The Oral History Project is a key part of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education’s mission to preserve and present the history of Oregon’s Jewish community. The current project expands and augments the Oregon Jewish Oral History and Archive collection assembled by Shirley Tanzer in the 1970s and the Holocaust survivor and witness interviews conducted by the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center from 1994 until 2012. We aim to collect a comprehensive range of oral histories chronicling the Jewish experience from community members across the state. OJMCHE currently has over 700 interviews and continues to add to the collection with its ongoing project.
In 2014 OJMCHE received a grant from the Oregon Heritage Commission to provide online access to the collection. Our goal over the next two years is to post all of the Oral Histories in our collection. Please check back regularly as we continue to add interviews. Feel free to use the information in these interviews, but please use the following citation: Transcript, (Name of Interviewee) Oral History Interview, (Date of Interview), by (Name of Interviewer), Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. Online: <web address of cited transcript>. (Date of download).
For more information about the project or interviewees, to conduct onsite research, to be interviewed, or reproduction permission contact the Archivist Alisha Babbstein at ababbstein@ojmche.org.
We extend our gratitude to the Oregon Heritage Commission for their support of the development of this webpage.
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Bernice Feldman 1896-1985
In 1916, Bernice met Henry Feldman in New York when she was 19. They subsequently married and moved to Portland. Henry’s parents were born in Germany and settled in Portland when they immigrated to the United States. He had four siblings, all of whom lived in Portland: Joseph, Henry, Gus and Elise (who married Herbert …
Leon Feldstein 1901-1985
Leon Feldstein was born on February 26, 1901 in Bucharest, Romania. He immigrated to America in 1908 with his mother, grandmother, and sister to join his father Adolf in Portland. Adolf had come six months earlier because, as a Jew in Romania, he was unable to support his family. He took a job in Portland where …
George Fendel b. 1942
George Fendel was born on August 29, 1942 in Portland, Oregon to Joseph and Gladys (Lieberman) Fendel. The family lived in Grant Park. George and his older sister Betty Lynn (Menashe) and younger brother Michael Richard attended Fernwood Grade School and Grant High School. Their father co-owned Standard TV and Appliance in SE Portland and their …
Joseph Findling 1928-2019
Joseph Findling was born in Cologne, Germany on June 21, 1928 to Etla and Wolf David Findling. He and his four siblings was raised in an observant family, each attending a Jewish school until 1938 when all the Jewish children in his school were expelled. In October 1938, Joseph’s father was deported to Poland and Joseph …
David Finkelstein 1895-1979
David Finkelstein was born in 1895 in Chaterisk, Ukraine. He immigrated to the United States in 1913, and settled in south Portland, Oregon where he already had a sister living. He worked with relatives at a junk shop upon his arrival. He lived close to the Neighborhood House, where he learned English and went to …
Bazil Freedman b. 1942
Bazil Freedman was born in Cape Town, South Africa on February 6, 1942 to Michael and Bessie Freedman. He grew up in a religious household in the suburbs of Cape Town, attending private schools and afternoon cheder. Bazil’s father died when he was 11 years old and his mother remarried when he was 18. He received …
Harry Friedman 1918-2015
Harry Friedman, the youngest of four children, was born in Warsaw, Poland on August 7, 1918. He attended Jewish school and then gymnasium in Warsaw, eventually working in his parents’ wholesale hat business when he graduated. He describes his family as averagely Jewish, observing all holidays and keeping kosher at home. When the war started …
Jack Fruchtengarten b. 1924
Jack Fruchtengarten was born on August 28th, 1924 in Opole Lubaelski, Poland. He was one of five children in an observant family in a small town. He was educated through seventh grade there, and also sent to cheder for a Jewish education. But after the Nazis invaded Poland Jack and his brother were told to run. …
Beverly Weiner Galen 1927-2022
Beverly Galen was born on February 17, 1927 in New York City to Beatrice and George Weiner. The family lived in Brooklyn when she was a child and then followed her paternal grandfather, Louis Weiner, first to Los Angeles and then to Portland, Oregon. Louis worked at Modish Coat and Suit and got a job for …
