Copies of original recordings (analog and digital, audio and video) may be accessed using equipment provided in Special Collections. All cassette tape recordings have been digitized to mp3 audio files. A large and growing number of interviews, both transcript and audio, are online at the Lowcountry Digital Library. For those oral histories that are not online, mp3s are available upon request. We also can provide a transcript for most, but not all, recordings. We respond to most requests within 2 business days, however, we may require up to week if an interview has not been fully processed.
To request a transcript and/or audio file, contact oral history archivist Alyssa Neely at neelya@cofc.edu or 843.953.8028, or call Special Collections 843.953.8016.
First Name: Beatrice
Last Name: Aaronson
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: Paris, France
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Solomon Breibart, Nicholas Butler, Belinda Gergel, Harlan Greene, Mayer Z. Gruber, Kim Harris, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 2/15/18
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-502
Interview Notes: Part one of five interviews conducted with Sigmund Abeles over the course of two days
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 2/15/18
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-503
Interview Notes: Part two of five interviews conducted with Sigmund Abeles over the course of two days
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 2/15/18
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-504
Interview Notes: Part three of five interviews conducted with Sigmund Abeles over the course of two days
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 2/16/18
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-505
Interview Notes: Part four of five interviews conducted with Sigmund Abeles over the course of two days
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 2/16/18
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-506
Interview Notes: Part five of five interviews conducted with Sigmund Abeles over the course of two days
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 2/27/17
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-474
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 3/1/17
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-475
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Sigmund
Last Name: Abeles
Date of Recording: 3/3/17
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-476
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Edward ("Eddie")Last Name: AbermanDate of Recording: 9/21/99Place of Birth: High Point, NCYear of Birth: 1932Special Collections MSS: 1035-218Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Mary Ann Aberman, Jack Leader, and Martin and Harriet GoodeOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Edward ("Eddie")Last Name: AbermanDate of Recording: 9/23/99Place of Birth: High Point, NCYear of Birth: 1932Special Collections MSS: 1035-221Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Mary AnnMiddle or Maiden Name: PearlstineLast Name: AbermanDate of Recording: 9/21/99Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1935Special Collections MSS: 1035-218Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Edward Aberman, Jack Leader, and Martin and Harriet GoodeOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Mary AnnMiddle or Maiden Name: PearlstineLast Name: AbermanDate of Recording: 9/23/99Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1935Special Collections MSS: 1035-222Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Davitia ("Ditty")
Middle or Maiden Name: Fleishman
Last Name: Abrams
Date of Recording: 7/10/14
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1931
Special Collections MSS: 1035-400
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Frances ("Debby")Middle or Maiden Name: Deborah BaruchLast Name: AbramsDate of Recording: 5/5/98Place of Birth: Camden, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-195Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Carolyn LevensonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: IrvingLast Name: AbramsDate of Recording: 2/27/97Place of Birth: Avenel, NJYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-128Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Marjorie AbramsOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Marjorie ("Marjie")Middle or Maiden Name: KohlerLast Name: AbramsDate of Recording: 2/27/97Place of Birth: Knoxville, TNYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-128Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Irving AbramsOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JennieMiddle or Maiden Name: ShimelLast Name: AckermanDate of Recording: 1/2/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-108Interview Notes: Interview with her sisters Dorothea Dumas and Renee FrischOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JennieMiddle or Maiden Name: ShimelLast Name: AckermanDate of Recording: 2/18/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-119Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SarahMiddle or Maiden Name: BurgenLast Name: AckermanDate of Recording: 9/22/99Place of Birth: Montgomery, ALYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-219Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: WilliamLast Name: AckermanDate of Recording: 12/5/96Place of Birth: California, PAYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-101Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Oh, yes, there were people from Brith Sholom who resented [the formation of Charleston’s Conservative synagogue] Emanu-El. Certainly there were bad feelings, but they couldn't have bad feelings for me, because I pay my dues! And that's not inexpensive after all those years, thousand dollars a year, plus all the other things with Addlestone Hebrew Academy and all the drives that they have and stuff like that. It's expensive to belong to both synagogues, but I believe that since I was a member of Brith Sholom Beth Israel—I don't want to penalize them. We need them. We need them. Because a lot of the people who are at Emanu-El are like me, they don't care much about religion, and we're not going to be much help in future days to come, when they really need that.
Because of assimilation. A lot of our people are leaving the Jewish fold. I was just reading an article from Edgar Bronfman here, from the American Jewish Committee, and he's talking about the fact that the Jews are becoming a decimated religion, and we're losing more Jews than we gain every year, and the Arabs are becoming stronger and stronger—the whole world is becoming stronger, as far as that's concerned, in their own religions, and we Jews are losing. In addition to the six million Jews we lost before, we're losing them today because it's too easy to assimilate, and that's not good. I don't want to see Judaism—I don't want to see it fade out completely. It's not a healthy situation, and of course they make it difficult for people to convert, which is not good, but I can't tell them that, because that's the way they want to practice their religion. They have a right to do that. I think it's okay, though, for me to belong to Emanu-El, or even the Temple. I think it's wonderful at the Temple. To try to bring the people in who have mixed marriages, to help them to observe the [basics of] Judaism.
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This is my father-in-law’s office. He also had the same kind of a story—he came out of Latvia, I think, or one of those places, also for the same reason, and he had been practicing in New York, and he came down and practiced in Charleston, and this was his office. While I was overseas he had one partner who died of cancer, so when the war was over and I was going back to Pennsylvania to practice. That’s where my home was and that’s where my practice was, that’s where I knew everybody. I was refereeing basketball and football games, and I was Chairman of the Young Republican Club and had a good little practice. And my father-in-law, after he lost his partner, asked me if I’d consider staying here with him.
I said, “No, I’m not going to practice here.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “First of all, I don’t want to take the bar over again.” I said, “I had a hell of a time passing it in Pennsylvania, it was hard enough, and I’m not going to take another bar exam here.” He said, “Why? You’re smart, you don’t have to worry about it.” I said, “I don’t know how smart I am, but I have been out for four years, and I’m not going to study for that. And beside, it’s too hot for me down here”—they didn’t have air-conditioning in those days—“and I don’t like the way you treat the black people, and,” I said, “[you] got big roaches about that big around.” Have you ever seen the roaches running around here? They’re horrible. They’re all over everything. “And you got mosquitoes, which I hate. No reason for me to stay here. I’m going back to Pennsylvania. First of all, I’m going to be a big fish in a little pond over there. Everybody knows me there; I don’t know anybody here. But most of all, I just don’t want to take the bar over again.”
My wife was one of four daughters, four girls. He had no sons, and she was the last of the Mohicans, ’cause the other girls had all been married—and no lawyers in the family—so my father-in-law was bound and determined I’d stay here. So he went to Columbia. You’ve heard of Sol Blatt?
Sol Blatt was a Jewish man, but [his wife] was converted out of Judaism into a Protestant or a Catholic. He and a fellow named Edgar Brown ran the state. Daddy went to him and said, “Sol, I got a son-in-law who practiced law in Pennsylvania for two years.” Incidentally, we have a reciprocity act with Pennsylvania and South Carolina. If you practice for five years, you can be admitted to [practice in] the other state without taking the bar. He said, “What can you do for me?” [Sol] said, “Don’t worry about it.” We got an act passed by the legislature which said that anybody who practiced law before the war, and then went into the service, you tack on whatever time they were in the service to the amount of years they practiced, so you get the five years. So my two plus four made six. They called it the Ackerman Act. One lawyer—in Laurens, South Carolina—took advantage of it besides me.
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Well, yes, my father-in-law Mr. Shimel was in his late seventies or early eighties. Daddy was not a very strong man. He’d had tuberculosis when he was a young man, and he was sort of—he just wasn’t a robust individual. About five or six years before he died, he told me one day that he wanted to give up practicing law, he was going to retire. I said, “Why do you want to retire?” I said, “You just come and go when you want to anyway. You don’t take anything you don’t want to take.” I had talked to his doctor, and his doctor told me, “Don’t let him retire, because he’ll fade anyway to nothing”—’cause the only interest he had in life was reading, he read prodigiously—and he said, “If he doesn’t have the law practice to go to, he won’t last long.” So [Daddy] said, “Well, I’m tired, I’ve had enough.” He said, “I think I’m sort of burnt out, ought to quit.” I kept talking and talking to him, and he wouldn’t change his mind, so I said, “Okay. Let me know when you’re going to quit, because we got a lot of closing up to do.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, we got hundreds of files and hundreds of clients. We’ve got to turn over all of the files to some lawyer, got to find someone to take them.” “What are you talking about?” I said, “What do you mean? You’re quitting, aren’t you?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, you quit, I quit. I don’t need the money, and I don’t want to practice without you.” “You can’t do that—you can’t quit! That’s ridiculous.” I said, “That’s ridiculous for you to quit, too.” I never heard another word about him quitting and he lasted eight more years. The doctor said he wouldn’t have lasted a month.
William Ackerman
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First Name: WilliamLast Name: AckermanDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: California, PAYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: WilliamLast Name: AckermanDate of Recording: 11/2/98Place of Birth: California, PAYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-206Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I just know it was before the turn of the century—I don’t know exactly when, but before the turn of the century. Even in those days, of course, Hungary had anti-Semitism, which Dad said was terrible. People who could get out, of course, would leave, and they didn’t mind; they let you go. They was happy to get rid of the Jews. He had a landsman, somebody from the little village that they lived in, and he sent my father enough money to come to the United States. He got a job in a little grocery store, he worked there for about three months, said, “I know enough now,” moved to Pennsylvania and bought a little grocery store there and expanded on out. These were all mining towns in that area.
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My family came from Hungary before the turn of the century, as a result of my father’s being conscripted into the Hungarian army. From the stories he tells me, they were very poor in Hungary. He and his whole family lived on a small farm about eight or nine acres, and he said the government took everything away from it in taxes. They had four boys and a girl. One boy went to the yeshiva; none of the other children got to school at all. He brought out all of his relatives. He paid the way for his sister and his three brothers. His father and mother would not come. They refused to leave Hungary.
He said that when they conscripted the Jewish boys into the Hungarian army, they treated them worse than slaves, made them do all the menial tasks, all the dirty filthy work. They never trained them to be soldiers or anything of that nature. He refused to fight for Hungary, so he emigrated to the United States when he was about nineteen years old. My mother—they didn’t know each other, although they lived close to each other near Budapest—she followed not long after that, not for the same reason, but because she wanted to live in the United States. They met here.
She came alone, he came alone, both of them. Those people in those days, they didn’t know anything about fear or things of that nature. My daddy couldn’t speak a word of English and neither could my mother. He had no education at all. My mother at least had—her father was a minor tax collector in Hungary, so at least she went to school. He had no education at all. None. Wound up being a multimillionaire.
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I led the fight in Charleston with the legislature for the Sabbatarians. I fought that thing—to let those people who wanted to stay closed on Saturday and open on Sunday—I started that, and I fought that in the legislature, even though I'm not religious, and I don't stay closed on Saturday, and didn't make any difference to me whether they want to stay open on Saturday or open on Sunday. That's what they wanted to do, then they should have the right to do that. I led that fight together with Rabbi Galinsky, out at Brith Sholom Beth Israel, and we were not successful the first time around. As a matter of fact, we got licked the first around. That was the first time in my life that I really observed anti-Semitism.
We went to the committee meeting to try to get it out of committee, so it could get to the legislature, and we were given two speakers from each side—two on our side and two on their side. Against us they had the President of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of South Carolina and a Baptist minister from up around Greenville. Rabbi Galinsky and I were the speakers for the bill. I spoke first on the insignificant things that we were asking to do. We only had about a half-a-dozen people who wanted to stay closed on Saturday and open on Sunday—one was a Seventh Day Adventist, and one I think came from Columbia, and the other four were from Charleston. I said, “You know, I don't know what you're arguing about. We're a small group of people—less than one-tenth of one percent of the population of South Carolina is Jewish—so why are you worried about it? What are you worried about?” And I said, “If we've got four people who want to observe the Sabbath”—and the rabbi then preached religious freedom from that standpoint. And they got up—and you could only speak one time, you can't go back for rebuttal. You get five minutes and that's it, you can't go back. So the Baptist minister got up and he said—and this is what I'm talking about—he said, “I listened to that silver-tongued lawyer from Charleston, that Mr. Ackerman, and I agree with him.” Oh my God, [I thought,] I've got a convert, a minister, a Baptist minister? “And I agree with him. The Jews do constitute only one-tenth of one percent of the population of South Carolina. And when they came here, out of sufferance, they knew this was a Christian state—and if they don't like it they can leave!” Rabbi Galinsky jumped up and I grabbed him. I said, “Rabbi, you can't talk.” “I'VE GOT TO TALK!” I said, “Rabbi, you can't talk, the five minutes is already up.” “I can't let that get by!” I said, “I can't help it, Rabbi. You can't talk.” So then the guy from the Chamber of Commerce, he talked, and when it was over Mr. Poulnot and I were friendly, and he came up to me—he was there—and said, “I want you to know that preacher doesn't speak for me.” I said, “Oh yes he does. He spoke for you. I didn't hear you say anything.” He said, “Well, I don't feel the way he does.” I said, “Why don't you tell him that?”
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First Name: NathanMiddle or Maiden Name: S.Last Name: AddlestoneDate of Recording: 3/13/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-57Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I went to Leeds the first time in 1960 and I went to visit my father’s—[he] had a sister whose name was Eisenberg. She had died, but had two sons. One of them had changed his name, for business reasons, I guess, from Abe Eisenberg to Alf Inglesby. The other one was Eisenberg, Jack Eisenberg. Abe Eisenberg had one son—Alf Inglesby had one son—and Jack Eisenberg had one son and a daughter. He had a little store in the neighborhood, [a] section of Leeds, for household goods and knitting and crochet thread and that sort of thing. The other one was a salesman. Anyway, when I went to Leeds I usually stayed at the Queen’s Hotel, [which] is always the big hotel near the railroad station in England, and when I checked in I picked up a telephone book and started looking for Laders and Inglesbys, and I found Addlestone in the telephone book. There must have been 150 Addlestones. I assume what happened when my dad came as a greenhorn to register, his name could have been Adelstein or something similar to that, and it became Addlestone. I guess that’s the way they registered him, because all these people were from the Church of England, none of them were Jewish. There’s an Addlestone, England, right near Gatwick Airport. In fact, my cousin—who was just married to David Appel, from here at the Storm Eye Institute—they were there together and brought me pictures of the time. Evidently it’s a well-known name in England, because I got a picture from a brewery with three beer dispensers and one of them said Addlestone Ale. Somebody sent me a soap wrapper that said Addlestone. It’s spelled the same way. Nobody here spells it that way. A-D-D-L-E-S-T-O-N-E. I’ve seen it E-D-D-, A-D-E-L-, but not A-D-D-L-E-S-T-O-N-E.
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My mother got tired of living in the country, practically running one of the stores, and she wanted to move back to the city. I guess my father couldn’t move back to Charleston at the time. He was a very proud person, and while he was living in Berkeley County—Berkeley County was the seat of all the bootlegging in South Carolina in those days. Hell Hole was the seat of all the gangs there. The Vilponteaux, which was a French family, and the MacKnights—like the Hatfields and McCoys—they were killing one another, fighting all the time. When I was in high school in Moncks Corner, they ambushed Senator Rembert Dennis right in front of the post office and killed him.
I can remember being in school one day. Only way to get into Moncks Corner was across the railroad track at the station, that was the only entrance to town from this side, [and] all the big freight trains were passing by. The Vilponteaux were chasing the MacKnights, or one or the other, and when they got there they couldn’t move because [there was a] big freight train [with] a couple hundred cars, and they had a shoot-out there. They killed four or five people right on the street, when we were in school. It was like the Wild West. They all drove Hudson Super 6s, with a gas tank about that wide, for bootlegging.
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My dad opened a store in Strawberry as a commissary for a big lumber company. I still remember the name of it, Lenox & Cannon Lumber Company. A big saw mill that had railroad lines running and everything else. Strawberry was a little stop on the Atlantic Coastline Railroad which is CSX today.
In the old days every big farmer or plant or lumber company had commissaries. They would advance groceries and goods in the store against salaries. I know my dad had to give the lumber company a percentage of his sales for the privilege of running it. They collected all his bills and everything. I think the profits were pretty big, too. You know, the lumber companies charged a big fee, I’m sure.
He ran a store there with everything—you name it. Those days they used to come with their wives on Saturdays from ten or twelve miles away and buy butt meat, flour and sugar and rice by the fifty-pound packages. They didn’t buy those small packages. They came in once every month or so for groceries and clothes.
Either [they paid in] script or they had accounts. They paid off every two weeks. He would take it in to the mill and they would pay him and deduct it from the salaries. And then the mill burnt down and he opened a store in Oakley which is on Highway 52, six miles south of Moncks Corner.
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In those days, you know, no automobiles and no transportation, McClellanville to Charleston was maybe a two-day trip by horse and buggy, or an all-day trip by horse and buggy. They [peddlers] would take orders for merchandise, blankets, spreads, and any household goods—pots, pans—and next trip they would bring it to them. I think one of the interesting things—there was a store here called Solomon’s, Sam Solomon. They were on King Street, almost across the street from where Fox Music House used to be. Next to it was a big Jewish delicatessen called Mazo’s Delicatessen. Sam Solomon would give the merchandise to all the peddlers, Jewish peddlers, on consignment, to go out and sell.
He had a black man working for them in the store whose name was Isaac, and Isaac spoke Yiddish like you’ve never heard in your life. I mean, you could not tell he wasn’t European. He would converse with all the refugees—immigrants, rather, in those days—in Yiddish. I remember him as a kid as a nice—coal-black, but one of the nicest fellows you ever met, and he was the head salesman for Solomon’s with the immigrants.
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My father probably was the neatest, most proud man you ever met. Abraham Addlestone.
I assume what happened when my dad came as a greenhorn to register, his name could have been Adelstein or something similar to that and it became Addlestone. I guess that’s the way they registered him. Evidently, it’s a well known name in England. I think he came to this country because he didn’t feel like England was—had too many restrictions on Jews in those days.
My dad peddled a while and then he worked for I.M. Pearlstine & Sons. Then, I think he decided he was going into the scrap business. He had dabbled a little bit in England in scrap, and he lasted about two months in it [here]. My daddy should have been a rabbi. He was not a businessman. He probably was the worst businessman. He couldn’t take the pressure of business. The scrap business in those years was a pretty rough business.
I’ll give you an illustration of what kind of businessman my dad was. He had heard that there was a scrap dealer in Sumter, South Carolina who wanted to go out of business, so he moved to Sumter first before he tried to buy him out. When he moved to Sumter, the fellow wouldn’t talk to him. So, he went in the scrap business [himself] in March—the first of March, 1930. Before September, he was completely broke.
That was the Depression. He didn’t have ten cents. He had a lease on our house for a year, but he didn’t go to the man and try to break the lease. What he did was he rented a little country grocery store in the black neighborhood, with a couple of rooms on it. He rented it. He went into the local wholesale grocer company called Croswell & Company and told them he wanted to open a grocery store. He wanted $500 worth of credit. He would pay for everything after that with cash, and he would pay off the $500 as he got a little better position.
He gave them some references in Charleston and a week later they called him up and told him to come in, and they opened the store for him. So, my mother ran the store and he had a little scrap yard with one man working for him. In those days, this one man would be cutting up automobile chasses with a hacksaw. If you told me somebody could do something like that, I’d think you were crazy. That’s all the tools he had. He had nothing.
Then, my dad went up to North Carolina in one of the textile plants and he bought remnants from print plants. At night, he and my mother would pack these into two-pound, four-pound bundles of scrap. It was all kind of colors. The women made comfort covers out of it, you know, rag things, patchwork. He sold those all over South Carolina to the country stores, my father did, because there was no scrap business in those days. And my mother ran the store
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My father was probably the neatest, most proud man you ever met. He was involved with the Young Maccabees—something like Hillel, I think, would be over here, or AZA would be over here—very active as a Zionist in those days. I think he came to this country because he didn’t feel like England was—[he felt it] had too many restrictions on Jews in those days, I think. I’ve been back since 1960 a half-a-dozen times, and I see these relatives of mine who live, most of them, almost [in] like a ghetto in big cities. So he decided to come to this country.
My mother came from a small town in Lithuania. Rozenka. It’s a long story. Rozenka is on the Polish border, one time Polish, one time Lithuanian—it changed back and forth. The reason I found it— I was in Lithuania [for] about five days, and [I was] unable to locate the town. A few weeks after I returned, I was at a dinner party in Jacksonville and we got talking somehow [about] this. One of the men said his ancestors came from Lithuania. I said, “I was just there!” I told him the fact that I tried to find this town and couldn’t. He said, “Give me the name of the town [where your mother was born],” and I gave it to him, he wrote it down. Two nights later he called me up. He said, “I found the town for you.” He had a map of Lithuania. He pointed it out on the map and sent it to me, and that’s how I found it.
My father came from Bialystok, which is [in] Russia or Poland, depending on the year. Russia, I think. Well, my dad came over here in about 1910, and stayed a short time, then went back to England. He was living there. That’s where my parents met. He came back in the fall of 1912, and he brought my mother, who was pregnant with me—I was born three months later in January 1913—my two brothers, a niece of my mother’s, and my father’s brother—his half-brother actually, he was about fifteen years old. Brought them all at one time. We settled here. The reason he came to Charleston, he had a very distant cousin whose name was Harry Goldberg. He was the Robinsons’ step-grandfather.
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First Name: DientjeMiddle or Maiden Name: Krant KaliskyLast Name: AdkinsDate of Recording: 4/25/97Place of Birth: Bussom, NetherlandsYear of Birth: 1938Special Collections MSS: 1035-145Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I went to another place and that was Laren, North Holland. The lady who took care of me was like a nun. It was kind of a Catholic religion but not quite, it was very strict. From one minute to the next I was told that my parents died. As a child four years old I had so many mixed up things. There was something true and it wasn’t true. In my little mind, how could my parents be dead? How in the world? Last week I still saw them. Where are they? I was told they were in heaven with Jesus. Because right away I had to believe in Jesus. I was taught that right away: I wasn’t a Jew, I was a Catholic and “we” believe in Jesus. That was my idol for the longest time, my Jesus. It was a very Catholic person who took care of me, kind of like a nun.
Unfortunately the nun, or the sister, or my stepmother, whatever, was not a very nice person. I don’t ever remember her smiling or saying anything kind to me. It was a very strict, awful face that I remember. I got a lot of beatings because I was crying, because there was no food. I was to not to get out of the closet. She beat me up a lot, very, very often for things that I really couldn’t help. So, very little times I got out that closet. I was very scared.
The only thing that I had was my doll. And my doll’s name was Ann, in Dutch Anneke Pop—pop is doll. My Anneke Pop was my everything. I talked to her, I cried with her, I joked with her—we were buddies. It was the only person who loved me and I loved besides my Jesus because I did love my Jesus then. I was taught that right away from early in the morning to late at night. The few times that I got out the closet I tried to go to a window and look outside and if I saw a cloud I saw my mom and my dad in the cloud, because they were there up in the cloud with Jesus. When times we very unsafe. I was stuffed in the closet with my doll—that was my good part.
A lot of my family was gassed in the gas chambers in the concentration camps. So naturally a lot of sadness, a lot of pictures around. My grandfather was killed. My mom and dad survived. I survived—not very easy times. It’s not easy as a five year old to survive on your own. All of a sudden you’re like—it’s like Moses. You know he was alone. He was lucky maybe to be taken care of. Maybe in a way, yeah, I was lucky. I’m still here. That’s something that after the war—and still I have to hear this—that people say, “You were so lucky. You made it. Aren’t you lucky you made it?” That was the most unreasonable to say right after the war to me. I didn’t feel I was so lucky. I had this guilt thing. How come my opa, my grandfather isn’t here. I wish I was with my opa, wherever he is. I didn’t think I was so lucky. The people I really loved they weren’t around me. My uncle, my sixteen-year-old uncle Abraham who I played with, who told me stories—where was he? I’m not lucky to be here as a eight year old because I want to be with my grandfather and my uncle and they’re not here no more.
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Bussum was a small—we call it a dorp, a village. Everybody kind of knew each other, everybody was pretty friendly. I used to go bicycle riding. I as very close to my aunts and uncles. I had one aunt who used to live right next door to us, also over the store, so the only way that we could get over to them was from the front door down stairs or we could walk on the balcony to each other’s house. This aunt was just married, guess when I was three years old. Her name was Katherine and my uncle’s name was Joseph.
My father and my grandfather and my uncle, they had a store where they sold working clothes like overalls, working materials, and needles and thread, and workshirts. It was called Degunst. We had one synagogue. It was orthodox. We celebrated most of the Jewish holidays. On Friday night we were all together; you weren’t supposed to go out. We played games and we talked and told jokes.
I’m Jewish and on the weekends on Friday night I went to my grandmama’s house and grandaddy’s house. I was a very happy, well-liked child. I loved to talk to people and I talked a lot. . . . I also remember very well that if I stayed over on Friday night on Saturday morning when I woke up I could come to their bedroom. And I could lay in the middle because they had a double bed. Each one—they were very childish—on their sides where they had their nightstands I remember they would have a little plate, and there was a cookie on there and a bonbon and a candy. It was like a game between them—whose little plate I was going first to eat. “Oh look! She came to me first,” my grandmother said. All that is so clear, like it was yesterday.
On my father’s side I remember my grandmother was like a real lady. Every Friday morning she had her hair appointment. I remember her having white hair—my oma Dientja who lives in Bussum. They were very well liked people, very respectable people—not very rich. They lived also over the store where later we lived. On my father’s side everybody lived in Bussum. So you see them everyday, you could just walk over there. But I did sleep over there many a times. The bedrooms were on the third story. The first story was the stores, the second story was the living room and the kitchen and another little bedroom. On the third floor was like the guest room. That’s where my sister and I used to sleep once and awhile.
I remember my father as a very hardworking person. They were very decent people, very respectful. We were never to say anything bad or use bad language. I think I had—before the war—a very loving way of growing up the first few years. Then it was getting very hard. By the time I was three and a half years old we had the Germans move in all around us.
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I was a rascal when I was little. I used to slip out the door at nine o’clock at night. My parents would go and see if I was in the bed and I was down the street on my little tricycle.
Before Holland was occupied we lived over a store that my father and uncle worked in. Next to the store was a school and just before things started getting really bad the Germans moved into that school. One day my mom and dad just couldn’t find me again and they looked next to their store. The Germans were all marching and I was right behind them, behind the Germans, marching. I had a pot on my head like their helmets and I had a broom over my shoulder like their rifle, marching along just like they were marching. My parents went over and said, “Come on over here.” You know they got scared. That’s the kind of kid I was—they were marching, I was marching, just not understanding what trouble I was going to get into.
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I do remember one thing. I had a white coat, naturally my grandfather gave me that. It was made out of wool. It was a white little girl’s coat with a hood on it. And then you had this thing where you put your hands in. It was the same material and we call it a “mof” [pl. moffen]. But you keep your hands warm because Holland is cold in the winter.
I remember one time when there was already a lot of Germans in Amsterdam, my mom took me shopping in the big city or to see relatives. We went in a trolley. A slang word for German that the Germans had then and still people use that word—they call the Germans “Moffen.” It’s the same word like the “mof” like we put our hands in to warm. So my mother knowing me, me as a child with a big mouth, got scared to death when she saw a few Germans step in the trolley car. I remember her jerking me away just as I was about to say, “Look, a ‘mof.’ Look mom, a ‘mof.’ I have a ‘mof’ on my hands.” That was the same word. I remember the frightening, scary thing on my mom’s face and she jerked me away and we got out the streetcar. It’s like things like that you remember too when you see your mother very worried, very scared. We went in hiding. My mom and dad had the store with my uncle and all of a sudden I remember we were on the street. They just came over and took over the store and we were on the street.
I do remember that my mom was crying and got very upset, and I saw her get very depressed. I didn’t know why. As a child I just coudn’t understand that. My father was trying to smile and try to be the big guy. I remember them saying goodbye. The next thing I knew I was in a children’s home. I went from Amsterdam to this children’s home in Bussum. I wasn’t very long there either because the owners of this children’s home they took me on the bicycle and took me away. Later I find out why they had to do that—because I was telling all the kids, “I can’t wait till I’m six years old because I can wear my star then, my yellow star of David with ‘Jew’ on it”— in Dutch “Jood.” So they had to get me away. I couldn’t stay there. I was telling all the kids I was Jewish.
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First Name: Ruth
Middle or Maiden Name: E.
Last Name: Adler
Date of Recording: 8/7/18
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-519
Interview Notes: Interview with senior members of the Furchgott/Furchtgott family with Jeanne Pinkerson Dreyfoos and Maurice Furchgott at the Furchgott/Furchtgott family reunion held in Charleston, SC
First Name: WillyMiddle or Maiden Name: MoritzLast Name: AdlerDate of Recording: 6/25/12Place of Birth: GermanyYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-356Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Matest
Middle or Maiden Name: Mendelevich
Last Name: Agrest
Date of Recording: 4/9/01
Place of Birth: Mogilev, Belarus, Russia
Year of Birth: 1915
Special Collections MSS: 1035-260
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Mikhail
Middle or Maiden Name: Matestovich
Last Name: Agrest
Date of Recording: 2/21/01
Place of Birth: Moscow, Russia
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-249
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 10/30/13
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-380
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Evolving Role of the Synagogue" with Rabbis Moshe Davis (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 4/13/16
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-442
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Politics in the Pulpit," with Rabbis Michael Davies (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 3/27/14
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-390
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "God at the Center: the Role of the Divine in Jewish Belief," with Rabbis Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative) and Michael Davies (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 11/1/17
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-494
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, " K'lal Yisrael: How Important is Jewish Pluralism?" with Rabbis Moshe Davis (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 4/18/12
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-351
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Be Fruitful and Multiply," with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 10/24/12
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-361
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Revelation, Prophecy, and Rabbinic Authority: Contemporary Perspectives," with Rabbis Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative) and Moshe Davis (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 4/4/13
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-369
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "On Understanding the Rabbinate: Preparation and Day-to-Day Life of a Pulpit Rabbi," with Rabbis Moshe Davis (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 3/23/11
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-348
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Judaism and Sexuality: Sects in the City," with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 11/7/2018
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-533
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Tefillah:Prayer," with Rabbis Moshe Davis (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 2/18/15
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Obligated to Educate: Jewish Education and Jewish Day Schools," with Rabbis Michael Davies (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 11/20/19
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-540
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Coming of Age in Judaism," with Rabbis Moshe Davis (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Alexander
Date of Recording: 11/9/16
Place of Birth: San Antonio, TX
Year of Birth: 1975
Special Collections MSS: 1035-464
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Views on Marriage," with Rabbis Alan Cohen (Conservative) and Moshe Davis (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: FayMiddle or Maiden Name: LaroLast Name: AlfredDate of Recording: 5/22/99Place of Birth: Shedlische, PolandYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-213Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: FayMiddle or Maiden Name: LaroLast Name: AlfredDate of Recording: 11/30/99Place of Birth: Shedlische, PolandYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-234Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: ElzaMiddle or Maiden Name: MeyersLast Name: AltermanDate of Recording: 2/3/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-114Interview Notes: Interview with her cousin Arthur WilliamsOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: DoraLast Name: AltmanDate of Recording: 10/19/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1896Special Collections MSS: 1035-42Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HarryMiddle or Maiden Name: IsaacLast Name: AppelDate of Recording: 12/22/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-105Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Samuel
Last Name: Appel
Date of Recording: 9/01/14
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-405
Interview Notes: Interview with his sister, Fannie ("Faye") Appel Rones
First Name: SamuelLast Name: AppelDate of Recording: 11/13/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1929Special Collections MSS: 1035-047Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
SA: I remember. We couldn’t go in the living room. Just on special occasions. Maybe Saturday night to listen to “Inner Sanctum,” right. I remember patches. We had slip covers over those. But we had patches because it would wear out for some reason. I don’t know how because we never used it. But I guarantee you those patches were sparkling clean. Everything in there was sparkling clean. Those slip covers had patches but they were sparkling clean.
FR: Clean. Clean. And before I had a date—we had beautiful floors in the house—I used to put the wax down and I would put on heavy socks, my father’s heavy socks, and I would skate around the room polishing up the floors.
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My brother was studying late at night down at medical school. Eleven o’clock at night he said, I’m hungry. My mother would say, isn’t there a sandwich shop there. Yes, but I don’t like the sandwiches here. So, my mother would make a sandwich at eleven o’clock at night. She didn’t learn to drive until she was an older woman. When she drove you would have to get out of the street. And she would go in the middle of the night and take him a sandwich in the middle of the night. Okay. When I was growing up, I’m not saying I’m any great hero. I sat down to eat and I said I wanted a piece of bread. She would butter it. I said, Momma, I’ll butter the bread myself. But Sidney, she handed it to him unbuttered and he would say, butter the bread Momma. He was very dependent.
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There was a Polish pronunciation and a Jewish pronunciation. We call it “Kowasheem” and I think they call it “Kowazeem.” But that’s depending on who you talk to. I’ll tell you what I know about Kaluszyn, what my father told me about Kaluszyn. Friday night you were required to have the biggest meal you could have to usher in the Sabbath. And what they did to clean the house. When I came home on Friday, the house was sparkling clean. White tablecloth. Candles going. Just beautiful. You knew. No one had to tell you it was Shabbos. It was Shabbos. You knew that. Anyway so my father’s Shabbos was. They used to have dirt floors. They had chickens running around. He said, they would sweep the chicken droppings off the floors and everything else. And their sumptuous meal was a big bowl of katoflas, which I understand is a Polish word meaning potatoes. That was their big meal. But whatever it was, they had their biggest meal for Shabbos. That’s how dirt poor he was.
Kaluszyn was either seventy-five kilometers or thirty-five kilometers outside Warsaw towards Russia and at the time he left, it was under Russian control. My understanding is the reason they were leaving in such a mass exit in 1910 is because Czar Nicholas—I don’t know who the Czar was—but the Czar’s answer to the Jewish problem, instead of killing them off, what he would do was conscript the young men into the army. And keep them in the army for thirty or forty years and not let them have families. That was the way he was going to get rid of the Jews. So, the Jewish young men said, that’s not for them. That’s my understanding of it. So, they left and came to America.
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My wife was from Montgomery. She grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a twin and she tells the story that she and her sister were the only Jewish [children] in this particular school. The principal said, “Well, let’s break them up. We will put one in one class and one in another so the kids can see what a Jew looks like.”
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Yes. They were all from Kaluszyn. I.M. Goldberg was the first Goldberg here. And that was my mother’s brother and she loved him. She thought he was wonderful. He was the first and he started bringing family over little by little. And then J. L. Goldberg came. Max Goldberg. Saul Goldberg. I don’t know how the sequence went, but J.L. Goldberg is a brother. Max Goldberg is a brother. Saul Goldberg is a brother. Max and Saul were single when they came. They lived in my house. And Max is the one that went back to Europe and he came back with Esther Goldberg. Who is still living. She lives in Florida now and Max died. She used to live right down the street from us. Saul lived in our home. He was a boxer and he just recently died. And he married a girl from Savannah, GA. Rita Cramer who was a lovely lady. She now lives in Atlanta. She has three children. One lives in Atlanta. One moved back to Charleston and lives on Sullivans Island. Sandy Goldberg lives on Sullivans Island. One lives in California, he is a plastic surgeon out in California. Eddy Goldberg.
I.M. Goldberg opened a furniture store. And he had a quality furniture store. High class furniture. They were very good furniture men. J.L. Goldberg opened a furniture store and he had, I don’t want to insult you. He had borax. In other words, if you wanted fine quality furniture you would go to I.M. If you wanted run of the mill stuff you would go to mass marketing. I.M. was not mass market. So, J.L. got into the business. So then, Max Goldberg got into the business. So, Saul Goldberg got in the business. So, (inaudible) Appel got in the business. All furniture stores. And some man named (inaudible) who in somewhere in this chain whose name was (inaudible). He was in the business also. I.M. was the first Jew from that area to come here. The first Jews were the (inaudible) and stuff like that. But this is the Goldberg family.
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First Name: Michael
Last Name: Arad
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Place of Birth: London, United Kingdom
Year of Birth: 1969
Special Collections MSS: 1035-515
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Facing Memory: the past, the present, and the public," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: FlossieMiddle or Maiden Name: GinsbergLast Name: ArnoldDate of Recording: 1/9/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1907Special Collections MSS: 1035-001Interview Notes: Interview with her son Norman ArnoldOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Upper King Street. When you got down past the Citadel, I mean, on King and Calhoun, it was all status. And my father was very strong on that. He says don’t do anything unusual because they know your Jewish and everyone will be thought less of and we don’t want that. Let them know you’re good people.
They didn’t want Jewish people there on Ashley Avenue because there weren’t many there. It was Christians next to us and on the corner was Poulnots that has Kerrison’s Department Store, and my father went to him and said, “If you do not desire us to be here, we can sell it and we can go somewhere else.” He said, “Mr. Ginsberg, you’re welcome to come, we’re happy to have people like you.” And from then on if Kerrison’s, you know, accepted us, everybody could.
We weren’t ashamed that we were Jewish people. But there’s a lot of Christian people, you went to school and they said, “Oh, you’re a Jew girl, my family don’t like me to play with Jews.” So, we didn’t hang around with them too much. They let you know that you’re beneath them.
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FA: When they had the grocery store, my mother used to have a black girl, teacher, to come in after she finished teaching, to teach her. They’d go upstairs and she’d read to her and do that to improve her. Tell me whatever I say wrong, don’t let me say it, tell me about it, I want it to be right.
This man in Charleston, he was a miser. He was older but he had a lot of money, Hyman Bluestein, on the corner of King and Radcliffe, and my mother was a beautiful woman. He said,you have to learn how to speak English because he wouldn’t go with you anywhere without English, they don’t speak Jewish over here and they don’t speak Russian, you’ve got to speak English.
And so my mother had a black school in back of where we lived near the grocery store. The teacher used to come at night when they closed the store and she used to teach her English, perfect English. Read, write, everything. And my mother was very proud of that. She could, you know, she was in America now.
NA: She [the teacher] was a black woman.
FA: A black woman, I think. There was a black school right in back and she came and taught my mother.
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My father’s name was Isaac, his first name. As soon as they came to America they dropped their family name because they were told nobody understands Russian and Jewish, you have to learn to speak English and so everybody will understand you. That’s right. And we were proud of it, we weren’t hiding from it, but they didn’t understand us, that’s the only trouble. And then we all spoke English. And my mother spoke English. And my father, he went to all the meetings. He became—what was that big organization? They asked him to join. The Masons.
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FA: Mama died, she was pretty young too. She was very up-to-date though, very up to date. She wanted to speak well and she used to tell us when we would come home from a party or a from a dinner, what did I say wrong and how do you pronounce that word, I didn’t know how to pronounce it. She was very forward in learning. She didn’t want to be a foreigner.
NA: A greenhorn.
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First Name: NormanMiddle or Maiden Name: J.Last Name: ArnoldDate of Recording: 1/9/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1929Special Collections MSS: 1035-001Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Flossie ArnoldOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
FA: When they had the grocery store, my mother used to have a black girl, teacher, to come in after she finished teaching, to teach her. They’d go upstairs and she’d read to her and do that to improve her. Tell me whatever I say wrong, don’t let me say it, tell me about it, I want it to be right.
This man in Charleston, he was a miser. He was older but he had a lot of money, Hyman Bluestein, on the corner of King and Radcliffe, and my mother was a beautiful woman. He said,you have to learn how to speak English because he wouldn’t go with you anywhere without English, they don’t speak Jewish over here and they don’t speak Russian, you’ve got to speak English.
And so my mother had a black school in back of where we lived near the grocery store. The teacher used to come at night when they closed the store and she used to teach her English, perfect English. Read, write, everything. And my mother was very proud of that. She could, you know, she was in America now.
NA: She [the teacher] was a black woman.
FA: A black woman, I think. There was a black school right in back and she came and taught my mother.
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My grandfather and my father had wholesale tobacco, drugstores around the state. They had one in Charleston, the original one in Charleston, Columbia, had a place in Beaufort, had a place in Greenville. They would open a store in Fairfax, South Carolina, for instance, which was a rail head. In those days as the railroad moved along, workers were a good source of customers. So my mother went to Fairfax, South Carolina, and she was there about six months, a year, before she was married, and she ran that place. And eventually the rail head moved on, it went to some place in Savannah, or whatever.
When repeal of prohibition occurred in ’37, they had distribution around the state of tobacco, so they opened a whiskey distribution place because we had the distribution network set up and that was in Columbia. You could only have one location. So, my father, he ran that. He used to commute, and commuting in those days was not like it is today on the interstate. It would take four and a half, five hours to drive to Charleston from Columbia. So, eventually, we moved to Columbia so he could do that business. All those other branches were closed later. And then, right towards the end of World War II, my grandfather’s only son wanted to take a more prominent role in the business and so forth, so my grandfather and my father split up. My grandfather’s family, son-in-law and son, Max Levine and Izzie, took the tobacco business, and my father took the liquor business, and they each ran their businesses.
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Beth Elohim, as you know, was Sephardic and then it became [central] Europeans and mostly Deutcher Jews, and as it evolved into a Reform synagogue. Originally it was Orthodox, but the real Orthodox of the community, the only Orthodox of the community was the St. Philip, Brith Sholom, and they had the cheder downtown, which I went to. My grandfather, when he was president of the synagogue, that’s when they built the education building next door, which supplemented the cheder which was around the corner. And, of course, later the Kaluszyners had another synagogue uptown, also on St. Philip Street.
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My grandmother had told me this story. It’s a wonderful story. Her mother’s father, her family, was a prominent family in this shtetl. Her father was a rabbi. My grandfather came from a poorer family and didn’t have the status they did, so he left Russia, went to South America, worked in the diamond mines for a couple of years to get enough and save enough money so he could go back and be a person of means so he could marry my grandmother, which he did. And then as soon as they got married they left for America.
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My father left New York when he was about seventeen. He went to Florida. They were having a land boom there, and he settled in Lake Worth, Florida. He did various odd jobs and he used to work on a ferry that went back and forth; he worked on the ferry selling cigars and candy. The ferry went between West Palm and Palm Beach. He had various and sundry jobs. This was a cow town. It was almost like the Wild West in those days. It was cattle country. People used to wear guns and ride horses.
But at any rate, he apprenticed himself. A druggist there allowed him to apprentice himself to him and after a couple of years he got his license as a pharmacist. Later, the old man who owned the drug store died and they sold the store to my father.
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FA: Mama died, she was pretty young too. She was very up-to-date though, very up to date. She wanted to speak well and she used to tell us when we would come home from a party or a from a dinner, what did I say wrong and how do you pronounce that word, I didn’t know how to pronounce it. She was very forward in learning. She didn’t want to be a foreigner.
NA: A greenhorn.
