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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Shirley Berenson Fromer Mark 1923-2019
Shirley Mark was born in Portland on July 4, 1923 to Max and Florence Casler Berenson, Polish and Russian immigrants, respectively. She had three older brothers, Milton, Bernard, and Norman. who were all grown and out of the house for most of her childhood. The family kept a religious home, on SW 15th Street and …
Arthur Markewitz 1908-1984
Arthur Markewitz was born in Portland June 2, 1908 to Milton and Frances Lachman Markewitz, and passed away on November 29, 1984. His father, Milton, was born in San Francisco, where his own father worked as a coppersmith in California and then came up to Portland through Jacksonville. Milton was a stock (paper) cutter for …
Ernest Markewitz 1903-1966
Ernest Markewitz was born in Portland, Oregon, on January 11, 1903 to Milton and Frances Markewitz. His family had been in the United States for several generations. His parents were born in Portland, and met and married there. They had two sons, Ernest and his brother Arthur. Ernest’s father Milton co-founded the Bushong printing company, where …
Chella Velt Meekcoms Kryszek 1928-2013
Rochella “Chella” Velt was born in The Hague, Holland on May 15, 1928. When she was five years old, her mother died, so her father was left to take care of Chella and her older sister, Flora. Her father was concerned that they weren’t going to get the education they needed, so he decided to send …
Solomon David Menashe 1925-2020
Solomon David Menashe was born on November 17, 1925 to David and Joanna Capeloto Menashe. Sol’s father had immigrated from the Isle Rhodes in 1914 and his mother was from Mecina, Turkey. They married in 1924 and opened a soda fountain on the corner of Broadway and Taylor. The family joined the Sephardic synagogue, Ahavath …
Elizabeth Menashe
Elizabeth Menashe (nee McBride) was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, to parents Ruth and Jack McBride. She had two siblings: Jerry and Margaret. When Elizabeth was two, her family moved to Spokane, Washington, where she spend her childhood. The family relocated again, this time to Bend, Oregon, when Elizabeth was entering high school. After graduation, …
Paul R. Meyer 1925-2020
Paul Meyer was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 12, 1925 to Abraham and Adele (Rosenfeld) Meyer. Theirs was a politically active and educated family. Adele, born in Harlem, graduated from Hunter College in 1919 with degrees in German and music. She performed opera in synagogues and churches. Abraham immigrated from Russia in 1906 …
Jim Meyer 1936-2021
Jim Meyer was born in Boston in 1936, lived in New Hampshire until the age of 12, and then moved back to Boston and attended high school there. He eventually attended Harvard University, where he met his wife Lora, and moved out to Portland with her in 1960. Jim bought an industrial supply company, and …
Alan Miller b. 1939
Alan Miller was born in 1939 to Harold and Edith (Ottenheimer) Miller. The Miller family had been in Oregon since 1886 when Henry Miller started Miller’s Hat Company, which became Miller’s Clothing Company, and then Miller’s For Men. The store closed in 1987 after 100 years in business in several locations in downtown Portland. Alan’s grandfather, …
Anne Miller 1912-1997
Anne Bloch Miller was born in 1912 in Cologne, Germany. She had a sister, Hilda, and a brother, Helmut. Her mother died when she was seven years old, and her father remarried three years later. Anne married her husband, Hans Mueller, on February 22, 1935 and they lived in Essen, just outside of Cologne, where …
John Miller 1907-1983
John H. Miller was born on February 18, 1907 in Neunkirchen, Germany the eldest of three children of Simon and Flora (Kahn) Mueller. His brother Walter (born in 1908) and Greta (Salomon born in 1910) followed. Their parents Simon and Flora ran a men’s clothing store in Düsseldorf. John was educated as far as high school. …
Charlotte Mitchell 1916-2003
Charlotte Mitchell was born Lotte Wieland in Gleiwitz, Oberschlesien (Germany) on July 20, 1916. She had three sisters: Ruth, Lora and Hilde. Charlotte attended school through the eighth grade, after which time Nazi pogroms made it impossible for her to continue. Her sisters were fortunate enough to emigrate to Palestine before the pogroms were enacted. …
