Leon Feldstein

Magid: When were you born? 
FELDSTEIN:I was born on February 26th, 1901 in a little country on the eastern part of Europe called Romania. I was born in Bucharest, Romania and I would like to state that Judy Magid has asked me a number of questions that she would like answered with regards to the background of myself and my family and I might state that I was seven years old upon arrival in the United States with my parents, and therefore some of the questions that I will answer, that she has put to me, will be information that I got from my parents personally, although some information I have on my own. My father and mother were both born, and myself, were born in Romania and we have a background that I think would be interesting in that originally our family came from Germany some 200 years ago. The family was ostracized from the country and ran away to Poland. With the pogroms in Poland and as also happened in other countries, Russia too, my great grandparents finally came to Romania. So my grandfather on my mother’s side and my grandmother on my mother’s side were settled in a town in Romania called Buzau and there is the city where my mother was born. My father was born in another city in Romania called Rahman. That’s in the northeastern part of the country. My father and mother met at an affair given by one of the relatives in the city Costanzia, Romania. Costanzia is a city on the Black Sea. That’s where my father met my mother and very shortly thereafter they were married in the city of Buzau, the home of my grandparents. Finally, from Buzau they moved to Bucharest because my father couldn’t earn a living in the city of Buzau, which was a small town. They moved to Bucharest and there it was a great struggle for the family to exist. In the city of Bucharest my sister Annette was born and in the city of Bucharest I was born. My grandmother, Grandmother Korn, moved from Buzau after her husband, my grandfather died, to Bucharest where she lived with us from that day, coming with us to the United States and lived with us for a matter of some 25 years. 

Magid: When exactly did you come to the United States? 
FELDSTEIN:So we came, as I mentioned before, we came to the Unites States in the year 1907, in November of 1907. When we arrived here…

Magid: Was there a particular reason why you left? 
FELDSTEIN:There was a great reason. One of the reasons being that it was impossible for my father to make a living in Romania and support his family. The laws of the country at that time were such that no Jew would be able to become a citizen of Romania and therefore every Jew was restricted from selling certain things. My father was primarily a salesman and the restrictions became greater and greater to the extent that my father could only maybe sell eggs in the early market in order to make a few cents with which to buy a little wood, buy a little food for the family. Anyway, we decided to come to the United States. He came first. He came in April of 1907. Now the question might be asked, why did he come to Portland, Oregon? Well, my mother had a brother, Israel Korn who had come to the United States earlier and he was living in Portland, Oregon and he promised my father a job, and having been promised a job my father did come to Portland, Oregon, which as you know is some 10,000 miles from Romania. Many times questions have been asked why didn’t you stay in New York where there are so many Jews, so many opportunities. Well, my father said, “I have the promise of a job,” and $5 a week to my father sounded at that time a lot of money. He didn’t realize that all he had to work for the $5 a week was seven days a week, 16 hours a day and he soon found that out when he came to Portland. Anyway, after he had been here for some six months or so, he sent for us and we came to the United States. Now it is hard for me to give an impression of the United States, having been only seven years of age, but I can tell you the impressions my father and mother had. The impression was, here they were in a free country in a place where they would not fear to talk Yiddish. Here they were in a place where they could go to a synagogue and walk down the street, talking Yiddish if they wanted to, with their heads held high, standing upright. 

Magid: Where in Portland did you actually live, what section of the city? 
FELDSTEIN:Well, we settled in South Portland because that was the Jewish area at that particular time for the immigrants, and we were immigrants. We came with no money, of course, and we lived with my uncle, my mother’s brother, and he lived very close to the Shaarie Torah synagogue at that time and so the synagogue having been very close to where we lived, we attended the synagogue. I presume, more often than maybe we had in times gone by. But anyway, we lived in the Jewish area and of course, none of us were able to… my father had learned a little English, but none of us, my mother, my sister, myself, we only knew Yiddish and the Romanian languages. We had to live in that part of the city where we could have an understanding with people which we couldn’t have had had we tried to live in a gentile area. So we finally became acclimated to the South Portland area where we lived actually for only six months. I cannot give too much information about South Portland, as we did not live long enough in that particular area for me to give a comprehensive opinion of South Portland. I know many Jewish people here, who are here now in Portland, lived in South Portland for many, many years, and I am sure that they can give a better description of the neighborhood and so forth, which I am not able to do because I was very young. 