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First Name: HaroldMiddle or Maiden Name: M.Last Name: AronsonDate of Recording: 2/15/96Place of Birth: Lane, SCYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-052Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Rose Louise Aronson and friend Edward MirmowOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HaroldMiddle or Maiden Name: M.Last Name: AronsonDate of Recording: 2/16/96Place of Birth: Lane, SCYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-053Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Rose Louise AronsonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Rose LouiseMiddle or Maiden Name: RichLast Name: AronsonDate of Recording: 2/15/96Place of Birth: Camden, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-052Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Harold Aronson and friend Edward MirmowOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Rose LouiseMiddle or Maiden Name: RichLast Name: AronsonDate of Recording: 2/16/96Place of Birth: Camden, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-054Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Harold AronsonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Gene
Last Name: Atkinson
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: Orangeburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Blanche C. Cohen, Irvin Cohen, Ronald Cohen, Brenda Yelman Lederman, Ernest L. Marcus, Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: Barbara
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 12/02/14
Special Collections MSS: 1035-410
Interview Notes: Interview with her mother, Pearl Hirsch Baker
First Name: Barry
Middle or Maiden Name: Ivan
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 11/3/10
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-340
Interview Notes: Interview with his aunt Ruth Silverman
First Name: Barry
Middle or Maiden Name: Ivan
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 10/24/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-360
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Pearl Baker and his brother Stanley Baker
First Name: Barry
Middle or Maiden Name: Ivan
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: JohnMiddle or Maiden Name: D.Last Name: BakerDate of Recording: 3/3/16Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1955Special Collections MSS: 1035-451Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MarcieMiddle or Maiden Name: SternLast Name: BakerDate of Recording: 6/26/15Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1954Special Collections MSS: 1035-484Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Beryle Stern Jaffe and aunt Anne Stern SolomonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: PearlMiddle or Maiden Name: CohenLast Name: BakerDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1912Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Pearl
Middle or Maiden Name: Cohen
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 10/24/12
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1912
Special Collections MSS: 1035-360
Interview Notes: Interview with her sons Barry Baker and Stanley Baker
First Name: Pearl
Middle or Maiden Name: Hirsch
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 12/02/14
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1927
Special Collections MSS: 1035-410
Interview Notes: Interview with her daughter, Barbara Baker
First Name: Stanley
Last Name: Baker
Date of Recording: 10/24/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-360
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Pearl Baker and his brother Barry Baker
First Name: AbelLast Name: BanovDate of Recording: 4/3/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-060Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Now, his grandfather was a postman, rural delivery postman and he—that means that he knew how to read Russian or Polish I guess. His grandfather. My father’s grandfather. And I think his father before him may have had a postman, but the grandfather was a postman. And his father, who would have been my great grandfather, was a foreman in a plant that made wooden nails for shoes. They used to make wooden nails, maybe they were wooden shoes, I don’t know, but from what I heard they made wooden nails, and he was a foreman. So, they must have a little bit of an income, a fair decent income, and apparently enough to get my father to Manchester when he was about eleven or twelve years old. Because they wanted him avoid—he was the oldest son and they wanted him to avoid the conscription. And you probably know this but the conscription in those days, the little Jewish boys of twelve, before they were bar mitzvah, they were conscripted into the Russian army. And marched until they either died or they became converts to Catholicism, to Orthodox Russian. That’s a matter of history, you know, the histories that you see of the period. So, apparently to keep him from having to get into that setup, they got him to Manchester. Now, Leon Banov, Sr., he told how he was brought to Hamburg to embark on a trip to the United States where he came and was apparently handled by my father many years later. Because he was quite a bit younger. What they did was, there were entrepreneurs who took the kids and brought them to the border and there were weak spots in the border, and they gave these kids—there were farms which were on two sides of the border—they gave these kids a little band of sheep and a shepherd’s crook and they drove the sheep across the border and they went in across the border and once they went across the border the men took them and brought them to Hamburg for a fee. And then, of course, they went wherever they were scheduled to go. My father was scheduled to go to Manchester, England because he had an uncle there. And the uncle’s name was I think Simon Gorse, that’s the name it eventually became, it was originally Gourovitz, I think, or something like that. But the Gourse family and the Banov family were very closely intertwined. This Gourse was an uncle on his mother’s side. They were big tall strapping people who had been fishermen on the Neimond River. Big strapping guys.
Now, getting back to my father, he stayed there and accumulated a little money and had a money belt and he came to Fall River, Massachusetts, where another Uncle Gourse was, I don’t know what his name was. He came there and just as he was about to work as a tailor he got a summons from Charleston where he had an older first cousin by the name of Wolf Banov.
So, that’s why my father came to Charleston. Because Wolf Banov heard that he had a young cousin in Massachusetts who was a tailor and he just happened to need a tailor at that time so he sent for him. And Sam, my father, worked for them for a couple of years until he got to know the business, then he started his own business. He must have gotten a little credit somewhere or something, started his own business, I think at John and King Street. And the next progression was King and Spring Street, which was a bigger store, and he ended up very successful and expanded the business, started one brother-in-law in a furniture business and the brother-in-law didn’t do too well and he had to take over the furniture business. Started another brother-in-law in a pawn shop and that didn’t do too well and he ended up having to take over the pawn shop. Because he was a pretty smart businessman and evidently when it was necessary for him to take it over, he made it work.
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Rabbi Bell, about a year into his contract, gave a bad check and we got rid of him. He was replaced by a man named Speck, S-P-E-C-K. He was running the Hebrew school. Speck was a big bruiser, about six foot tall and two hundred pounds, and when he’d hit you, you’d know you were hit. So by this time I was playing the violin. I used to come to Hebrew school from my violin class, I think every day of the week or quite a few days of the week. And one day as I was walking out Mr. Speck, who had a big mouth, said, “Ach, here comes the fiddler.” So I said, “Don’t you wish you could play the fiddle?” And Mr. Speck was absolutely—it hurt his feelings. So he told Mr. Glaser about it. The following Saturday at the synagogue Mr. Glaser told my father the story about how I was disrespectful to the teacher. That you never did. You could do just about anything but don’t be disrespectful to a teacher. And my father let me have it in full. I must have been ten or eleven years old at the time. Maybe nine or ten because we were already living on the Terrace at that time. He let me have it in full regalia. I never have forgotten that and I’ve never been disrespectful to a teacher ever since.
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I didn’t join the Masons. I don’t think most of my generation belonged to it. My brothers belonged to it. Oh, the Elks was even more important. The Elks was more important for integrating the Jewish and non-Jewish community and I didn’t belong to that. Fellows like Jack Krawcheck were active in that. My brother Buster was active in that. I think the Ellisons were active in that. Sam Berlin was probably. There was a great deal of interaction there.
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But Sam [Banov, my father] was more of a frustrated lawyer. He was an instinctive doctor but he wasn’t a frustrated doctor, he was a frustrated lawyer. Every young Jewish lawyer that came along he advised them on what to do. He was into politics. I told you he was remarkable in this connection. He was one of about half a dozen or less Republicans and he had a little hand in patrons but he was also very active in ward politics in the Democratic side. There was no Republican party in those days. There was only the Democratic party except for patronage. So he was in both camps. And he got by with it for some reason. He knew how to handle himself. And he had a combination Russian accent, Southern accent and Manchester accent because he learned his English in Manchester, England. He never said “eggs,” he said “heggs.” He had a few little British mannerisms and he also spoke with somewhat of a Southern accent but it was overwhelmingly Russian and yet he mixed with the mayor, he mixed with people on that level. He was quite a modest man but he knew who he was and he was a—and in a quiet way he was assertive and quite a remarkable guy.
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Now, did anybody tell you about the pawn shop, the institution? My father had brothers-in-law whom he backed in business. One was a furniture store he had to take over and one was a pawn shop. Now, when the brother-in-law who took over the pawn shop married a wealthy woman from New York he went up to New York to live. The father-in-law was a competitor with the man who founded the American Tobacco Company. He went up to New York and Willie Banov, Uncle Willie, must have been just about at the right age, so they put him in to run the pawn shop.
So, here was my father stuck with a pawn shop and he had a thriving clothing business. He didn’t have any time to fool with it so he turned it over to Uncle Willie. Uncle Willie ran it and my father had virtually nothing to do with it. But he was identified as a pawnbroker because he owned this building in which he had a pawn shop which was operated by other people. They didn’t allow him in there because he would have given the damn place away, he was that kind of a guy. He would come in every once in a while and play loan man and drive my Uncle Willie crazy because he was unreasonably generous with it. He was that kind of a guy. But when he died they identified him as a pawnbroker. When they talked about the history of the store they identified him—it drove me up the wall because it wasn’t really right; he wasn’t a pawnbroker, he was a merchant.
People from downtown used to come in through the clothing store, there was a common door, they would come in through the clothing store as if they were going to enter the clothing store. They would go in and pawn jewelry and pawn flatware and all kinds of stuff to carry them over, especially during the Depression, but later, too.
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Now, the background, my father came to Charleston in—it was probably 1884 or ’5. Must have been ’85 because he was supposedly born in 1870. He would never tell us but just putting together all of these things we figured out that he was born in 1870, in the town of Smascki, I think it was. S-M-A-S-C-K-I, and it’s on the map, oddly enough. I think that’s how you spell it. He always called it Schumasky. But it may have been Kopcvi, because he spoke of the two and both of them are about maybe 5 or 10 miles from each other and there goes a little history, a little Jewish history, history of the Jewish pale. Which happened to be typified by the experience of his family. He always talked about Kopcvi and Smascki and wondered about that so we have a family tree which was developed by one of our cousins from Knoxville, Tennessee, whose name was Rose Gorse, the official family historian. Now, in that family tree, which went back to 1770, the family along about in 1792 changed its name from B-A-N-O-R to B-A-N-O-V, I’m sorry, to Banovitz and I wondered about that and I noticed that they moved from Smascki to Kopvci or vice versa, along about that time. So I got curious about that. So I looked for a map of that period. Why did they move in 1792? So I went down there and I found out that in 1792 was the first partition of Poland, that this town was originally Poland where the name was Banor because that’s the Polish and it became Banovitz which was the Russian, so obviously they moved, and I wondered why. Well, that was the partition of Poland, and the part they were in went to Prussia and they apparently didn’t like the idea of being part—living with Prussians so they moved over to what in those days must have been a more gentle population in Russia. So that’s why the name was changed to Banovitz.
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I want to tell you about Karl Karesh. Karl Karesh, from the time he was about ten years old, has been the president and leader and just about everything in the Jewish community. There was a little boys’ club called B.O.Y., Band of Youngsters, he was the president. We had somethinKarl Kareshg called the Jewish Juniors Basketball Team, he was the captain. He was always the leader. Just a natural-born leader. And had a certain amount of magnetism, I guess.
Another thing that I should tell you about the Jewish community in Charleston, the great leavening agent was Hebrew school. We originally had the Hebrew school by the synagogue on St. Philip Street. Later they organized something called the Jewish Community Center which was a building bought from the Catholic community, where the Catholic community used to have a school there, Bishop England school. Then it changed over, moved over, the Jewish community bought it and it was constantly broke. I remember my father astounded the community. He donated a thousand dollars toward that community center, which was an unheard of amount. Whenever it was, 1925 or ’6, something like that. This marked us as economic royalists because of the thousand bucks. And there were other people like the Berlins and Kareshes, some of them, not all, some of the Kareshes didn’t qualify. But they were the relatively wealthy ones by the day’s standards. Then there were people, the children of the less affluential, who normally wouldn’t have associated with the wealthier ones, except in that Hebrew school all people were equal. We were all subject to getting slammed by Mr. Glaser or Speck or one of those, see. And we all commiserated and we all played baseball together and when we got big enough we tried to get on the Jewish Juniors, which Karl Karesh was the captain of.
So, there was this great leavening—it didn’t matter who you were, how much money you had or your father had, if you were good you made the team; if you weren’t good you didn’t make the team. And if you were good in Hebrew school, what’s his name let you recite favorably or he invited you to study Rashi with him, which was a commentary. Rashi was a commentary on the Bible and only the brightest ones could qualify for that. And not all the brightest ones gave a good goddamn, so they didn’t go to it, but those—it didn’t matter if you were the candlestick maker’s son or the president of the synagogue. That was the great leavening agent. And that leavening agent carried over into social things ’cause when you had parties in the evening, it didn’t make any difference—if you were in a two year range you went with the same group as a general rule and if you had the stuff and if you were socially knowledgeable you mixed in with them. And if you didn’t, you didn’t. You didn’t mix in with them. But the leavening agent was ability, there was no question. Money didn’t make any difference.
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Well, the downtown Jews by and large went to the Reform synagogue. The downtown Jews were German Jews as a general rule. Just happened that most of them lived down there. The uptown Jews were the people who came later, anywhere from 1886 or thereabouts or even 1850s, as in the case of the Kareshes. The Kareshes were uptown Jews because their business was uptown and they lived uptown. Originally over the stores and maybe considerably later up on Hampton Park Terrace, which was uptown. Now, the downtown Jews having been German Jews, many of them went back maybe to the original—I think Portuguese Jews may have started it there. In fact, I know they did. And the German Jews came in maybe in the 1800s as the immigrants. Looked down upon by the Portuguese. Which happened in New York too. And then the German Jews became the older Jews when the younger Jews, the newer Jews came in the 1850s and beyond. If you trace this, you’ll probably find there were pogroms or something which motivated them to come out. Possibly in 1848, Metternich, after the period of the upset there following the second Napoleon. And then in the 1880s there were problems in Russia. Well, anyhow, getting back to the uptown/downtown, the Karesh family was the cream of the uptown because they were American born. The father of that family was born in St. Louis.
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[I was] born in the master bedroom up over the store. We lived there until 1924 when my father who had been quite successful decided that after years of planning, he was going to build a house up on Hampton Park Terrace, known as The Terrace. He had a property there, about an acre or thereabouts, half acre, opposite the park on Moultrie Street, 107 Moultrie Street. That marked a typical stage of development of the immigrant population, the Jewish immigrant population of Charleston, and I think of many other cities, which was to come over and work like holy heaven to get established. You get established by working night and day, sleeping in the back of the store sometimes or sleeping above the store as the family did, and it was a nice combination upstairs but he couldn’t wait to build this, what was then regarded as one of the very very lovely houses of Charleston up there. I don’t know how many rooms it was but it was a big brick place, it was quite elegant. I mention that because that is a stage in the progression of Jewish immigrants. And also today the same sort of thing is being duplicated by the Vietnamese and the Koreans, all doing the same thing. Up in New York we see it. They come in, they open little stores somewheres, they get a stake, somebody gives them a stake, they start a little business, they sleep in the back of the store, they work night and day and then the next thing you know they’re building a house out in the suburbs. And in those days Moultrie Street was the suburb, The Terrace. It was part of the city but it was out of the usual.
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When they didn’t want us to understand what they were saying they spoke Yiddish. My mother knew Yiddish from her family, of course. [My father] spoke Yiddish. He probably didn’t know Russian, he only knew Yiddish, I think. I don’t think he knew Russian. Although he may have. But the thing is that if he knew it, he forgot it, because he was only eleven or twelve when he—he never used it. He would never refer to his home, except that he was from this town. He must have had some unpleasant experiences there as a kid. Never talked to me about his home city, about his home village or town.
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First Name: AlanLast Name: BanovDate of Recording: 3/12/20Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1946Special Collections MSS: 1035-569Interview Notes: Alan's partner, Sandi Blau Cave, sat in on the interview.Oral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Charles
Middle or Maiden Name: Harris
Last Name: Banov
Date of Recording: 3/02/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1930
Special Collections MSS: 1035-438
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Nancy
First Name: EdnaMiddle or Maiden Name: GinsbergLast Name: BanovDate of Recording: 11/2/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1908Special Collections MSS: 1035-45Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Mrs. Banov would call on the women. Mrs. Banov, Mrs. Berlin, Mrs. Patla, Mrs. George Birlant, his mother—all from downtown. They would visit the greenhorns, the women, and the men would visit the men and give them advice about what to do, and who to buy from, and what kind of merchant—what you could sell, what you couldn’t. They helped them with advice, you know. Not so much money, but advice. That’s how they got started.
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On the outside of each building on King Street the schnorrers would come. You know what a schnorrer is? The men who came by begging, asking for charity for some institution in Russia or some little organization or some synagogue or something to do with very, very strict Orthodox. They would have the little payos and the big fedora hats and the coats on. And later on, they took off the big fedora hats and the coats and they would come and you would give them charity. They would go from store to store collecting. They had these stores marked off where they would stop, where they knew there would be help for them. The Banov store had a big brick taken out where they knew that was [where the money was]—one would pass it on to the other. They would come in on a bus or a train and they would stop at Banov’s first and they would go through the town collecting. Sam Banov did it and Mrs. Banov would give them a room to sleep at night over the store on King Street. They lived over the store, too. She would feed them and the next morning, they would put them on a bus. They would give them enough to carry them to another city.
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In the Old Country, Flossie was Frumasheina. In Yiddish, Fruma means religious, and sheina means beautiful. That was her name, Frumasheina. Riding on the train from New Jersey to Charleston, Papa was calling “Frumasheinka.” Somebody said, “What kind of name is that, mister?”
Papa says, in his English broken but still understandable—Mamma didn’t understand a word—he says, “That’s her name.”
He says, “Ooo, and you’re going to give her that name in America? She’s going to live like that with a name like that. I don’t know.”
So Papa figured, what could he name her that started with an “F”? Later they’re riding past farms and see these huge cows with the big tits hanging, milking cows. And they heard the farmers saying, “Flossie! Flossie,” herding the cows in.
Papa said, “That’s a good name, Flossie. Flossie is perfect.”
Heavy milking cows—that was the theory they brought over from the old country. They didn’t have food to eat when they came to this country, they were forced to come here, to seek the goldener land.
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First Name: EdnaMiddle or Maiden Name: GinsbergLast Name: BanovDate of Recording: 11/9/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1908Special Collections MSS: 1035-46Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Around the corner you can still see the store, the barber pole that was there, that red and white, circled barber pole. Everybody in the neighborhood went to have a date once a week to the barber shop. They got a shave and a haircut, five cents. Papa allowed one of his daughters, Edna, Flossie, or Lola, to go with him. We would vie for that trip to sit in that barber shop and watch it. It was two blocks away from where we lived. We would sit there and watch and we would listen to all the gossip, the talk about the barbers there.
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We lived over the store on Hanover and America Street and we lived over the store on King Street. We went from one wholesale place, one building to another. King and Columbus Street and then a little further down we had another, Ginsberg Wholesale Tobacco. Papa traveled. He went from store to store selling wholesale candy instead of these grocery stores. He bought it and, in turn, he became a middle man. From there Papa went into his own business on King Street, two stores over there.
The store was a little store with wooden plank floors and it was on the corner. The merchants loaned you money, gave you merchandise to start. Everything was sold in big kegs. Lard, flour, sugar—not kegs but big barrels, you know. You see these big barrels cut in half now. And they stood on the floor.
This was the way our grocery store looked, with the huge big barrels of lard that my mother would have to dish up—she would hold her nose and open her mouth because it was treyf.
But in the store, we had a lot of friends. They were mostly Mexicans and they were mostly blacks, ethnic groups, that came down here and they lived. This was called “Little Mexico.” On America Street in those days, it was prevalent with crime, yet there were a lot of very decent [people]—our associates were mostly children who lived in that neighborhood.
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First Name: EdnaMiddle or Maiden Name: GinsbergLast Name: BanovDate of Recording: 11/14/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1908Special Collections MSS: 1035-48Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LeonLast Name: Banov, Jr. Date of Recording: 6/2/00Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-240Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Nancy
Middle or Maiden Name: Leopold
Last Name: Banov
Date of Recording: 3/02/16
Place of Birth: Milwaukee, WI
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-438
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Charles
First Name: Henry ("Bubba")Middle or Maiden Name: D.Last Name: BarnettDate of Recording: 5/10/95Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-019Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Patty BarnettOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: PattyMiddle or Maiden Name: LeviLast Name: BarnettDate of Recording: 5/10/95Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1927Special Collections MSS: 1035-019Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Henry BarnettOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Rachel
Middle or Maiden Name: Gordin
Last Name: Barnett
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: Sumter, SC
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-394
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Historical Society Past Presidents Panel," with David Draisen, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Ann Meddin Hellman, Edward Poliakoff, Robert Rosen, and Jeffrey Rosenblum on the occasion of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina's 20th anniversary celebration, Charleston, SC
First Name: KellerMiddle or Maiden Name: H.Last Name: BarronDate of Recording: 7/5/16Year of Birth: 1932Special Collections MSS: 1035-467Interview Notes: Interview with Rosemary SmithOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Barbara
Middle or Maiden Name: S.
Last Name: Barshay
Date of Recording: 9/6/18
Place of Birth: Wilson, NC
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-524
Interview Notes: Part one of a two part interview with Max D. Berner, William Brener, and Jane Barshay Burns
First Name: Barbara
Middle or Maiden Name: S.
Last Name: Barshay
Date of Recording: 9/6/18
Place of Birth: Wilson, NC
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-525
Interview Notes: Part two of a two part interview with Max D. Berner, William Brener, and Jane Barshay Burns
First Name: Jack
Last Name: Bass
Date of Recording: 4/17/16
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-446
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Against the Tide: Risks and Rewards for Rejecting the Status Quo" with Dan Carter, Wiliam Saunders, Robert Seigel, Cleveland Sellers, and Patricia Sullivan at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement," held in Charleston, SC, April 16-17, 2016
First Name: Suzanne
Middle or Maiden Name: Ajzensztark
Last Name: Baton
Date of Recording: 5/1/06
Place of Birth: Poland
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-311
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Cheryl
Last Name: Baum
Date of Recording: 10/21/18
Place of Birth: Camden, SC
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-530
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Community of Memory: Camden's Jews Then and Now," with Garry Baum, Albert Baruch Mercer, Barbara Freed James, Rita Tanzer, moderated by Dale Rosengarten, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, “Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Garry
Last Name: Baum
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Camden, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-526
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Endangered Congregations," with Barry Draisen, Louis Drucker, Barry Frishberg, Rhetta Mendelsohn, Paul Siegel, moderated by Noah Levine, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Garry
Last Name: Baum
Date of Recording: 10/21/18
Place of Birth: Camden, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-530
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Community of Memory: Camden's Jews Then and Now," with Cheryl Baum, Albert Baruch Mercer, Barbara Freed James, Rita Tanzer, moderated by Dale Rosengarten, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, “Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: NormanMiddle or Maiden Name: E.Last Name: BaumDate of Recording: 5/22/95Place of Birth: Camden, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-21Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
None of the sons wanted to go into the [family] business. The business went to a cousin, Shanks, who was my great-aunt’s sister’s husband. And Shank Brothers, they changed the name to Shank Brothers, and they ran the store until the closing of it. I remember the closing of it very much. It was such an old-fashioned store, you know, and they used to have the registers in the center and they’d put [the money] in a little basket and they’d send it up to the cashier. I mean it would go by pulling on a rope or something. And I thought it was fascinating.
I remember they closed it and I thought everything was for free. I was so young then. And I remember getting a little box, a little round hat box, a small one, and I said, “Oh, I want this,” and I started to take it out of the store and my cousin Leonard Shanks said, “You can’t have that, we have to sell it,” and that broke my heart.
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[The families] always lived in town and maintained homes in town [Camden, S.C.]. And the family lived almost in a row on Broad Street, a row of families like—well, the Hirshes weren’t related but next to the Hirshes were the Shanks, which were cousins, and in-laws, and much intermarriage went on. And because back in the earlier days there were no Jewish people to marry so cousins married cousins if they were far enough away, you know, distant. We had a little house, which was the only non-Jewish person on the block, Mimi Nickle. And then our big house. The landscape was done—my grandmother, it was called Greenleaf Villa, and the landscaping was done by—she had an Italian landscaper come over and lay it out. There were three fountains and each fountain got higher so when you sat on the piazza, the front porch, you could look out and see these fountains spraying. The hedges were all trimmed and there were archways of boxwood. It was a lovely place to live and very large, three stories, and the third story was a formal ballroom, a real ballroom. Later we put it into a pool room. We had a full-size pool table up there. I never went up there much because I was too young, I wasn’t interested in pool at all. But my older brothers were. It was nice living there except for the winters when you froze to death, in the summers when it was hot and no air conditioning and no deodorants. And I always remember that everybody smelled when I was a kid. I could never get over that.
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While the Baum family were planting cotton they also were] merchants. And what they did, how they gained a lot of the land they got, they would back a farmer and give him money for fertilizer and food and so forth for half of his crop. And so many of the farmers couldn’t pay off at the end of the thing so the family foreclosed on a lot of the land. So they began to get all this land. I remember when I was a very young boy down near Boykin, South Carolina, there was a piece of property that was right on a lake and my mother was furious with my father for not foreclosing on it. Said the man is so far behind you’ll never catch up and you’ll lose all your money. And my mother made my father—she was a businesswoman and my father had no business sense whatsoever—and she made my father foreclose on this land. And I don’t know what happened to it. I have no idea. But this was when I was very very young.
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My mother’s maiden name was Tewell and they, and I understand, Taber, does it mean table? I think that was the European name and my mother came from part of a family that were Austrian and part were German and my grandmother was going back to Europe to see her family and my mother had been conceived already, and on the voyage back to America, which was aboard a French ship, she was born because of such a rough voyage. And she was born and she never wanted anyone to know that she wasn’t a true-blue American. It was an embarrassment to her.
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There was Lockhart Plantation, which was on the Charlotte Highway North. It was about seven miles north of Camden, and that was the largest, and I rarely went to it. I don’t remember it much at all. Vinegar Hill, which I pass by frequently on the way to Columbia and I look at—every time I go by I blow it a kiss. I remember we used to go there and see the overseer. His name was Ben Chestnut and he was a wonderful black man, he really was. He was very courteous and wonderful. It was a huge cotton farm. It went back for miles. And I never realized how many miles it went back until recently I went back to visit some friends’ friends who lived off of this plantation, still on the original land, and I said, my God, this is our original land. Lugoff, the smaller of the three, had about 400 acres, I would guess, and 1700 acres on Vinegar Hill, and 2400 acres up in Lockhart.
Vinegar Hill, my grandfather said the land was so sour nothing would grow there and they grew cotton and over and over again. Of course, in those days they didn’t know anything about leaving the land farrow for a year or two and letting it regain its health and so the land just got poorer and poorer. They didn’t know about fertilizer back then, it hadn’t been invented as yet. Down here in this area, anyway. And, you know, we were getting over the war in this area back in that era. So, they did the best they could with what they had.
We were not big slave owners, I know that. I know that we had house slaves and I don’t know about the plantations at all. I only remember as a child the people who worked there and they were all whites except Ben Chestnut was a black. And they were like sharecroppers and they worked and shared the crop. This was during the Depression era.
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First Name: Doris
Middle or Maiden Name: Lerner
Last Name: Baumgarten
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Allentown, PA
Year of Birth: 1930
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Nelson A. Danish, Marvin Efron, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Judith Evans, Jeffrey Kaplan, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: DorisMiddle or Maiden Name: LernerLast Name: BaumgartenDate of Recording: 12/4/06Place of Birth: Allentown, PAYear of Birth: 1930Special Collections MSS: 1035-317Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Sophia MarieMiddle or Maiden Name: FriedheimLast Name: BeersDate of Recording: 9/22/99Place of Birth: Rock Hill, SCYear of Birth: 1927Special Collections MSS: 1035-220Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Zenya
Last Name: Berenboim
Date of Recording: 8/20/17
Place of Birth: Berdichev, Ukraine
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-496
Interview Notes: Interview in English and Russian with a translator present
First Name: Zenya
Last Name: Berenboim
Date of Recording: 8/27/17
Place of Birth: Berdichev, Ukraine
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-497
Interview Notes: Interview in English and Russian with a translator present
First Name: Zenya
Last Name: Berenboim
Date of Recording: 9/3/17
Place of Birth: Berdichev, Ukraine
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-498
Interview Notes: Interview in English and Russian with a translator present
First Name: Zenya
Last Name: Berenboim
Date of Recording: 9/17/17
Place of Birth: Berdichev, Ukraine
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-499
Interview Notes: Interview in English and Russian with a translator present
First Name: Benjamin
Last Name: Berendt
Date of Recording: 6/11/96
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1912
Special Collections MSS: 1035-76
Interview Notes: NOTE: this interview is restricted--not to be released to the public until January 28, 2020, at the request of the interviewee.
First Name: Arthur
Last Name: Berger
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1941
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with L. M. Drucker, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Max Hellman, Constance H. Mandeville, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Arthur
Last Name: Berger
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1941
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: HelenMiddle or Maiden Name: MazurskyLast Name: BergerDate of Recording: 6/9/00Place of Birth: Mayesville, SCYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-242Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HelenMiddle or Maiden Name: Laufer DworkLast Name: BerleDate of Recording: 2/9/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-177Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Maurice BerleOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HelenMiddle or Maiden Name: Laufer DworkLast Name: BerleDate of Recording: 11/19/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-207Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MauriceLast Name: BerleDate of Recording: 2/9/98Place of Birth: Bronx, NYYear of Birth: 1916Special Collections MSS: 1035-177Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Helen BerleOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Edward
Middle or Maiden Name: E.
Last Name: Berlin
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-480
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "The New Royalty," with Ben D'Allesandro, Joe Fischbein, Eli Hyman, and Joseph Jacobson, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: HenryLast Name: BerlinDate of Recording: 2/13/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-117Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Henry
Last Name: Berlin
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: Shera LeeMiddle or Maiden Name: EllisonLast Name: BerlinDate of Recording: 4/16/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1929Special Collections MSS: 1035-144Interview Notes: InterviewRelated Stories:
My father was a big Democrat. Oh my goodness. He was treasurer of the Democratic Party for Charleston County for about forty years. [The Democrats] were not allowed to have any—no election was to be held on any Jewish, any religious holiday, Jewish religious holiday. And that’s why I am such a staunch Democrat today. Through and through. Because the Republican primaries are held on Shabbos. I wouldn’t vote Republican.
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My parents spoke Yiddish with a southern accent. Am I a Jewish Southerner? You know I really have to think about that. I couldn’t tell you that off the top of my head. I think of myself as first being Jewish and second as a Southerner. No, second an American and third as a Southerner.
First and foremost [I am] a Jewish woman. And I wear that badge with honor. I wouldn’t be anything else. And it’s not that I had I never had it shoved at me or pushed at me, I was allowed to be in Christmas choruses and Christmas plays and I know every Christmas carol and I went to Christmas services and did everything with everybody else. But I knew I was a Jew. And I was never ashamed to tell anybody I was.
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My mother was quite a stylish lady and very tall, slim, good looking. And people liked the way she looked and so they used to buy. They sold very inexpensive clothes but it was during the Depression. People didn’t have any money. My mother could put on a $5.95 Bamberg sheer dress and look great in it. So they wanted to look like she did so they would come there. But that was the price of clothes—$5.95, $6.95. A formal dress was $10.95, $12.95. They were very successful in that business. But my father had been in business since he was about nineteen years old. He only went through the eighth grade at Bennett’s school and he worked. He went to work.
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I just remembered my great grandmother as being a very old lady, very tiny with a little cap on her head and starched, big starched white aprons. And I can remember as a little child being very afraid of her. I was afraid of old people. And she used to try to, she would give me nickels, you know, to make me warm up to her. And I’d go up to her enough to take the nickel. But I really was very much afraid of her. I just was, had never been around old people, you know, and she was so little and she was very wrinkled. And she had that little cap on her head because she didn’t wear a sheitel [wig] so you know, she kept her head covered.
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And my father, always appearances were very important to him, very important. You were a lady. You acted like a lady. You acted like a gentleman. You weren’t loud. I can remember the kids used to shoot marbles on the sidewalk. It was always a little dirt place and the kids used to shoot marbles and would draw the little circle outside the theater on George Street. I think my father thought it was his sole responsibility to come home every afternoon and run the kids off the street and tell ’em to go inside the building. Children didn’t play in the street. He did not like that. He didn’t like all the little Jewish boys congregating in the street shooting marbles. He thought they ought to be inside.
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I went to Ashley Hall. I went first to Ms. McGinnis’ kindergarten. I went there until I was five. I went there when I was three and four. And when I was five years old, my mother enrolled me at Ashley Hall cause my birthday wasn’t until February and I wasn’t, you know, couldn’t go; and after I was there for a few weeks they called my mother and said that they didn’t realize that I was only five and I shouldn’t be there. She says, “Well, you’ve already got her now, I’m not taking her out.” But she always felt that the reason for that was that I was Jewish. There was only one other girl in the lower school and that was Riney May Bodne. She and I started together. One other Jewish girl was there and that was Roslyn Banov, who is Leon Banov, Jr.’s sister. She was in the upper school. And mother said she didn’t care if they didn’t want me or not I was gong to stay there ’cause I was there, and I stayed there three years. But there was always that undercurrent. I always felt that I was not wanted there but it didn’t bother me. I liked it and I was doing well in school. I had all my friends and I was friendly with a few of those girls, and still am friendly with some of them to this day. There were the Stoney twins, who are Mrs. Arthur Stoney’s children. She recently passed away. Nancy Backer, who was Nancy Stevenson, who was your Lieutenant Governor. She was in that class.
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My father was sixteen years older than my mother. I think he was always afraid, he always took care of her, you know, he thought she was something specia. He said he didn’t want everybody in town saying that old man married that young girl and made her have a house full of children. She wanted more but they were content. My daddy didn’t want any more.
They had a good life. And I was very close with my cousins. Very close. I can remember Karl Karesh worked on King Street for Max which was just a block from where we lived when I was a little girl. On his way home to Rutledge Avenue where he and his sisters had moved—after Aunt Mamie and Uncle Jake died they gave up the house on Radcliff Street and they moved to Rutledge Avenue—he would pass by my house, pick me up and I would walk to Rutledge Avenue with him for dinner. Then he would bring me back home and go to work. I just loved them. You know, all my cousins were so important to me.
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You know, it’s hard for young people today to understand but in those days family was family. You know, one helped the other. It was no such thing as one having and one not having. If one in the family had it it meant everybody in the family ate. There was no such thing as my car, your car. It was our car. You know, there was a family car. There was a family business. There was always room in the house for everybody. I know when my Uncle Ed married Bernice Bluestein, they lived in a little house like in the back of grandmother’s house. Everybody, you know, there was always room. Until people got on their feet. As families brought people over from the old country there was always room in the house for people. You didn’t say, “Well, I don’t have room. I only have three bedrooms.” If you had three bedrooms you could sleep twelve people. It was, and if when you cooked you cooked enough for everybody to eat. There was just that feeling of family.
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And the big, the good speech writer was Bob Figg. Robert Figg. I can remember when we lived on Rutledge Avenue when Strom Thurmond was running for governor. All of his speeches were written at 102 Rutledge in our breakfast room. Those men used to sit at that table and eat salami sandwiches and talk politics.
Sally [Figg, his wife] just wasn’t very Jewish oriented. I mean she didn’t know too much about Judaism. I don’t think she was raised that way, you know. And Bob Figg was a Baptist. I can remember my mother telling me that he thought it was terrible that his children were being raised with no religion. So he used to read, have Bible readings at home. He just felt like his children ought to know about God. You know. But she never denied being Jewish or anything like that. I mean, she had some fabulous Jewish heritage. Very old, I mean one of the first Jewish families in the city. They must have come here in the 1700s.
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They picked on every little thing, they wouldn’t excuse you for anything, and we stayed home for every religious holiday. In my day you didn’t go to school on Rosh Hoshanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah. The first two days of Pesach, the last two days of Pesach. You didn’t go to school. And they maybe scheduled tests, you know, did different things like that. Well, I stayed there through the third grade and we lived across the street from Bennett School so it just became more convenient for me to go to school across the street. After all, they weren’t going to put me back a year because I had started school too young. She already got me through that part. And another thing, mother thought that by my being an only child, she was afraid I would only see one side of life. ’Cause we have a very comfortable home and so she thought that I ought to see a little bit of everything. There were only girls at Ashley Hall too and they were all from, you know, pretty comfortable homes. So my first six weeks at Bennett School in the fourth grade I remember vividly. I cried every day. I had never been in a class with people like that. There were children from the orphan home there. See, the orphan home was only two blocks from where the school, was on the corner of Calhoun and St. Philip. The school work was entirely different. I had never been taught cursive writing. We only printed at Ashley Hall. Our math was not as advanced as the public school, which is surprising, isn’t it?
The teacher’s name was Alice Mooran and I loved her to death, later. Called my mother and told her that I was just not keeping up. And mother said, “Well, I don’t understand that.” I was a straight A student at Ashley Hall. She says, “And she just seems to be so unhappy. She sits here and cries every day.” Well, the reason I was crying and the reason I wasn’t keeping up is, it was just so strange to me and I was afraid. So mother said, “Well, you give her a chance. She’ll catch on.”
Well, the second six weeks I made honor roll. You know, by that time I got adjusted to it, but it was a very traumatic change going from that little class of, what did I have—maybe fifteen children in my class, to a class of thirty-odd. Number one it was overwhelming to me. And then I loved it, absolutely loved it ’cause there were activities I could do and there were a lot of children to play with. Then they had a problem with me. For some reason or another mother said I kept losing skates, I couldn’t hang on to a pair of roller skates. And I would leave the table in the middle of a meal and disappear and she finally found out what was happening. It was my first experience with children who didn’t have things. So every time I got a pair of skates, I’d give ’em away. And I would take food from the table and go give it, you know, to somebody. I think she was very smart to have done that with me.
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This part of South Windermere was developed lots later than the other part. Ralph Sadler was involved, I think he was the agent for it. He was the real estate agent that was involved. But I really didn’t know. I just knew that the Dumas and the Shimel families were involved in it. I didn’t know if anybody else was and I knew that he was in real estate that’s about all. And I knew I didn’t want to live there. ’Cause I didn’t want to leave downtown. I didn’t even want to live in the northwest section, as my father called it, which was Grove Street and Garden Street, nor did we ever live up there. Daddy thought it was out of town. He was born and died in Ward 8. You know he never moved out of that neighborhood. He was born on Calhoun Street, moved to George Street, St. Philip Street and to Rutledge—it was all within a radius of six blocks. So as far as he was concerned, and I grew up with the same feeling, who wants to live up there?
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First Name: Steve
Last Name: Berlin
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1959
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Kings and Queens of King Street," with Nicky Bluestein, Ben Chase, Rosemary Read Cohen, Leonard Goldberg, Barry Kalinsky, Sammy Kirshtein, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Eve
Middle or Maiden Name: Meddin
Last Name: Berlinsky
Date of Recording: 11/29/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-466
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Norman Berlinsky
First Name: Herbert
Last Name: Berlinsky
Date of Recording: 1/21/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-110
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Norman
Last Name: Berlinsky
Date of Recording: 11/29/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-466
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Eve Meddin Berlinsky
First Name: Ronald
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Bern
Date of Recording: 6/13/98
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1936
Special Collections MSS: 1035-199d
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Today I Am a Fountain Pen," at Temple B'nai Israel's 50th anniversary celebration, Anderson, SC
First Name: MortimerMiddle or Maiden Name: H.Last Name: BernankeDate of Recording: 3/20/15Place of Birth: New York, New YorkYear of Birth: 1928Special Collections MSS: 1035-416Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Mortimer
Middle or Maiden Name: H.
Last Name: Bernanke
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1928
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Matthew Reich, Phillip Greenberg, Gertrude Radin, Alexander Cohen, Harold Kornblut, and Donna Cohen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Charles
Last Name: Bernstein
Date of Recording: 12/08/15
Place of Birth: Tampa, FL
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-436
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Frieda
First Name: Frieda
Middle or Maiden Name: G.
Last Name: Bernstein
Date of Recording: 12/08/15
Place of Birth: Groninger, Holland
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-436
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Charles
First Name: IdaLast Name: BerryDate of Recording: 3/3/97Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-134Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RaeMiddle or Maiden Name: FriedmanLast Name: BerryDate of Recording: 7/17/97Place of Birth: Kingstree, SCYear of Birth: 1929Special Collections MSS: 1035-154Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Meri GergelOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Ellie
Last Name: Billen
Date of Recording: 5/9/07
Place of Birth: Charlotte, NC
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-321
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Marshall
Last Name: Blalock
Date of Recording: 10/23/01
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1957
Special Collections MSS: 1035-263
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Christian View of the Jew," with Reverends Daniel W. Massie (First Scots Presbyterian Church, Charleston) and Jay Scott Newman (St. Mary's Catholic Church, Greenville), held in conjunction with the Three Rabbi Panel, "The Jewish View of the Christian," sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: JackMiddle or Maiden Name: L.Last Name: BloomDate of Recording: 2/26/97Place of Birth: Washington D.C.Year of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-126Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
You know that famous story about the family named Ferguson—you’ve never heard that? Well, when he came to this country the man was trying to think of his name, because you know they were given all kinds of names by the Russian officials, sometimes the most defamatory-type names in Russian. And so he came to the immigration officer and the immigration officer said, “What’s your name?” and he said “Forgesen,”—“forgot”—so he wrote down Ferguson.
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Chester had Jewish families all along. When my mother first came south she told me she once saw a colored woman, just got married and she had a cheesecloth veil, and so proud of it, and barefoot. And on Saturday afternoons they would all come in from the farm—they were all strictly rural—they would come in from the farms and they would fill the streets. Chester has gone down so much. There was a television series made several years ago and they used Chester as its backdrop. My uncle, Abe Balser, owned some buildings and they’ve sold them all since then, but we went to see the place and they had false fronts, some of which were still left there because they haven’t had the energy to remove them. But there are Jewish families there. There were Jewish families then. I don’t know what’s happened. There were Jewish families in every little place in South Carolina.
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Piedmont Shirt Company, which was founded as I remember in the late ’20s by Shepherd Saltzman, was to the best of my recollection the very first of the garment manufacturing businesses that came here headed by Jews. Now there may have been others not by Jews. Beginning in the ’30s we started to get chain stores, which meant we started getting a salaried class. Piedmont Shirt Company had a salaried class. Most of them had been shop owners, store owners, so they were entrepreneurs on their own. We had at that time two doctors, both of whom had married non-Jewish women. They may have belonged to the Temple of Israel. I was the very first Jewish lawyer to come to Greenville. Now we have five or six, nothing like Columbia or Charleston. We have never had the impact in Greenville. We had a mayor, Max Heller, who did quite well financially. He came here from Austria, very fortunate to have had a woman from Greenville [who] went to Vienna in the late ’30s, met Max, [he] told her he wanted to come. She knew Shep Saltzman, Piedmont Shirt, who brought him over. And he brought his family. And from then on we have branched out. Now we have got something of everything. I don’t really know all of them. We have a lot of new people here, in diverse types of business. We have a good number of doctors, several dentists. Charles Adler is a dentist, we have another one at least. And so now I think we are part of a more generalized situation. We don’t have Jewish-owned stores anymore. You see? Those have gone.
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There never was a Jewish section of Greenville. Where we lived—where my parents lived—the only Jewish families near us were my grandparents. And the reason my parents got the house they did was because it was near my grandparents. But most lived in other areas, scattered all over. When I went to grammar school, I was the first Jewish student who went there, the second was my brother. Period. And that was all. When I went to junior high school, in high school we had other Jewish students who had come before.
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Growing up here, I grew up in a community where there were no Jews, except when we went to the Sunday school, but my neighborhood—I’m talking about the people I played with, the boys I played with—there was never any indication. I must admit when I got to high school, when [the students] came from the city all together, there might have been some comments or remarks behind my back, but I was never quite aware of them.
I have never put my head in the sand, so I am not a person of that type. I have always been rather realistic and I think I am fairly well-informed about a lot of things. I did not encounter things of this nature ’til I went to Furman. A friend of mine wanted me to join his fraternity. Fraternity rush came and went and he told me that he didn’t realize that Jews were not allowed to join this fraternity. Well, I felt like telling him that I know of one who wouldn’t join your fraternity. You know that famous Groucho Marx statement in which he was told he was admitted into some exclusive club. And he replied that he wouldn’t belong to any club that would have him as a member. And I thought that was more of a statement, not on his character, [but] on [how] he characterized that club. And that’s the way I feel too. I’m poor but proud, ma’am.
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I have to do this because it’s as though I were born in China and I had to explain I was not Chinese—my mother’s family, as I told you, lived in Washington. My family, my father and mother, lived here but my mother wanted to be with her mother in Washington, so I was born in Washington, D.C., at Georgetown University Hospital on 25 June 1920. Within days I rebelled and we walked all the way from Washington to Greenville—I must have been about a month old. So I am really a native and certainly a lifelong resident of Greenville. The only times I have been away for any time at all, other than travel, have been the times I went off to school, Duke University Law School, and when I was in the army for a little over three years. But all the rest of it has been right here.