Morrie Galen b. 1927
Morris Galen was born in 1927 in Portland, Oregon to Isaac and Ruth Galen. His father arrived at Ellis Island with his family on September 3, 1907 from Kamenicz, Russia and came to Portland by train through Canada. The family name in Russia had been Matiches. It was changed at Ellis Island to Goldstein and Morrie …
Hilde Geisen 1924-2017
Hilde Geisen was born to Robert and Frieda Geisenheimer on May 28, 1924 in Cologne, Germany. She lost most of her family when they were scattered and murdered in various concentration camps. Hilde herself was imprisoned as a teenager in Terezin, in Czechoslovakia. She made lifelong friends with an “adoptive mother” there, and traveled with her …
Sadie Cohen Geller 1900-1995
Sadie Cohen Geller was born in Stolin, Russia (now Belarus) in the year 1900. She recalls very little about the Old Country – only that her grandfather was a grain dealer – because her family relocated to New York in 1908. Her father had arrived a few years prior, and Sadie subsequently came to join him …
Belle Bloom Gevurtz 1895-1996
Belle Bloom Gevurtz was born to Max Blum (Bloom) and Mary Nachamovitch in Taunton, Massachusetts on July 7, 1895. The family moved shortly thereafter to Waterbury, Connecticut before moving to San Francisco in 1906 where her father ran a shoe store. They survived the great earthquake but they lost their house and her father’s store. They …
Harry Gevurtz 1897-1986
Harry Gevurtz was born in Portland on January 8, 1897 to Isaac and Cecelia Gerson Gevurtz. His parents met in Oregon and were married by Rabbi Jacob Bloch at Temple Beth Israel in 1986. He had two brothers: Louis and Milton. He also had twin sisters: Lillian (Brandt) and Fanny (Crohn). He went to Ladd Elementary School, Lincoln High …
Robert Glasgow b. 1944
Robert Glasgow was born on November 13, 1944 in Portland, Oregon. His parents are Joseph Glasgow and Lena (Lee) Friedman Glasgow Schiff, and his siblings are Sara Glasgow Cogan, Boruk Glasgow, and William Glasgow. Joseph was born in Lithuania, and Lena was born in Brooklyn, New York; they came to Portland to work in the …
Harry Glickman 1924-2020
Harry Glickman was born in Portland on May 13, 1924. He was raised in South Portland by his mother, Bessie Glickman after his parents divorced when he was five years old. He attended Shattuck Grade School and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1941. When Harry’s mother remarried and moved to Seattle, Harry chose to …
Emma Bader Glickman 1905-1992
Emma Bader Glickman was born March 23, 1905 in Portland, Oregon. Emma’s father lived in Dublin, Ireland and Winnipeg, Canada before moving to Portland. Her mother came from Germany and lived in a number of places in the US before settling in Seattle. She eventually moved to Portland, where met and married Emma’s father in …
Diana Galante Golden 1922-2013
Diana’s large Sephardic family included her father, a merchant who owned a dry goods store, her mother, two sisters, one brother, her grandmother, and an aunt, who was blind. They were part of a Sephardic Jewish community of about 10,000 living in one section of Rhodes. Diana’s older sister and brother lived in Morocco. In …
Gersham Goldstein 1938-2020
Gersham Goldstein, prominent Portland tax lawyer and active member of the Jewish community, was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 5, 1938. After matriculating at City College of New York with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1959, he attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1962. …
Pauline Goldstein b. 1939
Pauline Goldstein was born in 1939 in Hillsboro, Oregon. After she graduated from college, she moved to San Francisco. She met her future husband, Gersham Goldstein, in 1963 in Salem, Oregon. She was in California for two years before she married Gersham, after which the couple moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. She converted to Judaism while in …
Edith Schnitzer Goodman 1912-2005
Edith Schnitzer Goodman was the daughter of Sam and Rose Schnitzer. Her father started his life in Oregon as a junk peddler and ended it as the owner of the vast Schnitzer Steel Corporation. Edith had six siblings: brothers Manuel, Morris, Gilbert, Harold and Leonard and sister Molly Schnitzer (Levine). She was a graduate of Lincoln …
Rosalie Horenstein Goodman (1929-2023)
Rosalie Horenstein Goodman, a native Portlander, was born to Mike and Sadie Horenstein on February 5, 1929. She had a sister, Lorraine Lippoff, who was four years older. Her parents were born in Russia and emigrated to America in 1912, first to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania then to Portland, Oregon to join other family members. Rosalie grew …