Jay Moskovitz b. 1950
Jay Moskovitz was born November 29, 1950, in the Bronx borough of New York. His parents were Holocaust survivors. His mother had been in Auschwitz and his father served in the Hungarian army. They married in 1945 in their hometown near Usti nad Labem in Czechoslovakia. His sister, Sylvia, was born in 1946. The family came …
Michael Munk b. 1934
Michael Munk was born July 5, 1934 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he lived with his younger sister and his parents. Both his parents grew up in Kutná Hora, Czechoslovakia. His Catholic mother was the editor of a women’s magazine and worked with refugees. His Jewish father managed a chain of department stores called Teta. His …
William Naito 1925-1996
William “Bill” Naito was born in Portland on September 16, 1925. His parents, Hide and Fukiye, had emigrated in 1912 from Japan, and Hide ran a successful retail and wholesale business. Bill liked to remind people that, because no one would hire Japanese men for a “real” job, they had to start businesses on their own. …
Madeline Brill Nelson 1924-2017
Madeline Brill Nelson was born on May 8, 1924 in Portland, Oregon. She grew up in her grandfather’s house on SW Montgomery Drive and Jackson Street, attended Hillside School and Catlin Gabel in Portland and Stanford University. She was a bio-chemistry major and continued in college despite her engagement to Roscoe Nelson in 1942, whom she …
Leah Nepom 1928-2020
Leah Tkatch Nepom was born in Fredonia, Kansas, on February 29, 1928 (a leap year birthday). Her parents, Chaya and Yelic (Joe), were immigrants from Russia. They landed first in Illinois, but upon hearing of cheap land for sale, relocated to Fredonia, Kansas, where Leah and both of her sisters, Bessy and Edna, were born. She …
Patricia Neuberger b. 1947
Patricia Neuberger’s father, Gerson “Gert” was born September 27, 1914 in Germany on his parents’ livestock farm. Her mother, Erna, was born September 15, 1914 in Vienna and worked as a seamstress at a woman’s clothing store. Gert immigrated to Baker, Oregon in 1934 when he was about 20 years old, although Neubergers had been in Baker since …
Jerome Newman b. 1934
Jerome “Jerry” Newman was born to Jennie and Alex Newman in Portland, Oregon at the Wilcox Memorial Hospital on August 15, 1934. Jerry and his brother Simon were first generation Americans. Jerry’s father was born in Poland, coming to Portland after his bar mitzvah, and his mother immigrated to the United States from Russia. As a …
Jeanne Mittleman Newmark b. 1930
Jeanne Mittleman Newmark was born in Portland, Oregon on April 10, 1930 to Helen and Harry Mittleman, the youngest of four girls. Her sisters were Marian, Charlotte, and Babette. Helen and Harry Mittleman were both born in Nebraska in 1900 and, after marrying, moved to Castle Rock, Washington, where Harry owned a grocery store. When …
Eugene Nudelman Sr. 1906-1994
Eugene Nudelman Sr. was born in 1906 in Portland, Oregon. He is the grandson of Joseph Nudelman who brought an agricultural colony from Russia in the 1880s to start an agrarian collective farm in North Dakota. When that farm failed the group moved to Nevada and then California before arriving in Portland, where there were …
Martha Horenstein Olshen 1921-1983
Martha Olshen was one of seven children born to Hyman (Herman) and Mishka Horenstein. Her parents had immigrated from Russia in 1905. They were well-known in Portland for the numbers of other Russian families they managed to bring to America. Hyman Horenstein worked as a barber and founded the Oregon Barber College at SW Second and …
Ella Ostroff 1932-2020
Ella Ostroff was born in Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary on June 4, 1932 to Henry and Helen Weiss. She had three older sisters (Magda, Lily, and Olga) and one brother. Ella lost both her parents and her brother in the Holocaust; her father was deported early on to a labor camp where he died, and her mother and …
Gordon Pearlman b. 1942
Gordon Pearlman was born in Des Moines, Iowa on December 20, 1942. His father’s family had come from Poland to reunite with family when his father was three years old. Gordon grew up in the Conservative community in Des Moines, very active in the USY (United Synagogue Youth) movement. He studied theater at the University of …