Back then Washington was South and it was all right. I was delighted that I had the mother I had and the father I had, so wherever they chose was what I wanted.
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First Name: Nicky
Last Name: Bluestein
Date of Recording: 2/13/20
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-567
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Nicky
Last Name: Bluestein
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Ben Chase, Rosemary Read Cohen, Leonard Goldberg, Barry Kalinsky, Sammy Kirshtein, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Nicky
Last Name: Bluestein
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: IdaMiddle or Maiden Name: LureyLast Name: BolonkinDate of Recording: 3/09/14Place of Birth: Greenville, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-389Interview Notes: Interview with her daughter, Joan MeirOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Jenny
Last Name: Bouknight
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1953
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: Sallie
Middle or Maiden Name: Wolper
Last Name: Boyles
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Jane Barshay Burns, Manuel Cohen, Marjorie Lynch, Paul Lynch, Spencer Lynch, Rosalyn Kramer Monat-Haller, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Marvin ("Dick")
Last Name: Breen
Date of Recording: 1/11/95
Year of Birth: 1907
Special Collections MSS: 1035-3
Interview Notes: Interview with his sister Florence Fleishman
First Name: BerthaMiddle or Maiden Name: Lazarowitz (Lazarus)Last Name: BreibartDate of Recording: 4/15/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1917Special Collections MSS: 1035-143Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Bertha
Middle or Maiden Name: Lazarowitz (Lazarus)
Last Name: Breibart
Date of Recording: 3/4/99
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1917
Special Collections MSS: 1035-209
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing Up Jewish in Small Town South Carolina," with Rita Solomon (Denmark), Sam Siegel (Anderson, Walterboro), and Joseph Lipton (Beaufort)
First Name: SaraMiddle or Maiden Name: BolglaLast Name: BreibartDate of Recording: 09/03/10 and 09/10/10Place of Birth: Brest-Litovsk, PolandYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-336Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SolomonLast Name: BreibartDate of Recording: 4/18/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-13Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Beth Israel was on St. Philip Street between Radcliffe and Morris Street. It was in a house which had been in some way altered. They had a big room. I remember you used to go on high steps to go to it. And they had an open basement, nothing below. But on the second floor they had a side porch and they had this room, maybe two rooms or maybe three rooms, which had been stripped apart, that had one long room there, and they had benches in there and they had a small ark, and I remember the reading area. And to the side was an area for women. On the second floor with a gauze curtain hanging in between or a lace curtain. You could see through it. To separate the two sections there. And there was a third floor and I think that the shames stayed up on the third floor or maybe the chazan or shokhet, somebody stayed up on the third floor there.
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My father’s store was on Meeting Street. I’ll tell you where it is. It’s on the corner of Meeting and Maple Street and at that time Maple Street was a dirt street, Meeting Street was paved with oyster shells. I remember sitting on the front of my father’s steps at the store and seeing them pave Meeting Street with the first coats of asphalt and things of that kind. I remember them laying the sewers on that street there, too, before they did the paving. That was in the 1920s, mid ’20s.
The main store was a big room, a big room—I’m talking about my father’s place. He had ceiling fans. He had an ornate tin ceiling over the fans. Too bad it’s gone now. The store changed over a period of time but as far back as I can remember it had a big counter where he filled the orders on the counter. He had a candy case. He had the old-type cash registers. Had shelves behind the counter where they had the groceries, teas, and canned goods of various kinds. Then they had a medicine cabinet on one wall where they kept drugs of various kinds, patent drugs, medicine, that kind of thing. On one wall he had bins in which he used to sell—used to have chicken feed and rice. I can’t remember what else he had in there. And then eventually he had a meat case where he kept meats. Eventually he opened a meat market there and then he had another—he had a showcase then, he had a big showcase then. He had two back rooms to the store and he had a hall on the side which led to an entrance from the front of the store so you didn’t have to come through the store. One room was a storage room where he kept supplies, groceries, and so on. And he had one of the first automatic hot water heaters. When he built his new house, he had a bathtub and he had showers and he had instant heat, you know. It’s about so high, metal cabinet with copper coils and the water ran through the copper coils and then the gas was on a pilot and when the water started flowing the pilot flared up and began heating the coils and so you had instantaneous hot water.
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[The downtown Jews] were the German Jews who had come earlier. Basically, they were the Beth Elohim members. Downtown. They owned some of the big department stores. In fact, perhaps the chief department store. The Marks family was on the corner. Some Markses were Brith Sholom but most of them were the Reform group.The downtown Jews, as I say, were mostly from the Reform synagogue or from Brith Sholom. The Brith Sholom people had been there since before the others came in. And in fact I think that was one of the reasons why Beth Israel was formed, because the Jews who came in after 1900 to Charleston thought that the Brith Sholom services were not suitable so they formed their own congregation. There were some jealousies and rivalries. They weren’t comfortable so they formed their own congregation.
[Member of Brith Sholom] were more the German-type Ashkenazi, and these were Russian Ashkenazi, and there were certain petty jealousies going on so they withdrew and formed their own congregation.
It wasn’t [about] language, because they always spoke Yiddish. Yiddish is Yiddish. They might have had a different accent but the Yiddish was the same.
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My father’s half-brothers always spelled their name Breitbard. My father’s name became Breibart, we pronounce it Breibart, but probably when he applied for his citizenship papers he pronounced it Breitbard and that’s how they spelled it, they spelled it B-R-E-I-B-A-R-T. So that was on his papers and he just took that form of it and used it.
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Jacob, he was known as Yankel, Jacob Goldberg. He was born in Russia in 1854. Probably around the Minsk area. And he died in Charleston in 1930. And my maternal grandmother—Sarah Lipsitt was her given name—also was born in Russia, probably the same area, born in 1862 and died in 1954, old age. Longevity there.
Back in those days they had sort of a network that you could send people—children—by this network. And [my father] was taken out of Russia by somebody who saw to it that he got on the ship and he came to America. It amazes me. I can’t visualize my son when he was 14 years old being shunted off to go by himself to America. And he had more experience in traveling than my father had. My father probably never got far from the shtetl he lived in or the city he lived in.
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The Mordecai family left Charleston. M.C. Mordecai left Charleston. He was opposed to secession. He left Charleston. The Posnanskis left Charleston. They didn’t stay here, they left. And I think they went to Canada. Because one of the—I don’t remember whether Mrs. Posnanski or Mrs. Posnanski’s mother died in Canada and she was later buried in Charleston.
[Rabbi Gustavus Posnanski] was opposed to secession. I don’t recall ever seeing anything that he was opposed to slavery. But he didn’t think the South should secede, that was all. And there were others—that’s the only one that I’m mentioning. I know that he was opposed to secession because his newspaper, he and a couple of other people formed a newspaper, I forgot what the name was, and that was an anti-secessionist newspaper. Didn’t last too long. I think it was called the Charleston Standard.
M.C. Mordecai was at one time a state senator. He was in the shipping business. He had a steamship of his own which used to ply between Charleston and the Caribbean area. After the war was over he made a ship available to transport South Carolinians who had died at Gettysburg, to bring them back to Charleston. But he was a state senator. He was pretty well a highly respected man in the community. He had a very big business. In fact, you know that big house next door to the courthouse downtown, the federal courthouse, the little park there, the big building on the corner, the Hollings building is recessed in the back, there’s a courtyard there—right next to that is a big house where the Mordecais lived. It happens to be occupied by a Jewish family now. And there is a Morgen David on the door. They said do you think that was the Mordecai family? I said, no, that was put up by a more recent person.
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First Name: SolomonLast Name: BreibartDate of Recording: 10/21/99Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-224Interview Notes: Interview with Burton PadollOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SolomonLast Name: BreibartDate of Recording: 3/16/04Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-279Interview Notes: InterviewRelated Stories:
The cash register was about this big. I remember very well because when I was growing up, one of my first things I did in the store was make change. They would sell something and tell me to take out so much and make change for them. They didn’t keep any books. They didn’t keep any books whatsoever. He was just flying by the seat of his pants, you know. As he needed things he would order things. He would buy on credit and he gave credit too in the grocery store. He wrote down the credit but he didn’t have any ledgers for that. He had a spindle in the store on which he would write down what the person owed and stick it on there. And then he eventually gathered them all together and figured up what the person owed him.
He used to have also—you may have seen in some of the stores—he had a cookie case. They’d be maybe about four feet tall and they would be able to put in there boxes, cookies with a glass covering that you open it and go in and take them out. Sold a lot of one-cent cookies and one-cent candies in the store. And it was a place usually, much more so later than earlier I think, that people used to come in and just schmooze, hang around the store, talk.
They would just lean on the counter and talk. That was a time, I must have been about sixteen, seventeen years old, and there used to be some regulars who’d come in all the time, almost every night, drink a beer or two, stand around and schmooze, that’s all. And one worked at the Navy Yard and he used to tell them all the things that were going on at the Navy Yard that he didn’t think was right but he was a part of it. And there was one that used to work at the Clyde Line, the steamship company. He was also a butcher. A man named Siemers. Not Jewish. None of these were Jewish. We lived in a neighborhood that was just growing up back in those days.
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Beth Elohim and Brith Sholom. You see, there was never any bad feeling between the two congregations, they got along very well. The members got along very well because they belonged to the same organizations which were organized in the community after the Civil War. In fact, the columns in the synagogue are supposed to come from Beth Elohim. Also, about the time that they were building Brith Sholom, 1875, around that time, they were also altering the [Beth Elohim], they were putting the pews in the synagogue. I think I read somewhere that the columns and maybe the ark was given to Brith Sholom and the rabbi of Beth Elohim spoke, gave the principal address at the dedication of the Brith Sholom as a synagogue in 1875. So the relations there were pretty good. I haven’t come up with anything to the contrary about that. In later years when I was growing up, there was a feeling that the German Jews, the impression that the newcomers had was that they were standoffish and felt themselves superior to the other, which was typical.
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Uptown most of the clientele was black, yeah. Interestingly enough, you know, a black person would not be allowed to try on a hat, for example, or shoes, in a place like Condon’s, Condon’s Department Store or Kerrison’s Department Store, which were the big department stores when I was growing up. The uptown Jews allowed them to do that. And the uptown Jews did extend credit more easily than the downtown merchants did, both Jewish and non-Jewish merchants did. So, although there was probably some resentment among the blacks that the Jews were in places of business and making money on them, they worked very hard. They used to be in their businesses from early in the morning until late at night. My father kept the store open from seven o’clock in the morning until eleven, twelve o’clock at night. Till much later. Till much later.
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You know, back in those days there was always, not only in Charleston but other places as well, there was always a feeling of, I wouldn’t know whether you’d say resentment, that’s not it. Resentment is not the word—but being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable. There were so many immigrants coming in. They were the poorer people. You know how it was in New York, the uptown Jews did all they could to try to elevate with classes and so on. Well, the same thing was true here. The Council of Jewish Women, I remember, used to have classes, Americanization classes. They wanted to get them Americanized as quickly as possible. But I don’t know whether they resented them, for me that’s too strong a word, but they felt that in some way it would harm their position in the community because they were the lower class status by that time. They were newcomers and these were the established people. Much the same attitude I imagine you’d find in New York with the uptown and downtown section. Maybe not to that extent.
And there was some bad feelings between the uptown Jews on religious matters. They used to call, I remember my father referred to the K.K. Beth Elohim as the “Deutcher shul,” the German shul. Because by that time the German element had become the dominant element of the synagogue. And yet on holidays, on the second day of the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when they used to have a sort of hiatus in their service, not too much going on in the service in the afternoon, my father would walk down to the K.K. Beth Elohim and just sit there for a while. And he did business with those people, with the downtown Jews. The Hirshmans and the Pearlstines, they were big distributors. Horniks, that was the downtown crowd
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The uptown Jews were those who came late. They were the Russians and the Polish Jews who came between 1880 and 1920. And they opened their places of business north of Calhoun Street, most of them did. There were one or two of them who opened downtown but most of them were uptown. Small little stores: clothing stores, shoe stores, furniture stores, notions and that kind of thing. But from Calhoun Street to Line Street, practically, I’d say seventy-five percent of the stores in there were Jewish owned. On a holiday, on Rosh Hashanah, we used to walk from where we lived on Meeting Street, all the way down to the synagogue which was down on—the Little Shul, as they called it, was on St. Philip Street near Morris Street. And when we would walk down King Street hardly any of the stores were open. Very few stores were open. The streets were bare. And that was the area where the meat market was, kosher meat market, up around between Morris and Radcliffe Street.
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First Name: Solomon
Last Name: Breibart
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1914
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Beatrice Aaronson, Nicholas Butler, Belinda Gergel, Harlan Greene, Mayer Z. Gruber, Kim Harris, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: Max
Last Name: Brener
Date of Recording: 09/06/18
Place of Birth: Chattanooga, TN
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-524
Interview Notes: Part one of a two part interview with Babara Barshay, William Brener, and Jane Barshay Burns
First Name: Max
Last Name: Brener
Date of Recording: 09/06/18
Place of Birth: Chattanooga, TN
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-525
Interview Notes: Part two of a two part interview with Babara Barshay, William Brener, and Jane Barshay Burns
First Name: William
Last Name: Brener
Date of Recording: 09/06/18
Place of Birth: Chattanooga, TN
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-524
Interview Notes: Part one of a two part interview with Babara Barshay, Max Brener, and Jane Barshay Burns
First Name: William
Last Name: Brener
Date of Recording: 09/06/18
Place of Birth: Chattanooga, TN
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-525
Interview Notes: Part two of a two part interview with Babara Barshay, Max Brener, and Jane Barshay Burns
First Name: SandraLast Name: BrettDate of Recording: 2/04/19Place of Birth: Johnstown, PAYear of Birth: 1957Special Collections MSS: 1035-536Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JackMiddle or Maiden Name: PincusLast Name: BrickmanDate of Recording: 3/13/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-180Interview Notes: InterviewRelated Stories:
My father rented a piece of property at 543 King Street. He opened a store there and we lived above the store. In the back of the store we had a little tailor shop where my mother and father would make such repairs as they could. If you had to have a pair of pants shortened it would be shortened in fifteen minutes, you didn’t have to come back two weeks later. My father would custom-make suits—I see bolts of cloth here [in the photo]. But my father kept an immaculate store. He was a very orderly individual.
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I remember that people would come in [to Laufer’s Restaurant] in the afternoon, they would get a cup of tea, like people go get Coca-Colas now. Some of the Jewish merchants would come into the store in the afternoon to get a cup of tea, just to refresh and think awhile. Get away from the business. I can see them drinking a cup of tea, holding the tea between their fingers, either holding them at the rim or holding it between their thumb and their lower finger at the edge. Drinking tea with a little sugar in their mouth. Hot glass of tea. Cube of sugar, yes. Put that in the mouth. Of course, I remember holding it primarily by the rim, but others have told me that it was between the top and the bottom, between the two fingers. And they would drink hot tea, scalding hot, with the sugar.
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There were—it might have been different times—two Jewish restaurants that I remember. Going back as far as I can remember, there was a Jewish restaurant I would say at about 529, or 531 King Street. Somewhere in that area. And that was first run—that I can recall—by a lady called Mrs. Greenberg. I believe her name was Molly Greenberg, a rather stout lady. She ran a restaurant, a kosher restaurant, and we would frequent it. Then Mrs. Laufer, even while Mrs. Greenberg was there, opened up a little restaurant above where they had a store at 535. And we would go upstairs there and she would serve meals in her kitchen or in a little room the size of this room we’re in, fourteen by fourteen, twelve by twelve, something. And we’d eat occasionally there or we’d eat at the Greenberg’s. My mother was an excellent cook and she’d like to cook, but frequently on Sunday my father and mother and I would go into the kosher restaurant and eat.
Thereafter, I think, Mrs. Greenberg wanted to retire. As a matter of fact, Helen Berle—she was a Laufer, her mother [was] Sadie [Tillie?] Laufer. They had a brother called Jakie, Jake. I talked to Helen recently, recalling things. Helen married somebody by the name of Dwork. She had two daughters. She is presently married to Maurice Berle—Berlinsky. She said that Mrs. Greenberg used to occasionally come up and eat at her mother’s restaurant, she enjoyed it, but finally Mrs. Laufer bought Mrs. Greenberg out. Helen’s father ran a little men’s store, some new merchandise, some used merchandise. They gave that store up when they took over the restaurant. Mrs. Laufer was a large woman, heavy woman, but delightful, very generous. I think you could get a steak dinner for thirty-five cents or maybe sixty five cents—appetizer, soup, meat, three vegetables, all the bread you want, tea, and dessert. Everything was ample sizes, too. . . . I remember that Mrs. Laufer had a reputation that she would never keep food from one day to the next. At the end of the day she would either throw it away or give it away. Every day it was fresh vegetables, fresh meat. Mr. Laufer was meticulous about cleaning the place. He had a little whisk broom and he would go around the tables and anybody [dropped a] bread crumb, he’d whisk it off and clean up the place. He would always grumble, but did that. I remember that occasionally people would come in the community who didn’t have any money. Somebody in the neighborhood would take up a collection, bring them into Mrs. Laufer and feed them. There was one particular person who was sort of the Sammy Ward of the community. His name was Jake Widelitz. You may run across his name somewhere, W-I-D-E-L-I-T-Z. He had relatives who live in St. George, but the community, for a while, fed him when he didn’t work, and I know that she would always give him extremely large portions. I remember one evening seeing him with flanken. Do you know what flanken is? Boiled flanken? It’s meat that they would boil and make soups with and she’d serve him a big [portion]. Delicious with horseradish. I don’t eat meat now because of cholesterol, but I remember she would serve him large portions.
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Okay. Mickey’s [Sonenshine’s] mother and my mother-in-law were sisters. And my mother, my mother-in-law, Mrs. Breibart, Mrs. Feldman, and a Mrs. Goldin, G-O-L-D-I-N, Bella Wallace’s mother, Frieda Bluestein’s mother, and several other ladies would play poker from when I was almost an infant child until well into the ’40s, until they began to, of course, separate by age. But they would play poker twice a week. Penny poker. And Wednesdays or Thursdays they would have a meal at each other’s house, whosever turn it was. Sunday was strictly for gambling. Penny poker.
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In those days, it was very difficult for a Jewish person to get in medical school. They only permitted two Jewish persons in each class of the Medical University for many years. There was a restriction on the number of Jewish students they could have.
For many years they restricted the number of Jewish students that would go to Harvard. A lot of the large schools had restrictions on the number of Jewish students that would be accepted each year. They didn’t want it to be known that it was a Jewish school. Or they didn’t want too many Jewish people becoming doctors or being competitive or for whatever reason they had. And for a long time in this community there was a sort of self perpetuating situation where the doctor’s children would be the ones who got preference. Thereafter I believe that each county was permitted to have two [students] come to the Medical University. Apparently if you had enough political pull, even if you were Jewish, you could get in from that county.
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First Name: Susan
Middle or Maiden Name: Alion
Last Name: Brill
Date of Recording: 5/19/12
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-354
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Women in Public Office," with Dyan Cohen (Darlington) and Belinda Gergel (Columbia), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service"
First Name: Harold
Last Name: Brody
Date of Recording: 5/18/19
Place of Birth: Sumter, SC
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-545
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Merchants on the Move," with Deborah Lipman Cochelin, David Furchgott, Mickey Kronsberg Rosenblum, and Zachary Solomon, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Revisiting the Past and Envisioning the Future: JHSSC Celebrates its 25th Anniversary," held in Charleston
First Name: CharlotteMiddle or Maiden Name: SaltzLast Name: BrotmanDate of Recording: 8/14/80Place of Birth: PolandYear of Birth: 1901Special Collections MSS: 1035-426Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Charles ("Charlie")
Last Name: Brown
Date of Recording: 4/16/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-445
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Revisiting Rivers: Reflections on School Desegregation," with Millicent Brown, Oveta Glover, Missy Cohen Gold, Robert Rosen, and Blanche Weintraub Wine at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement," held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Millicent
Middle or Maiden Name: E.
Last Name: Brown
Date of Recording: 4/16/2016
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-445
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Revisiting Rivers: Reflections on School Desegregation," with Charles Brown, Oveta Glover, Missy Cohen Gold, Robert Rosen, and Blanche Weintraub Wine at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, " held in Charleston, SC
First Name: EmmaMiddle or Maiden Name: Bogen LaviskyLast Name: BukatmanDate of Recording: 3/4/97Place of Birth: Coatesville, PAYear of Birth: 1906Special Collections MSS: 1035-135Interview Notes: Interview with Belle JewlerOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Jane
Middle or Maiden Name: Barshay
Last Name: Burns
Date of Recording: 09/06/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-524
Interview Notes: Part one of a two part interview with Babara Barshay, Max Brener, and William Brener
First Name: Jane
Middle or Maiden Name: Barshay
Last Name: Burns
Date of Recording: 09/06/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-525
Interview Notes: Part two of a two part interview with Babara Barshay, Max Brener, and William Brener
First Name: Jane
Middle or Maiden Name: Barshay
Last Name: Burns
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Sallie Wolper Boyles, Manuel Cohen, Marjorie Lynch, Paul Lynch, Spencer Lynch, Rosalyn Kramer Monat-Haller, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Nicholas
Last Name: Butler
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: Greenville, SC
Year of Birth: 1968
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Beatrice Aaronson, Solomon Breibart, Belinda Gergel, Harlan Greene, Mayer Z. Gruber, Kim Harris, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: Joseph
Middle or Maiden Name: Mazo
Last Name: Butwin
Date of Recording: 5/02/15
Place of Birth: St. Paul, MN
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-417
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, " Notes From the Battlefield and the Home Front," with Gale Siegel Messerman, Herb Novit, Edward Poliakoff, and Alan Reyner, Jr. at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: Richard
Middle or Maiden Name: D.
Last Name: Cagan
Date of Recording: 3/6/99
Place of Birth: Newark, NJ
Year of Birth: 1951
Special Collections MSS: 1035-210
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing Up Jewish in the Pee Dee," with Alexander Cohen, Robin Shuler, and Sam Rogol, at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 50th anniversary, Florence, SC; followed by a presentation , "A Brief History of Beth Israel Congregation," by Sam Rogol
First Name: EvelynMiddle or Maiden Name: Goodman SuraskyLast Name: CaplanDate of Recording: 5/4/96Place of Birth: Atlanta, GAYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-70Interview Notes: Interview with Rose SeldinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Dan
Middle or Maiden Name: T
Last Name: Carter
Date of Recording: 4/17/16
Place of Birth: Florence, SC
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-446
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Against the Tide: Risks and Rewards for Rejecting the Status Quo" with Jack Bass, Wiliam Saunders, Robert Seigel, Cleveland Sellers, and Patricia Sullivan at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement," held in Charleston, SC, April 16-17, 2016
First Name: GeorgeLast Name: ChaplinDate of Recording: 9/27/95Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-40Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
His brother, Charlie, Charlie Chaplin, can you imagine, came separately from my dad. Ellis Island did the same thing on names, in his case cutting off everything down to the last five letters. So, there one brother who was Chaplin, another brother who was Linsky. They had a summit meeting and settled on Chaplin.
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[My father] became a peddler, walking, pack on his back, customers mostly blacks, buying on the installment plan, paying thirty-five cents this week, thirty-five next week. He was a typical Southern Jewish peddler. Interestingly, he had an indentation in his skull that came about because he once went out to collect and was told by neighbors that the man who owed him was not there. He'd been putting my dad off for weeks. As my dad turned to leave, the man, who indeed was there, brought down a hatchet on my father's head. Fortunately, just at that moment, my father needed to scratch his head. It saved his life! His arm was broken in about four places, but the edge of the hatchet tipped over and made this indentation which as a kid I used to feel from time to time. It wasn't exactly a talisman but I used to feel it. He worked hard. He eventually had a horse and buggy, then in time, got into the retail business, and some years later into the wholesale shoe business. He and his brother became the largest shoe wholesalers in the Carolinas.
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He hadn’t gone to school here except night school in Boston, which is not exactly what Columbia and Greenville public schools are like. I remember an occasion when he was proud of me but for some reason didn’t want to show it. When I told him, “Here I am in Greenville, age twenty-five, and I’ve been selected for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, which is the highest academic award in journalism,” he said, “That’s nice,” and then went off somewhere. As I recall, I felt a little let down. He was not all that demonstrative about lots of things. Strong character, a man of his word, something of a philosopher. When he’d call long distance, let’s say, to Hawaii, his philosophy was never sit down on long distance. Don’t get comfortable. He always told the operator to let him know when three minutes were up. The assumption being if you can’t say it in three minutes, shreib a brief, write a letter. Little idiosyncrasies that I love. I find myself talking to him occasionally. He’s been dead a quarter of a century.
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Tell you an experience at Clemson that relates to Yiddishkeit. It was a tough military school when I went. Freshmen, the heads were shaved, you were called “Rat,” like VMI, Citadel. I worked hard. I wanted to achieve. Some of the Jewishness may have been a motive there. Because it was a gentile world in those days. So, I was a second ranking junior my junior year and the colonel, a regular military establishment there, an army colonel, a couple of majors, captains, sergeant, probably twenty there, called me up at the end of my junior year before I went to ROTC camp in Alabama and said Chaplin, gave me at ease, and said sit down. He said, “You should be the cadet colonel of this corps next year, number one cadet, but you’re not going to be.” I didn’t say a word. He said, “Don’t you want to know why?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Because you’re a Jew.” He said, “We’ve got about four Jews in this cadet corps and life would be made miserable for you and so you’re not going to be cadet colonel.”
Now, he was trying to do me a favor by explaining. He didn’t have to say a word. When the promotions came out posted on the bulletin board I would have seen Chaplin, G., cadet lieutenant colonel and I would have figured well, number two not bad, you know. He wanted me to know that I really should be number one but he wasn’t going to permit that because he thought my life would not be bearable, that the idea of a Jew heading, in effect, a non-Jewish cadet corps—now, we’re talking about 1934, you know. Sixty-one years ago. So, you were made aware. I went to one reunion I think about fifteen years after graduation, maybe twenty, and two reactions. The first was what am I doing here with these old bastards. This guy is showing his teeth in, this guy is hinky dink. We had a cocktail party, our class. There were several classes there having reunions at graduation time. There was some drinking. A guy comes up, puts his arm around me, says, “Chaplin, I want to tell you something, always liked you even if you were a Jew.” I didn’t say that’s mighty white of you. I said, “Sure, pal, let’s have another one.” What am I going to do, get into a discussion?
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As we could afford it, we moved out to Shandon and had a nice house on Devine Street. Sims Avenue and Devine Street. Some years ago I went back with Judy to take a look [at it]. It’s been made into offices. And I went into what used to be my bedroom, after getting permission from these people, and I wondered how anyone could live in a space that small. But we had a sleeping porch, five windows on each of three sides, and that’s where we slept in the summer. The whole family: my sister, my parents, and I.
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My uncle was an inveterate gambler. I remember he once took me to the Elks Club, where he played table-stakes poker, with up to one thousand dollars on the table. This was back in the early ’20s. He gambled on the stock market I think, without telling my dad, and in 1929 that helped push the company, which had been very successful, into bankruptcy. My dad put my mother and my sister, Kay, who now lives in New Orleans, and me in our Hupmobile and drove two hundred miles to Greenville and opened a hole-in-the-wall pawnshop. He worked awfully hard and gradually did well. Those were the days when chain stores were proliferating. My dad couldn’t compete against installment plan jewelry stores, clothing, and shoe stores: Stein Brothers, Thom McAn. A pawnshop was something that nobody else was doing and he hired an old pawn broker from Columbia and ran that store almost until he died at [age] eighty-four, four years into retirement.
He was born in August 1888 and died, of a stroke, in July 1971, six months after my mother. She had been quite ill for a long time and I think that when she died he felt that his life’s work had been done. That’s an assumption on my part but, in his last years, he was weary and with my mother sick we always had a colored woman in the house to cook, clean and take care of my mother. As soon as Dad closed the store, he was on the bus for home. That was his life, day in and day out.
One thing about my father that was terribly important to me—and I hope that some of it has rubbed off; I’ve tried to have it rub off on my two children and four grandsons—his word was totally his bond. He never made a promise unless at the time of making the promise he knew he would be able to deliver on it. No monkey business. We were talking about that once. He had no use for people who make a promise to you and then when it’s time to deliver they say, “Morris, I’ve had reverses in the business, or my wife has been ill, I can’t, in effect, deliver on the promise.” That was an anathema to him. When you made a promise to him he expected you to deliver on it. He was a highly ethical man in a tough business. Some guy came in once, he wanted to buy a watch, let’s say, and my dad couldn’t give it to him at the price the man wanted. As the man was walking out he said, “You people deserve exactly what Hitler did to you.” My dad said, “Would you wait there just a minute?” He went back to the office, he was a short man, probably four inches shorter than I, maybe five, five-three, five-four. He kept a Luger in the office, since pawnshops are vulnerable. He picked up the gun but kept it out of sight. Walking up to the man, he stuck the Luger in his gut and said, “Would you please repeat what you just said and when you do I’m going to put a bullet right through you.” The guy turned white, shaking, and backed out of the store. But Dad made his point. He wouldn’t have shot the man, for God’s sake, but the man didn’t know that.
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Earl and I bought this New Jersey house together. I put in more—on a loan from my dad—because Esta and I had the downstairs and Earl and Rita had the upstairs. I think we bought the house for seven thousand dollars; my share was probably four thousand, which my dad lent me. He wanted one hundred a month in repayment, to reach him on the first of the month, no interest. Something happened at the paper, some commotion, some turmoil, and I forgot one month. On the second of that month a collect telegram from Dad arrived. Two words: “What happened?” No reminding me of a promise, I knew damn well what he meant. I was so mortified because he always kept his promises and he expected me to keep mine. From then on I didn’t miss a payment.
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My mother, Netty, her family name in Europe was Bojarski. As you know, Ellis Island changed millions of names. When she came out, she was Brown. Netty Brown. She had a brother who had come earlier, but she came as a teenager alone. Her parents came in the 1920s and moved in with us in Columbia. My grandmother took over the kitchen, could speak no English so I had to learn a little Yiddish because I liked to eat—Ich leibe zu essen, so that’s how I got my limited pidgen Yiddish. Mama was born in Vilna, December of 1891, and died January of ’71, six months before my dad, almost to the day.
She got a job in the sweat shops, euphemistically called sewing plants, on the Lower East Side. A friend of hers said to her, “Netty, why don’t you come and work with me in my plant?” So my mother went over and signed up but the day she was supposed to report she had a bad cold and knew it would not be advisable to show up in that condition, so she stayed home. That was the day of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, when something like one hundred eighty young women died. They were on the eighth or ninth floor, but the steps burned, the one rickety elevator became inoperative, and there was no way out. Somebody had a ladder which they put across the alley to another window and a few of the more intrepid ones crawled over there. But a lot of them threw themselves out of windows. That led to a revision of the tenement building code in New York City. Thank God for my mother’s bad cold. The hairs on my neck still go up a little bit even now and that was, God knows how many years ago.
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On Sundays, next to my dad’s Carolina Shoe Company, which adjoined Max Citron’s wholesale dry goods, there was a vacant lot between that and Park Street. A little bit rocky as I recall. The Jewish kids played football there every Sunday, pickup football. I was one of the smaller ones and I’d get knocked down and start crying and one of these bigger guys would pick me up and comfort me and assure me that I was fine and all that stuff. The Jewish kids pretty much stuck together. I think I was sort of an exception because I fell in love with the YMCA. They had a pool, gym, and basketball. There was a time before I left Columbia when I was, I guess not older than a year after bar mitzvah, when I ran a gym class on Saturdays for underprivileged kids. They treated me like God, you know, and I had to stand in the shower and make sure they were absolutely clean, inspected their feet before they could go into the pool. It was a great experience. I also was the city ping-pong champion. The YMCA was sort of a haven for me. Columbia High School was right around the block but I used to go even earlier when we lived in Shandon and I was in junior high. When I left Columbia High School after two years, to move to Greenville, I quickly went to the YMCA. That was my home.
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My father was born in Bialystok in Poland and my mother came from Vilna, now Vilnius, in Lithuania. And Vilna Guberniya was a center of Jewish learning going back for centuries, the home of the Vilna Gaon, a leading biblical scholar. So Vilna was famous. My father came about 1906 as a teenager, alone. His mother had a crippled knee, which meant that she would never get through immigration in America, so he knew when he left that he wasn’t going to see his parents again. Some Ellis Island functionary changed his name from Tschaplinsky to Chaplin by chopping off the first two and last three letters.
He worked in shoe factories around Boston: Lynn, Chelsea, Haverhill. He went to night school for four years to learn English and on Saturday nights he used to box Irishmen to make an extra two dollars. His reason for going to Boston was a cousin there, a Mrs. Finkelstein, who ran a boarding house for immigrants. It was the kind of place where on Monday one of the boarders would ask Mrs. Finkelstein, “Efsher kan Ich haben ein schtickel herring Donnerstag in der frie? [phonetic]—Can I have a piece of herring Thursday morning?” Dad never went beyond those four years of night school, but I remember him very well reading the New York Times and theWall Street Journal..
Chaplin/Citron/Berkovitz Families, 1916 Max Citron enticed my dad to Columbia. A fellow Bialystoker, they were kids together. They corresponded. My dad came to this country, he wrote Max, Max says, “You can make a living here.” That’s how people get to where they settle. How does a Jew get to Montana for God’s sake? Somebody, originally from his shtetl, is in Montana, sends word back. I’ve traveled a fair amount. In Melbourne, Australia, a good friend, then with Pan American Airways introduces me to Oliver somebody and we go to his house to have a drink and I see Hebrew books in his library. I said, “Oliver, why are they here?” He said, “I’m part of a big Bialystoker community.” A lot of Bialystokers went to Australia. It simply means one or two went and wrote back telling glowing stories. An influx followed. That’s happened all over.
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First Name: GeorgeLast Name: ChaplinDate of Recording: 10/3/95Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-41Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Ben
Last Name: Chase
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion,"Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Rosemary Read Cohen, Leonard Goldberg, Barry Kalinsky, Sammy Kirshtein, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Ben
Last Name: Chase
Date of Recording: 4/21/01
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-259
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: BenLast Name: ChaseDate of Recording: 3/18/04Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1960Special Collections MSS: 1035280bInterview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JosephLast Name: ChaseDate of Recording: 4/19/01Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1931Special Collections MSS: 1035-257Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Joseph
Last Name: Chase
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1931
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: LeahLast Name: ChaseDate of Recording: 1/30/20Place of Birth: Westpoint, GAYear of Birth: 1938Special Collections MSS: 1035-563Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: PhilipMiddle or Maiden Name: H.Last Name: ChaseDate of Recording: 4/20/01Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1935Special Collections MSS: 1035-258Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Sylvia
Last Name: Clark
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Florence County, SC
Year of Birth: 1937
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: Deborah
Middle or Maiden Name: Lipman
Last Name: Cochelin
Date of Recording: 5/18/19
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Special Collections MSS: 1035-545
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Merchants on the Move," with Harold Brody, David Furchgott, Mickey Kronsberg Rosenblum, and Zachary Solomon, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Revisiting the Past and Envisioning the Future: JHSSC Celebrates its 25th Anniversary," held in Charleston
First Name: Alan
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/9/16
Place of Birth: Cleveland, OH
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-464
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Views on Marriage,"with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Moshe Davis (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Alan
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/8/06
Place of Birth: Cleveland, OH
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-315
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Women and Judaism," with Rabbis Anthony Holz (Reform) and Ari Sytner (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Alexander
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 3/6/99
Place of Birth: Darlington, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-210
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing Up Jewish in the Pee Dee," with Robin Shuler, Richard Cagan, and Sam Rogol, at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 50th anniversary, Florence, SC; followed by a presentation , "A Brief History of Beth Israel Congregation," by Sam Rogol
First Name: Alexander
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: Darlington, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Matthew Reich, Mortimer Bernanke, Phillip Greenberg, Gertrude Radin, Harold Kornblut, and Donna Cohen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Alexander
Middle or Maiden Name: H.
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/3/12
Place of Birth: Darlington, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-362
Interview Notes: Presentation, "A History of the Jewish Community in Florence" at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Blanche
Middle or Maiden Name: Cohen
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1928
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Gene Atkinson, Irvin Cohen, Ronald Cohen, Brenda Yelman Lederman, Ernest L. Marcus, Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: DavidMiddle or Maiden Name: Alexander, Jr.Last Name: CohenDate of Recording: 7/12/95Place of Birth: Darlington, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-31Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Donna
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/3/12
Place of Birth: Baltimore, MD
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-363
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Pee Dee Pioneers," with Fredric Levy, Bruce Siegal, and Richard Weintraub, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Donna
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: Baltimore, MD
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Matthew Reich, Mortimer Bernanke, Phillip Greenberg, Gertrude Radin, Alexander Cohen, and Harold Kornblut, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Dorothy ("Dutch")Middle or Maiden Name: Idalin GelsonLast Name: CohenDate of Recording: 3/5/95Place of Birth: Poughkeepsie, NYYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-12Interview Notes: Interview with her cousin Morris Rosen and her husband Mordecai CohenOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
The nickname “Dutch” comes from my youngest uncle, Bill Rosen, who was helping my mother out when she was in business. I was three years old and I looked like the girl on the Dutch Cleanser can, he said, so he called me Baby Dutch. Through the years, the family dropped the “Baby,” but then when I was in high school, some relatives would write “Dear Baby Dutch” for years. Now that I’m seventy-five, I have a little trouble with the name, but I’m going to stick with it.
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The shtetl my mother was born in was a distance from Moscow. My mother would say it was a day’s trip, I guess by buggy or by carriage, because they had relatives that had moved to Moscow that some of them would visit. I think it took them a good day by buggy to get to Moscow. But this shtetl had about twenty homes only.
One factor in their leaving was that it was before the Revolution, and my mother would recall that there was empty land near the shtetl. The Cossacks would come on horseback, and they were all so interested, and would tell them, “Down with the Czar!” They became zealots too—“Down with the Czar.” But then, when the Cossacks took over, they took the wealthiest brother’s money. He was very wealthy and he was helping everybody else. He put his money in various places in the ground and they dug it all up, found it.
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Uncle Sol is responsible for our moving to Charleston. He and my father got along really well together, so he wrote to Poughkeepsie—and this had to be in 1919, because I was just born- suggesting that my father come and go into business with him. The business was called Gelson and Rosen in Yonges Island.
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[My mother] always said we were good children, that we didn’t—we weren’t extravagant. But then as we got older she bought us very nice clothes. I never had nice clothes going to college, but if there was a dance, or if I had a date, she was smart enough to know where to put her money.
Thanksgiving my brother and sister and I had lovely clothes, we’d all have dates to a dance, Thanksgiving dance. At intermission, without any of us talking to the other one, we all showed up at the grocery store. I said to my date, “Do you mind if I go by to tell my mother and see how she is?” Anna did the same thing with her date. Leon did the same thing with his date. And none of us had checked, we just all showed up there. We kind of reinforced her. She got a lot out of life, but she worked very hard, and she reared us sort of—she didn’t let us slave in that store, you know.
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So one time we were broken into, and Mama knew just who it was because she had heard voices downstairs. This is how we lived. Somebody broke in and just made a mess of the upstairs. My sister Anna happened to have a date that night with a Jewish fellow who owned a pawn shop, Roy Schraibman—somebody that was in a pawn shop. When we told him what was stolen—a watch or whatnot—the person came into his pawn shop the next day with the watch and stuff, so he called the police. Now, you know who went to court to represent us? I did. I was a freshman, maybe, in college, or maybe still in high school. A little girl. I knew where the court was, I went there. The mother of this black fellow worked for a very prominent family, and she was there with her employer, so you know what chance I had—but I described the whole thing and he got eighteen months, and then he came back in the store, he was a customer again.
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DC: He [Sol Rosen] was to come [to America] with Uncle Sam, an older brother, and then the sister, Gussie, wanted to come, too, and the story was that my mother loaned her her dowry- Mama was older, and she had a dowry saved up. Aunt Gussie came to this country and returned that money to her. Then my mother was able to bring her and her husband—my father—and a sister, Mary, with that money that Aunt Gussie returned.
MR: Sam decided to come [from Poughkeepsie to Charleston]. The story told in the family is—I don’t think anyone really believes it—is that he went to Penn Station and he said he had so much money, where would it take him, and the fellow said Charleston, South Carolina, and that’s how he ended up here.
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My mother and father met through a matchmaker. My mother was very industrious — the Rosens — and she had made some money selling her produce. So the matchmaker knew she had a little money, and my father was a better-looking man, a more educated man. This came from my mother, she would say, “And I was a peasant, all I knew was Yiddish and he could speak Russian, but I had this little money.” So he came to town, she said, and everyone loaned her their finery. She had on the best boots and the best blouse, the best of what everybody had. They met, they had tea and whatnot, and he said he wanted her, it was fine. And she said the town—they just ran through the town—“Yonah wants Zelda,” she said. And then she’d say, “And then he loved me.” I grew up with that story and I loved it.
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If you want to know anything about the Gelson family, it’s interesting because they lived in a different village—this is my father’s family—and there was a school, a Russian school, therefore all the Gelsons were educated to a degree. My mother would say my father had the equivalency of a high school education, because it seems there was a Catholic school, so they were all atheists of a kind. They came to this country and they were socialists, they belonged to things like the Arbiterung [Workman’s Circle].
My mother would say to me—because my father died young—“Papa said there’s nobody up there.” However, the contradiction is, the paradox, that they were active in the synagogue because they were educated. Now, I’m not sure any of the other Gelsons ever went to synagogue much. They just stuck with their atheism.
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When we moved from Yonges Island to Meeting Street, my mother told me that an insurance man came in—Mama’s social life was that all these salesmen would come in for their Coca-Cola and slice of bologna or whatever, and so she would become friends with them. So this Christian insurance man said, “Jews are just so lucky, so lucky. You send your children to college, I can’t send my children to college.” And my mother said, “You call this lucky? I wake up at five in the morning and I go to bed at twelve and one o’clock at night. You think I’m lucky?” I do remember just that. I do remember that.
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First Name: Dorothy ("Dutch")Middle or Maiden Name: Idalin GelsonLast Name: CohenDate of Recording: 6/13/97Place of Birth: Poughkeepsie, NYYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-153Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Mordecai CohenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Dyan
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 5/19/12
Place of Birth: Phildelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-354
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Women in Public Office," with Susan Brill (Columbia) and Belinda Gergel (Columbia), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service"
First Name: Irvin
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: Augusta, GA
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Gene Atkinson, Blanche C. Cohen, Ronald Cohen, Brenda Yelman Lederman, Ernest L. Marcus, Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: Isadore ("Unc")Last Name: CohenDate of Recording: 3/10/04Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-277Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LeonardLast Name: CohenDate of Recording: 4/22/98Place of Birth: Baltimore, MDYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-191Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Mildred CohenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Lisa
Middle or Maiden Name: Collis
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/09/13
Place of Birth: Kingstree, SC
Year of Birth: 1958
Special Collections MSS: 1035-382
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Summers to Remember: Recollections of Blue Star, Camp Coleman, and Camp Judaea," with Maxine Solomon McLarnan, Gale Siegel Messerman, Maryann "Candy" Niman Popkin, Rodger Popkin, Brett Serbin, Daniel Sherman, and Robert Steinberg at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: LisaMiddle or Maiden Name: CollisLast Name: CohenDate of Recording: 6/11/19Place of Birth: Kingstree, SCYear of Birth: 1958Special Collections MSS: 1035-549Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LisaMiddle or Maiden Name: CollisLast Name: CohenDate of Recording: 6/11/19Place of Birth: Kingstree, SCYear of Birth: 1958Special Collections MSS: 1035-550Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Manuel
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Hickory, NC
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Sallie Wolper Boyles, Jane Barshay Burns, Marjorie Lynch, Paul Lynch, Spencer Lynch, Rosalyn Kramer Monat-Haller, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: MildredMiddle or Maiden Name: FriedmanLast Name: CohenDate of Recording: 4/22/98Place of Birth: Baltimore, MDYear of Birth: 1926Special Collections MSS: 1035-191Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Leonard CohenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Mordecai ("Mortie")Last Name: CohenDate of Recording: 3/5/95Place of Birth: St. Matthews, SCYear of Birth: 1917Special Collections MSS: 1035-12Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Dorothy Cohen and her cousin Morris RosenOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I went to a Methodist church because my neighbors—in fact, the neighbor across the street, she had seven children and she had the minister come to baptize them. While they were being baptized, I headed over there. Ms. Violet told the minister, “There’s a Jewish boy here, Mortie Cohen’s coming over here, what do we do?” He said, “A little water won’t hurt him.” I was baptized.