Alfred Goodwin 1914-1993
Alfred Goodwin was born Alfred Gutmann in Karlsruhe Baden Germany, on August 4, 1914. He was the second son and youngest child of David and Anna (Bissinger) Gutmann. Alfred immigrated to the United States from Hamburg, Germany on May 20, 1936. The destination was San Francisco, CA. From there, he travelled to Portland, Oregon, where he …
Lottie Hirsch Goodwin 1916-2006
Lottie Hirsch Goodwin was born Lieselotte Veronika Hirsch in Karlsruhe Baden, Germany, on November 20, 1916. She was the third and youngest child of Heinrich and Jenny Hirsch. Heinrich, later Henry Higdon, owned a factory that made military uniforms for the First World War and, after war ended with demilitarization, for the railroad and postal service. Prior …
Inge Graetz 1915-2005
Inge Graetz was born on April 2, 1915 in Berlin, Germany, the only child of Juljus and Selma (Leiser) Tzudova. Inge was raised among a large extended family, with many aunts, uncles, and cousins. She attended both a Jewish day school and a Jewish high school, and she was a member of several Jewish clubs. …
Mitch Greenlick 1935-2020
Merwyn “Mitch” Greenlick was born and raised in Northwest Detroit, in a vibrant Jewish community. He went to McCarroll Elementary and Central High School—which was about 80% Jewish— then Wayne State University for pharmacy degrees (undergraduate and Masters), and finally got a doctorate in pharmacy administration at the University of Michigan. Growing up, Mitch worked …
Peter Greg b. 1925
Peter Greg was born Peter Guggenheimer on March 26, 1925 in Berlin, Germany. He was the only child of a Jewish father and a Christian mother. Peter attended grade school and gymnasium in Berlin until 1942 when all of the Jewish students were expelled from public German schools. Although the pogroms and the war made …
Rose Hassin 1924-2017
Rose Hassin was born on August 26, 1924 in Vienna, Austria. She had an older sister, Bobby, and a twin sister named Amy. Her father was in the furniture business and ran his own factory. The family was comfortable, and spent summers vacationing abroad. This all changed when Hitler rose to power. Rose and her siblings …
Milt Hasson 1920-2014
Milt Hasson was born in 1920 at St. Vincent Hospital in Northwest Portland. He grew up in South Portland where he attended Shattuck School and Lincoln High School, which he says had a large Jewish student body with some Italian students. He graduated in 1937. He was pre-med at University of Portland, a Catholic School with …
Sanford Heilner 1885-1978
Sanford Heilner was born in Baker, Oregon around 1885 to German immigrant parents Sigmund and Clara. They had four children: Joseph, Jess, Mildred and Sanford (he was the youngest). Sanford’s father Sigmund owned a grocery store in Baker. When two of Clara’s cousins – Gerson and Bert Neuberger – joined the family in Oregon, they …
Helen Herner b. 1932
Helen Herner was born on June 6, 1932 in San Jose, California. She was the second child of Dina Gevertz Ball and Max Ball, both immigrants from Austria/Hungary. Her father was a tailor who immigrated to Oakland, California in 1920 and married Dina Gevertz there. Helen’s brother Paul was born in 1922 and the family …
Gunter Hiller b. 1928
Gunter Hiller was born an only child in 1928 to working class parents outside of Berlin, Germany. He attended school briefly in Berlin before his parents moved the family to Amsterdam in the summer of 1938. Gunter was in public school in Amsterdam, but only briefly; the pogroms forced him and all of his other …
Irwin Holzman 1930-2020
Irwin Burton Holzman was born in Portland, Oregon on January 4, 1930 to Lena and Jerome Holzman. His paternal great grandparents arrived in Oregon in 1859 and settled in Baker first, and later in Albany. His mother’s side, too had been in the west a long time. His mother was born in Washington state. Jerome …
Rabbi Yitz Husbands-Hankin b. 1947
Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 27, 1947. He was raised in the predominantly Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and grew up very close to his grandparents, whom he recalls as a positive formative influence on him growing up. Unfortunately, his father suffered from schizophrenia and spent a lot of …
Karen Irwin b. 1924
Karen Irwin (nee Evelyn Aronson) was born on July 4, 1924 in Halberstadt Germany to Franziska (Emanuel) and Félix Aronson. Franziska was a chemist, born in Hedemuenden and grew up in Kassel. Félix was a businessman whose family came from Konigsberg, Prussia and grew up in Paris. Karen had no siblings. Karen’s parents moved several times …