Soeurette Joseph: Final Thoughts

As conditions in El Salvador worsened due to internal civil strife, many community members decided to temporarily relocate to the US, Israel, or Europe. Some temporary stays lasted a lifetime.

(Why did you leave?)

Well, it was a very rough time in ’79. We had had a lot of threats of kidnapping and so on and so on and it was time to leave like everybody did, like your grandmother left and your grandfather – we all left.

(Who’s we?)

The whole– mostly – almost the whole community left.

(But your family – the people who left. You. Was Jean-Paul living in Salvador at that time?)

Jean-Paul was living in Salvador. He had married and he had just had a baby and the baby was six months old when they left and they came to New York and I followed and I came here.

Ruth Reich de Alpert: So why don’t you tell who Fred was?

Fred was my brother-in-law who lived with us. He was not married and he lived with us all his life. And he died years ago, I don’t even remember what year but before we left Salvador he died.

(Did you get along with him?)

Very well. Until the end then he became very difficult. The last years were awful. He couldn’t take the fact that Andre had died. It was like I was responsible. He made my life absolutely miserable but at the end – I must say that at the beginning he helped me a lot. Andre didn’t have enough time and he had much more time than Andre and he was very nice to me, extremely nice. And at the end only, he was getting old and had health problems and he couldn’t take the fact that his brother had died. That was the end of that.

(How old were you when your husband died?)

48.

(How old was he?)

63.

(63. What year was that?)

May 23, 1971.

(It was a very sudden death?)

No,he had a heart condition and he had been sick since 1962. It was still a very difficult time, yeah.

(So when you moved to New York was it a very fast move – from one day to the next?)

Like everybody else, we decided to leave and that was it.

(Did you move to this apartment?)

To this apartment, yes. Jean-Paul bought an apartment and convinced me in April of ’79 to buy an apartment. I bought the apartment, I wasn’t here so I took somebody to take care of buying furniture and so on and so on. And I said whatever she wanted to do in the apartment I said, “No, I'm never going to stay here, just for a short time. It ‘s not worth doing this or that or rearranging –“ and do I regret it. I thought it would stay here a few months then go back. I never expected to sit here for the rest of my life.

(So Jean-Paul and Jessica had three girls.)

Three girls.

(One was born in Salvador.)

Yes.

(And two were born here in the U.S. Both of Sylvia’s children were born in the States?)

Born here in the States.

(And how often did you see each other?)

Here? I used to go every Friday night for dinner at Jean-Paul and I would go Friday lunch – I would have Jean-Paul in town. I would go to his office and we would sit down and have lunch together. That was the tradition. And in the evening I would go to the Metropolitan [museum] in the afternoon and at six o'clock I would cross the street and go for dinner there. I saw them a lot. I would go in the beginning every Thursday to take Alexandra for the day when she was a baby. Later on they had people to take care of them so I gave that up.

(And Sylvia at that time?)

She lived first in Chicago and then she lived in New Haven.

(So you really had your closest people around -)

Oh, yes. So why would I go anywhere else?

(How was living in New York? That’s a huge change?)

Yes, but I was lucky. I came here, I was 56. That means you are young enough to get used to something new. If I would have to do it now it would be much more difficult but at that time it was a new experience. I knew I had to open a door and not look back. It was easy for me because I knew I had to get used to it. Nobody cares if you are unhappy so you have to do it on your own. You have to decide you are going to make it and take the best of it and meet people,go out and do things, and that was very easy. Now it would be much more difficult but that time it was okay. And who can be unhappy about it? You come to New York, you come to a
wonderful city, why would you complain? Why would you complain? There is no reason to. You make the best of it. Nobody cares if you are unhappy so try to be happy.

(What was Jean-Paul like?)

Jean-Paul was so nice. He was very funny, very funny. He was very nice. He adored his family. He adored his daughters, it was unbelievable. Yeah.

(And what about Sylvia? She also lost her husband at a young age.)

Very young. He was 42.

(Do you think that made you closer?)

Of course....And Jean-Paul passed away in ’98.

(’98. How did that change your life?)

Tremendously. It’s something that you – you can’t get over the death of your child.

(How did your role change in his family? Did you become closer or drift apart? )

First, when Jessica decided to sell the house she came and – she wanted to go to a hotel with the three children and I decided that she would stay here. So they came and stayed here for three months until they bought another apartment. And I used to go every Friday night there but then with the time the children left and there were other things coming up and little by little it disappeared. But two weeks ago I had dinner with Jessica and her new husband. She was in Spain last week and came back Thursday so yesterday she called me and told me about her trip. We get along very well. It’s not very difficult to get along with me. I'm a good girl. [chuckles]

(You’ve been through a lot and you managed to keep a very positive attitude.)

You have to be positive. If you are negative you are going to be miserable and nobody cares if you’re miserable so try to make it. That’s the only way. If you
want to destroy your life it’s easy, you can do it.

Like in the time of Salvador, it was not always so easy… we were never 100% Salvadoran.

Ruth Reich de Alpert: Never. Never.

(Why do you say that?)

Ruth Reich de Alpert: You never are. The Salvadorans don’t let you be Salvadoran.

(They don’t let you be Salvadoran?)

Not really. You never felt you belonged absolutely. I don't know how it is with the younger generation like you, you were born there [to Ruth Reich de Alpert]. But I don't know. But like, say, the children of the Freunds [see entries on Herta Freund and Ricardo Freund] who are already third generation, they must think differently from us.

Ruth Reich de Alpert: Um-hm.

[Soeurette to Ruth] You were already a first generation. I was not a generation at all.

Ruth Reich de Alpert: Yes.

Soeurette: I was an import and that’s different.
It’s very difficult to talk about yourself because you want to avoid believing you are somebody special and so on and so on and then you still want to tell a few stories and you cannot tell about your life in one hour or so. You would need so much more to tell about your experiences as a child and everything, it’s – it’s difficult to say. Some people have a life that’s easier than others. But some people have lives that are more interesting than others and sometimes you wish you would have had much less to tell.

Transcription by Claudette Allison, Word-for-Word.com
Ruth Reich de Alpert participated in this section of the intervew.