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St. Matthews was surrounded by farms. In fact, you could walk one block and find farms. We would go down into the watermelon patch, break the watermelon open, eat the heart out—that was one thing. Then we had chickens [that] ran loose in the town. Everybody had chickens, and then you had a lot of loose ones. We decided to give a chicken supper one night, so we went around and picked up all loose chickens. We kids fried the chickens and invited all the parents and everyone to eat their own chicken. We used to pick cotton. There was a cotton field right near our house, and, all of the kids, we went down and started picking cotton. At that time you had big croaker—open croaker bags—that you’d put the cotton in, and they had a balance to weigh it, so we one time put some bricks in the cotton to make it weigh more. The bricks weighed more than the cotton, so we didn’t get away with that. We had quite a varied young childhood.
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In small towns you had to have people come in to sell you. They were very good friends of the merchants—in fact, that’s how my father landed in St. Matthews. He worked here in Charleston, and a drummer told him that, “I called on a small town in St. Matthews and they could use a store there, it’s a good business town.” So my father, who had never been to St. Matthews, didn’t know a thing about St. Matthews, went there and opened a store. They made the rounds and they would help each other. If one store needed something and another store had it, the drummer would know which stores had things. Like my father worked with two merchants in Orangeburg. If he needed something, we would go over to Orangeburg and pick it up—it was around twelve, thirteen miles from us—and they would do the same, come over to St. Matthews and get something they needed. Drummers played a major part. They stayed at your home, because they didn’t have hotels or things there, so if they came, they would come home for dinner and—I don’t remember them spending nights there, but I remember many of them eating there.
They carried the news. You didn’t know what was happening in other towns, so they let you know about everyone: whose child was sick, whose child got married, who ran away from home. You knew all of the gossip from Columbia, Orangeburg, all of the smaller towns, you knew what was happening through the drummers.
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First Name: Mordecai ('Mortie")Last Name: CohenDate of Recording: 6/13/97Place of Birth: St. Matthews, SCYear of Birth: 1917Special Collections MSS: 1035-153Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Dorothy CohenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Ronald
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: New York City, NY
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Gene Atkinson, Blanche C. Cohen, Irvin Cohen, Brenda Yelman Lederman, Ernest L. Marcus, Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: Rosemary
Middle or Maiden Name: Read
Last Name: Cohen
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1937
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion,"Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Ben Chase, Leonard Goldberg, Barry Kalinsky, Sammy Kirshtein, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: HelenMiddle or Maiden Name: KronradLast Name: CoplanDate of Recording: 10/27/16Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-465Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Herb
Last Name: Crews
Date of Recording: 6/6/05
Special Collections MSS: 1035-298
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Claire
Last Name: Curtis
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Year of Birth: 1965
Special Collections MSS: 1035-513
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Shared Memories, Equal Justice," with Joseph Darby, Armand Derfner, Charles Heyward, and Bernard Powers, moderated by Richard Gergel, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Ben
Last Name: D'Allesandro
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1980
Special Collections MSS: 1035-480
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "The New Royalty," with Edward E. Berlin, Joe Fischbein, Eli Hyman, and Joseph Jacobson at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Sara
Last Name: Daise
Date of Recording: 4/29/18
Place of Birth: Bamberg, SC
Year of Birth: 1989
Special Collections MSS: 1035-516
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Difficult History: Plantations, Concentration Camps, and Cultural Tourism," with Lilly Filler, Shawn Halifax, George McDaniel, Joseph McGill, David Popowski, and Robert Rosen, moderated by Robin Waites, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: NelsonMiddle or Maiden Name: A.Last Name: DanishDate of Recording: 5/4/96Place of Birth: Augusta, GAYear of Birth: 1937Special Collections MSS: 1035-069Interview Notes: Presentations by Sunday school students and performances by guest singer Gloria Greenbaum and the men’s chorus, followed by speakers Nelson A. Danish, Mitchell Rifkin, Rosalee Rinehart, Fred Schneider, Rose Seldin, Steve Surasky, and Dianne Wolf on Founders' Day during the 75th anniversary celebration of Adath Yeshurun Synagogue in Aiken, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Nelson
Middle or Maiden Name: A.
Last Name: Danish
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Augusta, GA
Year of Birth: 1937
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Marvin Efron, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Judith Evans, Jeffrey Kaplan, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: Joseph
Middle or Maiden Name: A.
Last Name: Darby
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Special Collections MSS: 1035-513
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Shared Memories, Equal Justice," with Claire Curtis, Armand Derfner, Charles Heyward, and Bernard Powers, moderated by Richard Gergel, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Michael
Last Name: Davies
Date of Recording: 3/27/14
Place of Birth: New York
Year of Birth: 1982
Special Collections MSS: 1035-390
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "God at the Center: the Role of the Divine in Jewish Belief," with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Michael
Last Name: Davies
Date of Recording: 4/13/16
Place of Birth: New York
Year of Birth: 1982
Special Collections MSS: 1035-442
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Politics in the Pulpit," with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Michael
Last Name: Davies
Date of Recording: 1/31/18
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1982
Special Collections MSS: 1035-507
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Conceptualizing the Jewish Future: Contours of a Healthy Jewish Community," with Rabbis Greg Kanter (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Michael
Last Name: Davies
Date of Recording: 2/18/15
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1982
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Obligated to Educate: Jewish Education and Jewish Day Schools," with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Michael
Last Name: Davies
Date of Recording: 1/31/19
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1982
Special Collections MSS: 1035-534
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Jewish Views on Sexuality," with Rabbis Greg Kanter (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: AlexLast Name: DavisDate of Recording: 2/28/97Place of Birth: Greenville, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-131Interview Notes: Interview with his niece Suzanne LureyOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Carla
Middle or Maiden Name: Donen
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 12/19/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1937
Special Collections MSS: 1035-453
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 10/24/12
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-361
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Revelation, Prophecy, and Rabbinic Authority: Contemporary Perspectives," with Rabbis Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative) and Stephanie Alexander (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 4/4/13
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-369
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "On Understanding the Rabbinate: Preparation and Day-to-Day Life of a Pulpit Rabbi," with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 10/30/13
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-380
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Evolving Role of the Synagogue" with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 11/1/17
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-494
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, " K'lal Yisrael: How Important is Jewish Pluralism?" with Rabbis Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative) and Stephanie Alexander (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 11/7/18
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-533
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Tefillah:Prayer," with Rabbis Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative) and Stephanie Alexander (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 11/20/19
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-540
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Coming of Age in Judaism," with Rabbis Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative) and Stephanie Alexander (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Moshe
Last Name: Davis
Date of Recording: 11/9/16
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, PA
Year of Birth: 1981
Special Collections MSS: 1035-464
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Views on Marriage,"with Rabbis Stephanie Alexander (Reform) and Alan Cohen (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Achiya
Last Name: DeLouya
Date of Recording: 11/18/99
Special Collections MSS: 1035-232
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Judaism But Been Afraid to Ask," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky and Chaim Lindenblatt, sponsored by Brith Sholom Beth Israel Sisterhood and Addlestone Hebrew Academy
First Name: EvalineMiddle or Maiden Name: E.Last Name: DelsonDate of Recording: 2/7/19Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1969Special Collections MSS: 1035-539Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Lynda
Middle or Maiden Name: Firetag
Last Name: Denberg
Date of Recording: 05/06/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-523
Interview Notes: Interviewed by her niece Heidi Kligman Lovit
First Name: IsidoreLast Name: DenemarkDate of Recording: 2/10/95Place of Birth: Mayesville, SCYear of Birth: 1910Special Collections MSS: 1035-8Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Armand
Last Name: Derfner
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Year of Birth: 1938
Special Collections MSS: 1035-513
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Shared Memories, Equal Justice," with Claire Curtis, Joseph Darby, Charles Heyward, and Bernard Powers, moderated by Richard Gergel, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Richard
Last Name: Di Diego
Date of Recording: 7/28/05
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-299
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: HeleneLast Name: DiamantDate of Recording: 5/12/05Place of Birth: Warsaw, Poland Year of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-296Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JanisLast Name: DickmanDate of Recording: 6/28/15Place of Birth: New York City, NYYear of Birth: 1948Special Collections MSS: 1035-448Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SelmaMiddle or Maiden Name: E.Last Name: DickmanDate of Recording: 6/28/15Place of Birth: New York City, NYYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-448Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Richard
Last Name: Dimentstein
Date of Recording: 10/15/17
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-493
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Making Their Mark on Georgetown," with Roslyn Goldstein Greenspon, Nathan Kaminski, Benedict Rosen, Deborah Schneider Smith, and Gene Vinik at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Between the Waters," held at Hobcaw Barony and in Georgetown SC
First Name: Bobby
Last Name: Donaldson
Date of Recording: 4/16/16
Special Collections MSS: 1035-443
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Let Us Break Bread Together: African Americans, Jews, and South Carolina's Civil Rights Struggle" at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, " held in Charleston, SC, April 16-17, 2016
First Name: Pauline
Middle or Maiden Name: Elionsky
Last Name: Doobrow
Date of Recording: 2/27/97
Place of Birth: Kovna, Russia
Year of Birth: 1906
Special Collections MSS: 1035-129
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: MickeyLast Name: DorseyDate of Recording: 1/24/06Place of Birth: Chester, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-307Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: BarryLast Name: DraisenDate of Recording: 6/19/10Place of Birth: Anderson, SCYear of Birth: 1943Special Collections MSS: 1035-334Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Ellen DraisenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Barry
Last Name: Draisen
Date of Recording: 10/20/2018
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-526
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Endangered Congregations," with Garry Baum, Louis Drucker, Barry Frishberg, Rhetta Mendelsohn, Paul Siegel, moderated by Noah Levine, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: DavidLast Name: DraisenDate of Recording: 6/19/10Place of Birth: Anderson, SCYear of Birth: 1950Special Collections MSS: 1035-333Interview Notes: Interview with his brother Sam DraisenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: David
Last Name: Draisen
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-394
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Historical Society Past Presidents Panel," with Rachel Gordin Barnett, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Ann Meddin Hellman, Edward Poliakoff, Robert Rosen, and Jeffrey Rosenblum on the occasion of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina's 20th anniversary celebration, Charleston, SC
First Name: EllenMiddle or Maiden Name: CherkasLast Name: DraisenDate of Recording: 6/19/10Place of Birth: Atlanta, GAYear of Birth: 1945Special Collections MSS: 1035-334Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Barry DraisenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Samuel ("Sammy")Middle or Maiden Name: MorrisLast Name: DraisenDate of Recording: 6/19/10Place of Birth: Lynn, MAYear of Birth: 1942Special Collections MSS: 1035-333Interview Notes: Interview with his brother David DraisenOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Samuel
Middle or Maiden Name: Morris
Last Name: Draisen
Date of Recording: 11/14/10
Place of Birth: Lynn, MA
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-342
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Life in the South Carolina Upcountry," with Fred Leffert (Greenville) and Marsha Poliakoff and her son Gary Poliakoff (Spartanburg) at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Anderson, SC
First Name: EthelMiddle or Maiden Name: LapinLast Name: DraisinDate of Recording: 8/6/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1908Special Collections MSS: 1035-159Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Louis DraisinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LouisLast Name: DraisinDate of Recording: 8/6/97Place of Birth: Bobruisk, RussiaYear of Birth: 1911Special Collections MSS: 1035-159Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Ethel DraisinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: DaleMiddle or Maiden Name: LeRoyLast Name: DreyfoosDate of Recording: 7/14/95Place of Birth: Atlanta, GAYear of Birth: 1956Special Collections MSS: 1035-33Interview Notes: Interview with his cousin Max FurchgottOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Jeanne
Middle or Maiden Name: P.
Last Name: Dreyfoos
Date of Recording: 08/07/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-519
Interview Notes: Interview with senior members of the Furchgott/Furchtgott family with Ruth Furchtgott Adler, and Maurice Furchgott at the Furchgott/Furchtgott family reunion held in Charleston, SC
First Name: L.
Middle or Maiden Name: M.
Last Name: Drucker
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Max Hellman, Constance H. Mandeville, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Louis
Last Name: Drucker
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Kingstree, SC
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-526
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Endangered Congregations," with Garry Baum, Barry Draisen, Barry Frishberg, Rhetta Mendelsohn, Paul Siegel, moderated by Noah Levine, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: AbeLast Name: DumasDate of Recording: 12/14/96Place of Birth: Sullivan's Island, SCYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-102Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
The economy in Charleston was such that the exchange of know-how was the way that you managed because the funds were not available. So it was sort of a Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn existence and the fact that my father had this place up in Berkeley County gave us a great experience of life—rural and urban. You had two cotton gins there and whatnot. We learned how to drive. We were exposed to various segments of the entrepreneurship of businesses.
I remember the first season we entered the Charleston High School. They had little gangs there and if you brought a sandwich to school somebody would come over and if he was bigger than you were and intimidated you, you’d have to share. Not out of the fact that they needed it for survival, but that was just the existence of people there. This was a very poor economic community.
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Well, it really became a clothing store in 1930. When he bought the store, he bought a building and it was on the corner of King and Market. The front of the store was rented, I think, it was either a hardware or grocery store and in the back there was a little very very sophisticated pawn shop and it was run by I. Dave Rubin who was a very lovely sophisticated man and he had a watch repair shop. And then my father hired a Mr. Goodman, who was a relative of the Livingstain family, which was a large family uptown that ran a pawn shop and a hardware store and what not. And he went to work and made the pawn shop a little bigger. And my brother and I when we got to be, you know, the age of six and eight, we loved to go down there because they had bicycles and they had shotguns. And it was a very interesting business.
By the time we got into high school and college we decided that we didn’t particularly like being in the pawn shop business because it had a certain aroma that you were dealing, you know, with very poor people and then questionable people and people with all kind of self-imposed needs for money by ruthlessly or recklessly spending it and what not and having to sell everything but their soul to exist. Anyway, and that part of the business was finally—we got rid of [it], and then when we moved to King and Society, I mean we had there one of the largest operations, you know, of men’s and family clothing in the city of Charleston.
When my brother and I got into, when we were sixteen or seventeen, when working was a full time deal with us, we would go to school in the morning, right from school to the store, and we stayed there till 9:00 or 10:00 o’clock at night, every night. Six days a week. And we loved it. My father was still running his business in Berkeley County and the store kept getting bigger and bigger. [When] Roosevelt came into his presidency in 1932, Charleston was in a huge depression and we were doing a thriving business. We were one of the few stores in the city of Charleston that put in a full line of outdoor clothing, hunting wear, and we hit a very sensitive cord. I mean everybody in Charleston aspired to be a duck hunter and a plantation owner.
Anyway, when Roosevelt opened the civilian corps, conservation corps, which was the three “C” [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps, they put eligible people to work, in particular blacks. Well, that was the beginning, in my opinion, of the type of recognized assimilation of the blacks and whites, even though the blacks were separated even under the auspices of Roosevelt. But we restarted, we developed the uniform business. And that was in 1934 and 1935. And then from 1935 on, even though this country didn’t go to war, the whole world was preparing for war and the defense industry started picking up and we had a uniform business, one of the early uniform retailers in this part of the country. And when World War II hit we were one of the largest retail uniform companies in this part of the country and then we had become a recognizable purveyor of clothing. You know, sportswear, nothing super fancy, but it became a lot.
We had, as I recollect it, we always had a line of work wear that was indigenous to the needs of people who worked in this community. So that meant we had the black people and the stevedores and the white people who had outside jobs that weren’t, you know, professionals. We had a modest amount of the beginning of what we call sportswear. And we still always had back-to-school things. That was a nice little business. And the store kept growing and we were the L.L. Bean of Charleston, we were the Banana Republic of Charleston.
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When I got into the College of Charleston in 1931, the student body was three hundred students. I am going to make a quick guess. Out of three hundred I think there were about thirty Jews there.
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My brother and I at the College of Charleston had just finished taking our last exam which was about April the twentieth or April the twenty-fifth.
And we invited two of our classmates, two gentile boys, would they like to spend a week with us at Folly Beach in my mother’s cottage. We had a car and a little five-horse-power outboard motor and we each put up twenty dollars apiece which was eighty dollars and we bought groceries and I don’t know if we bought beer, I think we did—we weren’t big beer drinkers then. And we took the outboard motor and went to Folly Beach, and you know, we had hot dogs and we fixed our own meals. And the day after we got there we got up in the morning and went out on the beach and we were playing stick ball. Half-rubber ball—and this guy came up who was walking down the beach in a pair of cut-off pants. This was before the days of attractive Bermudas. You took your old pants and took a scissor or knife and cut ’em off. And he had about a ten-day growth of beard and I said, “Do you know the game?”
He says, “Yes, I’m from Brooklyn, New York.”
I said, “Get out in the field.”
Anyway, you only got a bat if you caught a fly ball. That entitled you to take a bat. And if you struck out you got back out. Anyway, he never did catch a fly ball or nobody hit one out of there far enough, so about an hour later I called him back in. So he said, “Gosh, y’all are not quitting on account of me?”
I said, “No, it’s eleven something and we are going in to lunch and we’d like for you to join us.”
So he stuck his hand out and he said, “Gosh, I don’t know how to begin,” he said, “But my name is George Gershwin.”
And I said, “My name is Abe Dumas, and my brother’s Joe Dumas,” and George Thompson and Lye and Tyler were the two other boys.
So he says, “Gosh, I just hope that I am not imposing.”
I said, “No, no come on in. We are going to have some hamburgers and hot dogs.”
And he said, “I’d love it.” So he went in.
So I said, “George, or Mr. Gershwin,” I think I called him, “What are you doing here?”
And he said, “I’m staying with Dorothy and Dubose Heyward.”
I said, “Yeah, they are my neighbors.” So that was all he said.
So we had our lunch and he said, “Listen, I want y’all to come over and be my guest for dinner tonight.”
And we said, “Absolutely.”
So we went over and there was this huge, typical, not typical but a fine Folly Beach home and they must have had ten or twelve blacks working in there. They had a lovely dinner with wine and whatever. And I noticed in the public room there were two baby grand pianos there and scores of sheet music all over the place just in disarray. So he said when we were about to finish the meal he just left the table and went into the room and started strumming and playing bits and finally he played a piece that I recognized.
I punched my brother and I said, “Joe, that’s George Gershwin.”
He said, “Yeah, but who is he?”
I said, “He’s a famous musician and he’s Jewish.” I said, “Take the car and go in town and get Mary and Yetta.” My two sisters. So he went and got ’em both.
Yetta was an attractive girl and George knew we were Jewish and he liked the young people. He was with these stodgy people from downtown. By that time we knew who he was and we went in there and asked him a lot of questions and he said he was working with Dorothy [and] Dubose Heyward and was trying to write the score for a play that they were doing on Porgy and Bess.
And he asked me, you know, since I had a car and knew the area would I mind help him locate some of the black churches so he could go and hear the gospel music and what not. And I said, “Sure, I’d love it.”
So for that entire summer I would meet with George from time to time and he wouldn’t go anyplace socially in Charleston without taking my sister. She was at that time about fifteen and you know, not any romantic thing, he just liked her. She was a very attractive young lady. Anyway, next summer he came down, same thing. And finally in 1935 he came down just for a few days and talked with my sister and took her back to New York and put her in ballet school. She didn’t last very long. He got her a job with Bonwit Tellers in New York. She was about eighteen or nineteen.
When my wife and I announced our engagement, I think it was in some time in early 1936 and it was fashionable in those days, if you could afford it, that the parents would take their daughters, Jewish particularly, up to New York and take a trip on the Clyde Line. Then it was like a beautiful trip, a day and a half by boat from here to New York and then stay in New York and then come back on the boat. Anyway, Gershwin gave a party for my wife in New York. And two years later he died and that was it. I never realized the importance of having had that opportunity to be in the presence of this man for two summers and then learn about—the state of South Carolina passed a law in the legislature that would not allow the integrated actors or even a presentation of Porgy and Bess, for many, many years after they had gone all over the country and all over the world before they would even allow it in the state of South Carolina.
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They were limited by what the Russians allowed them—where to live and were they would go. The only time my father had any latitude of moving was when he was in the army. His stay in the army was very oppressive duty. The winters were long and horrible and his promotion was very limited. So he developed a tremendous desire, a passion not only to get out of the army but to get the hell out of Russia. In fact, he bribed his way out of the army and made it to this country. And with very hard work and ambition he became successful, in a limited sense, as a merchant, but his major undertaking was that he became a purchaser of a large amount of real estate and timber property and bought a business in Charleston and moved the family to Charleston.
I remember at age seven—I was a twin—when my brother and I would come home from school at the ages six, seven, and eight, and my mother, in 1918, 1917, would get letters from her mother and from her remaining sister in Vilna. It would be written on notebook paper in ink and the tears were coming out of her eyes. They were begging for relief. In those days, if you could raise a hundred dollars in 1918 or 1919 in Charleston, you would send it out of the country for relief—Jewish relief money sent to the family. We would send the clothing that we would collect—all the years that we had family remaining there, we’d send it to this Jewish agency in New York. They had devised methods of delivering it.
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Well, we lived at 182 Wentworth Street which at that time was two blocks from the Ashley River. I remember growing up that there were four major lumber companies on the river and they would haul the logs or float them in or bring them in by barge from where they would cut them—it was a very romantic area of growing up. I learned how to swim in the summertime off of West Point which was the old rice building which is now one of Charleston’s historic buildings. Where the Chamber of Commerce has a building and where they have a restaurant—where the marina is right now.
And every spring of the year we would go and find an abandoned bateau and one of the blacks that worked at one of the mills would teach us how to batten up and make it waterproof and I learned how to row or paddle a boat from Charleston to the Isle of Palms. When I was eight to ten years of age, my brother and I, I mean we had a terrific amount of mobility. We were driving a car when we were ten. In those days we didn’t need a license. You just needed the ability to do it.
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My mother’s eldest brother, whose name was Read, R-E-A-D, Frank Read came to South Carolina. He came directly to Moncks Corner in 1890. My father came to this country in 1902. He came from one of the ghetto villages at Lithuania. My mother is from Vilna, which is now called Vilnius, V-I-L-N-I-U-S—think of Venice. But my mother’s elder brother whose name was Read was the predecessor of all of the family on her side. My father had two nephews who later came here and they settled in Sumter, South Carolina. So they came over in 1920.
He settled in Moncks Corner and brought all two or three of his brothers and when my father married the younger sister of my uncle he brought over my mother and another sister and left the remaining segment of her family in Europe. They all vanished, finished off by Hitler.
My father didn’t [talk about his parents]. My father was in the Russian army and he was so happy to purchase his way out of the army. He took a German freighter and landed at Ellis Island. My father was a very aggressive fellow and came to South Carolina with one notion. He wanted to take advantage of the wonderful atmosphere of America, the ability to earn a livelihood without the oppressive circumstances that Jews were living in in that part of the world. He worked very hard and within two years he had already gone in business for himself and had earned enough money to send for my mother.
My aunt tells the story that when my father sent for my mother to come to this country, it cost about two thousand dollars for transportation and getting out of where she was. Apparently they had—it was almost as if they were paying, I got the impression that they were paying monies to get a permit to leave. And when she got to New York at Ellis Island they had such a tremendous group of people and such terrible decisions to make. History has proved that the negative decisions hit the Jewish people, particularly on the east coast because at that time they weren’t bringing in any Asians or blacks. They turned my mother down because whoever examined her said she had a communicable eye disease. The agency in New York, apparently—and I am very grateful and thankful for all of these things that I know so little about—had her sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia. She stayed there for two months with this wonderful gentile family who took care of her, saw to it that she had any medical attention she needed and gave her a very very comfortable domicile.
One of the humorous things that came out of it—when my mother had all of the certifications between the New York agency and the medical examiners in Halifax, Nova Scotia, [they] wrote my father—I was told it took thirty-five hundred dollars to arrange for passage for my father to go to pick her up and for transportation—and he was told that there was not a bill for any of her expenditures in Halifax, but it would be nice if he made a contribution. Anyway, to abbreviate the story, my uncle told my father that he was not sophisticated enough to bring his sister back and that he would like to pick up my mother. My father agreed to send my uncle up but he never forgave him for that. Anyway, my mother came—this was in 1905 or 1906—and moved with my father to Bonneau, South Carolina. [Later] the family moved to Charleston and bought a house at 182 Wentworth Street which is still in existence—a right attractive typical Charleston two-story house with a porch on the first and second floor. He knew that he could not raise a Jewish family in Bonneau. We became a part of the community of Charleston and in 1916 they became domiciled in Charleston and became a member of Brith Sholom Synagogue. And four Dumas children were born in South Carolina. My two older sisters and my twin brother and I were born on Sullivan’s Island.
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First Name: Dorothea ("Dottie")Middle or Maiden Name: ShimelLast Name: DumasDate of Recording: 1/2/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-108Interview Notes: Interview with her sisters Jennie Ackerman and Renee FrischOral History Link: View Oral History
First Name: Marvin
Last Name: Efron
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Aiken, SC
Year of Birth: 1930
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Nelson A. Danish, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Judith Evans, Jeffrey Kaplan, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: Leila ("Sugie")Middle or Maiden Name: RosenfeldLast Name: EinsteinDate of Recording: 7/10/14Place of Birth: Asheville, NCYear of Birth: 1936Special Collections MSS: 1035-401Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Samuel
Middle or Maiden Name: Wolf
Last Name: Ellis
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Aiken, SC
Year of Birth: 1983
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Nelson A. Danish, Marvin Efron, Judith Evans, Jeffrey Kaplan, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: Haskell
Last Name: Ellison
Date of Recording: 11/22/98
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1926
Special Collections MSS: 1035-208
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Herbert
Middle or Maiden Name: Arnold
Last Name: Engel
Date of Recording: 6/9/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1922
Special Collections MSS: 1035-151
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: JoeLast Name: EngelDate of Recording: 4/30/97Place of Birth: Zakroczym, PolandYear of Birth: 1927Special Collections MSS: 1035-147Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
On January 19, 1945, when the allies came closer to liberate Auschwitz, they got everybody out from the camp. They wanted to take us deeper inside Germany so they could leave no trace of the survivors. This night in January 1945—we call it the Death March—they marched us all night long over to Bogamin (that’s on the border of Poland and Czechoslovakia, not far from Glawica) and they put us in a soccer stadium. They kept us overnight there. Of course, on the Death March half of them didn’t make it. Anybody who couldn’t keep up with the march, they put a bullet in his head.
Later they put us on open cattle trains. It was winter. I said to myself, “Under circumstances of what I can see, on the open cattle train, I’m never going to make it. Without food, without water, packed in.” So I told myself that if the train start to roll, start moving, and it’s going to get nighttime, I’m going to jump the train. I figure if they catch me they’re going to shoot me, so I wouldn’t have to suffer. And if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll survive—because on each side you had an SS guarding the train. When it got dark for a couple of hours I escaped. I think a lot of fellows jumped nearby but I never see them. When I jumped they stopped the train and was looking all over. I was deep down in the snow about eight hours. I don’t know how I survived in the cold. Finally the train started going again.
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First Name: Joe
Last Name: Engel
Date of Recording: 3/29/02
Place of Birth: Zakroczym, Poland
Year of Birth: 1927
Special Collections MSS: 1035-270
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Joe
Last Name: Engel
Date of Recording: 1/18/11
Place of Birth: Zakroczym, Poland
Year of Birth: 1927
Special Collections MSS: 1035-344
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Louis
Middle or Maiden Name: Buddy
Last Name: Engel
Date of Recording: 02/11/97, 02/12/97, and 02/13/97
Place of Birth: Zakroczym, Poland
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-116
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Rebecca
Last Name: Engel
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1982
Special Collections MSS: 1035-528
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Strategies and Resources for Survival," with Noah Levine, Annie Rivers, Anita Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Jay Schwartz, moderated by Mark Swick, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Ann
Last Name: Epstein
Date of Recording: 2/15/18
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-501
Interview Notes: Also present Barbara Rundbaken Epstein (niece) and Jane Mirsky Mendelsohn
First Name: Elaine
Middle or Maiden Name: Wanderman
Last Name: Epstein
Date of Recording: 7/11/14
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1935
Special Collections MSS: 1035-402
Interview Notes: Interview with her former husband, William Edward Epstein
First Name: Elaine
Middle or Maiden Name: Wanderman
Last Name: Epstein
Date of Recording: 7/11/14
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1935
Special Collections MSS: 1035-403
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: William
Middle or Maiden Name: Edward
Last Name: Epstein
Date of Recording: 7/11/14
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-402
Interview Notes: Interview with his former wife, Elaine Wanderman Epstein
First Name: Judith
Last Name: Evans
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Beuthen, Germany
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Nelson A. Danish, Marvin Efron, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Jeffrey Kaplan, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: StanleyMiddle or Maiden Name: BernardLast Name: FarbsteinDate of Recording: 10/24/98Place of Birth: Beaufort, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-204Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing up Jewish in Beaufort," with Joseph Lipton, Michael Greenly, Thomas Keyserling, and Gerrie Sturman at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: StanleyMiddle or Maiden Name: BernardLast Name: FarbsteinDate of Recording: 11/9/99Place of Birth: Beaufort, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-229Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Stanley
Middle or Maiden Name: Bernard
Last Name: Farbstein
Date of Recording: 4/2/05
Place of Birth: Beaufort, SC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-292
Interview Notes: Presentation, "JHSSC Cemetery Survey Project and Survey of Beth Israel Cemetery," with Cynthia Levy, at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SC
First Name: Minnie
Middle or Maiden Name: Lerner
Last Name: Feinberg
Date of Recording: 7/25/00
Place of Birth: Poland
Year of Birth: 1906
Special Collections MSS: 1035-243
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Morris Feinberg
First Name: Morris
Last Name: Feinberg
Date of Recording: 7/25/00
Place of Birth: Chester, PA
Year of Birth: 1908
Special Collections MSS: 1035-243
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Minnie Feinberg
First Name: Leon
Last Name: Feldman
Date of Recording: 3/9/03
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-274
Interview Notes: Interview with his sisters Lena Solomon and Shirley Prystowsky
First Name: ConieMiddle or Maiden Name: SpigelLast Name: FergusonDate of Recording: 1/10/95Place of Birth: Spartanburg, SCYear of Birth: 1951Special Collections MSS: 1035-2Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
They made their own jewelry. And of course they bought a lot, like all jewelry stores do, but they made their jewelry, a lot of it, and the jewelry that they ordered, as I found out really in the last couple of years, my grandmother had to okay it first before she let it come into the jewelry store. If it was all right with her then it was all right to bring it on into the store. So that sort of shows that she did have a rule but she was one of the behind-the-scenes lady that you didn’t know it because he ruled very strongly, had a very strong rule over the entire family, but she was the one that said whether the jewelry could come in or not.
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When my grandfather said that that’s a past life, he wouldn’t even speak German, would not allow it. The only time he ever spoke German to my grandmother, which I understand she understood, was when they wanted to say something that they did not want my father and aunt to understand, then they would speak in German. Other than that no German or Yiddish or anything was allowed or spoken in the house.
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[My grandfather] was a salesman. My mother will tell you that. He was a very very good salesman. But then, the prices were not that astronomical where the people could not afford them. I can remember when my mother went back to school to get a college degree, that was in the middle to late ’60s, she used to have some of the students come over to the house and they would study together since she was an older student. And I can remember one time that one of the guys brought his parents over or something and when they heard the name the man reached into his pocket and said, “You see these glasses?” He said, “Your grandfather made these glasses for me and I’m still wearing them.” You know, Grandpa died in ’49 and this was in the ’60s, he was still wearing the same glasses. So it shows that the quality of his work had to have been fantastic, so the people were willing to spend money if they knew it was going to last them a lifetime. Those glasses lasted that man’s lifetime.
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There were either four or five Levy brothers and they said it was really magnificent watching them go down the street because all of them were over six feet tall. Their mother and father both. All of them, four sons and the parents. People would step back to watch these tall people go down the street. I met a few of my father’s first cousins. I met a few of them a few years back and maybe they shrunk, I don’t know, they didn’t look that tall to me. I mean, I was a teenager and I’m not very tall myself, but they didn’t seem that tall to me. But the stories were that there were these giant people walking down the street and people would stand back to look at them.
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The last name that they went by when they came to this country was Spigel, but it was S-P-I-G-E L. When they came into the United States the guys would say write down the name and they were just in a hurry and they just left out the first “E” just for these two and that’s all there’s ever been. And the rest of the family, like I said, we have no idea what happened to them.
My grandfather was the type that he said when he left the old country what was there stayed. No nothing. He was not going to talk about it. So we only can assume that there were a lot of things that were not very pleasant and he didn’t want to think about them. So I don’t know that much. I have one aunt, my father’s only sister, and I’ve asked her but she is almost ninety and she doesn’t remember a lot now, so I don’t know that much about why things were done. But I know that my Uncle Joe came first and it had to have been in the middle 1800s [1880s?] because Grandpa and my grandmother moved to Spartanburg in 1903. They were already married and then my aunt was born in 1906 and my father was born in 1912.
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I don't really see myself as a Southerner, per se, I guess. I'm open-minded to everything, to learn as much as I can about everything around me, but being that this is the only place that I've ever lived, and it's probably the place that I will die, I guess I am a true Southerner. I never really stopped to think about it. I could never think of being any other religion. I love learning about other religions, fascinated by the histories of them and when I read them I go, is this really what these people believe. But then when I stop to think about it they probably say the exact same thing about me, is that what they really believe?
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[My father] had to be a doctor because his father and mother told him he was going to be a doctor. At that time period you did what your parents said, no question. My father really didn’t want to be a doctor but his parents told him he was going to be, so he was a doctor. He did his residency here at the Mary Black Hospital here in Spartanburg before he went on into North Carolina and then to Texas and then back to Spartanburg and stayed in Spartanburg ever since until he died.
My grandfather seemed like he was the type of guy he thought he’d be around forever, you know. He was such a businessman he had everything lined out, what he was going to do, when it was going to be done. But it had to be my son, the doctor, that was the thing, you had to have a doctor in the family, whether it was an M.D. or a dentist or something, you had to have a doctor in the family. That’s why my father would have said [he was] the unlucky one, to have gotten that part. If he’d have gone into medicine on his own I think he may have been a dermatologist. But if he had had his druthers he wanted to be a meteorologist, he loved the weather and things like that. That’s what he wanted to be.
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I never found it to be [difficult to maintain a Jewish identity in Spartanburg] because—it was like coming to temple, I never came to temple for the social part of it, I came to temple because I wanted to come here, I wanted to pray; I did it for me. That seemed to upset a few people because after services I never stayed for one shabbat, I left. And I was asked why and I said well, I did not come for that, I came for either to say yahrzeit or whatever. And I came for me on that. And I said I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, I'm friendly with everybody, but that's why I came. I'm the third pew from the back, that's me, on the corner. I've been there since ’64, I've got squatter's rights, that's my pew.
And I've had people come by, this one particular lady would come by and pat me on the shoulder. “Hello, Conie, how are you?” and I said—she never looked—I said, “What would you do if I wasn't here?” She said, “I'd pat you and keep right on going.” Because they know third pew from the back, that's me. That's where I've always sat with my family. My grandfather was the same way in the old temple. He had a pew that he was in and if anyone had the nerve to sit in that pew when he came, they got up and moved. He'd never say anything, he would just stand there very quietly and they would look and see this figure standing beside them, they got up and moved for him to sit in his pew. I guess I've gotten to be the same way too, I have mine that I want to go in. I'm not that bad, I won't stand there and wait for them to move over, I'll sit somewhere else. But I still sit on the same side, whether it's the front or the back, I'm still back there, they know that's me.
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There were no Jewish kids for me to have [as friends] at all. There was some anti-Semitism but you learned to let it just roll off you and just let it go. I did not really see a lot of it until I was in junior college and then it became very predominant, I just figured that they didn't know what they were talking about. The one phrase I hated was “You don't look Jewish.” I have a very bad temper which I keep under control completely, but I'd just pop back [at them].
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First Name: Marcie
Middle or Maiden Name: Cohen
Last Name: Ferris
Date of Recording: 5/23/98
Place of Birth: Blytheville, AR
Year of Birth: 1957
Special Collections MSS: 1035-196
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Holocaust as a Crisis of Faith," with Rudolf Herz, Thomas E. Myers, Jr., and William N. McKeachie
First Name: Marcie
Middle or Maiden Name: Cohen
Last Name: Ferris
Date of Recording: 11/09/13
Place of Birth: Blytheville, AR
Year of Birth: 1957
Special Collections MSS: 1035-381
Interview Notes: Presentation, "'God First, You Second, Me Third': An Exploration of 'Quiet Jewishness' at Southern Jewish Summer Camp," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: Belle
Middle or Maiden Name: Serbin
Last Name: Fields
Date of Recording: 6/28/17
Place of Birth: Tarentum, PA
Year of Birth: 1912
Special Collections MSS: 1035-511
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Belle
Middle or Maiden Name: Serbin
Last Name: Fields
Date of Recording: 10/11/17
Place of Birth: Tarentum, PA
Year of Birth: 1912
Special Collections MSS: 1035-512
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Lilly
Middle or Maiden Name: Stern
Last Name: Filler
Date of Recording: 10/31/10
Place of Birth: Munich, Germany
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-339
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: LillyMiddle or Maiden Name: SternLast Name: FillerDate of Recording: 2/18/16Place of Birth: Munich, GermanyYear of Birth: 1947Special Collections MSS: 1035-509Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Lilly
Middle or Maiden Name: Stern
Last Name: Filler
Date of Recording: 4/29/18
Place of Birth: Munich, Germany
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-516
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Difficult History: Plantations, Concentration Camps, and Cultural Tourism," with Sara Daise, Shawn Halifax, George McDaniel, Joseph McGill, David Popowski, and Robert Rosen, moderated by Robin Waites, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Lilly
Middle or Maiden Name: Stern
Last Name: Filler
Date of Recording: 5/03/15
Place of Birth: Munich, Germany
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-418
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Remembers," with Anita Zucker, David Popowski, Esther Goldberg Greenberg, and Harlan Greene at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: Phyllis
Last Name: Firetag
Date of Recording: 2/19/98
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-178
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Phyllis
Last Name: Firetag
Date of Recording: 3/12/98
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-179
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Phyllis
Last Name: Firetag
Date of Recording: 4/14/98
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-186
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Phyllis
Last Name: Firetag
Date of Recording: 2/25/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-368
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Joe
Last Name: Fischbein
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1971
Special Collections MSS: 1035-480
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "The New Royalty," with Edward E. Berlin, Ben D'Allesandro, Eli Hyman, and Joseph Jacobson, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: BernardLast Name: FleischmanDate of Recording: 12/6/16Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1946Special Collections MSS: 1035-490Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Alvin
Middle or Maiden Name: Theodore
Last Name: Fleishman
Date of Recording: 6/14/98
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-200
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Alvin
Middle or Maiden Name: Theodore
Last Name: Fleishman
Date of Recording: 6/13/98
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-199f
Interview Notes: Speech as toastmaster at the dinner celebrating Temple B'nai Israel's 50th anniversary, Anderson, SC
First Name: Florence
Middle or Maiden Name: Breen
Last Name: Fleishman
Date of Recording: 1/11/95
Place of Birth: Plainfield, NJ
Year of Birth: 1905
Special Collections MSS: 1035-3
Interview Notes: Interview with her brother Marvin Breen
First Name: LibbyMiddle or Maiden Name: KirshLast Name: FleishmanDate of Recording: 2/25/97Place of Birth: Baltimore, MDYear of Birth: 1911Special Collections MSS: 1035-123Interview Notes: InterviewRelated Stories:
LF: I did know a good many Jewish people down here [in Anderson when I first arrived]. We had a big crowd of Jewish people down here then. ’Cause you know you’d see from all the children and everything. We had poker games goin’, we had mahjong games goin’, bridge games goin’. Had a nice, nice Jewish crowd then. We always had card games going on and then there was the Elks Club that we all belonged to. In fact, that’s where your father-in-law passed away.
SR: That’s absolutely right. The joke in the family is he was sitting there with a winning hand and keeled over.
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Friday nights we have ten people at the minyan, counting women. We have a good many intermarried couples here.
It’s so hard to say [what the future of the Anderson Jewish community is], I just can’t. You know, every once in a while we have a spurt and then they all leave. Like we have a Jewish doctor that came here in Iron Oakes, Dr. Roland. I think his wife’s from Lexington. I think she’s not Jewish. He comes every once in a while, but there’s not much to being here, you know.
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First Name: Rita
Middle or Maiden Name: Levy
Last Name: Fogel
Date of Recording: 7/15/98
Place of Birth: Bishopville, SC
Year of Birth: 1910
Special Collections MSS: 1035-201
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Barbara
Middle or Maiden Name: Radin
Last Name: Fox
Date of Recording: 10/28/05
Place of Birth: Butler, PA
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-305
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: CaroleeMiddle or Maiden Name: RosenLast Name: FoxDate of Recording: 8/7/97Place of Birth: Asheville, NCYear of Birth: 1930Special Collections MSS: 1035-160Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Harold
Middle or Maiden Name: Irving
Last Name: Fox
Date of Recording: 2/03/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1928
Special Collections MSS: 1035-437
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Kenny
Last Name: Fox
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Nashville, TN
Year of Birth: 1951
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: SarahMiddle or Maiden Name: MendelsonLast Name: FoxDate of Recording: 2/28/97Place of Birth: Warsaw, PolandYear of Birth: 1904Special Collections MSS: 1035-132Interview Notes: InterviewRelated Stories:
1916. We came into New York. We stayed there three years. And through mutual friends, I don’t know if you know the name Kaufman [???] in Charleston—that was my dad’s friend. How he became a friend is very important. My dad had a habit of going for a walk in Warsaw every night after dinner and everybody knew everybody. He finally noticed this strange man there and he asked him if he could be of any help. And the man says, “Can you tell me of a kosher place where I could go and have a meal?” And he says, “That will not be necessary. You can come into our home. There are eight of us and when you cook for eight there are always leftovers.”
So we took him home and my dad asked him whether he knew of a place he is going to spend the night and he said, “No, can you suggest anything?” My dad said, “It’s not necessary to do that. You can come in. We’ll put up a bed or cot whatever and you can stay overnight and tomorrow I’ll help you find a place.” Well, he spent the night and never left. He stayed with us, I think, three years. He became an uncle out of a clear sky because that’s how people treated one another then. You know what I mean. You were there to help and if you could you did.