Mary Peizner b. 1930
Mary Peizner was born in Portland, Oregon on January 4th, 1930 to Ben and Mercada Babbani. Mary was the youngest of four daughters. Her sisters were Jean, Joy, and Lee. Her parents were Turkish and came to Portland during the Turkish Revolution from Istanbul. Her father Ben helped to build the old Ahavath Achim synagogue. …
Augusta Kirshner Reinhardt 1907-2005
Augusta “Gussie” Reinhardt was born on December 31, 1907 in Salem, Oregon to Oscar and Anna Kirshner of Odessa, Russia; her siblings were Ora Kirshner Goodman, Hyman Kirshner, and Isadore Kirshner. She graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland in 1925, majored in physical education at the University of Washington, and received her master’s degree in …
Helga Bernstein Relation 1924-2004
Helga Bernstein Relation was born in Berlin, Germany, on February 24, 1924. She attended a public primary school and then a private Catholic school for lyceum (high school). Helga’s father owned and operated a fabric wholesale business in Berlin. He worked primarily with silks, satins and velvets. Her mother was a respected seamstress in their community. Although …
Eva Simons Rickles b. 1927
Eva Simons Rickles was born on November 13, 1927 in Berlin, Germany to Dolf and Marie Elizabeth Simons. Her mother was an economist for the German government after the First World War and her father was a dermatologist in private practice. The family escaped from Berlin as the Nazis were becoming more and more powerful. They …
Arthur Robert b. 1920
Arthur Robert (Ro-behr) was born September 6, 1920 in La Broque, France, a small village near Alsace, to Marguerite and Arthur Robert. He had two sisters: Alice (Alis) and Genevieve (Genviev). When Arthur was still in high school, his father founded the Volontaires de la Mort, or the Volunteers of Death, a French Resistance organization …
Laurie David Rogoway b. 1944
Laurie David Rogoway was born on February 22, 1944 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, where she was raised and educated. She moved to Portland, Oregon upon marrying her husband Burt Rogoway in 1964 and raised her family in Southwest Portland. Laurie and Burt originally lived in Southeast Portland, nearer to relatives. They adopted their first daughter, Susanne …
Rabbi Emanuel Rose 1932-2020
Rabbi Emanuel Rose was born in Jamaica, New York on October 20, 1931, to Abraham and Mary Rose into a family lineage boasting fifteen generations of rabbis. He received his ordination from the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1957 and served for three years at Congregation Emanuel in Manhattan before moving to Portland, Oregon …
William Rosenbaum 1916-2017
William Rosenbaum was born in 1916 in Omaha, Nebraska, and lived in what he describes as a Jewish ghetto. His parents were clothing merchants. He met his wife, Goldie, at an AZA convention in Omaha. They had three children — Bob, Tom and Jean —and they all had medical careers. Bill got his undergraduate degree …
Abraham English Rosenberg 1901-1995
Abraham Edward “English” Rosenberg was born on June 17, 1901 in Hull, England to Lazarus and Anna Rosenberg. He was born the second of seven children. His parents were originally from the Kovno gubernia in Russia, and they moved to Hull in approximately 1899. Abraham and his family immigrated to the United States in 1914 and …
Mary Friedman Rosenberg 1900-1993
Mary (Miriam) Friedman Rosenberg was born January 4, 1900 in the Bronx, New York. At the urging of her mother’s brother, Abraham Lichtgarn, Mary’s family, consisting of mother Anna and father Morris, older sister Bertha, and two younger brothers Jack and Isidor, all moved to Portland, Oregon in 1905. Initially settling in SE Portland on 26th …
Alan Rosenfeld b. 1923
Alan Rosenfeld was born in 1923, the youngest son of Ruth Goldsmith Rosenfeld and Dr. Arthur Rosenfeld. He had two siblings: Helen Rosenfeld Lackman and Dr. Edward Rosenfeld. He attended Ainsworth Grade School and Lincoln High School in Portland. He began his undergraduate career at Stanford University before the Second World War. From 1944 to 1945, …