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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Bob Tobias 1929-2023
Bob Tobias was born on June 22, 1929 at Good Samaritan Hospital, at the time known as Wilcox, in Portland, Oregon. While his parents resided in Winnipeg, Canada, Bob’s mother Anna Tobias traveled to Portland to ensure Bob was a US citizen. Mr. Tobias who made his living as an attorney in Winnipeg, suffered financially during …
Gladys Loewenberg Trachtenberg 1910-1993
Gladys “Laddie” Trachtenberg was born on October 30, 1910 to Joseph Goodman and Rose Loewenberg Goodman. She was the granddaughter of Julius Loewenberg, one of the early members of Temple Beth Israel, and the niece of Ida and Zerlina Loewenberg, both long-time supporters and employees of the Neighborhood House in Portland. Both sides of her family …
Harry Leonard Turtledove 1921-2011
Harry Leonard Turtledove was born in Portland, Oregon on June 26, 1921, the son of Fanny and David Turtledove. He attended Fernwood elementary school and Grant High school. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Reed College, and earned a junior year exchange scholarship to Wesleyan University. After graduation, in 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, …
Linda Veltman b. 1943
Linda Popick Veltman was born in 1943 in Portland to Rae and Hy Popick. She was the product of a “mixed marriage,” a father from Russia and a mother from the Isle of Rhodes. Linda’s Sephardic grandfather, Avram Honeo, was the spiritual leader for many years at Congregation Ahavath Achim. The family alternated and blended …
Marion Walter 1928-2021
Marion Walter was born July 30, 1928 in Berlin, Germany. In March 1939, after Kristallnacht, she and her sister went to England on the Kindertransport, where they had distant relatives. The girls went to a boarding school immediately after their arrival, although they did not know any English and were the only refugee children in …
Lottie Waxman 1923-1995
Lottie Feuchtbaum Waxman was born October 3, 1923 in Vienna, Austria. Her father was Solomon Feuchtbaum. Her mother was Josephine Siner. Both families were from Galitzia, Austria. Lotte had one brother, Johnny. Both her mother’s and father’s family were observant Jews. Her parents spoke German, Polish and Yiddish. Lottie’s father was a photographer and had …
Joan Frankel Weil b. 1945
Joan Frankel Weil was born on March 30, 1945 in Evanston, Illinois to Idele Okman Frankel and Alex Frankel. She was raised in Muncie, Indiana, where the family moved when she was three years old. Joan’s father owned a men’s wear store there. The family joined the Reformed synagogue that was the only synagogue in the …
Edward Weinbaum 1981-1979
Edward Weinbaum was born in Providence, Rhode Island on July 4,1891. His father worked as a brewery engineer first in Providence, then in Minneapolis and later was an agent for an insurance company in Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania and Oregon. Edward graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1909 and then worked as a cub reporter …
Elaine Lewis Weinstein b. 1935
Elaine Weinstein was born on June 24, 1935 to Tessie (Bamberg) and Joseph Lewis. Both of her parents were immigrants from eastern Europe. The family moved from Brooklyn, New York to Seattle, Washington when Elaine was still a baby. Her brother Marvin was four years older. Joseph’s brothers Harry and Jack had come west and encouraged …
Benjamin Witt 1900-1979
Benjamin Witt was born July 9, 1900 in Austria. He came to New York with his three sisters in 1905; his parents had immigrated two years earlier. He joined the National Guard in 1915, and was recruited by the British Army in 1918. He was in the Jewish Legion and spent time in Egypt, Palestine, …
Rabbi Joseph Wolf b. 1951
Rabbi Joseph Wolf was born March 17, 1951 in Boston, MA, one of four children. Influenced by his maternal grandmother and mother, both active in Hadassah and the Zionist movement, he grew up with a dream to go to Israel. His family attended a Conservative synagogue in Brookline, MA, celebrated all Jewish holidays, and observed Shabbat …
Frances Aiken Wolfe 1924-2017