Well, anyway, when he got the visa, permission to leave, he went to Charleston from Warsaw. This was his home. You know they had a whole of group of Kaluszyners. They lived in Kaluszyn, which was a little suburb from Warsaw, and when one came over they brought their family after a while and helped the next fellow in the family. We became very close friends by then and when he saw the insert in the paper that we had arrived in New York he remembered the name Mendelson and he decided to come up and visit if it was okay with us. Well, we agreed. He came up and stayed ten days and he saw how my dad had to go to work at six in the morning and come home at eleven at night. He worked overtime to feed enough people, eight. Had to clothe them and pay rent and he saw this was not a good future. And he decided then and there he was not going to let us stay in New York. That wasn’t a place to settle with a family. He decided to take my only brother, Isadore Mendelson, who was in the jewelry business in Charleston, and he opened up a little store with accessories like socks and different little things like hankies—things of that sort. He took my brother in there and he said, “This is for you and your father.” My brother didn’t know what to do or say. He went in and thanked the man. He didn’t know what the outcome would be.
Mr. Kaufman in the meantime called my father—when his vacation came he was to come to him. And anyway my dad came and Mr. Kaufman took him by the hand like a friend and he said, “Abraham, this if for you and family. I’m going to give you this on one condition. That you accept it.” My dad said, “The only way I will accept it will be if I pay for it.” They discussed the situation and finally my dad accepted. They paid him off and we opened up a store Mendelson and Son.
We established a good name for us and worked until 1928. We decided, my husband at the time—I was married in 1927. My brother played the mandolin and my husband played the violin. He was with the Charleston Symphony. And they decided to open up a little store. They just had a few violins or whatever—they couldn’t go into piano, there was too much competition. There was Seigling Music House. We all worked in the business. I worked constantly in the business since it was opened up in1928. And after Otto died the children decided to keep the business and each one got a share and they worked up a beautiful business with me included. I worked every day of my life since I was twelve.
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I lived on Race Street. That has a variety of different people. Goyim different denominations. Jewish people also different denominations. I always said good morning to anybody that would show before me. Sometimes I would walk outside and I would miss the person who was there saying hello to me. I apologized and said I’m sorry I didn’t see you. And they would carry on a conversation like we were brothers and sisters.
And when I left Race Street, it’s a funny thing. The lady was watching for the mover to come and get me to Race Street when the house was ready. And she called me and asked me, why am I moving? We miss you so much. You’re our inspiration. Why did you decide to move? Well, I told her. We had an incident. Otto and I were sitting in the living room and all of a sudden we heard something like a shot. They had gone on the porch and crashed a window with a brick. And when we heard that both of us were scared. We started to look together huddled up. We finally came into the bedroom. My bedroom and Otto’s. It’s a good thing we had Venetian blinds. The window was crashed. And some of the glass came through the Venetian blinds because they are not permanently shut. And that’s when we decided to call our children.
There is a Carondolet Alley about a half a block from where we lived between Rutledge Avenue and Coming Street. And nobody ever committed anything there. It was so peaceful. We had the property, I mean the land here. And my children started to work to get us over here. And thank God I had no problem. I, myself, didn’t have any problems. It was just that they were going through the neighborhood. And I hated to leave. Some of the people from there still call me and talk to me. I lived there thirty-six years right across the Greek Church. I lived at 31 Race Street. I was so in love with that cottage. It was just for me. Especially after the children got married, I didn’t want to go to a big place. So Maurice and Joan, Maurice’s wife, began to talk and do something about it. In 1967 we moved here on our fortieth wedding anniversary. And I have enjoyed living here. The people are very nice but they are not too sociable. So we don’t visit each other too much. Once in a while they will come. Like I give donations to the heart fund, any kind of fund, so I go to their house and wait for the check to send off and that’s how we meet and see each other.
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I was born in Europe, in Warsaw, Poland. I lived there until I was twelve years old and all of a sudden the war starts and we are trying to get out of the trouble. My trip was really a miserable one. We left Warsaw in 1916. We had to go through Berlin to get the train from Warsaw and after that we traveled thirty days to Rotterdam in order to get the boat. And when we got there we found that the trip [ship?] had been canceled and it’s prolonged again.
But we stayed in the Rotterdam Hotel until things were available again to the immigrants. I left there shortly after and when we got on the trip [ship?] every country’s waters refused to let us go through because we were on a German ship. Our passage was supposed to be first class and we finally ended up on the bottom of the boat where the kitchen was. We were so tired and starved because during the time we lived in Warsaw, after Germany took over they got all the food and the residents didn’t get any. We were hoping that when we got to Rotterdam we’d have something to eat. But still there was no food available. It was really miserable. We didn’t know what we were going to do.
But we finally went on the journey and London was very very helpful. They allowed our boat to land and took care of us. They had a meal but we couldn’t afford to eat because we didn’t know whether it was free or whether we had to pay. All we had were twenty-five dollars to show on Ellis Island when we got there. My father and two sisters were already in New York. We sent them a telegram from Ellis Island when we arrived there. They missed the telegram and couldn’t come out that evening to get us. We thought that we had been forgotten or something had happened to them and we just gave up. We said that if we couldn’t get anything to eat and my father didn’t come to get us off Ellis Island the next thing to do was to go into the ocean and forget about everything. But fortunately the next morning at five o’clock we were told, “The Mendelson family should come into so-and-so cabin. We are ready to release you.” We didn’t know who had come until we got into the room where they had told us to go to. And then there were my father and two sisters waiting on the outside. And they had gotten the telegram and made all the arrangements to come in the next morning. That was at five in the morning and you can imagine what a reunion that was, not to have seen each other for two years and not knowing whether we were still alive or dead. The reunion was something special and from then on we really were happy.
The trip itself we could have eliminated but we had no other way to get where we were going to the United States of America and looking forward to it of course because we knew here we would have a chance to really live normally. And that’s what my dad wanted for his six children. To bring them up normally. He was not happy with the European way of living because the Christians there, the Pollacks, tortured the Jewish people. It was a shame we had to be born Jews but I never regretted it because that was the only place—America—that took care of people like us wanting to live, to do something with life, and not to be handicapped.
So at first [my father] went to Rio de Janeiro and it wasn’t any better. He came back to Warsaw and tried to get another ticket to the United States and this is where he went to. He met a family that gave him a job to sew the tiny little things on suspenders to catch them on the pants button. And he learned how to do that. Until then he had never worked. He was a Hebrew student. His father was the same way. They lived in the suburb of Warsaw where they had a little cottage and some land. They had someone to cultivate it for them and they ate what was grown on that area. When he came to Europe after he got married to my mother they were both sixteen years old and he didn’t have trade of any kind. So my mother had to go and peddle like the people do here, selling sheets and pillow cases door to door. When she was pregnant with a child and it was due she stayed over until the baby was delivered and went back to work. They raised six wonderful children—I have to say because we were a nice family. And little by little he trained my two older sisters how to do that work and they were able to make a livelihood for the family. But mother still kept on peddling. Until we left [Europe] we were not living normal lives. We were tortured. And that was the reason why we were thinking of leaving for the United States.
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My mother’s name was Jenny. My father’s name was Abraham. Mendelson is the family name. I couldn’t carry on with my education. I had a younger sister, Gussy. We let her go to high school and she came back telling the fancy names that are available to the youth. Nowadays you hear more of it. But at that time it was terrible to use a word like that. So my dad sat her down and told her, Gussy, we’re giving you the opportunity to get the education that Sarah wanted. She stepped out of the way to let you go. And if you are going to bring in these kinds of words, that kind of language, you can’t go back. It’s a choice you have to make. Well, it worked and she finished with honors. And I never did go back to go to school. This is the best I can do. That’s how I learned English. Partially in the schools and then from reading and listening and that helps. And here I am.
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[My father] had a general merchandise store. We had every bit of clothing for men and women and children except shoes. But everything else was available. And in those days you kept open from seven in the morning until eleven or twelve at night. As long as the customer came you were open. And that was the end of that business. But the Fox Music House was my pet. I loved working in there. You meet such a wonderful line of people. From the poorest to the roughest. We had people that Otto peddled with before we opened up the business and he would get paid with a chicken, vegetables. If they didn’t have the money, Otto Fox would leave a few dollars. They were sick. He’d help them get the medicine, put out the money for the medicine. The people have never forgotten that name. Right now wherever I go, “Mr. Fox was such a fine man. You know, he did so and so for us. He helped us with the medicine. He helped us with the sick.” And he peddled. He used to get a dollar payment and if they couldn’t pay that they paid him a watermelon. See. We worked together. They didn’t have the money so how could they pay us. This is the most interesting life.
We finally went into the music business. We had a complete record stock. Anything you wanted to hear you had in our store. And if we didn’t have it, we ordered it for the people. And that was the part that built us up. We worked so hard to please the people. At first we had a hand winding machine with two records. I was the only one in the business then. People would hear the music outside, especially church music for the colored people. They would come in and pay ten cents on a thirty-five-cent record. And we put one aside for them and when the other one came in, we called the people or wrote them a card if they didn’t have a phone and they came and took the record out.
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First Name: Charles
Last Name: Fram
Date of Recording: 10/30/99
Place of Birth: Union, SC
Year of Birth: 1902
Special Collections MSS: 1035-226
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Dot
Middle or Maiden Name: E.
Last Name: Frank
Date of Recording: 11/9/2019
Place of Birth: Spartanburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-559
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Hub City Reminisces," with Allan From, Gloria From Goldberg, Andy Poliakoff, Gary Smiley, Sandy Smiley, and Ben Stauber at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina fall meeting, "In Search of Jewish Spartanburg," held in Spartanburg
First Name: ArnoldMiddle or Maiden Name: H.Last Name: FranzblauDate of Recording: 11/29/99Place of Birth: New York , NYYear of Birth: 1927Special Collections MSS: 1035-233Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Connie FranzblauOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: ConnieMiddle or Maiden Name: KareshLast Name: FranzblauDate of Recording: 11/29/99Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NYYear of Birth: 1934Special Collections MSS: 1035-233Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Arnold FranzblauOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Max
Last Name: Freilich
Date of Recording: 12/10/08
Place of Birth: Altenburg, Germany
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-326
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: LarryMiddle or Maiden Name: W.Last Name: FreudenbergDate of Recording: 3/15/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1959Special Collections MSS: 1035-58Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MargotMiddle or Maiden Name: StraussLast Name: FreudenbergDate of Recording: 2/24/97Place of Birth: Hanover, GermanyYear of Birth: 1907Special Collections MSS: 1035-122Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Margot
Middle or Maiden Name: Strauss
Last Name: Freudenberg
Date of Recording: 3/8/02
Place of Birth: Hanover, Germany
Year of Birth: 1907
Special Collections MSS: 1035-267
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Edward
Middle or Maiden Name: Marc
Last Name: Friedman
Date of Recording: 5/28/98
Place of Birth: Bridgeport, CT
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-198
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Edward
Middle or Maiden Name: Marc
Last Name: Friedman
Date of Recording: 11/2/99
Place of Birth: Bridgeport, CT
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-227
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Future Needs of the Charleston Jewish Community, with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Anthony D. Holz (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Edward
Middle or Maiden Name: Marc
Last Name: Friedman
Date of Recording: 2/22/00
Place of Birth: Bridgeport, CT
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-237
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Intermarriage and Conversion," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Anthony D. Holz (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: MorrisLast Name: FriedmanDate of Recording: 5/28/96Year of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-73Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Naomi Friedman, his sister-in-law Frances Jacobson, his brother-in-law Melvin Solomon and his wife Judith SolomonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: NaomiMiddle or Maiden Name: SolomonLast Name: FriedmanDate of Recording: 5/28/96Year of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-73Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Morris Friedman, her brother Melvin Solomon and his wife Judith Solomon, and her sister Frances JacobsonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: ReneeMiddle or Maiden Name: ShimelLast Name: FrischDate of Recording: 1/2/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-108Interview Notes: Interview with her sisters Jennie Ackerman and Dorothea DumasOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Barry
Last Name: Frishberg
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-526
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Endangered Congregations," with Garry Baum, Barry Draisen, Louis Drucker, Rhetta Mendelsohn, Paul Siegel, moderated by Noah Levine, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Allan
Last Name: From
Date of Recording: 11/9/2019
Place of Birth: Union, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-559
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Hub City Reminisces," with Dot Frank, Gloria From Goldberg, Andy Poliakoff, Gary Smiley, Sandy Smiley, and Ben Stauber at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina fall meeting, "In Search of Jewish Spartanburg," held in Spartanburg
First Name: ClaireLast Name: FundDate of Recording: 10/26/05Special Collections MSS: 1035-304Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: CarolineMiddle or Maiden Name: GeisbergLast Name: FunkensteinDate of Recording: 2/25/97Place of Birth: Anderson, SCYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-124Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Louis FunkensteinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LouisLast Name: FunkensteinDate of Recording: 2/25/97Place of Birth: Athens, GAYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-124Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Caroline FunkensteinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: David
Last Name: Furchgott
Date of Recording: 5/18/19
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-545
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Merchants on the Move," with Harold Brody, Deborah Lipman Cochelin, Mickey Kronsberg Rosenblum, and Zachary Solomon, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Revisiting the Past and Envisioning the Future: JHSSC Celebrates its 25th Anniversary," held in Charleston
First Name: Jeremy
Last Name: Furchgott
Date of Recording: 08/06/18
Place of Birth: Washington, D.C.
Year of Birth: 1991
Special Collections MSS: 1035-518
Interview Notes: Presentation, “The Family Who Stayed in Europe (aka The Zlaté Moravce Branch),” at the Furchgott/Furchtgott family reunion held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Jeremy
Last Name: Furchgott
Date of Recording: 08/07/18
Place of Birth: Washington, D.C.
Year of Birth: 1991
Special Collections MSS: 1035-520
Interview Notes: Presentation, “Family Cemeteries in Slovakia and Contributing to the Maintenance of these Historic Sites,” at the Furchgott/Furchtgott family reunion held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Marcelle
Middle or Maiden Name: Kleinzahler
Last Name: Furchgott
Date of Recording: 5/14/14
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1922
Special Collections MSS: 1035-393
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Maurice
Last Name: Furchgott
Date of Recording: 08/16/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-517
Interview Notes: Presentation, “Furchgott Brothers Dry Goods & Department Store Empire” at the Furchgott/Furchtgott family reunion held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Maurice
Last Name: Furchgott
Date of Recording: 08/07/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-519
Interview Notes: Interview with Ruth Furchtgott Adler and Jeanne Pinkerson Dreyfoos at the Furchgott/Furchtgott family reunion held in Charleston, SC
First Name: MaxLast Name: FurchgottDate of Recording: 7/14/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1917Special Collections MSS: 1035-33Interview Notes: Interview with his cousin Dale DreyfoosOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RobertMiddle or Maiden Name: FrancisLast Name: FurchgottDate of Recording: 2/28/01Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1916Special Collections MSS: 1035-252Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RobertMiddle or Maiden Name: FrancisLast Name: FurchgottDate of Recording: 4/18/01Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1916Special Collections MSS: 1035-256Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History
First Name: HershMiddle or Maiden Name: MosheLast Name: GalinskyDate of Recording: 11/24/96Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1934Special Collections MSS: 1035-100Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Hersh
Middle or Maiden Name: Moshe
Last Name: Galinsky
Date of Recording: 10/31/04
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-287
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Looking at the Past and to the Future: From the Pulpit of Brith Sholom Beth Israel," with Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, at the Southern Jewish Historical Society and Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina joint conference, "Jewish Roots in Southern Soil," on the occasion of the 150th anniversary rededication of BSBI
First Name: AlexLast Name: GarfinkelDate of Recording: 2/26/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-127Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JennieMiddle or Maiden Name: KaufmanLast Name: GarfinkelDate of Recording: 2/3/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-176Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Max GarfinkelOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MaxLast Name: GarfinkelDate of Recording: 2/3/98Place of Birth: Baltimore, MDYear of Birth: 1916Special Collections MSS: 1035-176Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Jennie GarfinkelOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: PhilipMiddle or Maiden Name: W.Last Name: GarfinkelDate of Recording: 12/15/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1931Special Collections MSS: 1035-103Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: FrancesMiddle or Maiden Name: SolomonLast Name: GarfinkleDate of Recording: 6/4/96Place of Birth: Winston-Salem, NCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-75Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Nathan GarfinkleOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: NathanLast Name: GarfinkleDate of Recording: 6/4/96Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NYYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-75Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Frances GarfinkleOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RalphMiddle or Maiden Name: G.Last Name: GeldbartDate of Recording: 11/8/00Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-248Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: BettyMiddle or Maiden Name: WilliamsLast Name: GendelmanDate of Recording: 6/17/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-79Interview Notes: Interview with her brother Arthur WIlliams and her mother Zerline Williams RichmondOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Belinda
Middle or Maiden Name: Friedman
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 5/19/12
Place of Birth: York County, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-354
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Women in Public Office," with Susan Brill (Columbia) and Dyan Cohen (Darlington), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service"
First Name: BelindaMiddle or Maiden Name: FriedmanLast Name: GergelDate of Recording: 3/1/16Place of Birth: York County, SCYear of Birth: 1950Special Collections MSS: 1035-491Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Belinda
Middle or Maiden Name: Friedman
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: York County, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Beatrice Aaronson, Solomon Breibart, Nicholas Butler, Harlan Greene, Mayer Z. Gruber, Kim Harris, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: Belinda
Middle or Maiden Name: Friedman
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: York County, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-394
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Historical Society Past Presidents Panel," with Rachel Gordin Barnett, David Draisen, Richard Gergel, Ann Meddin Hellman, Edward Poliakoff, Robert Rosen, and Jeffrey Rosenblum on the occasion of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina's 20th anniversary celebration, Charleston, SC
First Name: Belinda
Middle or Maiden Name: Friedman
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: York County, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-431
Interview Notes: Presentation with Richard Gergel, "Deep Roots, Lofty Branches: Perspectives on the Capital City's Early Jews," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Belinda
Middle or Maiden Name: Friedman
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: York County, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, L. M. Drucker, Richard Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Max Hellman, Constance H. Mandeville, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: MeriMiddle or Maiden Name: FriedmanLast Name: GergelDate of Recording: 7/17/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-154Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Rae BerryOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RichardLast Name: GergelDate of Recording: 2/29/16Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1954Special Collections MSS: 1035-491Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Richard
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 5/19/12
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-352
Interview Notes: Opening remarks at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service," with Robert Rosen
First Name: Richard
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-394
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Historical Society Past Presidents Panel," with Rachel Gordin Barnett, David Draisen, Belinda Gergel, Ann Meddin Hellman, Edward Poliakoff, Robert Rosen, and Jeffrey Rosenblum on the occasion of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina's 20th anniversary celebration
First Name: Richard
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-395
Interview Notes: Remarks during Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina reception celebrating the Society's 20th anniversary
First Name: Richard
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-431
Interview Notes: Presentation with Belinda Gergel, "Deep Roots, Lofty Branches: Perspectives on the Capital City's Early Jews," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Richard
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, L. M. Drucker, Belinda Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Max Hellman, Constance H. Mandeville, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Richard
Middle or Maiden Name: M.
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-513
Interview Notes: Moderator for panel discussion, "Shared Memories, Equal Justice," with Claire Curtis, Joseph Darby, Armand Derfner, Charles Heyward, and Bernard Powers at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Richard
Last Name: Gergel
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-407
Interview Notes: Presentation, "The Remarkable Story of the Early Jews of South Carolina," with Robert Rosen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: Frances
Middle or Maiden Name: Bass
Last Name: Ginsberg
Date of Recording: 2/21/11
Place of Birth: North, SC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-346
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: IdaMiddle or Maiden Name: BerryLast Name: GinsbergDate of Recording: 3/23/96Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-59Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Judith "Judy"Middle or Maiden Name: DraisenLast Name: GlassmanDate of Recording: 6/19/10Place of Birth: Spartanburg, SCYear of Birth: 1948Special Collections MSS: 1035-335Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Bernice GoldmanOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Oveta
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Glover
Date of Recording: 4/16/2016
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-445
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Revisiting Rivers: Reflections on School Desegregation," with Charles Brown, Millicent Brown, Missy Cohen Gold, Robert Rosen, and Blanche Weintraub Wine at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement," held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Missy
Middle or Maiden Name: Cohen
Last Name: Gold
Date of Recording: 4/16/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-445
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Revisiting Rivers: Reflections on School Desegregation," with Charles Brown, Millicent Brown, Oveta Glover, Robert Rosen, and Blanche Weintraub Wine at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement," held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Benjamin
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 1/22/14
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-387
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife, Claire Goldberg
First Name: Benjamin
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 2/05/14
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-388
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife, Claire Goldberg
First Name: Bluma
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 3/23/02
Place of Birth: Pinczow, Poland
Year of Birth: 1926
Special Collections MSS: 1035-268
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Charles
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: Charles
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 7/26/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-425
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Harriet Goldberg
First Name: Claire
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 1/22/14
Place of Birth: Cohoes, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-387
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband, Benjamin Goldberg
First Name: Claire
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 2/05/14
Place of Birth: Cohoes, NY
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-388
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband, Benjamin Goldberg
First Name: Gloria
Middle or Maiden Name: From
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 11/9/19
Place of Birth: Union, SC
Year of Birth: 1951
Special Collections MSS: 1035-559
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Hub City Reminisces," with Dot Frank, Allan From, Andy Poliakoff, Gary Smiley, Sandy Smiley, and Ben Stauber at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina fall meeting, "In Search of Jewish Spartanburg," held in Spartanburg
First Name: Harriet
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 7/26/15
Place of Birth: New York
Year of Birth: 1941
Special Collections MSS: 1035-425
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Charles Goldberg
First Name: Herbert
Middle or Maiden Name: S.
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 12/5/17
Place of Birth: Asheville, NC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-495
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Herbert
Middle or Maiden Name: S.
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 12/18/17
Place of Birth: Asheville, NC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-500
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Leonard
Last Name: Goldberg
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1936
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion,"Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Ben Chase, Rosemary Read Cohen, Barry Kalinsky, Sammy Kirshtein, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: HeideMiddle or Maiden Name: EngelhardtLast Name: GoldenDate of Recording: 10/23/16Place of Birth: Gablingen, GermanyYear of Birth: 1941Special Collections MSS: 1035-469Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: David
Last Name: Goldfield
Date of Recording: 6/13/98
Special Collections MSS: 1035-199e
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Anderson and the Jewish Experience in the South," at Temple B'nai Israel's 50th anniversary celebration, Anderson, SC
First Name: BerniceMiddle or Maiden Name: DraisenLast Name: GoldmanDate of Recording: 6/19/10Place of Birth: Anderson, SCYear of Birth: 1945Special Collections MSS: 1035-335Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Judith GlassmanOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HelenMiddle or Maiden Name: LevinLast Name: GoldmanDate of Recording: 4/2/05Place of Birth: Tulsa, OKYear of Birth: 1939Special Collections MSS: 1035-290Interview Notes: Presentation, "The Jewish Community of Beaufort in 1905 and the Founding of Beth Israel Congregation," with Stephen Schein, at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JudithMiddle or Maiden Name: KurtzLast Name: GoldmanDate of Recording: 10/22/99Place of Birth: Rock Hill, SCYear of Birth: 1941Special Collections MSS: 1035-225Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Hilda
Middle or Maiden Name: P.
Last Name: Goldsmith
Date of Recording: 9/5/05
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-300
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Alwyn
Last Name: Goldstein
Date of Recording: 1/30/95
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1915
Special Collections MSS: 1035-4
Interview Notes: Interview with Philip Schneider
First Name: Raisa
Middle or Maiden Name: Milvena
Last Name: Gomer
Date of Recording: 3/22/01
Place of Birth: Kiev, Ukraine, Russia
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-254
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: HarrietMiddle or Maiden Name: MarshallLast Name: GoodeDate of Recording: 9/21/99Place of Birth: Rock Hill, SCYear of Birth: 1937Special Collections MSS: 1035-218Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Martin Goode, Edward and Mary Ann Aberman, and Jack LeaderOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MartinLast Name: GoodeDate of Recording: 9/21/99Place of Birth: Decatur, GAYear of Birth: 1937Special Collections MSS: 1035-218Interview Notes: Interview with Edward and Mary Ann Aberman, Jack Leader, and Martin and Harriet GoodeOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Diane
Middle or Maiden Name: Schafer
Last Name: Goodstein
Date of Recording: 11/3/12
Place of Birth: Dillon, SC
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-364
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "South of the Border and the Legend of Alan Schafer," with Evelyn Hechtkopf, Richard Schafer, Robin Schafer, and Harold Kornblut, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: MiriamMiddle or Maiden Name: BrotmanLast Name: GordinDate of Recording: 11/8/19Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1933Special Collections MSS: 1035-557Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: BellaMiddle or Maiden Name: GoldmanLast Name: GrauerDate of Recording: 8/23/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-86Interview Notes: InterviewRelated Stories:
I was born in 1913 down on Church and Tradd Street [82 Church Street] in Charleston. My daddy owned that corner. At the time Church and Tradd Street was completely different than it is today. Today it doesn’t have any black people in it at all. Years ago in every alley there were black people. There was a railroad going from East Bay, from the waterfront—from the Cooper River—from the Atlantic Ocean. It went through East Bay, through Church, and it curved right there. The boxcars used to come in to deliver right near the church—there’s a church now on the corner of Water and Church Street [First Baptist Church]. Of course, we used to love to get in the boxcars and ride—they’d take us far as East Bay near the waterfront.
And the corners—one corner we lived on. Across the street, Mr. [H.W.] Fuseler [87 Church Street] had a large flour company, and he used to bag flour and he’d sell it to the groceries. On the other corner there was also a store—I can’t remember exactly what was in that store—but I do remember right next to them was Washington Heyward House, which was a bakery at that time. It was owned by two sisters. They were old maids, and they used to sell cakes and all kinds of pastries and next to that was Catfish Row.
My mother had in our house, right above the kitchen, an apartment. My mother used to have a family, a black family, live there. The father worked with James Allen [Jewelers] at that time, was a janitor like, and the mother—my mother taught her how to cook, you know, and keep kosher, and she had daughters, Bertha and Eloise.
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We had a girl called Sadie and she was working for us. My mother taught her how to cook. She used to work for my mother. And she bought a set of furniture from [a dealer on King Street]. How many years do you think that poor schvartzer paid for that? She must have paid that man a dollar every week for ten years. That’s how they got rich. These poor ignorant schvartzers! You think they were religious, but they were dishonest. I don’t call that being a good Jew. I never did. In fact, when I got older and Sadie brought me the receipts, I’m not exaggerating, she had a box this big and this high with dollar receipts in them that [the merchant] had given her. I said, “Sadie,” I says, “My God, what did you buy for all that?” She said, “I bought a bed!”
He had the nerve to come to my mother one day after I talked to Sadie—I think it was about a week afterwards, and Sadie was upstairs—and I says “Sir,” I says, “You looking for Sadie?” He says, “Yes, she gives me a dollar every week.” By then, I had taken—we had the grocery store downstairs—I had taken the box downstairs. I says, “How much did Sadie—” I didn’t tell him I had the box. I says, “How much did that bed cost?” He told me. I says, “You know what I could do if I wanted to? I can add up every dollar, and I can make you give her every penny back that you took from that poor schvartzer.” I never saw him again. He never came back. That’s how [he] got rich. You don’t think he’d got that rich from being honest, do you?
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I was very good in sports. Extremely good in sports. I used to swim South Atlantic Team with the Stuhr girls, Usher, and with Bobby [Danny?] Jones—they named the park in North Charleston after him. We used to swim together with the South Atlantic Team. We didn’t even think about swimming like they do today for the Olympics. We didn’t even—I don’t even know if they had an Olympics at that time. I know they had a South Atlantic Team. We used to swim in North Carolina and Charlotte. We used to go to Florence. And we used to, believe it or not, we used to practice in the Atlantic Ocean. We used to practice off the Battery. That’s right. We used to swim out there.
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First Name: Esther
Middle or Maiden Name: Goldberg
Last Name: Greenberg
Date of Recording: 5/03/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1957
Special Collections MSS: 1035-418
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Remembers," with Anita Zucker, David Popowski, Lilly Stern Filler, and Harlan Greene at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: Phillip
Last Name: Greenberg
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: Florence, SC
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Matthew Reich, Mortimer Bernanke, Gertrude Radin, Alexander Cohen, Harold Kornblut, and Donna Cohen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Sonia
Middle or Maiden Name: Sokol Feinberg
Last Name: Greenberg
Date of Recording: 2/17/00
Year of Birth: 1936
Special Collections MSS: 1035-236
Interview Notes: Interview with her aunt Jennie Rosenberg and her cousin Jean Rosner
First Name: Harlan
Last Name: Greene
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1953
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Beatrice Aaronson, Solomon Breibart, Nicholas Butler, Belinda Gergel, Mayer Z. Gruber, Kim Harris, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: Harlan
Last Name: Greene
Date of Recording: 5/03/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1953
Special Collections MSS: 1035-418
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Remembers," with Anita Zucker, David Popowski, Lilly Stern Filler, and Esther Goldberg Greenberg at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: HarlanLast Name: GreeneDate of Recording: 2/5/19Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1953Special Collections MSS: 1035-537Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Lucille
Middle or Maiden Name: Bernice Schoenberg
Last Name: Greenly
Date of Recording: 11/9/96
Place of Birth: Savannah, Ga
Year of Birth: 1919
Special Collections MSS: 1035-95
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: MichaelLast Name: GreenlyDate of Recording: 10/24/98Place of Birth: Wichita Falls, TXYear of Birth: 1944Special Collections MSS: 1035-204Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing up Jewish in Beaufort," with Joseph Lipton, Stanley Farbstein, Thomas Keyserling, and Gerrie Sturman at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Roslyn "Roz"
Middle or Maiden Name: Goldstein
Last Name: Greenspon
Date of Recording: 10/15/17
Special Collections MSS: 1035-493
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Making Their Mark on Georgetown," with Richard Dimentstein, Nathan Kaminski, Benedict Rosen, Deborah Schneider Smith, and Gene Vinik at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Between the Waters," held at Hobcaw Barony and in Georgetown SC
First Name: Judy
Last Name: Grossman
Date of Recording: 1/27/20
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-562
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband William Grossman
First Name: Judy
Last Name: Grossman
Date of Recording: 1/27/20
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-561
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband William Grossman
First Name: William
Last Name: Grossman
Date of Recording: 1/27/20
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-562
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Judy Grossman
First Name: William
Last Name: Grossman
Date of Recording: 1/27/20
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-561
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Judy Grossman
First Name: Mayer
Middle or Maiden Name: Z.
Last Name: Gruber
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: Schenectady, NY
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Beatrice Aaronson, Solomon Breibart, Nicholas Butler, Belinda Gergel, Harlan Greene, Kim Harris, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: George ("Jerzy")
Last Name: Gruszczynksi
Date of Recording: 10/11/05
Place of Birth: Warsaw, Poland
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-303
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Yevgeny
Middle or Maiden Name: Michael
Last Name: Gurevich
Date of Recording: 3/19/01
Place of Birth: Minsk, Belarus, Russia
Year of Birth: 1979
Special Collections MSS: 1035-253
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Jeffrey
Middle or Maiden Name: S.
Last Name: Gurock
Date of Recording: 10/31/04
Place of Birth: Bronx, NY
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-286a
Interview Notes: Keynote lecture, "A Commentary on a Synagogue History: Brith Sholom Beth Israel and American Jewish History," at the Southern Jewish Historical Society and Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina joint conference, "Jewish Roots in Southern Soil," on the occasion of the 150th anniversary rededication of BSBI
First Name: Yaron
Middle or Maiden Name: Tamir
Last Name: Gutkin
Date of Recording: 4/26/01
Place of Birth: Johannesburg, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1978
Special Collections MSS: 1035-261
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Shawn
Last Name: Halifax
Date of Recording: 4/29/18
Place of Birth: NewportNews, VA
Year of Birth: 1971
Special Collections MSS: 1035-516
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Difficult History: Plantations, Concentration Camps, and Cultural Tourism," with Sara Daise, Lilly Filler, George McDaniel, Joseph McGill, David Popowski, and Robert Rosen, moderated by Robin Waites, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Kim
Last Name: Harris
Date of Recording: 2/16/06
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1961
Special Collections MSS: 1035-308
Interview Notes: Symposium on Penina Moise with Beatrice Aaronson, Solomon Breibart, Nicholas Butler, Belinda Gergel, Harlan Greene, Mayer Z. Gruber, Anita Rosenberg, Ira Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Barbara Stender, and Max Stern, sponsored by Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston
First Name: Ruth
Middle or Maiden Name: Horowitz
Last Name: Harris
Date of Recording: 3/4/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1908
Special Collections MSS: 1035-136
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Pauline ("Polly")
Middle or Maiden Name: McFaddin Moise
Last Name: Harritt
Date of Recording: 3/10/00
Place of Birth: Sumter, SC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-239
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Macy
Last Name: Hart
Date of Recording: 11/10/13
Place of Birth: Greenwood, MS
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-383
Interview Notes: Presentation, "B'Shert and the Wonderful Accident That Changed My Life," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: Lyssa
Middle or Maiden Name: Kligman
Last Name: Harvey
Date of Recording: 4/11/16
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1954
Special Collections MSS: 1035-470
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Evelyn
Middle or Maiden Name: Schafer
Last Name: Hechtkopf
Date of Recording: 11/3/12
Place of Birth: Little Rock, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-364
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "South of the Border and the Legend of Alan Schafer," with Richard Schafer, Robin Schafer, Diane Goodstein, and Harold Kornblut, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: BariMiddle or Maiden Name: KingLast Name: HeidenDate of Recording: 3/20/04Place of Birth: Atlanta, GAYear of Birth: 1937Special Collections MSS: 1035-281Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Oldtimers and Newcomers," with Gene Vinik, Meyer Rosen, Philip Schneider, and Ariane Lieberman at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Georgetown, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Bari
Middle or Maiden Name: King
Last Name: Heiden
Date of Recording: 4/22/98
Place of Birth: Atlanta, GA
Year of Birth: 1937
Special Collections MSS: 1035-192
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Francie
Last Name: Heller
Date of Recording: 10/23/16
Place of Birth: Greenville, SC
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-462
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Max Heller: The Father of Modern Greenville," with Steven Heller, Trude Heller, Susan Heller Moses, and Richard Riley at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Looking Back and Moving Forward: Greenville's Congregation Beth Israel, Building Community Since 1916," in honor of Beth Israel's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of an historical marker
First Name: MaxMiddle or Maiden Name: MosesLast Name: HellerDate of Recording: 2/28/97Place of Birth: Vienna, AustriaYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-133Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Trude HellerOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I was taught how to translate the Hebrew into German, and how to write in Yiddish, and my grandparents—who thought that living in Vienna means living near the devil, and that there would be no Yiddishkeit [Yiddish culture] left—they were so thrilled when I would write a letter in Yiddish to them. My parents wanted me to know that.
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MH: I'm a born-again Jew, you have to remember that. [Laughs.] I was born again in Greenville. Greenville became my home. The only thing I miss about Vienna was the music. That's the only thing, when I hear it.
TH: And the outdoor cafés. That's why now they have them.
MH: Yes, the outdoor cafés. One reason you see those outdoor cafés, [when I became mayor] I said, “We have to have outdoor cafés in Greenville.”
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I grew up in a home that was, by the way, a very happy home. I had a wonderful childhood. My parents would not work on the Shabbos. They would not even turn on the lights on the Sabbath day. And their way of giving charity, and I remember this distinctly, was to feed the poor who came on Sabbath, on Saturday morning. At services, they always had like a small luncheon afterwards, and so my father, that was his way of giving charity, without his name—people didn’t know who it was—and he felt good doing that.
So I grew up in a very Orthodox home. I learned Hebrew. I had a Hebrew teacher who came to the house when I was eight years old and stayed with me until I was bar mitzvahed, was a wonderful teacher—he didn’t stay with me but three times a week, I should say. He was a wonderful teacher because he taught me more than Hebrew, reading Hebrew and translating it. He also taught me the history of Judaism, and the culture and the morals and the ethics, and I have to say to you, today, that that to me is really the core of Judaism. Is how you should live and how you should behave. And so he helped me a great deal to understand what my heritage is. I’m still grateful to him for that.
But even [though] Vienna was known for the city of love and music and life, there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Even when I was a little boy, I would always fight. I would have to fight, because I was attacked going to school. I was a Jew. And you sort of take these things for granted. You grow up a certain way and you think that’s the way it has to be.
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My grandfather on my mother’s side—he was a very religious man, even more so than my father. His whole life was his synagogue. He lived across the street from the synagogue. For him, to blow the shofar was the greatest honor there could be. And he had a wonderful profession. He was an artist. He would carve patterns into a board—different patterns, whether they be flowers or what have you. People would come who wove their own linens—in those days, you didn’t go out and buy a yard of this and that—and he would print that pattern, whatever the pattern was. So he would print fabric that had little flowers or other designs. I would just love to sit there and watch him do this. He would tell me about his parents, but he talked more about religion, more than anything else, because to him—he was not a worldly person, as we think of today. He was a very simple man, who believed in God, had total faith, with all the pogroms. “Whatever it is,” he says, “God’s going to protect us.” That was his whole life. My grandmother, his wife, her head was shaven as they do, the very Orthodox. She wore a wig and a cloth, a kerchief. Her job was to feed the family. And some of her family lived in the same house with them. They were very poor, but they were the cleanest people I ever knew. I can smell the soap today. So these are the memories of my grandparents, and they become very important. My grandfather, when he would send me to get him cigarettes—he was a heavy smoker, his white beard was a little yellow—I loved to smell that tobacco. This is what I remember today. It seems unimportant at the time, but if that’s all you have, you hold onto it. And I wonder sometimes what will our children hold onto from their lives with us.
One thing is important to know—I don’t know if it’s any significance for this purpose. People often wonder why Jewish people are so imbued with education. My father, where he grew up in this little town in Poland, the public school system would not allow Jews to go to school. His parents had a large farm and they engaged a teacher who lived with the family. He was like part of the family. And he taught them mostly the Hebrew, of course, and the Yiddish, and Polish. My mother was self-educated, because when she left the little town of Lubaczów where she was born, she went to Krakow. She had to live with a family, a relative, and she had to do housework and take care of the children, and yet, despite all of that, my mother educated herself. My father educated himself. They had a business, they ran a business, and education was the most important thing in our lives. That and music, believe it or not—Jewish music, any kind of music. And so there is a reason to understand, even today, that most of your Jewish people support education. If it’s anything a parent wants, they want their child to have an even better education than what they had. And this is the kind of thing we give our children. They’re imbued with that, and their children are imbued with education. It’s the greatest gift that a parent can give a child.
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First Name: Max
Middle or Maiden Name: Moses
Last Name: Heller
Date of Recording: 3/27/02
Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria
Year of Birth: 1919
Special Collections MSS: 1035-269
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Stephanie
Last Name: Heller
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1958
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, L. M. Drucker, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Max Hellman, Constance H. Mandeville, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Steven
Last Name: Heller
Date of Recording: 10/23/16
Place of Birth: Greenville, SC
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-462
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Max Heller: The Father of Modern Greenville," with Francie Heller, Trude Heller, Susan Heller Moses, and Richard Riley at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Looking Back and Moving Forward: Greenville's Congregation Beth Israel, Building Community Since 1916," in honor of Beth Israel's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of an historical marker
First Name: Trude
Middle or Maiden Name: Schonthal
Last Name: Heller
Date of Recording: 10/23/16
Place of Birth: Vienna, Austria
Year of Birth: 1922
Special Collections MSS: 1035-462
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Max Heller: The Father of Modern Greenville," with Francie Heller, Steven Heller, Susan Heller Moses, and Richard Riley at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Looking Back and Moving Forward: Greenville's Congregation Beth Israel, Building Community Since 1916," in honor of Beth Israel's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of an historical marker
First Name: TrudeMiddle or Maiden Name: SchonthalLast Name: HellerDate of Recording: 2/28/97Place of Birth: Vienna, AustriaYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-133Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Max HellerOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
MH: I'm a born-again Jew, you have to remember that. [Laughs.] I was born again in Greenville. Greenville became my home. The only thing I miss about Vienna was the music. That's the only thing, when I hear it.
TH: And the outdoor cafés. That's why now they have them.
MH: Yes, the outdoor cafés. One reason you see those outdoor cafés, [when I became mayor] I said, “We have to have outdoor cafés in Greenville.”
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First Name: Ann
Middle or Maiden Name: Meddin
Last Name: Hellman
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-394
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Historical Society Past Presidents Panel," with Rachel Gordin Barnett, David Draisen, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Edward Poliakoff, Robert Rosen, and Jeffrey Rosenblum on the occasion of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina's 20th anniversary celebration, Charleston, SC
First Name: Max
Middle or Maiden Name: B.
Last Name: Hellman
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Chester, SC
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, L. M. Drucker, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Constance H. Mandeville, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Rudolf ("Rudy")Last Name: HerzDate of Recording: 2/23/01Place of Birth: Cologne, GermanyYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-251Interview Notes: Presentation to Professor Ted Rosengarten's class, "History of the Holocaust," and Professor Dale Rosengarten's class, "Documentary Studies," College of CharlestonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Rudolf ("Rudy")
Last Name: Herz
Date of Recording: 4/25/11
Place of Birth: Cologne, Germany
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-349
Interview Notes: Presentation to Professor Ted Rosengarten's class, "History of the Holocaust"
First Name: Rudolf ("Rudy")
Last Name: Herz
Date of Recording: 11/21/96
Place of Birth: Cologne, Germany
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-99
Interview Notes: Presentation to Professor Beatrice Stiglitz's class, "Holocaust and the Literary Imagination," College of Charleston
First Name: Rudolf ("Rudy")
Last Name: Herz
Date of Recording: 5/23/98
Place of Birth: Cologne, Germany
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-196
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Holocaust as a Crisis of Faith," with Marcie Cohen Ferris, Thomas E. Myers, Jr., and William N. McKeachie
First Name: Charles
Middle or Maiden Name: C.
Last Name: Heyward
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-513
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Shared Memories, Equal Justice," with Claire Curtis, Joseph Darby, Armand Derfner, and Bernard Powers, moderated by Richard Gergel, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Benjamin
Last Name: Hirsch
Date of Recording: 1/23/11
Place of Birth: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-345
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: MordenaiMiddle or Maiden Name: RaisinLast Name: HirschDate of Recording: 7/16/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCSpecial Collections MSS: 1035-83Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Rachel RaisinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 11/8/06
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-315
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Women and Judaism," with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Alan Cohen (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 11/12/08
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-325
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Jewish View of the Gentile," with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Robert Judd (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 4/30/98
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-194
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 11/2/99
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-227
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Future Needs of the Charleston Jewish Community," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Edward M. Friedman (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 2/22/00
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-237
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Intermarriage and Conversion," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Edward M. Friedman (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 9/6/00
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-245
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Prayer and Women: Three Jewish Viewpoints," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Chezi Zionce (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 2/21/01
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-250
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Essence of Judaism," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Chezi Zionce (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 10/17/01
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-262
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Jewish View of the Christian," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky (Orthodox) and Chezi Zionce (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels, held in conjunction with the Three Minister Panel, "The Christian View of the Jew," sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 3/14/07
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-320
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Judaism and Education," with Rabbis Susan Tendler (Conservative) and Ari Sytner (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 11/7/07
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-322
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Revelation at Sinai: Jewish Views of the Torah," with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Robert Judd (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 4/3/08
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-323
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Sexuality and Homosexuality and Jewish Law," with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Robert Judd (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 3/12/09
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-329
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Religious Authority and Personal Autonomy" with Rabbi Robert Judd (Conservative) and Professor Joshua Shanes (Orthodox), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Anthony
Middle or Maiden Name: David
Last Name: Holz
Date of Recording: 3/18/10
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-331
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Tradition and Change in Judaism" with Rabbis Ari Sytner (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: MarionMiddle or Maiden Name: WalterLast Name: HornikDate of Recording: 4/9/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1908Special Collections MSS: 1035-141Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: FlorenceMiddle or Maiden Name: Genet ColemanLast Name: HorowitzDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: Hoboken, NJYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Fern
Middle or Maiden Name: Karesh
Last Name: Hurst
Date of Recording: 3/1/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-472
Interview Notes: Interview with her mother Charlot Marks Karesh
First Name: Eli
Last Name: Hyman
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-480
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "The New Royalty," with Edward E. Berlin, Ben D'Allesandro, Joe Fischbein, and Joseph Jacobson, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Eli
Last Name: Hyman
Date of Recording: 4/28/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-420
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Alan
Last Name: Kahn
Date of Recording: 4/5/16
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-471
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: EllisMiddle or Maiden Name: IrvinLast Name: KahnDate of Recording: 4/10/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1936Special Collections MSS: 1035-142Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HelenMiddle or Maiden Name: GreherLast Name: KahnDate of Recording: 3/5/97Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-138Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
When [my father] first came here he peddled from Charleston to Columbia. With all the little merchandise that he had he would stop at the various little towns like North and Denmark, those little towns from Charleston to Columbia. Because you know they didn’t have the interstate.
