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 …
Read MoreMorris 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 …
Read MoreJack 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. …
Read MoreNadine Dunker was born in Seattle, Washington on May 22, 1938, the third child of Barney and Frances (Schnitzer) Bricker. Her siblings are Sue Dorn and Monte Bricker. She is the granddaughter of Morris and Bertha Schnitzer and part of a very large, extended Schnitzer family in Portland. The family had connections in many of …
Read MoreMilt Carl was born in Portland in 1925, the third of four surviving children of Russian immigrants. The children were: Sid, Bess, Milt and Eva (Walleston). They lived in South Portland at Third and College until the early 1930s, when they moved to Park and Jackson. His father owned a men’s clothing store. Milt worked as …
Read MoreFrances Schnitzer Bricker was born in Portland on August 6, 1909. Her family had immigrated from Russia around 1904. Her father Moishe Schnitzer worked as a junk man in Portland. It was the only job he could find that didn’t interfere with the Sabbath, to save enough money to send for Frances’s mother and her older …
Read MoreReuben Blumenthal (born Runyas) was born January 1, 1891 in Romanika, Russia, and came to New York when he was two. His father worked as a watchmaker but died in New York in 1898. Reuben, his mother and sister, moved to Portland when Reuben was 12, because his aunt, uncle, and cousins, the Nudelmans, lived …
Read MoreKathryn Kahn Blumenfeld was born in Boise, Idaho around 1921 to a family that had been in the United States for a generation already. Her father Charles Kahn’s family started Kahn Bros. Hide and Wool business in Portland. Charles was born in Portland. He married Barbara Lauer, the daughter of a pioneering Jewish family in …
Read MoreJeremiah Jerome “Jimmy” Berg was born in Edmonton, Alberta on June 25, 1914. His family lived in Great Falls, Montana until 1919 when they moved to Portland. In 1920, Jimmy’s father purchased the Grant Street Theater, the Kearney Theater, and the Sunnyside Theater. He later owned the Lincoln Theater. The whole family worked at the theaters. …
Read MoreTillie Baderman, nee Cohen, was born on August 23, 1922 to Hymen Cohen and Yetta (Danzker) Cohen. Her mother was born Yetta Katz in Kiev, Russia in 1890, and was married to a Herschel Danzker, with whom she had two children: Irving Danzker and Lenore (Danzker) Liebrich. Herschel Danzker died in Russia and afterward, Yetta …
Read More