Joan (Joanie) Campf was born in Northeast Portland in November 1942 to George and Sylvia Davis Campf; her brother is Melvin Campf. Her grandparents on her father’s side were Sam and Molly Sherman Campf. Sam was the head tailor in the Men’s Department of the downtown Meier & Frank Department Store. Before that time, he …
Read MoreCharlotte (Lotte) Geller Brown was born on April 2, 1924 in the small town of Lackenbach, Austria. Following the German occupation of Austria, all Jews were required to move into the cities and she went with her family to Vienna. Very soon, she was sent to England as part of the Kindertransport program. She lived in …
Read MoreBernard Brown was born in Viseul-de-Sus, Romania to a religious family. He had an older brother and three younger sisters. During the Second World War he was sent to several concentration and work camps and was the only member of his family to survive. He married his wife Libby after they both survived the camps. They …
Read MoreDr. Isidor Brill was born in Yaldemeresk, Poland on October 1, 1888. He emigrated to New York to join an older brother in 1903, and arrived in Portland in 1905 where he attended the Shattuck School for one year. In Poland, Isidor had no access to a public school education but did attend a Yeshiva in …
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 MoreHannah Mihlstin Bodner was born in New York on December 31, 1891 to immigrant parents who had come to America separately from Hungary and Austria and had met in New York. Shortly after Hannah was born, they moved to Tacoma, WA, where her father worked as a roofer and builder. He was offered a job with …
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 MorePhil Blank was the last of seven children and the only child born in America to parents who came to Portland in 1914 via New York from Blagapol, Russia (near Kiev). They arrived with five sons: Sam, Abe, Joe, Lou, Ted, and one daughter, who died in Portland at age 11. Phil, who born in Portland …
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. …
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