He had an old car in those days. I don’t know what kind of car or how he got around that well. As I say I’m very sorry I never asked more questions. But when he came here he had his meals at Rabbi Karesh’s. [David Karesh, rabbi of Beth Shalom in Columbia, S.C.] Most of the peddlers would manage to spend the the night there or wherever they could find a Jewish home and keep kosher meals and eat kosher. And then he opened up a ladies ready-to-wear on Gervais Street—I am going to say where the AT&T building is now. Across from the capitol. But he didn’t stay in that long. That wasn’t his forte. He opened a pawn shop on Main Street. And then later moved it to Washington right off of Main Street and he stayed there until he died.
I started working for my father when I was about fifteen. I was going to Columbia High School and his store was only about two blocks down. And I used to walk down there and help them in the afternoons when I got out of high school. Being a pawn shop, we used to take in everything. Saws, hammers, it didn’t make any difference. We took in men’s clothing, jewelry, of course, and luggage. Anything like that.
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There was a family called Kohn, David Kohn. They had a ladies ready-to-wear on Main Street and a very nice one. And they were known for their hats when women used to wear a lot of hats and gloves and all. But anyway they were definitely from Germany because one of the nieces came over and her name was Ilsa Kohn. And I fell in love with the name and when my daughter was born my father was gone by that time and his name is Isaac. And I tried to think of an American name to go for Isaac. And I named her Ilsa. Everybody said, where did you get that name? And I was almost hated to say it came from Germany.
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We had the Yudedum Club here for the Jewish boys. It was a bunch of Columbia boys got together and named it the Yudedum. They used to give big dances. And the Charleston crowd would come up. Augusta crowd. Savannah crowd. They used to come from all over. I was always dating a Jewish boy from Charleston as I said. And he would come up for it. And they had wild dances. They would always go down to the bootleggers and buy a pint of liquor or a quart of liquor. We used to go bootlegging in those days. And they would always elect a queen. I’m trying to think of the Rosen girl—her first name. She was red headed. It was Lou Rosen’s sister. Katie, I think it was. She was one of the queens. It was quite an event.
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First Name: Jack
Middle or Maiden Name: Thomas
Last Name: Kahn
Date of Recording: 3/21/98
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1920
Special Collections MSS: 1035-182
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Barry
Last Name: Kalinsky
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion,"Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Ben Chase, Rosemary Read Cohen, Leonard Goldberg, Sammy Kirshtein, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Nathan
Last Name: Kaminski
Date of Recording: 10/15/17
Place of Birth: Georgetown, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-493
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Making Their Mark on Georgetown," with Richard Dimentstein, Roslyn Goldstein Greenspon, Benedict Rosen, Deborah Schneider Smith, and Gene Vinik at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Between the Waters," held at Hobcaw Barony and in Georgetown SC
First Name: Greg
Last Name: Kanter
Date of Recording: 1/31/18
Place of Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio
Year of Birth: 1965
Special Collections MSS: 1035-507
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Conceptualizing the Jewish Future: Contours of a Healthy Jewish Community," with Rabbis Michael Davies (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Greg
Last Name: Kanter
Date of Recording: 1/31/19
Place of Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio
Year of Birth: 1965
Special Collections MSS: 1035-534
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Jewish Views on Sexuality," with Rabbis Michael Davies (Orthodox) and Adam Rosenbaum (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: FreidaMiddle or Maiden Name: Selma ZaglinLast Name: KaplanDate of Recording: 2/27/97Place of Birth: Wilmington, NCYear of Birth: 1908Special Collections MSS: 1035-130Interview Notes: Interview with her nephew Jeffrey Zaglin and his wife Erica ZaglinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Jeffrey
Last Name: Kaplan
Date of Recording: 3/24/16
Place of Birth: Augusta, GA
Year of Birth: 1953
Special Collections MSS: 1035-440
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Ruth Kirshtein Kaplan and his brother Sam Kaplan
First Name: Jeffrey
Last Name: Kaplan
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Augusta, GA
Year of Birth: 1953
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Nelson A. Danish, Marvin Efron, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Judith Evans, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: Ruth
Middle or Maiden Name: Kirshtein
Last Name: Kaplan
Date of Recording: 3/24/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1930
Special Collections MSS: 1035-440
Interview Notes: Interview with her sons Jeffrey Kaplan and Sam Kaplan
First Name: Ruth
Middle or Maiden Name: Kirshtein
Last Name: Kaplan
Date of Recording: 2/18/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1930
Special Collections MSS: 1035-120
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Sam
Last Name: Kaplan
Date of Recording: 3/24/16
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-440
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Ruth Kirshtein Kaplan and his brother Jeffrey Kaplan
First Name: Max
Last Name: Karelitz
Date of Recording: 11/9/06
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1910
Special Collections MSS: 1035-316
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Alice
Middle or Maiden Name: Freed
Last Name: Karesh
Date of Recording: 12/8/95
Place of Birth: Missouri
Year of Birth: 1907
Special Collections MSS: 1035-49
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Anna
Middle or Maiden Name: Bamberger
Last Name: Karesh
Date of Recording: 1/6/06
Place of Birth: Bamberg, Germany
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-306
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Charlot
Middle or Maiden Name: Marks
Last Name: Karesh
Date of Recording: 3/1/17
Place of Birth: Greensboro, NC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-472
Interview Notes: Interview with her daughter Fern Karesh Hurst
First Name: CharlotMiddle or Maiden Name: MarksLast Name: KareshDate of Recording: 9/6/95Place of Birth: Greensboro, NCYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-37Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Stanley KareshOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: CharlotMiddle or Maiden Name: MarksLast Name: KareshDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: Greensboro, NCYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: KarlLast Name: KareshDate of Recording: 4/22/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1912Special Collections MSS: 1035-65Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I had one experience with a boy who became a very close friend of mine. He used to run me home from high school because I was Jewish. He turned out to be a beautiful guy and we were very close friends for a long time. But that’s the only real experience I’ve ever had of being Jewish. Then when I went to work, first went to work for Jack Krawcheck, and he had a good business from downtown people, gentiles, I became to be known as a clothier through that connection. When I finally had my own, I went to work for Mr. Meyerson on the corner of King and George, which was right around the corner from the college, and we used to serve a lot of college people and we became lifelong friends with a lot of people from downtown who were not Jewish.
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It was estranged, never mixed too much. They lived in their neighborhood and I never went to temple before I was probably thirty years old or something like that. I knew them. I knew Mordenai Hirsch and Rabbi Raisin’s children and Eleanor Rittenberg; they were good friends. Very good friends as a matter of fact. But we never—our parents were not friends. Maier Triest was one of the exceptions. Because he was in the insurance business and a lot of his business came from uptown Jews so he was kind of a regular in that neighborhood. He’d visit.
The bulk of the charity and participation in Jewish functions as a citywide effort was mostly Orthodox Jews by and large. There were some exceptions: The Hebrew Orphan Society, organized some 175-plus years ago, was the first charity establishment in Charleston by Reform Jews for the benefit of needy Jewish families and there was also the Hebrew Benevolent Society. But Reform Jews don’t have a history of social work in this town. We had an organization called the Daughters of Israel which was located next to the synagogue on St. Philip Street and they kind of did things for new families and indigent Jewish families but other than Mrs. Hirshman, I don’t think any Reform Jews were members.
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I sort of developed a memory for colors rather than being able to identify them. I very often just asked the customer, what color was this. And I’d tell them I’m colorblind. Is that green? No, he’d say, that’s purple. Most of my people knew I was colorblind. Most of my customers knew that. It became a kind of standing joke.
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Well, the story is that Mr. Jacobs was really Karesh and when he got to the immigration department they asked his name and he said Jacob. His name was Jacob Karesh. And they assumed that would be his family name, Jacobs. That’s what they became, Jacobs. Jacobs instead of Karesh. Sammy Jacobs, who was a long-time historian, unofficial historian, he always said that was not true, he didn’t want to be a Karesh, he wanted to be really a Jacobs. He resented that.
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Oh, yes. We kept kosher. Sure. You know, the city was pretty well divided between the Orthodox population and the Reform population and those of us who went to Brith Sholom were all kosher, no question about it, you kept kosher. And we lived in neighborhoods. In my neighborhood was mostly Orthodox Jews. The Reform Jews lived downtown with maybe one exception. They all lived downtown. And we had no contact with Reform Jews on a general basis.
Who lived uptown? Mr. Rubin, who was an electrical engineer and he had a shop on King Street where LeRoy’s Jewelry was. He sold electrical appliances. His name was Louis Rubin.
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Radcliffe Street was not a paved street. There weren’t too many paved streets. It was a dirt street at that time. Our biggest source of fun was playing baseball or something on that street. And we had two areas of pleasure. One was playing on Radcliffe Street and then one was playing on a railroad lot on Ann Street, which was probably 30 feet wide, much too narrow to play baseball, we did anyhow. At the end of that lot they used to bring in sand from the cement company and we’d go down and play in this huge mound of sand on a railroad car. The other thing was that the fire station, which was no motorized engines, they were all horse-drawn, there was one just one block from where we lived on John Street and we could hear the bell from the fire station. The location of the fire was determined by the number of bells that rang at this fire station and we would run out and run after these horse-drawn fire engines. That was another area where we had games. And we played on Marion Square. Marion Square was a little hostile because the gang from lower Calhoun—what we used to call the Buzzard’s Roost—that gang didn’t like us to play on Marion Square. So we’d have fights with those boys. So we had three areas of play, either the street or the railroad lot or Marion Square. Those were our three. We were limited to that. We couldn’t go to Mitchell Park and we couldn’t go to the mall and we couldn’t play on the Battery because they each had their little gangs to protect their turf, so to speak.
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We always knew they came from someplace near Bialystok. And it could be that they lived in a small town outside of Bialystok because Bialystok was a very industrialized city and they could have lived there. But when I was last in Israel they have a kind of a computer system where for 25 cents you could plug in your family name and where you think they lived and you would get a—and I’ve got that report upstairs if you’d like to see it. What Bialystok was like in those times. And instead of the name Karesh coming up, it came up as Kravcheck. One of my distant relatives, Julian Krawcheck, who now lives in Cleveland, Ohio, was a journalist and he interpreted Kravcheck to be Taylor. They were tailors. And there were a lot of tailors in my immediate family, particularly in the Krawchecks, in the Karesh family there were several people who had experience in tailoring. So it could very well be the name was Kravcheck instead of Karesh.
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German-born Jews in Charleston made what they called the elite part of society and eastern Europeans were considered a little different class. [My family came before the Civil War], but they came from eastern Europe, that makes a big difference. German Jews were considered the elite of the population. But you wouldn’t know that today.
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Typically in those days, you know, the Jews were unskilled, didn’t have any degrees or any professional life. They’d open a store, either a grocery store or dry goods or furniture or general merchandise. The thing to do was to open a store. My father had several stores. Looking back on his career, he should never have been in business. He was more of a scholar. He was more interested in reading and writing. He had several businesses. He had a fish market, couple or three grocery stores, and finally in his later years he just gave it all up and became an inspector for the health department. But that was—he was forced into doing things that he really was not qualified to do and yet he didn’t have any professional training to do anything else. You don’t have to be particularly trained to open a grocery store in those days. There were no supermarkets and the competition was corner groceries. So it was very simple if you knew how to manage money, and he apparently didn’t know how, so he never survived any long-term business.
Mamie Ellison Karesh, 1903 My mother was a professional caterer for years and years. She did weddings and the bar mitzvahs and things of that nature. So between the two of them, they raised seven children. But none of us ever went to college. None of the seven ever went to college. Probably a financial thing. We all went to work early so we could contribute to the household expense. My first job was earning twelve dollars a week and I was required to give five dollars to my mother. And all the other members of the family did likewise.
My father had a scale that hung from the ceiling and the container was shaped like kind of a bucket or shovel and that’s where he would weigh the fish. The store was located just across the street from Mr. Robinson’s pawn shop and bicycle shop. Klyde [Robinson] and his family lived over that store. Maybe not on a daily basis but certainly on a regular basis his maid would bring over Klyde to the fish market and my father would put him in the scale and weigh him. That became kind of a routine thing for my father and Klyde. And Klyde remembers that. Somebody must have told him of course.
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I think the Ellison family settled in Savannah. He was kind of an unordained rabbi, Mr. Ellison was. His professional life was spent in the synagogue either as custodian or as a part-time rabbi or some official capacity. And he landed in Savannah. Very soon after that he got a telegram that there was a job in Charleston if he wanted to move here, so he did.
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First Name: Roslyn ("Roz")
Middle or Maiden Name: Furchgott
Last Name: Karesh
Date of Recording: 5/16/06
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-312
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: StanleyLast Name: KareshDate of Recording: 9/6/95Place of Birth: Fall River, MAYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-37Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Charlot KareshOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: StanleyLast Name: KareshDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: Fall River, MAYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: CarolynMiddle or Maiden Name: AltmanLast Name: KassDate of Recording: 1/23/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1941Special Collections MSS: 1035-111Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Phyllis KatzRelated Stories:
I understand my family came from Prussia. They came to New York and my grandfather, Sanai Wolf Jacobosky, worked for a hat manufacturer, Johnson and Brown on the Bowery and 3rd Avenue. There was trouble in the South and before the Civil War started Grandfather was commissioned to Charleston to work on the Beauregard caps. Beauregard caps was the name of the Confederate hats, named after General Beauregard. I’ve also heard they were called “keppy.” My grandmother, Naomi Emma Jacobosky, was ill with colds and flu, living in the cold North, so they decided to move south with their two little girls, Henrietta Jacobosky (Fass) and Fanny Jacobosky (Friedberg).
After the war, Grandpa was given nine hundred dollars in gold and they bought a house on Meeting Street. Business prospered and they loved living in Charleston. Henrietta would work in her father’s cap and tobacco company store and greet people when they came in from out of town.
Grandpa was a very patriotic man. When the yellow fever broke out and thousands of people were dying he contracted the disease. When he said, “My pipe does not taste so good anymore,” they knew Papa wasn’t feeling too well. This robust man died at the age of forty-five. Grandma also contracted the disease but a milder case and recovered. Grandpa was the first treasurer of Brith Sholom and when he died his family turned over nine hundred dollars to the shul. On his tombstone is written, “An honest man is the noble work of God.”
I’m reading from two different memoirs, Grandma Etta (Friedberg) Gaeser and Cousin Katie R. (Fass) Lesser.
It tells you about the earthquake of 1886 and the “Big Fire,” about Henrietta and Fanny growing up as girls in Charleston, marriage making, their girlfriends, songs they liked to sing, and what was going on in Charleston during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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First Name: Phyllis
Middle or Maiden Name: Altman
Last Name: Katz
Date of Recording: 1/23/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1937
Special Collections MSS: 1035-111
Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Carolyn Kass
First Name: EthelMiddle or Maiden Name: ObermanLast Name: KatzenDate of Recording: 5/28/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-149Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: EthelMiddle or Maiden Name: ObermanLast Name: KatzenDate of Recording: 7/31/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-85Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Sondra
Middle or Maiden Name: Shanker
Last Name: Katzenstein
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: Aiken, SC
Year of Birth: 1938
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Nelson A. Danish, Marvin Efron, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Judith Evans, Jeffrey Kaplan, Ernest Levinson, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: TerriMiddle or Maiden Name: WolffLast Name: KaufmanDate of Recording: 2/10/20Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1955Special Collections MSS: 1035-565Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: TerriMiddle or Maiden Name: WolffLast Name: KaufmanDate of Recording: 2/10/20Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1955Special Collections MSS: 1035-564Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Charles
Middle or Maiden Name: D.
Last Name: Kay
Date of Recording: 11/10/20
Place of Birth: Paterson, NJ
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-560
Interview Notes: Presentation, "From Budapest to Spartanburg: The Teszlers, Textile Giants in the American South," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina fall meeting, "In Search of Jewish Spartanburg," held in Spartanburg, SC, Novermber 9-10, 2019; Panelists: Mr. Oakley Coburn and moderated by Diane Vecchio.
First Name: IraLast Name: KayeDate of Recording: 6/15/96Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-78Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Ruth KayeOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RuthMiddle or Maiden Name: BarnettLast Name: KayeDate of Recording: 6/14/96Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-77Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Momma would do things like this: Bubba was in high school here, but the teacher went out of the classroom. When he came back in, there was a big hubbub going on, pandemonium going on. He got real mad and he said—it was a man—he said, “What in the world is going on here? It sounds like a Jewish picnic.” Bubba was so hurt—Bubba was the kind that he would not say anything, but he was terribly hurt by that. Came back and said, “Momma, he said that. Why would anybody say ‘a Jewish picnic’? They’re no different from any other picnics.”
Momma said, “Who’s that?” Momma calls him up right away—Momma wouldn’t hesitate to do things like that. She felt confident who she was. She would always say, “I know who I am. I don’t have to pretend to anybody who I am. I am what I am, and if you insult me, I tell you, I’ll turn you straight.” She called that man and she said, “Could you come by? I want to speak with you.” She didn’t go there—that was the part I thought about in later years. It’s so funny. Never occurred to her that she should go over there to him, and he was the principal of the school. She said, “I want to call this to your attention”—I didn’t hear her, but she told me that—“This is going to be a great surprise to you, that I ever heard this story, and I know you’re not going to be able to say why in the world you said it. I just want to explain to you how things go—”
She said, “Little do you realize how your words affect the children who’re listening to you.” She said, “I know you’re a nice person. I know you very well. You’re a good principal and you’re even-handed with the children, and I know you’re not any more prejudiced than anybody else, but there are words, there are things that people say, without ever stopping to think of what they’re saying, and would this wound some poor little child that’s listening.” And she said, “That’s what you said.”
He didn’t even know or remember he’d said [it]. He said, “My goodness, I can’t believe I said such a thing, but I could have said it, ’cause it’s an expression I know.” She told me he said, “I don’t know what in the world made me do that—I feel so terrible.” Momma said he was like, “Ohhhhh, Lord”—knocked out, couldn’t speak. He said, “I don’t know what to say to you, how to apologize. I feel so terrible. What do you want me to do?” She said, “Nothing. I want you not to say it again. That’s all I want you to do. And I want to point out to you that there are always people in a group who are ’specially hurt by some little thing that you never even think about, that the majority never thinks about, whatever it is. Maybe it’s that their nails are dirty every day, or something else. Don’t embarrass people by saying things that—pointing out that they’re different.” She said, “Just always think twice.” She said, “Bubba came home very hurt, but I told him you didn’t mean anything by it.” He says, “Well, thank you.” And she said, “That’s all there is, that’s all. I just don’t want you to forget that.” And he never forgot it.
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My grandmother, who was one of the younger in that family—there were a lot of children—was to be married. In those days in Europe it was considered very proper, and a very admirable thing to do, that a Jewish family who had means would marry their daughters to scholars who were poor as church mice—that was considered a mitzvah on both sides—so that’s how that marriage came about. He was a great scholar and a rabbi. His father was a rabbi in the place where they lived in Hungary, and that grandfather—that man who was to be my great-grandfather—was considered such a holy, fine, wonderful, admirable man, according to what my grandmother said, that he died in a very spectacular way. He was conducting the High Holy Day services. He was very old and wizened, and very sainted and looked up to by the Jews of that area, and he conducted all the services on the Day of Atonement. In the final blessing, when he was standing there blessing the congregation, he fell dead, would you believe that? On the pulpit. So that shows he was really a saint, right?
What a story. That’s to show you how holy this derivation was, and, boy, how it washed out down our end! His son, who was my grandfather, was, of course, a rabbi and was a scholar and so on, and no way to make a living other than that. Well, the family fortunes immediately went down in the house. There were mortgages, and they weren’t able to pay, and they had to give up the place. The oldest son, who would be the one in charge of the farming, was not the smartest one, and he had signed a lot of notes for a lot of people, so he was the culprit. Anyway, the whole thing failed, and they all thought of coming to America.
They came over—and my grandmother had children all along. She had seven children. My mother was the oldest. And my grandfather had congregations where they would permit him to speak in German, but with the understanding that he would be staying and would be able to speak in English by a certain time. The place where he stayed longest was Altoona, Pennsylvania. He was always a Reform rabbi—Reform, which I think is most unusual.
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When the First World War [came], I was living there [South Carolina], of course. Grandmother’d come down to visit and they’d all be talking. When my grandmother came to visit, she and Momma, if there’s something they didn’t want us to hear, they talked in German, and I’d get real mad ’cause I loved to know what was going on. In the early days when she came, which was during the war—and I was a small, very, very tiny child—they said they was speaking French. I always thought this was a darling sidelight—they told us they were speaking French. My little friends across the street would be there playing and they’d be speaking. “What’d they say, what’d they say?” And they said, “We’re speaking French.”
Because Germans were the terrible guys, and the Kaiser we burnt—I can remember burning the Kaiser in effigy on the school grounds. I went down to see it—Momma took me at the end of the war—and that’s how I’ll always know that word “effigy.” They burned the Kaiser in effigy. They had a thing like a hanging gibbet, and they had a thing hanging made out of straw like a scarecrow, and then they lit a fire under it and they burned it, and that was the Kaiser. They burned the Kaiser in effigy. There was a lot of hatred about the Germans, and so they said they would speak French.
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I was always connected with the New York family. I went up there and spent every summer with them, as I say. I always dreamed of going to college, going to school later up there, and I pictured myself as understanding their viewpoint and their way of life sympathetically. Whereas the rest of the family would laugh, make jokes about the funny things they would say or do—I don’t mean it in an ugly way, they were just narrow-minded Southerners that didn't know any better. There’s still plenty like that down here now. They would laugh and they would love to play tricks on them, teasing—teasing tricks, you know—and they thought that was so cute. They were teachers, they were schoolteachers, so they would always have a thing with the kids—“So what do you, how do you spell that? That’s not the way you pronounced it.” You know, they’d try to get them to pronounce correctly. The kids would die laughing at them, the Yankee way they’d talk—“Oh, that’s Yankee talk”—and that kind of stuff. I never in my whole life ever related to those aunts that way, but they always did.
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The youngest of all [my father’s siblings] was a brother named Harris—interesting, ’cause that wasn’t a Jewish name. It was a family name of some neighbors of theirs, I think, the Harris family, and he got that name. He was the youngest and he was everybody’s favorite. Everybody loved Harris. He was supposed to have been a darling, outgoing, charming, delightful man. Whereas the others were—from what I put together in my mind, the way I remember them in stories and so on—they were very Victorian and suppressed, like people used to be in those days, and especially Jews who wanted to put on a good front for the neighbors, you know, were very formal with everybody—But Harris, he was a doll that ran around the town and went to dances and had lots of friends and mixed with everybody. Everybody loved him. The family loved him. And here was his sad fate.
He went in—he was a member of the militia. I know this story from my father, and my father always said “the militia,” and I never bothered to inquire exactly what kind of a militia. My impression, that I got in looking back, is something like the National Guard today is, but my husband and I had a big argument because he says he thinks he was really in a militia, he was in training for going down to the Spanish-American War. I know nothing of that, and I’d tell my husband he’s wrong, ’cause he wouldn’t know it was—All these Barnetts were dead—except my father—so he didn’t get it from the horse’s mouth like I did, but that’s what he thinks is the story. But my story is it was like a National Guard.
Whatever it was, it was a fun thing for him. He belonged to this, the local guys all belonged the militia, and they would drill whenever—once a week or something, they had a gathering and they did that. And then he went away—this is why I say it was like the National Guard—they went away for a trip for about two weeks, where they—it was like an active duty thing. They’d practice, they drilled and they marched around, whatever they did, and then they came home, and that was for two weeks, like active duty. He went on that and they went to Florida. They were training on the beach, and they had winter uniforms on, woolen uniforms, and he got terribly overheated—this is the story they told me. They got terribly overheated, so he goes in the water, in the ocean, to cool off, because he was all sweaty—I don’t know if he had his clothes on or what—but he went in the ocean and he caught a terrible cold. Came home with pneumonia, died with pneumonia. So, oh, calamity! the favorite, the white-haired boy, everybody’s darling, the high hopes of all the old-maid ladies up at the top end of the family, everybody loved him—suddenly he’s dead and gone. The family never recovered from that. It was just such a grieving that they talked about it, and never got over it.
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When B.J. Barnett came, he did like so many other Jews who landed in New York. He got himself together, ready to go out and be a business man, an entrepreneur. He got a pushcart, or whatever they pushed, whatever they got about in, and he became what they called a peddler. And he—they always usually headed south, those peddlers. All the Jews in the South—many of them—come from those people who came down as peddlers.
So he had his peddling business, and he came down through the South. How long it took him—how long he did that—I don’t know. Daddy didn’t used to much talk about stuff like that. We had to dig it out of him. I was interested when I was college-age, I would ask him questions, but he would just answer whatever you asked. He wouldn’t elaborate. I don’t know that he knew too much. I don’t think he bothered asking his parents too much. He was a man of his times, he didn’t live in the past—you could always say that about him, and the other Barnetts, too. Never talked about the past much—he didn’t hide it, but he never dwelt on it. Anyway, so he finally had, when he came through this area, had enough money to buy some land, and he bought a place in—we called it Manville, M-A-N-V-I-double L— You’ve heard of Manville before? It’s on the way to between here and Bishopville in Lee County. There was a swamp near there, and it was called the Scape Ore Swamp—means “escape over.” Some slaves escaped over this swamp, so it’s called Scape Ore Swamp.
At least that’s what Daddy called it—“’scape over.” And if you ever wanted to get Daddy mad—and we used to love to do that, needle him—you’d say, “You lived in the country. You lived on the swamp.” “CERTAINLY DID NOT!” He’d say, “Why, we were the hub of everything out there!” The reason [he] was in the hub of everything [was] because on the edge of Scape Ore Swamp was where their house was, and they had a farm that went with it, but Daddy’s house was down right back from the road, and on the road was a store. They ran the store that was the center of the community of the people that lived here, there, and yon, around between Bishopville and there, and on the town towards Sumter. That was the gathering place, where they came to the store, and they picked up their mail there. The oldest daughter, Minnie Barnett—not the one that, don’t mix her up with Minnie Loryea Barnett—Minnie Barnett, the one who was the big mother to everybody, she was the postmistress. She got her a little job as the postmistress at the store, and all the people in the rural area there came to that store to get their mail, so they knew the whole county. They knew everybody. They knew all the gossip and all the news and everything that was happening and going on. That’s why Daddy’d get so mad if you wanted to get his goat—we loved to do that, you know. “Poppy, you was the hub of everything where they lived!”
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They had the Junior League formed here in Sumter, but they called it the Junior Welfare League, because you had to have certain status before the National Junior League would have qualified. They wanted to qualify, they wanted to apply. So they followed certain guidelines. They didn’t have any Jews in ’em—they had a couple of ’em, but they were all questionable Jews. They were Jews, like one parent was Jewish and one was not, and then after those children grew up they married Christians and went to church and things like that. So it’s arguable—for instance, Patty became a member, because by her time they took people who was known to be Jews, but only if they were the kind that they thought they should have in the group.
My mother took a dim view of that thing from the word go, and she was aware of it because of Minnie and Rosalie, our cousin, who grew up Jewish but changed early on. Rosalie did because she married a non-Jew and raised her—baptized her children and everything. Minnie never married and never had any occasion to do anything and left money to the temple, but she never came to temple, to a service or anything, but she never identified with the Christians either.
So they came around to sell raffle tickets to that organization, that was having a raffle—my best friend across the street came. Momma said, “Virginia, I can’t possibly buy none,” and explained it to her, and she gave her the big tale, and the whole history of the Junior League, of that Junior Welfare League. She said, “That’s how it is, and so any organization like that, I’m not patronizing it. I know you wouldn’t expect me to do it.” She said, “Mrs. Barnett, you gotta be wrong. It can’t be. I’ve never heard such a thing, and I can’t believe it. I’m going to go and find out and I’ll let you know.” And she never did find out anything that [changed her mind].
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[My mother] lived in a gentile way, but it wasn’t a country way. They always lived in town, and they made that—Daddy always made that point. Anything that took place on the farm went through overseers, and he issued the orders. He was the man in command. They came to the store—he kept in touch with the farmers, they were sharecroppers and they had this little space of land. They came to the store every Saturday and there’d be big conversations about what was going on. He’d ride up there, I told you, in the buggy, and then in the car, and he’d drive around and see how things were, but only in like an overlord way. The day-to-day running of the thing was the overseers who carried out Daddy’s orders—you know, program. So Momma lived in town and never thought of herself as a farmer—I won’t say she didn’t think of herself as a farmer’s wife, ’cause of course that’s what she was, and she loved it, loved the country, loved to drive up there—but she didn’t personally connect with the operation of the farm.
She became the most happy Southerner you ever did see. She loved the South. She loved the people. She loved everything, but she was not like everybody else down here—she was more kindly in her attitude toward the blacks. But she would always excuse the Jews down here, that “Well, you know that’s how it is, and they’re all so afraid that if you gave ’em an inch there would be a revolution, they’d come and murder you in the beds and all, these people just so narrow-minded that’s what they think.” She always spoke kindly of the southern attitude, but she was not that way. I don’t say that she was a great crusader in the other direction, but she was a humanitarian-thinking lady, and I turned out to be like her. Whereas the others are more out-and-out Southerners, in my family.
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[The Barnetts originally came from] a part of Russia, but it’s now called, I think, Estonia. Where we got that information was, some man told that to Bubba. This man [H. D. Barnett] grew up in this area over in Bishopville or somewhere, an old man. His father walked back from Appomattox with our grandfather, B.J. Barnett. They were all in the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s army, and when Appomattox took place and the war was over for that army, they were mustered out and they walked home. [They] walked with some people called the Haynesworths, that live in Sumter, who were a very aristocratic family around here. My grandfather and this man’s something—some ancestor—was in that walking party, and he knew more about the story on my grandfather, which he told Bubba, than we ever heard! He said that [B.J. Barnett] told [his ancestor] that they came from Estonia—but it wasn’t called Estonia then, because that was after President Wilson separated those, they were made little Baltic States—but it was from that area.
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My father was a cotton planter, and they had farms up at Dalzell Center, which is in this county. It’s just about eight or nine miles up the road from here. I used to ride out with him when I was—[I] can remember, but none of the other children can, because I was the oldest. He still rode in a buggy with a horse. He would go on a day’s trip out to the farm and talk to the overseers, and talk about the planting and what was going on, and drive all over fields, and on some days I was permitted to go with him. I will never forget those thrilling times. The other children never had that opportunity because cars came along, and after that he didn’t use the horse and buggy anymore, after a few years.
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When the crop would be, as what he used to call, “laid by,” it meant that you planted it in the spring—the cotton—and you hoed it, and you took care of the weevils by hoeing and so on, you’d fertilize it and everything, and then it got to where the limbs of this cotton stock shaded the ground and you couldn’t get in there to hoe anymore. What determines the moment that you could stop it, they call that when the crop was “laid by.” That was the time you took your vacation—it was generally the month of August. So my father was in the habit of going almost every August up—he would go to New York.
He had a store as well. It was sort of a commissary for the people on the farms, that would come into the stores and get things that they needed, and then they would run an account which would be paid when the crop came in. And he used to— That store became more and more of—what we would say—a commissary, but in far back days when his father was living, and he worked there, they carried all kinds of merchandise in there. Not the kind that would appeal to the higher-class trade, but just to the workers. They had all kinds of things—umbrellas, I remember, and all kinds of shoes, things like that. So he would go on a buying trip to New York for the store, and then, after that, he would go over to Atlantic City for two weeks or so.
That was a very popular gathering place for Jewish people in those days and for quite a long time after that. They would meet—couples, many couples, met at Atlantic City, because Jews from one area would meet Jews from another area, and the South would meet people from the West and North and so on. My mother was in Atlantic City because her uncle was the rabbi in Sumter—his name is Rabbi Klein. Her father was a rabbi too. My grandfather was the older of the rabbis and his brother, Henry Klein, was rabbi in Sumter in those days. The temple would not have services through the summer—and that continued for quite a time after that time, too, maybe they don’t anymore now, either—I don’t know how it is. But anyway, they didn’t have regular services through the summer, and the rabbi and his wife were entitled to go wherever they wanted and enjoy the summer. However, they had one grave responsibility, which was to come back for funerals. People would die in the summer and it was a terrible mess for them. So this involved a funeral, and the rabbi had to come home—it always had to be on the train in those days—and he and his wife were in a hotel in Atlantic City, so my mother was detailed to go there and stay with his wife, because it was unseemly that this lady could stay alone in a hotel. So Momma went there to stay with her, the aunt, and Daddy was there on vacation, and [her aunt] introduced him as “a gentleman from our congregation.” That’s how it went.
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First Name: RuthMiddle or Maiden Name: BarnettLast Name: KayeDate of Recording: 6/15/96Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-78Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Ira KayeOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Billy
Last Name: Keyserling
Date of Recording: 4/16/16
Place of Birth: Beaufort, SC
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-444
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Rising to the Challenge: Jewish Politicians in an Age of Change," with Marvin Lare, Joel Lourie, and Jack Swerling at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, " held in Charleston, SC
First Name: Billy
Last Name: Keyserling
Date of Recording: 5/20/12
Place of Birth: Beaufort, SC
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-355
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Speaks," with Joel Lourie (Columbia), Ernest Marcus (Eutawville), and Benedict Rosen (Georgetown), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service"
First Name: HerbertLast Name: KeyserlingDate of Recording: 7/18/95Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-36Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: ThomasMiddle or Maiden Name: C.Last Name: KeyserlingDate of Recording: 10/24/98Place of Birth: Beaufort, SCYear of Birth: 1954Special Collections MSS: 1035-204Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing up Jewish in Beaufort," with Joseph Lipton, Stanley Farbstein, Michael Greenly, and Gerrie Sturman at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Robert
Last Name: Kimmel
Date of Recording: 6/13/98
Special Collections MSS: 1035-199b
Interview Notes: Shabbat service at Temple B'nai Israel's 50th anniversary celebration, Anderson, SC. Includes remarks by Sen. Isadore Lourie and the presentation of a plaque to Mike Krupshaw by Herbert Cohen.
First Name: MaxLast Name: KirshsteinDate of Recording: 9/2/99Place of Birth: Laskerzew, PolandYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-217Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Now my father was here in 1920. I told you he came on the US Lenox. They arrived [in Charleston] December 13th and he sent for my mother. Now in Europe at the time was Mr. I. M. Goldberg, who was [already] a successful furniture merchant [in Charleston]. He came back not to live, but to see his family, and and he was giving my mother all kind of advice. He was telling my mother that to wear the fur coat, you don’t have to declare it, and not only that it was so bulky getting into small packages that she had, she may not be able to get it in. My mother [arrived in New York] with the fur coat, with the heat and all that she must have developed a fever. They held us overnight and this is very, very risky. I was at Ellis Island just last month and they told us that one thousand immigrants a month was being returned to Europe. I also just found out the first and second class passengers did not have to go through an examination, just the third class and steerage went through this examination. If they had any suspicion of any eye trouble or any serious disease or if you got fever, they didn’t bother with you, they sent you back, but we spent the night. Well, the following day, we had to go before an Appeals Court of five men—I just learned this—and they approved (my mother’s fever had gone down) and they approved and we came to America. We arrived, I think I told you, October 2nd, 1921. We came to America.
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I came home [from the service] and Mama said take a month off and I did and Alex Karesh asked me one—it was Christmas weekend—he offered me a job. I worked for him for about six months. I knew this was not going to be my future. Then I told Alex Karesh in May, “I’m not cut out for selling shoes.” He said, “But I’m happy with you.” I said, “I feel morally obligated to stay with you till you get a respectable replacement. I’ll give you till the first of the year to find one, seven months.” In about two months, he came back to me and he said, “I do have someone who wants your job, but I still want you.” I appreciate that, but you know this wasn’t—and then I went out in my car and I went out and peddled and knocked on doors.
I remember I went to the C&S Bank right opposite Cannon Street—the bank still exists but in a different name—and wanted to borrow a thousand dollars and the guy tells me, “You never had any credit.” I said, “No, but I got to get started.” He gave me a note and he said, “Take this down to your Uncle Abe and tell him to sign right under your name.” I had never, ever had anyone endorse anything for me. I wouldn’t do it. So I went to my advisor who is the best financial man to this day, Melvin Solomon. “Melvin, what do I do?” He said, “You go to South Carolina National on Broad Street.” He said, “You go see David Verner and don’t ask for a thousand. You ask for two thousand. He’ll turn you down and he’ll only give you a thousand.” I went to Mr. Verner and I went through the story and I showed him my statement. He saw something on the statement the other banks didn’t. I had an insurance policy from Arthur Williams’ father and the cash value was nine hundred and some-odd dollars. He said, “You want two thousand, you’ve got to do two things. Number one, transfer your account here.” I said, “That’s easy to do.” “Number two, I want you to make us the beneficiaries of your policy for whatever interest that may appear and the balance will go to your estate.” Which I did, and that was probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me because I was with the bank for years until Mr. Verner died.
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First Name: Mitzi
Middle or Maiden Name: Levin
Last Name: Kirshtein
Date of Recording: 1/30/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1935
Special Collections MSS: 1035-367
Interview Notes: Interview with husband Sam Kirshtein
First Name: Sam
Last Name: Kirshtein
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion,"Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Ben Chase, Rosemary Read Cohen, Leonard Goldberg, Barry Kalinsky, and Allan Livingstain at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Sam
Last Name: Kirshtein
Date of Recording: 1/30/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-367
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Mitzi Levin Kirshtein
First Name: SamLast Name: KirshteinDate of Recording: 1/26/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-174Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
According to my father, I got the impression that it wasn’t his intention to come to this country. It was very commonplace for people to leave children and take off for one reason or another. In a lot of instances they never saw the relative anymore for the rest of their lives. My maternal grandfather came to this country in 1913, and his wife and daughter, who was my mother, didn’t come to this country until 1920. They were separated for seven years. Imagine that, being separated from a wife and daughter for seven years.
First of all when he came into Danzig, he sent a wire home to Poland, Kaluszyn, that he had arrived safely. The reason that he felt it was necessary is that the authorities were looking for him. He’d already been drafted into the army and he actually deserted. He and his brother both had false passports made in Warsaw and came to this country with false passports. They had to have their eyes examined. My father, in the meantime, had an eye infection and some Jewish doctor happened to examine him. He understood the circumstances. He gave him a bill of health and let him board the ship. Otherwise, he might have been detained and he might have been sent back to Kaluszyn.
As a matter of fact, he came here to Ellis Island, he and his brother together. At Ellis Island they gave him the name Cohen. They gave his brother the name Goldberg. Imagine that. Their name was Miedzyrzecki, which was a Polish name.
Coincidentally the name Miedrzyrzecki means between two rivers and Charleston is also between two rivers.
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Anyway, Papa went to Hornik to get some goods on credit and they asked him some questions. They asked him what kind of collateral [he had]. “I have nothing, I have absolutely nothing.” They were so impressed with his being so candid and honest, Papa said, that by the time he got home the cartons of merchandise were already there waiting for him. They’d already sent it to the house. He was very impressed by that.
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First Name: Sam
Last Name: Kirshtein
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: Gilbert
Last Name: Klaperman
Date of Recording: 12/22/03
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-276
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Gilbert
Last Name: Klaperman
Date of Recording: 10/31/04
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-287
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Looking at the Past and to the Future: From the Pulpit of Brith Sholom Beth Israel," with Rabbi Hersh M. Galinsky, at the Southern Jewish Historical Society and Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina joint conference, "Jewish Roots in Southern Soil," on the occasion of the 150th anniversary rededication of BSBI
First Name: Helene
Middle or Maiden Name: Firetag
Last Name: Kligman
Date of Recording: 1/08/06
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1931
Special Collections MSS: 1035-412
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Melton Kligman
First Name: Melton
Last Name: Kligman
Date of Recording: 1/08/06
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-412
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Helene Firetag Kligman
First Name: HaroldMiddle or Maiden Name: A.Last Name: KlineDate of Recording: 11/18/15Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1929Special Collections MSS: 1035-455Interview Notes: Interview with his brother Sol KlineOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SolLast Name: KlineDate of Recording: 11/17/15Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1930Special Collections MSS: 1035-455Interview Notes: Interview with his brother Harold KlineOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Michael
Last Name: Kogan
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Special Collections MSS: 1035-514
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Monuments of Marion Square," with Christine King Mitchell, moderated by Theodore Rosengarten, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: PincusLast Name: KolenderDate of Recording: 4/27/97Place of Birth: Bochnia, PolandYear of Birth: 1926Special Collections MSS: 1035-146Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
The last deportation was in September, l942, and since my father was a good friend of Dr. Weissman, the president of the Judenrat, he went to him. We knew it was the last deportation, so he put his name down. They allowed 150 people to stay in the ghetto. My father was a very good friend, so we were allowed to stay in the ghetto. They deported the whole Jewish population—that, I remember, was on a Thursday.
Friday the SS came in and they wanted to have a countdown. Unfortunately, Weissman had so many friends, he put down about 250. They start counting, and they see instead of 150 you got 250. The SS Obersturmführer was angry. He was screaming in German and he gave orders to pick 100 people at random, pull them out. They took out my mother, and they moved a hundred people about 150 yards away. You could hear screaming, hollering. They lined them up against the wall and we had to watch them execute them all. They mowed them down just like that. We all heard it. My mother was shot down. That was September 3, l942.
Then they came and they picked twenty boys, young boys. We had to carry the bodies to a certain place near the ghetto, and they gave us orders to stack them up, get wood. We stacked them up about ten bodies, then put a piece of wood on the top, and then another ten bodies. They gave us gasoline to pour over them and we had to burn the bodies. While the SS looked away—they were far away—I pulled out my mother’s corpse. I figured I would pull her out and late at night I might bury her. An SS man noticed this and came up to me with a whip and hit me right on the head. “What are you doing?” I didn’t answer, and he just said, “Put it back in with all the corpses.”
In about two hours they were burnt and then [the SS] left. By then everything was only ashes left. I remember I had a metal can. I put some of the ashes in the metal can and I buried it not far from there, about two feet deep. It was in the evening and I remember I said to myself, if I survive I may give the burial. Ten years ago I went with my family, I took my son and my daughter and my wife. We went there and we spent about three or four hours at that place, but everything had changed so much. I remember I had a marker. There was a fence there, a wire fence. The fence is gone, overgrown with weeds, and I spent hours searching and I couldn’t find it.
