was like a little hotel, where he stayed for a couple of months. He used to travel mostly to Occidente, so he would take the train to Santa Ana where he would visit clients, and from there he would travel to the surrounding towns. He had an assistant and they would travel on mules on which they’d load all the samples, the muestras. They would come back with bags full of large silver coins, bambas they were called, which is how they were paid and they would take them either to the bank or ship them back by train to San Salvador.

(And eventually he and Jorge, did they start their own business, or they just continued working?)

And then —and I have the contract somewhere in Miami—about four years later, Mr. Simon offered my father to become a partner in the business, and then George Salomon also became a partner. Mr. Simon in 1945, after World War II, said, “The same thing is going to happen as after World War I. There’s going to be a depression.” So he sold the business to George Salomon and my father. So L.A. Simon & Cia. became Weill, Salomon & Cia. They went into business and remained partners for the rest of their life. The business was called Weill, Salomon. Tey’re both buried in Miami, because both of them passed away in Miami during the war (Salvadoran Civil War). Their tombs are right next to each other, and since my father’s on the left-hand side the tombs read “Weill-Salomon”, so we say the partnership continues.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.