Adrienne Frances “Fran” Wolfe was born in Pocatello, Idaho on February 12, 1924 to Frank and Miriam (Boskowitz) Aiken. Her father worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. When Fran was nearly two, the family (including her two older brothers, Henry and Edward) moved to Ogden, Utah where her father worked with the railroad building a railway …
Howard Wolfe 1919-2013
Howard Frank Wolfe was born in Portland, Oregon on September 3, 1919, the son of Simon and Carolyn (Solomon) Wolfe. He had an older brother, Alfred. Howard graduated from Lincoln High School and Reed College. He served as an army medic in the Second World War in both European and Pacific campaigns. He survived the …
Don Zadoff 1926-2013
Don Zadoff was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. His parents immigrated from what is now Belarus 1913 and Don’s father worked as a furrier in New York City. He grew up in a small apartment in a Jewish neighborhood with his parents, his maternal grandmother, and an uncle. His parents and grandmother spoke Yiddish …
Saul Zaik 1926-2020
Saul Zaik was born on November 17, 1926, in Portland, Oregon to parents Miriam and David. Saul attended Irvington for grade school and then Benson High School, where he developed an interest in engineering. He intended to enroll at Oregon State University to study electrical engineering when he returned from the Navy in 1946, but, …
Leonard Zawacki 1916-2001
Born January 20, 1916, Leonard Zawacki was a Polish Catholic serving as a lieutenant in the Polish army at the time of the German invasion. In September 1939, he was taken as a prisoner of war but escaped. He immediately began working with the underground resistance movement in Warsaw until he was arrested again, this time by …
Zelda Director Zeidman 1921-2010
Zelda Zeidman was born on July 15, 1921 in Portland, Oregon. Her father, Nathan Director was born in Chartorysk, Russia, the same village that the Schnitzers and the Rosenfelds came from. He met Zelda’s mother Annie Shapiro Director in Lodz, Poland, where he had fled from Chartorysk due to his involvement in the Jewish underground …
Alan Zell 1930-2015
Alan Zell was born in Portland, Oregon. He was the second-generation of the successful Zell Brother’s jewelry business. Alan’s father, Julius, was one of four brothers who emigrated from Austria to the Pacific Northwest around the time of the First World War. In 1922, Julius married Lillian Freudenstein, whose family originated from Leipzig, Germany. Interestingly, Lillian’s …
Julius Zell 1895-1976
Julius Zell was born in 1895 in Lemberg, a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had three brothers: Harry, Dan, and Milton. They had a half-sister, Rose, who had moved to the United States where she met and married Mike Silverman. Julius was eager to as well, and in 1909, at age 14, his father put …
Martin Zell 1927-2020
Born in 1927 in Portland, Martin Zell was a second-generation manager of the successful Zell Brother’s jewelry business. Martin’s father, Julius, was one of four brothers who emigrated from Austria to the Pacific Northwest around the time of the First World War. Julius and his brother, Harry, took over the drugstore of their cousin, Mike …
Min Mudrick Zidell 1923-2016
Min Mudrick Zidell was born in Washington, D.C. on December 12, 1923. She was the last of seven children of Russian immigrants Max and Rebecca Mudrick. Her father died before she was born, and her mother settled in Portland, Oregon, as she had a few brothers living there. Min grew up in Congregation Shaarie Torah but …
Arthur Zuckerman b. 1953
Arthur Ira Zuckerman was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 18, 1953, to Max and Sylvia Zuckerman. He grew up in an Orthodox home, and was part of a Zionist youth group called B’nai Akiva. After high school, he moved to Israel, living on a kibbutz before joining the Israeli army to fight in the …
Clara Blackman Zusman 1898-2008
Clara Blackman Zusman was born in Lidvinka (now Ludvinka), Russia in the late 1800s, circa 1898. Lidvinka was a small town with both Gentile Russians and Russian Jewish inhabitants. Her parents, Sura (Sara) and Bern, had seven children together, listed here in descending order: Avrum (Abe), Beila, Molla (Molly), Rushka (Rose), Bertha, Clara, and Moshe …