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First Name: Harold
Last Name: Kornblut
Date of Recording: 11/3/12
Place of Birth: Florence, SC
Year of Birth: 1952
Special Collections MSS: 1035-364
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "South of the Border and the Legend of Alan Schafer," with Evelyn Hechtkopf, Richard Schafer, Robin Schafer, and Diane Goodstein, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Harold
Last Name: Kornblut
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: Florence, SC
Year of Birth: 1952
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Matthew Reich, Mortimer Bernanke, Phillip Greenberg, Gertrude Radin, Alexander Cohen, and Donna Cohen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: MosesLast Name: KornblutDate of Recording: 7/10/95Place of Birth: Latta, SCYear of Birth: 1915Special Collections MSS: 1035-28Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Josephine
Middle or Maiden Name: Levy Kaplan
Last Name: Kramer
Date of Recording: 8/7/99
Place of Birth: Savannah, GA
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-215
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Anne ("Annie")Middle or Maiden Name: OxlerLast Name: KrancerDate of Recording: 10/26/00Place of Birth: Kingstree, SCYear of Birth: 1930Special Collections MSS: 1035-247Interview Notes: Interview with her daughter Wendy Twing, her sister Julia Jacobs Maling, and her sister-in-law Eva OxlerOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Maurice
Last Name: Krawcheck
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1936
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Burnet Mendelsohn, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: Maurice
Last Name: Krawcheck
Date of Recording: 1/18/19
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1936
Special Collections MSS: 1035-535
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: SaulLast Name: KrawcheckDate of Recording: 7/6/95Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1926Special Collections MSS: 1035-27Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: AvramLast Name: KronsbergDate of Recording: 4/4/01Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1936Special Collections MSS: 1035-255Interview Notes: Interview with his son Edward KronsbergOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Edward
Last Name: Kronsberg
Date of Recording: 10/23/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1966
Special Collections MSS: 1035-531
Interview Notes: Interview with Jonathan Kronsberg and Jason Kronsberg
First Name: Edward
Last Name: Kronsberg
Date of Recording: 10/23/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1966
Special Collections MSS: 1035-532
Interview Notes: Interview with Jonathan Kronsberg and Jason Kronsberg
First Name: EdwardLast Name: KronsbergDate of Recording: 4/4/01Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1966Special Collections MSS: 1035-255Interview Notes: Interview with his father Avram KronsbergOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Frederica ("Freddie")Middle or Maiden Name: WeinbergLast Name: KronsbergDate of Recording: 11/13/96Place of Birth: Staunton, VAYear of Birth: 1910Special Collections MSS: 1035-97Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Frederica ("Freddie")Middle or Maiden Name: WeinbergLast Name: KronsbergDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: Staunton, VAYear of Birth: 1910Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Jason
Last Name: Kronsberg
Date of Recording: 10/23/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1971
Special Collections MSS: 1035-531
Interview Notes: Interview with Edward Kronsberg and Jonathan Kronsberg
First Name: Jason
Last Name: Kronsberg
Date of Recording: 10/23/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1971
Special Collections MSS: 1035-532
Interview Notes: Interview with Edward Kronsberg and Jonathan Kronsberg
First Name: Jonathan
Last Name: Kronsberg
Date of Recording: 10/23/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-531
Interview Notes: Interview with Edward Kronsberg and Jason Kronsberg
First Name: Jonathan
Last Name: Kronsberg
Date of Recording: 10/23/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-532
Interview Notes: Interview with Edward Kronsberg and Jason Kronsberg
First Name: Betty ("Bella")Middle or Maiden Name: HirschLast Name: LancerDate of Recording: 7/31/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1924Special Collections MSS: 1035-157Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Betty ("Bella")
Middle or Maiden Name: Hirsch
Last Name: Lancer
Date of Recording: 8/1/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-358
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Marvin
Middle or Maiden Name: Ira
Last Name: Lare
Date of Recording: 4/16/16
Place of Birth: Hartville, OH
Year of Birth: 1935
Special Collections MSS: 1035-444
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Rising to the Challenge: Jewish Politicians in an Age of Change," with Billy Keyserling, Joel Lourie, and Jack Swerling at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, " held in Charleston, SC, April 16-17, 2016
First Name: AlexLast Name: LashDate of Recording: 07/24/96, 07/25/96, and 10/03/96Place of Birth: Bayonne, NJYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-84Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Lila LashOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LilaMiddle or Maiden Name: WinterLast Name: LashDate of Recording: 07/24/96, 07/25,/96, and 10/03/96Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1928Special Collections MSS: 1035-84Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Alex LashOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JackLast Name: LeaderDate of Recording: 9/21/99Place of Birth: Charlotte, NCYear of Birth: 1946Special Collections MSS: 1035-218Interview Notes: Interview with Edward and Mary Ann Aberman, and Martin and Harriet GoodeOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Brenda
Middle or Maiden Name: Yelman
Last Name: Lederman
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: Florence, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Gene Atkinson, Blanche C. Cohen, Irvin Cohen, Ronald Cohen, Ernest L. Marcus, Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: Fred
Last Name: Leffert
Date of Recording: 11/14/10
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1941
Special Collections MSS: 1035-342
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Life in the South Carolina Upcountry," with Samuel Draisen (Anderson) and Marsha Poliakoff and her son Gary Poliakoff (Spartanburg) at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Anderson, SC
First Name: MathildeMiddle or Maiden Name: S.Last Name: LehemDate of Recording: 2/12/96Place of Birth: Salonica, GreeceYear of Birth: 1916Special Collections MSS: 1035-51Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MathildeMiddle or Maiden Name: S.Last Name: LehemDate of Recording: 2/27/96Place of Birth: Salonica, GreeceYear of Birth: 1916Special Collections MSS: 1035-56Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Joyce
Middle or Maiden Name: Kaplan
Last Name: Lender
Date of Recording: 6/12/98
Place of Birth: Harrisburg, PA
Year of Birth: 1938
Special Collections MSS: 1035-199a
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Anderson Reflections," at Temple B'nai Israel's 50th anniversary celebration, Anderson, SC
First Name: LaraMiddle or Maiden Name: D.Last Name: LeRoyDate of Recording: 5/5/17Place of Birth: Atlanta, GAYear of Birth: 1970Special Collections MSS: 1035-477Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: CarolynMiddle or Maiden Name: BaruchLast Name: LevensonDate of Recording: 5/24/95Place of Birth: Camden, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-023Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Sam Levenson and his sister Ella SchlosburgOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: CarolynMiddle or Maiden Name: BaruchLast Name: LevensonDate of Recording: 5/5/98Place of Birth: Camden, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-195Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Frances Deborah AbramsOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SamLast Name: LevensonDate of Recording: 5/24/95Place of Birth: Bishopville, SCYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-23Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Carolyn Levenson and his sister Ella SchlosburgOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: A.
Middle or Maiden Name: Mark
Last Name: Levin
Date of Recording: 3/18/04
Special Collections MSS: 1035280a
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Julian
Middle or Maiden Name: Seymour
Last Name: Levin
Date of Recording: 2/10/97
Place of Birth: Beaufort, SC
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-115
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Renee Levin
First Name: Renee
Middle or Maiden Name: Steinberg
Last Name: Levin
Date of Recording: 2/10/97
Place of Birth: Savannah, GA
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-115
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Julian Levin
First Name: AnitaMiddle or Maiden Name: RosenLast Name: LevineDate of Recording: 5/14/97Place of Birth: Port Chester, NYYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-150Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Sol LevineOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Noah
Last Name: Levine
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Newark, NJ
Year of Birth: 1951
Special Collections MSS: 1035-528
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Strategies and Resources for Survival," with Rebecca Engel, Annie Rivers, Anita Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Jay Schwartz, moderated by Mark Swick, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: SolLast Name: LevineDate of Recording: 5/14/97Place of Birth: Savannah, GAYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-150Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Anita LevineOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Ernest
Last Name: Levinson
Date of Recording: 11/16/14
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1948
Special Collections MSS: 1035-408
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Aiken Pioneers, Then and Now," with Doris Lerner Baumgarten, Nelson A. Danish, Marvin Efron, Samuel Wolf Ellis, Judith Evans, Jeffrey Kaplan, Sondra Shanker Katzenstein, Irene Krugman Rudnick, and Stephen K. Surasky, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Jewish Roots, Aiken Branches: From Shtetl to Small-Town South," in Aiken, SC, on the occasion of the dedication of the Adath Yeshurun Synagogue historical marker
First Name: LibbyMiddle or Maiden Name: FriedmanLast Name: LevinsonDate of Recording: 5/2/95Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1909Special Collections MSS: 1035-16Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
We were not ever prosperous in Charleston. We had a wonderful affiliation with the very best of people in Charleston, but in the old country—do you know what the word “yiches” means? It means “class.” And Charleston is that kind of city today, I know that. They still go back to what you were. I know money’s very important, but in Columbia they don’t look to see who your great-grandfather was. In Charleston and Savannah they do.
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Before World War I, we were very comfortable people. In those days—I don’t know if it’s necessary—but when a young nice Jewish boy married a nice young Jewish woman, the shiddach was made by the parents. Shiddach means the marriage. And for four years my mother and my father lived with my father’s parents. That’s why he had such a great education, they paid for his education, and my mother lived with them while my father finished school. And then for the next four years, they lived four years with my mother’s parents, who were very comfortable people. They had a big plant in Warsaw, they manufactured brushes and everything pertaining to that, like—what do you call them here?—the Fuller Brush people.
The little town they lived in was called Trestani [Poland]. All the Pearlstines and all the Jacobs come from Trestani, as well as all the Kareshes. They had a big plant there—just family workers, that’s all, it wasn’t big like the one in Warsaw. So when I was born we were very comfortable people. I guess we’d be considered not comfortable here, ’cause a ruble then was a lot of money, which a dollar today is nothing.
They were very comfortable, and in Trestani they had a Jewish school, a small yeshiva for thirty orphans. As soon as some would graduate, they’d get more, and they paid for it and kept them up. So my mother came from a very comfortable family, and so did my father. My father’s father was not educated like my mother’s father, nor was he as philanthropic, but they used to call him Moishe the Chochem. He was so smart, he was a genius. A lot of time when somebody would tell my mother, “You got smart children,” she would say, “Of course, takes after my father-in-law, Moishe the Chochem.” “Moishe the Chochem” means his name was Moishe and chochem means you’re very smart. He was smart.
I guess my parents might have known of some anti-Semitism, but I was a small child and I didn’t know. I had not even started school when the war started, and then, during the war, it was very, very bad. You couldn’t go out. My mother would not allow the children to go on the street on Sunday, because when all the people came up in the small towns—they were mostly farmers and they were not educated people—they hurt a lot of Jewish children on their way to church. The churches were not out in the country, they were in the cities. That was very bad.
After the war, we left right away. We were the first Jewish family to leave our little town, and when we came to Charleston there were not too many Jewish immigrants. They started coming a lot, like the Sokols and the Altmans and all those people started coming after World War I, but they were not prepared to come like we were. Two things: We were all educated. My sisters and all, they were smart and educated. And another thing was, we had our tickets before the war started, so all we had to do is go to Warsaw, renew our visas, and we came.
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I’ll tell you how he [my father] died. He was visiting my sister Annie. She lived upstairs over the store and she had a great big porch that went all around—you know the old-time homes. It was on Shabbos and he was spending the weekend with her. He had a big Torah with the table and he was reading. My father probably knew hundreds and hundreds of pages by heart. He was a scholar—they don’t have many like that today—I guess in New York they do. My sister went out there to give him a glass of water or something to drink and he had already fell over the Torah and he was dead upstairs in Annie’s house, in Annie’s porch.
You see, my father could have been a rabbi in the biggest city in the United States, but he had one thing that kept him from it: he could never master the English accent. He spoke with a broken accent. The synagogues that would have taken him wanted a man that spoke perfect English, that was the problem. And that’s what he was suited for, because he was not suited for a businessman. He could have been a great rabbi, but he didn’t have the English language.
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My mother was not a businesswoman. My mother always used to say God put a curse on her because her two daughters were businesswomen. She thought it was horrible for a woman to work in a store. She would cry about it.
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“Alter” means “old.” The thing was, in the old country—and in this country—When your brother in-law, Sol Lourie, almost died—he was six years old and he had double pneumonia and he couldn’t make it, he was so sick in St. George—my mother and my husband took him to the Jewish synagogue and gave him a nickname “Alter.” They thought that would prolong his life. Of course, that was superstition, I know that, but my mother believed in it, and my husband was very devoted to the Lourie children. So Alter is not a name, it’s something that’s added onto your name. Sol is named after my grandfather, my mother’s father. Schlami Zalman was his real name.
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My father left the old country four weeks before Germany declared war on Russia. That was World War I. My mother wouldn’t go, because in those days you could own your home, but you could not own the land that it was on, because you were Jewish. So my mother wanted to stay the four weeks, or six weeks, and sell the house and sell the furniture. We had our tickets, we had our passports and the money to go—because we were not rich people, but we were comfortable people. We couldn’t go because the first place that the rails were torn up was in our little town. My mother thought she could make it, but when the Russian soldiers came in my mother was scared they would rape my sisters. Miss Kalinsky was sixteen years older than I was, and Miss Lourie was ten years older, and they were both beautiful women. My mother was scared to death that she couldn’t make it, that they would rape her children, so we went to Bialystok. Bialystok had sixty thousand Jews. I think today there’s three hundred from what I understand—I think they have in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, they have all the figures.
My mother went there and she divided her children. She kept one. The rabbi of Bialystok was my uncle, he was one of the chief rabbis in Poland, his name was Alpern. My mother put one son with him, so he could teach him to be bar mitzvah and all—he was a child, you know, and he needed training. The other son she put with an uncle who was in the lumber business. [This brother, Sender, was married and lived in a town called Shepitova]. He was older than my sister Miss Simon—than Miss Lourie. I can’t ever call her Simon, she always will be Miss Lourie to me in my heart and in my mind. My mother took him there so my uncle could teach him business. He was twelve years older than I was. We had an aunt and uncle who had a very nice hotel in Bialystok—my mother’s sister—and they were very good to us, but after a few weeks we were told [we were leaving]. It took us ten days to travel a few miles. Bialystok was only ten miles from Gritse [Grajewo], but we only traveled at night because it was dangerous for Jews to be seen during the day; we stayed in the woods hidden ’til we got to Bialystok, I remember that distinctly.
We stayed with this aunt and uncle and they made us comfortable, but my mother thought—she had hid all her jewelry and all her linens and all—that she could go back to Gritse and find enough where she could sell a piece of jewelry or something like that. We didn’t think the war would last four years, we thought it was a year, you know, but World War I lasted almost four years. Germany was very successful after a while, but first the Russians went deep into Germany. When she got [to Grajewo] the Russians were retreating and our home was burned down. There was nothing left. She came back to Bialystok and she separated her children. My sister, Annie, went with one aunt. Minnie and I—I was the baby and Minnie was always the spoiled one, you know that, you’ve heard that—my mother kept the two of us with her [in Grajewo, which was now occupied by the Germans]. We had a very hard time and then the war was over. I don’t know how we lived. It was tough. My mother opened up a tea house in Gritse and the non-Jewish people, the few better-class goyim—Catholics, all Catholics—they were very nice to my mother, they brought her furniture and things like that. And they had a great big German hospital in Gritse.
In Jewish we called it Gritse, but it was Grawejo, the Polish name. This leading officer of the hospital—I don’t know if it was a doctor or what—he used to come and drink tea, and all his soldiers would come and drink tea. My mother knew how to make mandelbrot and sponge cake and blintzes and all, and they loved it. They were not Jewish. The headman fell in love with my sister Minnie—she was really pretty—and he came to see my mother and he said he’d like to marry her. Well, you know what intermarriage meant then, eighty years ago. It was the kiss of death. My mother got her little linens together—she didn’t have much—and her children together and she went back to Bialystok. She was afraid that he’d kidnap her or something, you know. So it was a hard life.
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I raised my children in Barnwell. I took my son—Mick roomed with him one year at the Smolen’s before he was bar mitzvah, one summer, and of course I took Arnold to everything in Augusta. Girls were not bat mitzvahed in those days, and when Margie became twelve years old, we were very friendly with the Episcopal minister—he’s still living, he’s a minister in Sumter, South Carolina, Mr. Martin. He came to see me one day and says, “You know, Libby, you’re depriving your daughter of a lot of fun. All her girlfriends, I have a little thing for them, a little drop-in every Tuesday night. We do not talk about Jesus and we do not talk about religion.” He says, “We play games, we do crossword puzzles, we sing songs,” he says, “and that’s all we do.” He says, “I would not hurt her, I’m not going to give her no pork or nothing, I only give them a little piece of cake.” He says, “It would not hurt her to come to my house, let her have a nice evening.”
All of those children in the Episcopal were the aye, aye, aye [the upper class], you know, the Episcopal people are sort of the classy goyim—I don’t know if they’re all classy but in Barnwell they’re all classy. So I sent her. I sent her. I sent her one time, and I sent her the second time, and the third time she came home—Charlie would go and get her, at ten o’clock it was out—and she came in the house, she said, “Mother, he did talk to me a lot about the Jesus and had a regular program all around Jesus.” I said, “Well, that’s his business, he wants to convert you but he’s not going to do it.”
School was almost out, and from that day on out she did not finish school in Barnwell. We sent her to Bernard Academy. That was in Gainesville, Georgia. They had a Hillel Foundation there ’cause they had Riverside—that was a boys’ school, had a lot of Jewish children there.
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I do [remember the passage from the old country]. The same brother that was killed by the Holocaust, he came with us as far as Danzig, and my sister Minnie was kind of—she was a flirt, she could never make up her mind who she was going to marry, and she was very popular. She was in love with this nice Jewish man—she thought she was—in Gritse. He asked her not to go to the United States, and my father sent her the money to get married in Gritse. When we got to Danzig she was there to meet us. She decided she didn’t want to stay in Poland no matter how the boy liked her. He could follow her— Which he did, but she never married him, she married a boy from Charleston, Holly Hill. So she met us in Danzig and we had to stay there a couple of weeks, and then we went on to Liverpool, and we stayed in Liverpool a couple of weeks before the ship came in.
We stayed in a nice hotel. Everything was paid for. We went first-class. We came on to the United States and we never went to Ellis Island; we went to Philadelphia.
Yes, that’s what I want to tell you. My sister Annie was always very adventurous, and we had two hours to stay in Philadelphia. She wanted my mother to give her permission to get a cab or a bus and ride into the town to see how Philadelphia looks. We were talking Jewish between us, and of course my mother was very scared, and this Jewish man came up to us—we didn’t know if he was Jewish or not—and he spoke a perfect Jewish. When I tell you who it was you’ll think— He says, “Ich hab nich grossinger gayen avag.” [phonetic transcription] She was really good-looking, hefty-looking, she was a big girl. Guess who it was? Norman Arnold’s grandfather, Ginsburg. Norman’s grandfather, who was a great friend of my father’s, but he was a student of my father’s. My father held adult classes three times a week, and these people who were not so educated at that time, they would come and my father held classes for them. Well, Mr. Ginsburg was shocked—when we got to Charleston, it must have been fifty cars at the station, all my mother’s relatives. See, she knew him yet from the old country, some of them, you know, like Hymie Karesh—not this Hymie Karesh here but his grandfather—a lot of them, a lot of the Pearlstines. They were not Reform Jews in the old country, they were all Orthodox, but I guess the children changed.
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When we got to Charleston my father had already established a lovely home for us—my brother was there too—and beautiful clothes and everything, and we did not suffer. But my father was never a happy man in Charleston, because he was very snooty. He had a tremendous ego, and you can’t have that and get along in this country.
My father thought if you couldn’t speak two, three languages, you were not educated. He could never be a peddler, like most of them became, because that was beneath him. He had a grocery store, and he was as poor a businessman as one could be—I mean, he just didn’t understand the rudiments of business. But they had Jewish jobbers there, like the Hirshmans and the Pearlstines, and they all gave him an open credit, and he put in light clothes too. But to say he was a success—he was not.
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The oldest department store in Charleston, Jewish, was Furchgott’s. They were Reform Jews. He opened up a very fine ladies’ ready-to-wear store in Charleston. It was called Herbert’s, downtown. Right after I quit my job—I only worked a few weeks because I could not walk three miles—there was an ad in the paper: a woman was going off for two months, the secretary took off for two months, and they were looking for somebody, so I went. He thought I was a little bit young, and I showed him what I could do, and he hired me for just the two months. I didn’t have to work on Saturday.
When he hired me, the office was in the center of the store—that’s the way Charleston used to be, they don’t have that now. So this girl came in [to Herbert’s]. She was a friend of my sister Annie’s, her name was Goodman. She was Theresa Livingstain’s first cousin, and she was fat, she wore about an eighteen dress. And this clerk—her name was Maybelle Kennedy, I can still remember—she was trying to keep on telling her, “Buy a black dress or a navy ’cause you’re stout, it will make you look thinner,” and she didn’t like it. I called over my boss and I said, “Mr. Benjamin, if you let me go over there and help that girl”—and that’s the first time I ever sold in my life—“I can sell her a dress.” And they had expensive clothes, in that time, like 150 dollar dresses. He says, “Well, go ahead and try, I’ll tell Maybelle you’ll give her the commission because you don’t work on the floor.” And I did sell her a beautiful dress, I sold her a pretty printed silk dress. He said to me, “I want you to work on the floor when the cashier comes back.” He says, “You know human nature.” I said, “No, I don’t know human nature, but I know her nature, she didn’t want a black or a navy dress.”
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I was born in a little town called Grajewo, G-R-A-J-E-W-O, Poland. It was on the border. We were three miles from Germany, right close to Leipzig, and everybody in our little town had a pass that they could [use to] go into Germany—everybody used the doctors there and all. Well, Grajewo was a town of ten thousand Jewish people, and it was a nice town, had a lot of well informed people. We had a yeshiva there, you know what a yeshiva is. For those days, it was a highly sophisticated town. My father—I’m not going to brag about him or my mother or our background, but it was a wonderful background. A lot of education. Always spoke to their children. My father went to school thirty-two years; he was an educated man. My grandfather wanted him to be a rabbi, but my father didn’t want it, and he became a businessman.
My grandfather was in the import-export business. He had a big business in Kiev—that’s Russia, and Russia was very much of an agriculture country. Leipzig was in Germany and that was a manufacturing country. Germany had very little space; they didn’t have much land. And so my father was placed—and this was in 1908 or 1907, I think—he was placed in the Kiev office and he ran it. They had big trainloads of stuff that went from one place to the other. The export-import business, that was a big thing in Europe then. While my father was in his office one day, a bunch of Cossacks came in and broke a bottle and split his head open—only because he was a Jew, he wasn’t doing anybody any harm. He came home and he told my mother, “This land is not for us. We’ve got to go to America where our children can have education and freedom.”
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First Name: Cynthia ("Cyndi")
Last Name: Levy
Date of Recording: 4/2/05
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-292
Interview Notes: Presentation, "JHSSC Cemetery Survey Project and Survey of Beth Israel Cemetery," with Stanley Farbstein, at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SC
First Name: Eleanor
Middle or Maiden Name: Evens
Last Name: Levy
Date of Recording: 12/31/15
Place of Birth: Pulaski, VA
Year of Birth: 1936
Special Collections MSS: 1035-450
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Fredric "Rick"
Middle or Maiden Name: R.
Last Name: Levy
Date of Recording: 11/3/12
Place of Birth: Moss Point, MS
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-363
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Pee Dee Pioneers," with Donna Cohen, Bruce Siegal, and Richard Weintraub, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Sarah
Middle or Maiden Name: Belle
Last Name: Levy
Date of Recording: 2/11/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-413
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Sam
Last Name: Liberman
Date of Recording: 8/4/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1926
Special Collections MSS: 1035-158
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Sam
Last Name: Liberman
Date of Recording: 8/8/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1926
Special Collections MSS: 1035-161
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: ArianeLast Name: LiebermanDate of Recording: 3/20/04Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1958Special Collections MSS: 1035-281Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Oldtimers and Newcomers," with Bari Heiden, Gene Vinik, Meyer Rosen, and Philip Schneider at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Georgetown, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RayLast Name: LifchezDate of Recording: 11/06/15Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1932Special Collections MSS: 1035-429Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Chaim
Last Name: Lindenblatt
Date of Recording: 11/18/99
Special Collections MSS: 1035-232
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Judaism But Been Afraid to Ask," with Rabbis David J. Radinsky and Achiya DeLouya, sponsored by Brith Sholom Beth Israel Sisterhood and Addlestone Hebrew Academy
First Name: HeleneMiddle or Maiden Name: JacobsonLast Name: LipsitzDate of Recording: 6/20/96Place of Birth: Richmond, VaYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-80Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Hyman Lipsitz, and his cousin Edward Lipson and his wife Celia LipsonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HymanMiddle or Maiden Name: DavidLast Name: LipsitzDate of Recording: 6/20/96Place of Birth: Beaufort, SCYear of Birth: 1913Special Collections MSS: 1035-80Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Helene Lipsitz, and his cousin Edward Lipson and his wife Celia LipsonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JosephMiddle or Maiden Name: WilliamLast Name: LipsitzDate of Recording: 11/7/96Place of Birth: Beaufort, SCYear of Birth: 1920Special Collections MSS: 1035-93Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Lucille LipsitzOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: LucilleMiddle or Maiden Name: BassLast Name: LipsitzDate of Recording: 11/7/96Place of Birth: MassachusettsYear of Birth: 1930Special Collections MSS: 1035-93Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Joseph LipsitzOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: CeliaMiddle or Maiden Name: PinoskyLast Name: LipsonDate of Recording: 6/20/96Place of Birth: Greenwood, SCYear of Birth: 1925Special Collections MSS: 1035-80Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Edward Lipson, and his cousin Hyman Lipsitz and his wife Helene LipsitzOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Edward ("Mickey")Middle or Maiden Name: MarionLast Name: LipsonDate of Recording: 6/20/96Place of Birth: Beaufort, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-80Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Celia Lipson, and his cousin Hyman Lipsitz and his wife Helene LipsitzOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JosephMiddle or Maiden Name: J.Last Name: LiptonDate of Recording: 1/29/16Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-447Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JosephMiddle or Maiden Name: J.Last Name: LiptonDate of Recording: 7/18/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-156Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JosephMiddle or Maiden Name: J.Last Name: LiptonDate of Recording: 10/24/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-204Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Growing up Jewish in Beaufort," with Stanley Farbstein, Michael Greenly, Thomas Keyserling, and Gerrie Sturman at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Beaufort, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Joseph
Middle or Maiden Name: J.
Last Name: Lipton
Date of Recording: 3/4/99
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-209
Interview Notes: Panel discussion," Growing Up Jewish in Small Town South Carolina," with Rita Solomon (Denmark), Sam Siegel (Anderson, Walterboro), and Bertha Breibart (Charleston & Summerville)
First Name: MoreyLast Name: LiptonDate of Recording: 3/16/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1927Special Collections MSS: 1035-181Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Sandra LiptonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SandraMiddle or Maiden Name: Lynn GoldbergLast Name: LiptonDate of Recording: 3/16/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1934Special Collections MSS: 1035-181Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Morey LiptonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Stephen
Last Name: Litvin
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Manchester, NH
Year of Birth: 1949
Special Collections MSS: 1035-478
Interview Notes: Presentation by Stephen Litvin, "The Transformation of King Street: The Price of Success" at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Allan
Last Name: Livingstain
Date of Recording: 5/20/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-479
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion,"Kings and Queens of King Street," with Steve Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Ben Chase, Rosemary Read Cohen, Leonard Goldberg, Barry Kalinsky, and Sammy Kirshtein at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Allan
Last Name: Livingstain
Date of Recording: 7/15/96
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1929
Special Collections MSS: 1035-82
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Theresa Livingstain
First Name: Theresa
Middle or Maiden Name: Levy
Last Name: Livingstain
Date of Recording: 7/15/96
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1902
Special Collections MSS: 1035-82
Interview Notes: Interview with her son Allan Livingstain
First Name: JoanMiddle or Maiden Name: SteinbergLast Name: LoebDate of Recording: 4/24/96Place of Birth: New York, NYYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-66Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Joel
Last Name: Lourie
Date of Recording: 4/16/2016
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1962
Special Collections MSS: 1035-444
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion: "Rising to the Challenge: Jewish Politicians in an Age of Change," with Billy Keyserling, Marvin Lare, and Jack Swerling at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Courage, Conscience, and Conformity: South Carolina Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, " held in Charleston, SC, April 16-17, 2016
First Name: Joel
Last Name: Lourie
Date of Recording: 5/20/12
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1962
Special Collections MSS: 1035-355
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Speaks," with Billy Keyserling (Beaufort), Ernest Marcus (Eutawville), and Benedict Rosen (Georgetown), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service"
First Name: Lillie ("Lisa")Middle or Maiden Name: GoldsteinLast Name: LubinDate of Recording: 4/13/98Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-185Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
When my mother came to this country, she used to say, “Liebeinke, I came with a book of a thousand songs. And I kept that very safe.” She says, “I came with a perinya and pillows, but that songbook was the most precious to me.” When I was a little girl, she taught me many songs. One was from the opera, Goldfaden’s opera, Shulamith, and I still know the words from that song.
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Well, I know there were Jews here from the early 1800s, but those Jews seemed apart. The Jews that came in the early 1900s all felt some kind of a kinship and most of them had businesses on King Street. They saw each other up and down that street every day. They would see each other in the temples. The children went to the same schools, the same synagogue, the same Hebrew schools. There was some kind of a comradery and a kinship there. I think that was very unique. They may have had it in the larger cities, in the neighborhoods in New York, but because this was a small town, it was unique. Everybody knew each other, everybody—in some ways it was very good and in some ways it was not so good. There was a lot of gossip, and a lot of jealously about this person’s child and that person’s child and whatever, which is natural. I’ve found out in my long life for—human beings are that way. But there was something very good about it. It might have been the feeling that they could rely on one another if there was something dreadful happening to them. After all, most of these people came a long way with nothing practically, to make a new life and there is something else I would like to say. They were dedicated to make a better life for their children. They were very hard working people. And most of them accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. Their children have done very well in this country because of them. I think they all had to be very courageous.
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I think that that is what the appeal was for many Jews—King Street was what was unique about this Jewish community. King Street offered that kind of Jewish person the opportunity to have that kind of store, that small business. Put something in it and you could make a living.
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First Name: SuzanneMiddle or Maiden Name: RaeLast Name: LureyDate of Recording: 2/28/97Place of Birth: Greenvile, SCYear of Birth: 1961Special Collections MSS: 1035-131Interview Notes: Interview with her uncle Alex DavisOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Marjorie
Middle or Maiden Name: Levy
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Sallie Wolper Boyles, Jane Barshay Burns, Manuel Cohen, Paul Lynch, Spencer Lynch, Rosalyn Kramer Monat-Haller, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Marjorie
Middle or Maiden Name: Levy
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 10/21/15
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1924
Special Collections MSS: 1035-427
Interview Notes: Interview with her son Spencer Lynch
First Name: Paul
Middle or Maiden Name: M.
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1962
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Sallie Wolper Boyles, Jane Barshay Burns, Manuel Cohen, Marjorie Lynch, Spencer Lynch, Rosalyn Kramer Monat-Haller, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Paul
Middle or Maiden Name: M.
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 11/17/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1962
Special Collections MSS: 1035-434
Interview Notes: Interview with his brother Spencer Lynch
First Name: Spencer
Middle or Maiden Name: J.
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Sallie Wolper Boyles, Jane Barshay Burns, Manuel Cohen, Marjorie Lynch, Paul Lynch, Rosalyn Kramer Monat-Haller, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: Spencer
Middle or Maiden Name: J.
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 11/17/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-434
Interview Notes: Interview with his brother Paul Lynch
First Name: Spencer
Middle or Maiden Name: J.
Last Name: Lynch
Date of Recording: 10/21/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1960
Special Collections MSS: 1035-427
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Marjorie Levy Lynch
First Name: MaryMiddle or Maiden Name: OctaviaLast Name: MahonDate of Recording: 8/17/13Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1918Special Collections MSS: 1035-377Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JuliaMiddle or Maiden Name: Oxler JacobsLast Name: MalingDate of Recording: 10/26/00Place of Birth: Kingstree, SCYear of Birth: 1926Special Collections MSS: 1035-247Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Anne Krancer, her sister-in-law Eva Oxler, and Anne's daughter Wendy TwingOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Constance
Middle or Maiden Name: H.
Last Name: Mandeville
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Port Huron, MI
Year of Birth: 1989
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, L. M. Drucker, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Max Hellman, Ernest Marcus, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Keith
Middle or Maiden Name: Evan
Last Name: Maniker
Date of Recording: 4/23/02
Place of Birth: Columbus, OH
Year of Birth: 1965
Special Collections MSS: 1035-272
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Ernest ("Ernie")
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Marcus
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Gene Atkinson, Blanche C. Cohen, Irvin Cohen, Ronald Cohen, Brenda Yelman Lederman, Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: Ernest ("Ernie")
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Marcus
Date of Recording: 11/07/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-430
Interview Notes: Roundtable discussion, "Ex-Pats of South Carolina's Capital City," with Arthur Berger, L. M. Drucker, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Stephanie Heller, Max Hellman, Constance H. Mandeville, Harold Nankin, Nancy Nankin, Henry Nechemias, and Joseph B. Rosen at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Columbia, SC
First Name: Ernest ("Ernie")
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Marcus
Date of Recording: 5/20/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-355
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Speaks," with Billy Keyserling (Beaufort), Joel Lourie (Columbia), and Benedict Rosen (Georgetown), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference, "To Heal the World: Jewish South Carolinians in Public Service"
First Name: Ernest ("Ernie")
Middle or Maiden Name: L.
Last Name: Marcus
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: RoseMiddle or Maiden Name: YospeLast Name: MarkDate of Recording: 11/7/96Place of Birth: Baltimore, MDYear of Birth: 1927Special Collections MSS: 1035-94Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Daniel
Middle or Maiden Name: W.
Last Name: Massie
Date of Recording: 10/23/01
Place of Birth: Canton, MS
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-263
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Christian View of the Jew," with Reverends Marshall Blalock (First Baptist Church, Charleston) and Jay Scott Newman (St. Mary's Catholic Church, Greenville), held in conjunction with the Three Rabbi Panel, "The Jewish View of the Christian," sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: Barnett ("Barney")Middle or Maiden Name: LeeLast Name: MazurskyDate of Recording: 9/21/00Place of Birth: Augusta, GAYear of Birth: 1955Special Collections MSS: 1035-246Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MorrisMiddle or Maiden Name: DavidLast Name: MazurskyDate of Recording: 2/9/95Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-6Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
My mother’s side of the family were Austrian Jews. My grandfather was a baker by trade, and [he] came to Charleston and established a Jewish bakery. He had seven children, two sons and five daughters. The oldest daughter, Jenny, was the one born in Austria. The next daughter was Rachel, and the next daughter was Mary, who was my mother. The next daughter was Annie, or Anne, and the last daughter was Paula. Most of them continued and lived either in the Columbia or Charleston area.
The two sons were the youngest two children. One was Benjamin. For all practical purposes, he was never married. He was the youngest of the crowd, died in 1987 at the age of eighty-seven. The next to the youngest child was a son named Israel Edward Blatt—everybody called him Ed. He lived in Charleston a great portion of his life, and then from about thirty-five years old [he] resided in Columbia, South Carolina. He married a nice Baptist lady and has one daughter.
My grandfather on my mother’s side of the family, and all of them, left because of the persecution of Jews. Now, I’m no big geography person, but Galicia really was closer to Poland, in that area. All of the Jews there felt the anti-Semitism. My grandfather immigrated to this country in about 1888, when he first hit Philadelphia.
He was a baker in the old country, and he brought that trade over with him. He baked kosher Jewish bread, like pumpernickel and rye. My mother used to tell me the story that it was like the old days, like they delivered milk—you had a bread route, and you delivered your bread with a horse and wagon. I think somewhere my sister has a picture of my mother as a young woman standing next to the horse, which amazed me, because she was so scared of most animals.
The ones that came South really came, probably, because they were looking for a way of life that was more agrarian than [in the North]. In Europe, my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side lived more or less in a farm area, a small-town area, and apparently they didn’t like Philadelphia. The same thing was true with my father.
All I heard them say was Galicia, which is a province, not a city, and for that reason I just assumed they lived in a rural area, not really in a town or village. I know my mother used to say that my grandmother used to brag about the fact that she saw the Emperor, Franz Joseph. He stopped and watered his horse at their farm in Europe. She was really Austrian; she loved all of the Austrian waltzes, loved to waltz and stuff like that.
My grandma on my mother’s side of the family was very Orthodox, kept all of the dietary laws, never would eat out. My grandfather got in the world, because he ran a bakery, [but] she never really talked English real good. My recollection is whenever we visited, she’d always hug me and say “Boychik” and “Dumichik,” pinch my cheeks like that. She died when I was about eight. My grandfather, Morris, he died before I was born. You know, according to Orthodox tradition, that’s how I was named after him.
My grandfather—my mother always said that he never really accumulated a lot of wealth ’cause he was a rolling stone. But in those days, you know, you didn’t have much money to roll far, so he lived primarily between Columbia, Charleston, and Augusta. My mother said every time she thought he was doing real good, he decided he’d rather go back to Charleston or go back to Columbia. My mother grew up, in fact, she was confirmed—and this sounds funny, because the family was Orthodox—she was confirmed in Augusta, Georgia, and attended public school in Augusta. She was real Southern. My mother was four years old when they moved South from Philadelphia, but she sounded real Southern—I guess like me.
The landsman, or good friend, from the old country that they knew in Charleston was a Henry Hirshman, and Henry Hirshman had become a prosperous wholesale grocer in Charleston in the early 1900s, when my grandfather on my mother’s side moved down. They went to Charleston because they knew Henry, who they called Herschel, not Henry—in Europe he was Herschel. And when they went down—what Jews would do, back in those days, is they wouldn’t give charity, they would give you credit, they would help you get started. Henry Hirshman sold my grandfather his first supply of flour and whatever he needed to make bread.
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My father, when reached seventeen, he was already operating his own mill. In Russia, even though you weren’t given any civil rights, everybody was conscripted and drafted into the Russian Army. My father had just made up his mind—I think he just had a lot of guts, I guess, nerve—he said, “I’m not going to serve the country.” Of course, word trickled back about America and freedom, and by that time he had already had an older brother, Uncle Charles, and a [sister], Aunt Rebecca, who had immigrated to this country and settled in the New York area. He decided he was going to this country, to come to America. He went to Louis and Louis said, “You mean give all of this up?” And my father says, “Give up what? You know, all the mojiks got to do is turn on you and you’ve got nothing.” So he settled and sold his interest for five hundred rubles—that’s five hundred Russian dollars—to his brother.
The way they would try to stop the young Jewish boys from deserting was to penalize and fine the family, and they could do it. What my father had to do was go ahead and enlist. Oddly enough, they had an enlistment age of eighteen, just like we had in this country, and he was only seventeen, so he went to where they inducted them, he says, “Well, I’m ready to go.” They said, “How old are you?” He said, “Eighteen.” They didn’t check the ages or anything like that. So they inducted him.
It’s a real humorous story. They were watching him, and he said [that] when he got through basic, he was scheduled to go to a far outpost in Siberia, so he knew he had to get away. There was sort of a time schedule. You know, my father was the greatest storyteller, he’d tell me all these things. He’d tell us the story about how he got out of Russia, and maybe he glamorized it a little, too. He said that he wanted to get away—it was very subtle. They assigned him to be under the command of what we would call a corporal, and this fellow—Daddy said he had to get real friendly with him. He got some money from his brother—he was still stationed near his home—and he told the corporal, “I want to take you out for a big dinner.” Well, Russians were notoriously big drinkers, and he said it was amazing how much vodka he had to buy! This fellow finally passed out, and that was the night [my father] escaped.
In those days they would get a horse and wagon—Jews were always leaving, and other people. He tells us hair-raising stories about where they got caught at the border, men, women and children. He was a young single fellow, and they were just about to cross over into Germany, and the Russian border guards caught them. Most of these people were poor, and Daddy’s family, because I guess of their influence, had learned about the great art of bribery and how to get what they wanted. That’s why Russia was going to collapse. Even the people who were Russian had no loyalty, because the Czar was an absolute tyrant and monarch, and they were kept in subjugation. So the [commander of the border patrol] says, “I’m going to take you back.” The people were wailing, and Daddy went around the wagon, he says, “Give me whatever contribution you can have.” He went and talked to the head officer (all of them on horseback) and said, “Look, we’re a bunch of poor people, [and if you take us back] you got to go ten miles back in the snow. Why not go get some drinks? What do you care about these—?” I guess he used some very choice words. “What in hell do you care about these poor bunch of people—you going to carry them back? For what?” So they took whatever there was, the thirty or forty or fifty rubles. If they took it, they would still have to carry them back. See, what they did was head for the nearest bar. That’s the way he got across the border.
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My mother always said—and she wasn’t picking on them—she said that among the Austrians and the Hungarians, the women were the businesswomen and the men were all regular playboys, they never could settle down too good. That’s what she said. She said that when she married she was looking for a Russian, and she married one.
[The Russians] davened all the time. But Hungarians were the worst! [Laughter.] The Russians were traders. I mean, they were just natural drivers. My father had that nature, too. He was very adventurous, loved to take chances on enterprises.
My father was born in Russia. He was born in a city called Kobrin, in Russia. It was in a province—and don’t ask me how to spell it—called Grodny Gobernya. It was about two hundred miles east of Warsaw, right near the area they called the Pale; that was an area that sort of went back and forth between Russia and [Poland].
Actually, he didn’t live in Kobrin. It was like the county seat of the province and his family were wheat farmers–grain farmers. His name was Abraham Isaac, but no one ever called him Abraham. He was “Abe.” I don’t think many people knew his middle name in this country. He was always Abe. There were about ten or eleven children and my father was the youngest.
Dad always said that one reason he left Russia was because there was no freedom, no civil rights, and they weren’t allowed to go to school except in rare circumstances. Jews were very down trodden in Russia but they survived.
Most of the Jews who lived in the town of Kobrin were the type you would see in “Fiddler on the Roof.” I’ll never forget the first time my father saw the Broadway play. He said, “That’s it! That’s the conditions under which I grew up.”
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When [my father] came over, he started out and couldn’t speak English. One of his first jobs was delivering seltzer bottles in the flats of New York. He was short but very strong. He was very muscled up and had a good frame. He said he carried the bottles up four or five flights. That was his first job, and then he was told that he could make a lot of money because they were using immigrants to build roads in Pennsylvania.
So, he went to the work crew, most of whom were Italians and not very bright, and he said that going out and digging roads wasn’t his exact idea of really getting ahead in the world. He got disillusioned with New York very speedily. So, he thought of his uncle who lived in Barnwell, South Carolina.
He had an uncle who was really Beryl but who was called “Barney.” He had settled in the Barnwell County area at the time my father decided to move down and was already a very prosperous merchant in the town of Barnwell. In fact, I think there were some hard feelings because Barney was the one who had sneaked out from the army and had caused the family a lot of trouble. They had gotten into a big argument about that and Dad didn’t know if he would be welcome when he got down to Barnwell.
He said he took a boat, a steamer, looks like a coastal steamer, from New York to Norfolk, where you would disembark, and then you’d catch I think it was already the Atlantic Coastline Railway that would come all the way through Virginia and North Carolina and terminated at Augusta, Georgia. It went right through Barnwell.
So, he came in about two in the morning on the train. He got off in the dark and he said the first one to greet him was the colored porter, standing on the platform. And the fellow said to him, “Hello, white folks.” Dad, with his poor knowledge of English, thought he was calling him a fox. “I’m no fox,” he said.
You know, the black person was very meek. He must have scared Dad to death because he said all he could see in the dark were these white teeth grinning at him. But, anyway, he finally made it known well enough to–I guess he kind of made him understand that he was looking for Barnwell. It was a little village.
About daylight he got to his uncle’s house. He called it Mazourski so they must have recognized the name ’cause that’s what his uncle went by. He walked up to the door. He wasn’t announced; he hadn’t sent him any letter in advance. He knocked on the door and said, “Uncle Beryl?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Abram Yitzak, David’s son, you know.”
And he took him in.
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He got all of his education in what was called “cheder,” which was Hebrew school. It was primarily because of the Jewish admonition to read the Torah. Everybody had to be literate and Jews were literate while the Russian mojik, who were serfs, were not. I think it was during the days of the Tsar, Peter or Alexander, who knows, when they freed the serfs.
Now, they were freed somewhat the way the blacks were freed after the Civil War—they were given forty acres and a mule, and they couldn’t read or write. What happened is that the Jews came and leased land; they couldn’t own land, but it was a legal subterfuge. They said they owned it, and they leased land from the mojiks, who didn’t know anything about managing, and produced wheat.
Actually, the mojiks were the Russian peasants who were like their sharecroppers. It was a reverse of where the whites own the land here and the sharecroppers are the blacks. The mojiks owned the land but they were still sharecroppers of the Jews.
My father said at one time they had leased well over a thousand [acres]. The oldest brother—that was Uncle Louis, really Lazar, but when he came to this country they called him Louis—was like the patriarch of the family, and they leased this land. My father grew up under those circumstances. His mother and father had died by the time he was eight years old. But Louis was, believe it or not, twenty years older than him. That’s how long they had the families.
I thought just the other day, maybe that’s why he was called Abraham Isaac, because of the fact that Abraham was so old when he had his son, Isaac. You know, they said he was a hundred years old. I don’t know why they named him Abraham Isaac, but that was his name. He remembered his mother, and he remembered his father, and when they died, his brother—who had children that were just as old as him, almost—raised him. His brother was like his second father. That was Uncle Louis. He was the manager of the plantation, so to speak.
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First Name: George
Last Name: McDaniel
Date of Recording: 4/29/18
Place of Birth: Cherry Point, NC
Year of Birth: 1944
Special Collections MSS: 1035-516
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Difficult History: Plantations, Concentration Camps, and Cultural Tourism," with Sara Daise, Lilly Filler, Shawn Halifax, Joseph McGill, David Popowski, and Robert Rosen, moderated by Robin Waites, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Joseph
Last Name: McGill
Date of Recording: 4/29/18
Place of Birth: Kingstree, SC
Year of Birth: 1961
Special Collections MSS: 1035-516
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Difficult History: Plantations, Concentration Camps, and Cultural Tourism," with Sara Daise, Lilly Filler, Shawn Halifax, George McDaniel, David Popowski, and Robert Rosen, moderated by Robin Waites, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: William
Middle or Maiden Name: N.
Last Name: McKeachie
Date of Recording: 5/23/98
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Special Collections MSS: 1035-196
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Holocaust as a Crisis of Faith," with Marcie Cohen Ferris, Rudolf Herz, and Thomas E. Myers, Jr.
First Name: Maxine
Middle or Maiden Name: Solomon
Last Name: McLarnan
Date of Recording: 11/09/13
Place of Birth: Augusta, GA
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-382
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Summers to Remember: Recollections of Blue Star, Camp Coleman, and Camp Judaea," with Lisa Collis Cohen, Gale Siegel Messerman, Maryann "Candy" Niman Popkin, Rodger Popkin, Brett Serbin, Daniel Sherman, and Robert Steinberg at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: DorisMiddle or Maiden Name: LevkoffLast Name: MeddinDate of Recording: 1/25/97Place of Birth: Augusta, GAYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-112Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Founding of Emanu-El," with Pearl Baker, Florence Horowitz, Rose Jacobs, Charlot Karesh, Stanley Karesh, Frederica Kronsberg, Doris Meddin, and Rabbi Lewis Weintraub at the 4th annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Synagogue Emanu-El in Charleston, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: DorisMiddle or Maiden Name: LevkoffLast Name: MeddinDate of Recording: 7/23/02Place of Birth: Augusta, GAYear of Birth: 1919Special Collections MSS: 1035-273Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JoanMiddle or Maiden Name: BolonkinLast Name: MeirDate of Recording: 3/09/14Place of Birth: Greenville, SCYear of Birth: 1947Special Collections MSS: 1035-389Interview Notes: Interview with her mother, Ida Lurey BolonkinOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Minnie
Middle or Maiden Name: Mazo
Last Name: Meislin
Date of Recording: 6/8/10
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1913
Special Collections MSS: 1035-332
Interview Notes: Interview with her son Owen Meislin
First Name: Owen
Last Name: Meislin
Date of Recording: 6/8/10
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1952
Special Collections MSS: 1035-332
Interview Notes: Interview with his mother Minnie Meislin
First Name: Burnet
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Bernard Mendelson, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: Burnet
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 11/23/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1934
Special Collections MSS: 1035-435
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Jane Mendelsohn, his brother Joseph Mendelsohn, and Joseph's wife Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn
First Name: Jane
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 11/23/15
Place of Birth: Savannah, GA
Year of Birth: 1939
Special Collections MSS: 1035-435
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Burnet Mendelsohn, his brother Joseph Mendelsohn, and Joseph's wife Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn
First Name: Joseph
Middle or Maiden Name: S.
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 11/23/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1939
Special Collections MSS: 1035-435
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Rhetta Aronson Mendelsohn, his brother Burnet Mendelsohn, and Burnet's wife Jane Mendelsohn
First Name: Rhetta
Middle or Maiden Name: Aronson
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Orangeburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-526
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Endangered Congregations," with Garry Baum, Barry Draisen, Louis Drucker, Barry Frishberg, Paul Siegel, moderated by Noah Levine, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Rhetta
Middle or Maiden Name: Aronson
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 11/23/15
Place of Birth: Orangeburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-435
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Joseph Mendelsohn, his brother Burnet Mendelsohn, and Burnet's wife Jane Mendelsohn
First Name: Rhetta
Middle or Maiden Name: Aronson
Last Name: Mendelsohn
Date of Recording: 11/08/15
Place of Birth: Orangeburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-433
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Midlands Memories: Patches on a Fading Quilt," with Gene Atkinson, Blanche C. Cohen, Irvin Cohen, Ronald Cohen, Brenda Yelman Lederman, Ernest L. Marcus, Stephen Savitz, and Beverly Ulmer at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Orangeburg, SC
First Name: Bernard
Last Name: Mendelson
Date of Recording: 1/24/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-366
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "King Street as a Classroom," with Henry Berlin, Nicky Bluestein, Joseph Chase, Kenny Fox, Charles Goldberg, Sam Kirshtein, Maurice Krawcheck, Burnet Mendelsohn, Andy Slotin, and Joe Sokol, part of Professor Dale Rosengarten's class of the same name at the College of Charleston
First Name: Albert
Middle or Maiden Name: Baruch
Last Name: Mercer
Date of Recording: 10/21/18
Place of Birth: Miami, FL
Year of Birth: 1953
Special Collections MSS: 1035-530
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Community of Memory: Camden's Jews Then and Now," with Garry Baum, Cheryl Baum, Barbara Freed James, Rita Tanzer, moderated by Dale Rosengarten, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, “Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Albert
Middle or Maiden Name: Nathaniel
Last Name: Mercer
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Chapel Hill, NC
Year of Birth: 1984
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: Gale
Middle or Maiden Name: Siegel
Last Name: Messerman
Date of Recording: 11/09/13
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-382
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Summers to Remember: Recollections of Blue Star, Camp Coleman, and Camp Judaea," with Lisa Collis Cohen, Maxine Solomon McLarnan, Maryann "Candy" Niman Popkin, Rodger Popkin, Brett Serbin, Daniel Sherman, and Robert Steinberg at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: Gale
Middle or Maiden Name: Siegel
Last Name: Messerman
Date of Recording: 5/02/2015
Place of Birth: Anderson, SC
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-417
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, " Notes From the Battlefield and the Home Front," with Joseph Mazo Butwin, Herb Novit, Edward Poliakoff, and Alan Reyner, Jr. at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: Gerald ("Jerry")
Middle or Maiden Name: Leo
Last Name: Meyerson
Date of Recording: 8/7/12
Place of Birth: Spartanburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-359
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Jane Meyerson
First Name: Jane
Middle or Maiden Name: Pearlstine
Last Name: Meyerson
Date of Recording: 7/30/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-357
Interview Notes: Interview with her brother Edwin Pearlstine
First Name: Jane
Middle or Maiden Name: Pearlstine
Last Name: Meyerson
Date of Recording: 8/7/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-359
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Gerald Meyerson
First Name: Jane
Middle or Maiden Name: Pearlstine
Last Name: Meyerson
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1932
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Laura Moses (Sumter), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: FayeMiddle or Maiden Name: GoldbergLast Name: MillerDate of Recording: 1/25/16Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1938Special Collections MSS: 1035-468Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: HenryLast Name: MillerDate of Recording: 12/3/15Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1953Special Collections MSS: 1035-457Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Minda MillerOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: MindaLast Name: MillerDate of Recording: 12/3/15Place of Birth: Memphis, TNYear of Birth: 1955Special Collections MSS: 1035-457Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Henry MillerOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: EdwardMiddle or Maiden Name: V.Last Name: MirmowDate of Recording: 2/15/96Place of Birth: Orangeburg, SCYear of Birth: 1930Special Collections MSS: 1035-052Interview Notes: Interview with friends Rose Louise Aronson and Harold AronsonOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Christine
Middle or Maiden Name: King
Last Name: Mitchell
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Place of Birth: Augusta, GA
Year of Birth: 1955
Special Collections MSS: 1035-514
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Monuments of Marion Square," with Michael Kogan, moderated by Theodore Rosengarten, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Rosalyn
Middle or Maiden Name: Kramer
Last Name: Monat-Haller
Date of Recording: 5/21/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-482
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Life in Flowertown," with Sallie Wolper Boyles, Jane Barshay Burns, Manuel Cohen, Marjorie Lynch, Paul Lynch, Spencer Lynch, and Vivian O. Rose at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "The 'Kingdom of Israel' in This Town": Jewish Merchants of Charleston and Summerville," held in Charleston and Summerville, SC
First Name: LarraineMiddle or Maiden Name: LourieLast Name: MosesDate of Recording: 10/26/16Place of Birth: Columbia, SCYear of Birth: 1949Special Collections MSS: 1035-487Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Laura
Last Name: Moses
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Sumter, SC
Year of Birth: 1956
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Eliot Rabin (Charleston), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: RichardMiddle or Maiden Name: PhillipsLast Name: MosesDate of Recording: 8/7/99Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1926Special Collections MSS: 1035-216Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RobertMiddle or Maiden Name: AltamontLast Name: MosesDate of Recording: 5/15/99Place of Birth: SumterYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-214Interview Notes: Reading, "A Sephardic Story," an account of how his ancestors came to Savannah, Georgia, in 1733Related Stories:
Family tradition has it that our Nunes family ancestors from Lisbon, Portugal—like most other Jews living in Portugal and Spain during the Spanish Inquisition—had long professed Christianity, while secretly remaining loyal to the Jewish faith. Once they came to this country, years of non-Jewish living were not easy to shake off. For months after their arrival, the ladies of the Nunes family apparently were unable to recite their Jewish prayers without the assistance of the rosary.
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First Name: Robert
Middle or Maiden Name: Altamont
Last Name: Moses
Date of Recording: 10/27/01
Place of Birth: Sumter, SC
Year of Birth: 1921
Special Collections MSS: 1035-264
Interview Notes: Presentation, "A Sephardic Story," an account of how his ancestors came to Savannah, Georgia, in 1733
First Name: RobertMiddle or Maiden Name: AltamontLast Name: MosesDate of Recording: 8/16/13Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-375Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: RobertMiddle or Maiden Name: AltamontLast Name: MosesDate of Recording: 8/17/13Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-376Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
Family tradition has it that our Nunes family ancestors from Lisbon, Portugal—like most other Jews living in Portugal and Spain during the Spanish Inquisition—had long professed Christianity, while secretly remaining loyal to the Jewish faith. Once they came to this country, years of non-Jewish living were not easy to shake off. For months after their arrival, the ladies of the Nunes family apparently were unable to recite their Jewish prayers without the assistance of the rosary.
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First Name: Susan
Middle or Maiden Name: Heller
Last Name: Moses
Date of Recording: 10/24/16
Place of Birth: Greenville, SC
Year of Birth: 1946
Special Collections MSS: 1035-462
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Max Heller: The Father of Modern Greenville," with Francie Heller, Steven Heller, Trude Heller, and Richard Riley at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Looking Back and Moving Forward: Greenville's Congregation Beth Israel, Building Community Since 1916," in honor of Beth Israel's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of an historical marker
First Name: JeromeLast Name: MoskowDate of Recording: 2/25/95Place of Birth: Andrews, SCYear of Birth: 1917Special Collections MSS: 1035-10Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Thomas
Middle or Maiden Name: E.
Last Name: Myers, Jr.
Date of Recording: 5/23/98
Special Collections MSS: 1035-196
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Holocaust as a Crisis of Faith," with Marcie Cohen Ferris, Rudolf Herz and William N. McKeachie
First Name: BurtonMiddle or Maiden Name: LeeLast Name: PadollDate of Recording: 10/21/99Place of Birth: Canton, OhioYear of Birth: 1929Special Collections MSS: 1035-224Interview Notes: Interview with Solomon BreibartOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Betty Mae
Middle or Maiden Name: Bernstein
Last Name: Pearlman
Date of Recording: 10/10/17
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1926
Special Collections MSS: 1035-492
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Gustav (Gershon) "Gus"
Middle or Maiden Name: Harry
Last Name: Pearlman
Date of Recording: 6/10/97
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1913
Special Collections MSS: 1035-152
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: HannaLast Name: PearlstineDate of Recording: 8/28/96Place of Birth: St. Matthews, SCYear of Birth: 1903Special Collections MSS: 1035-88Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Edwin
Middle or Maiden Name: Strauss
Last Name: Pearlstine, Jr.
Date of Recording: 7/30/12
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1935
Special Collections MSS: 1035-357
Interview Notes: Interview with his sister Jane Meyerson
First Name: Martin
Last Name: Perlmutter
Date of Recording: 6/13/19
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-551
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Martin
Last Name: Perlmutter
Date of Recording: 6/13/19
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1943
Special Collections MSS: 1035-552
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Mordecai ("Mort")Last Name: PerskyDate of Recording: 11/3/99Place of Birth: Savannah, GAYear of Birth: 1931Special Collections MSS: 1035-228Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Paulette
Last Name: Pfeiffer
Date of Recording: 4/11/05
Place of Birth: Russia
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-295
Interview Notes: Interview with Evelyn Opper
First Name: CorinneMiddle or Maiden Name: LevyLast Name: PhilipsDate of Recording: 5/9/95Place of Birth: Sumter, SCYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-18Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Andy
Last Name: Poliakoff
Date of Recording: 11/9/19
Place of Birth: Spartanburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-559
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Hub City Reminisces," with Dot Frank, Allan From, Gloria From Goldberg, Gary Smiley, Sandy Smiley, and Ben Stauber at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina fall meeting, "In Search of Jewish Spartanburg," held in Spartanburg
First Name: Edward
Last Name: Poliakoff
Date of Recording: 5/17/14
Place of Birth: Abbeville, SC
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-394
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Jewish Historical Society Past Presidents Panel," with Rachel Gordin Barnett, David Draisen, Belinda Gergel, Richard Gergel, Ann Meddin Hellman, Robert Rosen, and Jeffrey Rosenblum on the occasion of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina's 20th anniversary celebration, Charleston, SC
First Name: Edward
Last Name: Poliakoff
Date of Recording: 5/02/15
Place of Birth: Abbeville, SC
Year of Birth: 1945
Special Collections MSS: 1035-417
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, " Notes From the Battlefield and the Home Front," with Joseph Mazo Butwin, Gale Siegel Messerman, Herb Novit, and Alan Reyner, Jr. at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: Gary
Middle or Maiden Name: W.
Last Name: Poliakoff
Date of Recording: 11/14/10
Place of Birth: Spartanburg, SC
Year of Birth: 1951
Special Collections MSS: 1035-342
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Life in the South Carolina Upcountry," with Fred Leffert (Greenville), Samuel Draisen (Anderson), and Gary's mother Marsha Poliakoff (Spartanburg) at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Anderson, SC
First Name: Marsha
Middle or Maiden Name: Levin
Last Name: Poliakoff
Date of Recording: 11/14/10
Place of Birth: Baltimore, MD
Year of Birth: 1925
Special Collections MSS: 1035-342
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Jewish Life in the South Carolina Upcountry," with Fred Leffert (Greenville), Samuel Draisen (Anderson), and Marsha's son Gary Poliakoff (Spartanburg) at the regional meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, Anderson, SC
First Name: RosaMiddle or Maiden Name: FromLast Name: PoliakoffDate of Recording: 5/1/95Place of Birth: Union, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-14Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
We had to have this picture made, and they told us to be at the photographers, all the family. See, there were six siblings, my grandparents and six siblings, and each one of them had—I think we were the only ones with six children, some of them had four, three, or five. Everybody was there. It’s a gorgeous picture. I have the picture at home, in my house. My grandfather and grandmother and all the brothers and all the grandchildren. One person was missing. They told the photographer and he said, “Just save room. We’ll put [him in]. Send us a college picture.” He was at Georgia Tech. His name is Charlie. Well, he calls himself Charles, and we call him Charlie. His last name is F-R-A-M. This is very interesting—They all came to Ellis Island and would give their names and the people at Ellis Island, of course, would translate it. There’s some in the family that spell it F-R-E-M, and some who spell it F-R-O-M, and some are spelled F-R-A M. I think we’re the only ones that are F-R-O-. I thought it was pronounced “frahm” but spelled with a A. So this man at Ellis Island said, “If his name is From, it’s got to be F-R-O-M,” so that’s the way. But some of them are F-R-E-M. So when the Frems and the Frams and the Froms met at the photographer’s, everybody’s in the picture except this one Charlie Fram. He was the oldest one and they left space for his picture. It was interposed, and everybody is looking facing the camera, and he’s facing that way, so you can see it’s a very interesting picture.
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We sent packages during the war. My father had an uncle, his name was Yankel Green, he decided to—At that time, there were a lot of Jews from Lithuania who went to Africa—I know you’ve heard this before, they said that the Jewish people from Russia, Lithuania, helped to establish the gold mines or diamond mines in Africa. He went to South Africa from this town in Lithuania, and I don’t know whether he got sick or what, but he finally went back to Russia, to Lithuania. He wrote letters to my father that he needed some clothes, but he said, don’t send new clothes, because if you send new clothes the government—they didn’t get through. He said, “Don’t send anything new. Send old things.” For a long time they’d get letters from him. Even after my father passed away, he would write to my mother and say what he needed, and she’d send him things, but then the letters stopped coming so we knew there was no more Yankel Green.
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From the Union Daily Times, Friday afternoon, October 1927. There’s a photograph of Israel From, and the text says:
To tear loose from the land of your fathers, leave all the surroundings of child-hood’s happy days and jump from Lithuania, in Northern Europe to Union, South Carolina, is no little jump.
Then to realize that you are burning all bridges behind and that you are landing in a strange country, without money or knowledge of the language, nothing between you and darkness but your own determined efforts, requires unbounded confidence in your capabilities and plenty of physical energy.
“I. From, Dry Goods and Notions,” is a household word in Union County: a fair price and courteous treatment has made it so. Mr. From discovered this worked in 1879 and discovered Union in 1905. He began business by peddling and in 1908 opened up a dry goods business which has been a growing success ever since. Living below your income with a sufficient margin to add to the business is the secret.
Mr. From was married in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905 and came directly to Union. They have two boys and four girls who are trained and educated to represent the best in American thought and effort.
That’s an American thought, that’s what he was after. They loved this country. My mother had a picture of George Washington hanging in our house and a picture of Edison ’cause she remembered when the electric lights first came. Those were her two heroes.
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[My parents] were sweethearts [before they came to this country]. They lived in the same town. My mother used to say, “In the same apartment house”—I don’t know, some sort of dwelling. My father came first, and he came by way of England. This will help to establish exactly the year he got here, because he was there [during] Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, if you look up exactly when that is. I remember hearing him tell, he was in England and he climbed up in a tree to see the parade of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
After he was here a while, he sent for my mother, and she came by way of Germany—the boat stopped in Hamburg. When the children were growing up, and they’d say they wanted a hamburger, she always would tell them about how she stopped in Hamburg. In my house—this is the craziest thing. When we went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington—I think that’s where we saw the exhibit of things that people brought over—I couldn’t believe, it was just exactly the things that my mother brought, too. I have two candlesticks in my house—I’m so glad, one for each one of my girls. How did they bring all of these things? They were heavy, heavy. I have some pots, copper pots, and you can tell they were hand-made, that she brought in her bag. She brought quilts, featherbeds.
She just had one sister. That’s how we got to South Carolina, because all my father’s people were in Worcester, Massachusetts. In his family there were five boys and one girl, just like the Poliakoffs. The reason he emigrated from Worcester, Massachusetts, to South Carolina is my mother just had one sister, and she was in South Carolina, and they wanted to be together. So they came. They said, well, we’re going to live in South Carolina with my mother’s sister. Her last name was Berlin. That was an outstanding family. There were six children in that family. First they lived in Union, where my mother came, then they moved to Greer, South Carolina, [and] then they moved to Charlotte because they wanted to be where there was a large Jewish synagogue.
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We did speak English at home. None of us—this is crazy—none of us really learned to—we certainly understood Yiddish, but we don’t speak it fluently. We use words. Sometimes, if I couldn’t make my mother understand something, I would try to think of a Jewish word. My mother and father spoke Yiddish, but we spoke English in our house. My father spoke beautiful English with no accent; see, my mother was always at home. She loved her home. She wanted to be sure she had three good meals every day for her children. She was a good wife, kept a good house, and my father said— You know, it depends on the head of the house. Some men expected their wives to come and help, but some men— My father figured, “I can pay somebody to help me in the store, but I can’t pay somebody to be a good mother to my children, six children at home. You do your part and I’ll do my part.”
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First Name: William
Middle or Maiden Name: Sprott
Last Name: Pollitzer
Date of Recording: 9/24/99
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-223
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Maryann ("Candy")
Middle or Maiden Name: Niman
Last Name: Popkin
Date of Recording: 11/09/13
Place of Birth: Port Chester, NY
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-382
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Summers to Remember: Recollections of Blue Star, Camp Coleman, and Camp Judaea," with Lisa Collis Cohen, Maxine Solomon McLarnan, Gale Siegel Messerman, Rodger Popkin, Brett Serbin, Daniel Sherman, and Robert Steinberg at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: Rodger
Last Name: Popkin
Date of Recording: 11/09/13
Place of Birth: Atlanta, GA
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-382
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Summers to Remember: Recollections of Blue Star, Camp Coleman, and Camp Judaea," with Lisa Collis Cohen, Maxine Solomon McLarnan, Gale Siegel Messerman, Maryann "Candy" Niman Popkin, Brett Serbin, Daniel Sherman, and Robert Steinberg at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting in Columbia, SC
First Name: David
Last Name: Popowski
Date of Recording: 10/24/10
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-337
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: David
Last Name: Popowski
Date of Recording: 4/29/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-516
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, “Difficult History: Plantations, Concentration Camps, and Cultural Tourism," with Sara Daise, Lilly Filler, Shawn Halifax, George McDaniel, Joseph McGill, and Robert Rosen, moderated by Robin Waites, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: David
Last Name: Popowski
Date of Recording: 5/03/15
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-418
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Next Generation Remembers," with Anita Zucker, Lilly Stern Filler, Esther Goldberg Greenberg, and Harlan Greene at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: PaulaMiddle or Maiden Name: KornblumLast Name: PopowskiDate of Recording: 5/3/97Place of Birth: Kaluszyn, PolandYear of Birth: 1923Special Collections MSS: 1035-148Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
After the war we went back to Kaluszyn because we were trying to get our flour mill back, which the Germans took. That was the family business. My parents were killed in Kaluszyn, my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles—everybody. The home was torn apart but the mill was operating. We were trying to get it back. But the government had already come and said, No, you can t get it back because it s too big. We got to nationalize it.
So we said, Let’s go into the post office and see, maybe, maybe somebody wrote a letter. The postman who knew us from before the war said there was a letter from the United States. My mother had a sister who went to Palestine in 1936. She knew the address of the Zuckers in Charleston, so she wrote to them and they wrote right to us. We didn’t even know them—they left Poland before I was even born. We made contact and in a little while they said if you want to come to the United States we could help you.
It took a long time to get a visa to come to the United States. From ’45 to ’49 we corresponded with them and they send us an affadavit, that we were not going to be a burden to the government. We went through the process but it took a long time until what they called the DP [Displaced Persons] law passed. So we wrote the Zuckers and we came to New York.
We came on Thanksgiving Day in 1949. We had our first Thanksgiving dinner on the boat. Late in the evening on Wednesday we came to New York. The seas were so rough—twelve days on the boat—it was November in the fall. I’ll never forget. I was very seasick and pregnant and with a small child and my husband. After so many days, sea and sky, sea and sky, we saw the panorama of New York. But it was too late to unload us. Thursday was Thanksgiving and they couldn’t unload us—it was a holiday. So they gave us the first dinner, Thanksgiving dinner, on the boat. The dinner was so delicious but we didn’t know why—we thought because they’re welcoming us to New York. We didn’t know it was Thanksgiving. Then on Friday they unloaded us and Saturday we were in Charleston.
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First Name: Bernard
Middle or Maiden Name: E.
Last Name: Powers
Date of Recording: 4/28/18
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-513
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Shared Memories, Equal Justice," with Claire Curtis, Joseph Darby, Armand Derfner, and Charles Heyward, moderated by Richard Gergel, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Memory, Monuments, and Memorials," held in Charleston SC
First Name: Shirley
Middle or Maiden Name: Feldman
Last Name: Prystowsky
Date of Recording: 3/9/03
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-274
Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Lena Solomon and brother Leon Feldman
First Name: Shirley
Middle or Maiden Name: Feldman
Last Name: Prystowsky
Date of Recording: 3/7/18
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1923
Special Collections MSS: 1035-508
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Eliot
Last Name: Rabin
Date of Recording: 5/18/13
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1942
Special Collections MSS: 1035-370
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Our Families, Our Selves," with Barry Baker (Charleston), Arthur Berger (Abbeville), Jenny Rosenberg Bouknight (Abbeville), Sylvia Weinberg Clark (Manning), Ellen Iseman (Darlington), Ernest Marcus (Abbeville, Manning, and Eutawville), Albert Nathaniel Mercer (Camden), Jane Pearlstine Meyerson (Charleston), Laura Moses (Sumter), Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg (Sumter, Charleston), and Eileen Rabin Sorota (Charleston), at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Charleston, SC
First Name: Gertrude
Last Name: Radin
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Matthew Reich, Mortimer Bernanke, Phillip Greenberg, Alexander Cohen, Harold Kornblut, and Donna Cohen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Gertrude
Middle or Maiden Name: Levy
Last Name: Radin
Date of Recording: 5/06/15
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, NY
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-419
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 2/21/01
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-250
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Essence of Judaism," with Rabbis Chezi Zionce (Conservative) and Anthony D. Holz (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 10/17/01
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-262
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Jewish View of the Christian," with Rabbis Anthony D. Holz (Reform) and Chezi Zionce (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels, held in conjunction with the Three Minister Panel, "The Christian View of the Jew," sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 10/31/04
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-286b
Interview Notes: Remarks by the rabbi and rededication of Brith Sholom Beth Israel at the Southern Jewish Historical Society and Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina joint conference, "Jewish Roots in Southern Soil," on the occasion of the 150th anniversary rededication of BSBI
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 8/14/97
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-163
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 9/23/97
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-168
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 11/2/99
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-227
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "The Future Needs of the Charleston Jewish Community," with Rabbis Edward M. Friedman (Conservative) and Anthony D. Holz (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 11/18/99
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-232
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Judaism But Been Afraid to Ask," with Rabbis Chaim Lindenblatt and Achiya DeLouya, sponsored by Brith Sholom Beth Israel Sisterhood and Addlestone Hebrew Academy
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 2/22/00
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-237
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Intermarriage and Conversion," with Rabbis Anthony D. Holz (Reform) and Edward M. Friedman (Conservative), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 8/17/00
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-244
Interview Notes: Translation and commentary on Rabbi Hirsch Zvi Margolis Levine's notebook
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 9/6/00
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-245
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Prayer and Women: Three Jewish Viewpoints," with Rabbis Chezi Zionce (Conservative) and Anthony D. Holz (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 3/11/04
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-278
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 3/30/04
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-282
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Mitzvah as Commandment," with Rabbis Chezi Zionce (Conservative) and Robert Seigel (Reform), one in a series of Three Rabbi Panels sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, College of Charleston
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 7/1/04
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-284a
Interview Notes: Translation and commentary on Rabbi Hirsch Zvi Margolis Levine's notebook
First Name: David
Middle or Maiden Name: Jacob
Last Name: Radinsky
Date of Recording: 7/20/04
Place of Birth: Seattle, WA
Year of Birth: 1940
Special Collections MSS: 1035-284b
Interview Notes: Translation and commentary on Rabbi Hirsch Zvi Margolis Levine's notebook
First Name: RachelMiddle or Maiden Name: MarlaLast Name: RaisinDate of Recording: 7/16/96Place of Birth: Charleston, SCSpecial Collections MSS: 1035-83Interview Notes: Interview with her sister Mordenai HirschOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: JosephMiddle or Maiden Name: DavidLast Name: ReadDate of Recording: 9/22/96Place of Birth: Pinopolis, SCYear of Birth: 1904Special Collections MSS: 1035-90Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
[My father] had a store that was a block long. He sold shoes and clothing, groceries. He had a mule yard, a yard where he sold mules. Papa had an interest in a cotton gin. He also sold coffins. There were no undertakers in Moncks Corner at that time. I remember playing in the coffins, Paul and myself. We had a colored man by the name of Mac Makelvy—he was a big man and a strong man, but very superstitious. And one day Paul and I got into a coffin back in the warehouse which was attached to the store with a sort of a platform from the back door of the store to the back door of the warehouse where the coffins where. And we got in that and when Mac came in to get a sack of sugar of something, we raised up [laughing] and started moaning and he almost died
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It was a peculiar business. We did as much business on a Saturday as the rest of the week. All the rest put together. It was a nice business. We were very crowded. Right now our trades are at their smallest. In those days you wouldn’t know it. On a Saturday, we would have maybe thirty or forty people in the store at one time, buying twenty-five cent stocking, fifty cent blouses, two dollars and ninety-five cent overalls. Prices like that. Twenty-five cent cloth. We had lots of cloths for twenty-five cents. Yellow homespun was ten cents, and a good quality, four-yard sheeting.
The hours were long. On Saturday we would close at twelve midnight. Open at eight in the morning. During the week, we’d be eight until nine.
We never lived over the store until [Dad] went broke and had to sell that house and we moved up over the store on the third floor. We had an elevator, a freight elevator that took us up and down. I used to enjoy doing that.
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Papa’s name actually was Frank Redt, R-E-D-T. And that’s the name he used when he came to this country. And the ladies of Pinopolis were teaching him English that he never got fully, but he could make himself understood, believe me. And they kept telling him when he signed his name Frank Redt that that’s not how you spell Read, ’cause they thought that was his European accent. And he finally ended up by going before a judge and having his name legally changed to Read.
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Most Europeans, if they are able, want to have land—they are deprived of it in Europe. Behrman said there is plenty of land down here. I’m pretty sure that’s how he got Papa to come down. Otherwise, we probably would have been buying Long Island instead of South Carolina.
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First Name: Matthew
Last Name: Reich
Date of Recording: 11/4/12
Place of Birth: Ohio
Year of Birth: 1978
Special Collections MSS: 1035-365
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Stories From the Pee Dee: Short Takes by Community Members," with Mortimer Bernanke, Phillip Greenberg, Gertrude Radin, Alexander Cohen, Harold Kornblut, and Donna Cohen, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference in Florence, SC, on the occasion of Beth Israel Congregation's 100th anniversary
First Name: Alan
Middle or Maiden Name: J.
Last Name: Reyner, Jr.
Date of Recording: 5/02/15
Place of Birth: Columbia, SC
Year of Birth: 1950
Special Collections MSS: 1035-417
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, " Notes From the Battlefield and the Home Front," with Joseph Mazo Butwin, Gale Siegel Messerman, Herb Novit, and Edward Poliakoff at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting "GI Jews: SC Goes to War" in Charleston, SC
First Name: SydneyMiddle or Maiden Name: Solomon YaschikLast Name: RichmanDate of Recording: 8/25/14Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1934Special Collections MSS: 1035-404Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: ZerlineMiddle or Maiden Name: Levy WilliamsLast Name: RichmondDate of Recording: 6/17/96Place of Birth: Summerville, SCYear of Birth: 1898Special Collections MSS: 1035-79Interview Notes: Interview with her son Arthur WIlliams and her daughter Betty GendelmanOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Abbie
Last Name: Rickoff
Date of Recording: 10/23/16
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1983
Special Collections MSS: 1035-463
Interview Notes: Presentation: downtown Greenville walking tour with Barry Nocks at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Looking Back and Moving Forward: Greenville's Congregation Beth Israel, Building Community Since 1916," in honor of Beth Israel's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of an historical marker
First Name: MitchellLast Name: RifkinDate of Recording: 5/4/96Place of Birth: Aiken, SCYear of Birth: 1944Special Collections MSS: 1035-069Interview Notes: Presentations by Sunday school students and performances by guest singer Gloria Greenbaum and the men’s chorus, followed by speakers Nelson A. Danish, Mitchell Rifkin, Rosalee Rinehart, Fred Schneider, Rose Seldin, Steve Surasky, and Dianne Wolf on Founders' Day during the 75th anniversary celebration of Adath Yeshurun Synagogue in Aiken, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Richard
Middle or Maiden Name: W.
Last Name: Riley
Date of Recording: 10/23/16
Place of Birth: Greenville, SC
Year of Birth: 1933
Special Collections MSS: 1035-462
Interview Notes: Panel discussion, "Max Heller: The Father of Modern Greenville," with Steven Heller, Trude Heller, and Susan Heller Moses, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Looking Back and Moving Forward: Greenville's Congregation Beth Israel, Building Community Since 1916," in honor of Beth Israel's 100th anniversary and the unveiling of an historical marker
First Name: RosaleeMiddle or Maiden Name: BergerLast Name: RinehartDate of Recording: 5/4/96Special Collections MSS: 1035-069Interview Notes: Presentations by Sunday school students and performances by guest singer Gloria Greenbaum and the men’s chorus, followed by speakers Nelson A. Danish, Mitchell Rifkin, Rosalee Rinehart, Fred Schneider, Rose Seldin, Steve Surasky, and Dianne Wolf on Founders' Day during the 75th anniversary celebration of Adath Yeshurun Synagogue in Aiken, SCOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Henry
Middle or Maiden Name: W.
Last Name: Rittenberg
Date of Recording: 12/21/96
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-104
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Henry
Middle or Maiden Name: W.
Last Name: Rittenberg
Date of Recording: 9/20/11
Place of Birth: Charleston, SC
Year of Birth: 1918
Special Collections MSS: 1035-350
Interview Notes: Interview with his wife Sara Rittenberg
First Name: Mary
Middle or Maiden Name: Lourie
Last Name: Rittenberg
Date of Recording: 12/04/14
Place of Birth: St. George, SC
Year of Birth: 1927
Special Collections MSS: 1035-411
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Mary
Middle or Maiden Name: Lourie
Last Name: Rittenberg
Date of Recording: 12/08/12
Place of Birth: St. George, SC
Year of Birth: 1927
Special Collections MSS: 1035-424
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Sara
Middle or Maiden Name: Zucker
Last Name: Rittenberg
Date of Recording: 4/7/98
Place of Birth: Lublin, Poland
Year of Birth: 1919
Special Collections MSS: 1035-184
Interview Notes: Interview with her daughter Harriet Steinert
First Name: Sara
Middle or Maiden Name: Zucker
Last Name: Rittenberg
Date of Recording: 9/20/11
Place of Birth: Lublin, Poland
Year of Birth: 1919
Special Collections MSS: 1035-350
Interview Notes: Interview with her husband Henry Rittenberg
First Name: SidneyLast Name: Rittenberg, Sr.Date of Recording: 6/17/13Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-371Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SidneyLast Name: Rittenberg, Sr.Date of Recording: 6/19/13Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-372Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SidneyLast Name: Rittenberg, Sr.Date of Recording: 7/27/13Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-397Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: SidneyLast Name: Rittenberg, Sr.Date of Recording: 10/27/13Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1921Special Collections MSS: 1035-398Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Annie
Last Name: Rivers
Date of Recording: 10/20/18
Place of Birth: Myrtle Beach, SC
Year of Birth: 1987
Special Collections MSS: 1035-528
Interview Notes: Panel Discussion, "Strategies and Resources for Survival," with Rebecca Engel, Noah Levine, Anita Rosenberg, Dale Rosengarten, Jay Schwartz, moderated by Mark Swick, at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina meeting, "Endangered Congregations: Strategies for Survival," held in Sumter and Camden, SC
First Name: Caba
Middle or Maiden Name: Earle
Last Name: Rivkin
Date of Recording: 5/3/95
Place of Birth: St. Petersburg, Russia
Year of Birth: 1904
Special Collections MSS: 1035-17
Interview Notes: Interview
First Name: Roselen "Roz"Last Name: RivkinDate of Recording: 12/25/15Place of Birth: RomaniaYear of Birth: 1926Special Collections MSS: 1035-456Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Lynn
Last Name: Robertson
Date of Recording: 5/18/19
Place of Birth: Miami, FL
Year of Birth: 1947
Special Collections MSS: 1035-546
Interview Notes: Presentation, "A Store at Every Crossroads: A Curator's Talk," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina spring meeting, "Revisiting the Past and Envisioning the Future: JHSSC Celebrates its 25th Anniversary," held in Charleston
First Name: KlydeLast Name: RobinsonDate of Recording: 8/26/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-165Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral HistoryRelated Stories:
I had occasion in, let’s see, it would be about 1980, I was holding court in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and the General Assembly had just built a brand new building in Columbia which was dedicated to and named after Senator Rembert Dennis, a state senator for many years, who was from Moncks Corner. I guess the entire city of Moncks Corner had observed that as a holiday, and I adjourned court for the day and went to Columbia for the dedication ceremony with three other fellows. Coming back, the fellow who was driving the car, said he was tired of I-26 and he was going to take the old way back to Moncks Corner. Coming back, he went through the first town that had any familiarity to me which was St. Matthews, South Carolina, because I had relatives that used to live in St. Matthews. I think you interviewed Mortie Cohen. When I was six years old, I took my first train ride and went to St. Matthews to visit. The next city we came to was Elloree, and I saw a sign that said “City Hall” and I asked the driver to stop. I said, “You all have got to give me ten minutes or so.” I said, “All of my life I’ve heard that my grandfather was mayor of Elloree in 1896 but I’ve never seen anything pertaining to it. No documentation or anything.” I went into City Hall and there was a young girl working there and I asked where would I find some old records. I told her what I was looking for and she said, “Well, look upstairs. We’ve got a room full of filing cabinets with records.” So I went upstairs and, sure enough, they had a room full of filing cabinets but the last date they had on them was 1930. I came down and, explaining to her further what I was really looking for, and by that time, the chief of police came in and I explained to him and he said, “Oh, Mrs. So-and-so would know all about it.” So I said, “Well, how do I find Mrs. So-and-so?” He said, “Well, go down such-and-such a distance,” and he gave me directions which were reasonably complicated and so I said, “Listen, Chief, you’ve got to do me a favor. I’m going to get in your car and these fellows can follow me in their car and you’ve got to take me to this lady’s house because I may not find it. It’s the first time I’ve been in Elloree and probably the last time I’ll be in Elloree.”
And he took us and we kept knocking and knocking and knocking on the door and there was no answer. So I said, “Damn it, I’ll never get back. I’ll never see this lady.” We started to leave. About that time, we heard a lot of noise, maybe a hundred yards away in the back of the house. So I said, “Let’s go back and see what’s going on.” So we walked back there. There was this lady. I would say she weighed about ninety pounds and my best recollection, she was about ninety-two years of age. This was in the heat of the summer and she had in her hand a saw. She was sawing off the limb of a tree. I interrupted her and I saw she was a little perplexed. She couldn’t quite understand what I was saying and she said, “Come on back to the house.” We all went back to her house and sat in her living room. And before she did anything, she got us all a glass of iced tea and she put on a hearing aid and she said, now I can hear you. I turn my hearing aid off, I take it off, because these cars and trucks going up the highway make so much noise I can’t stand it. So she put her hearing aid on and I again explained to her that my mother was born in Elloree and that my grandfather supposedly had been mayor of Elloree and she said, “Who was your mother? Mary or Eva?” I said, “Eva.” She said, “I remember the day she was born.” She said they lived right next door to us. She said, “Come here.” She took me out to her back yard and showed me there was a path that went from her house to my grandparents’ house, which was no longer there but the path was still there and she said, “I remember the day she was born.” She said how excited we all were. She took out a book and showed me where my grandfather was in the Volunteer Fire Department, a charter member, and was mayor and so forth, and she even loaned me the book with a firm commitment that I would return it within two weeks.
I tried every way in the world possible to get a copy and in the two weeks I mailed the book back to the chief of police, who was to return it to this lady and I assume he did. Unfortunately, I never did get a copy and the next time I got to Elloree was a number of years later and she had passed away and her daughters, who were living, had no idea in the world what happened to her book. All her possessions were scattered and she had several children. They all left South Carolina except one and I went to the library in Elloree and they don’t have a copy and I haven’t found anybody in Elloree that does have a copy. I’ve got a couple of books on the history and their versions do not bear out what this original book that she had did. I think they’ve got my grandfather listed as mayor in 1902 instead of 1896 or something like that and it doesn’t say anything about the Volunteer Fire Department. It’s not as authentic a history of Elloree as this earlier book was. But one of these days, maybe I’ll get a copy of it.
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Bicycle businesses as most businesses in Charleston, particularly in those days, they handled bicycles and toys. You’re familiar with Toys-R-Us today? Well, that’s how the bicycle shop was. Various toys and dolls and so forth were stacked from the ground to the ceiling. In the months of November and December they did a bigger business than the rest of the ten months of the year. Everybody in the family worked at the store in December. Even when I became the United States District Attorney, and I became a Circuit Court Judge, come December 15th, I would take leave, vacation time, from those positions, and go down to the store and work.
Everybody worked in the store. Nobody got paid a salary or anything of that nature. Whatever we needed, we went to the register and took, no questions asked. No accounting had to be given. We’d go on a trip, we took some money, Dad gave us some money. That’s what we did.
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First Name: KlydeLast Name: RobinsonDate of Recording: 9/5/97Place of Birth: Charleston, SCYear of Birth: 1922Special Collections MSS: 1035-166Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Stuart
Last Name: Rockoff
Date of Recording: 5/18/14
Place of Birth: Fort Worth, TX
Year of Birth: 1969
Special Collections MSS: 1035-396
Interview Notes: Presentation, "Looking Away from Dixie: The Changing Face of the Jewish South," at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina conference celebrating the Society's 20th anniversary
First Name: SamLast Name: RogolDate of Recording: 7/11/95Place of Birth: Darlington, SCYear of Birth: 1914Special Collections MSS: 1035-29Interview Notes: InterviewOral History Link: View Oral History First Name: Sam
Last Name: Rogol
Date of Recording: 3/6/99
Place of Birth: Darlington, SC
Year of Birth: 1914