Let me think now, one of the questions that Judy asked me with regard to what was our trip like to Portland from Europe. Well, naturally there weren’t any jet airplanes at that time, so it took us some four weeks to come from Bucharest. In the first place we took the train from Bucharest to Rotterdam. In Rotterdam we stayed several days, awaiting the arrival of the boat which would take us across the Atlantic and I still remember the name of the boat because my mother always taught me the importance of a foreign born person to remember when he got to this country, the name of the boat and the name of the line. So the name of the boat was the Rheindown and the name of the line was the Holland-America Line. Well, it took 12 days to come across the Atlantic. You would cross it now in about four or five days. And then coming across the United States by train took us practically a week because we had to stop here and there. It’s not like having a through train like we have today. Trying to give you an impression of the trip; it took us almost a month. To get to Portland, Oregon is not too easy, but I remember some of the difficult times we had. We had no Pullman accommodations. We slept on the hard benches on the train and it was difficult for my mother, because there with her was her mother, my grandmother and my sister and myself, the four of us. None of us spoke English but my mother was fluent in several languages, German, French and she was able to make herself understood with some people. The Romanian language naturally is not spoken very generally in the United States, but German and French, she could find some people to speak. One comical incident that I remember as a boy, you can’t remember too much when you were seven years old, but I remember talking about Rotterdam and finally the boat arrived; my wife always told me I should say ship. The ship arrived in Rotterdam and so we were ready to board ship and my grandmother who was not too old a lady but was frightened in going up the gangplank. They didn’t have the gangplanks in those days as they have today, the wired gangplanks with railings and everything, and my grandmother was very scared. I can remember very vividly that my grandmother had to be blindfolded to go up the gangplank of the ship, she was that frightened. So anyway we were on the ship and as I told you before we made the trip across the United States and here we arrived In Portland, Oregon in November 1907. It was raining, that I remember too, very vividly. My uncle was at the Union Station to meet us and he didn’t have enough money to pay for a cab to take us from the Union Station to his house which was, as I remember was on Front and College. As I said before, near the Shaarie Torah synagogue. So we walked all the way from the Union Station to his house, which was quite a long walk, especially for my old grandmother, although she was not old in years at that time, but she was just an old fashioned, older type of a lady. Anyway, we lived in South Portland for not over about six months. I started school after I learned my ABCs, and how to count in English; I finally started at the Shattuck School, either Shattuck or Failing School that I don’t remember now. That’s where I first got my basics in the English language. Of course you know, the kids made a lot of fun of me. I had a lot of fights and was licked most of the time, as I was a very fragile fellow in those days. Maybe not so much now. 

Magid: You said you only lived six months in South Portland. Where did you move to after the six months? 
FELDSTEIN:My father, as I said before, when we first came to Portland had been working for my mother’s brother, my uncle, then he was very dissatisfied with his job, in the first place making such a small salary and my father didn’t want to be… some of our Jewish people were peddlers and made a living for their family and turned out to be very wonderful citizens of our community, but my father didn’t want to be a peddler; he wanted to be a businessman. And we moved, the whole family, from South Portland to Union Avenue near Burnside Street. At that time there were a few little business places in that area and my father rented a shack of a building, of wooden structure with living quarters in the back. He bought a few second hand pieces of furniture. My father had a wonderful personality and he was given a little credit by some gentile people that he knew and so he got a little stock of new and second hand goods in the store. We lived in the back. You know in the old days there [were] no bathtubs and no hot water and no bathroom facilities. But we managed and Papa began to make a living on the east side. Having moved to the east side, my father felt that he wanted to be sort of on his own. He even indicated to me at times that he didn’t want to live in an area where there were only Jewish people, for the reason that he felt that he wanted to learn the English language and English customs as soon as possible and he felt he would be held back in the Jewish area. Of course we went to the Jewish area back and forth all the time. In those days we had a kosher house – of course, my grandmother wouldn’t have stood for anything else. And we used to go back and forth to the synagogue. We used to go back and forth to buy kosher meats, and buy groceries and so forth. Judy was asking me the question of where did we spend most of the time, how did we spend most of our time, with whom, friends, relatives or with whom. Naturally, we spent quite a bit of time with my uncle and his wife and their children, but in the meantime while we had lived in South Portland, my father and mother became acquainted with some people who also had come from Romania and these seemed to be very close to us because you know people who come from the same country are apt to be more friendly to each other. They understand; they talk about the customs in the country in which they lived. And it happened to be a happy time when these Romanian Jews would get together and have what we would call a mamaliga party. A mamaliga party consisted of a huge tub of mamaliga. 

Magid: What’s mamaliga? 
FELDSTEIN:Mamaliga is cornmeal, hardened cornmeal mush. The Italians call it polenta. Mamaliga is the national dish of Romania eaten in many ways and eaten with many things, but I won’t go into this at this time, excepting to say that in those days all of us were very, very poor, so having the party with a few Romanian people, Mama would make a huge vat of mamaliga putting into the mamaliga after it was cooked, a huge amount of gravy and a few pieces of meat that they could afford to buy, and of course with onions and garlic that was a national Romanian dish. 

Magid: Can you remember the names of the people of the Romanian people that you were friendly with? 
FELDSTEIN:Oh yes, I can remember many people. I say many, quite a few. For example, a very well-known family here in Portland is the Kaufman family. Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Kaufman. In fact, Mr. Kaufman came from my mother’s hometown Buzau, Romania, and we were very friendly with them. You will recall that Mr. and Mrs. Kaufman had a hat store on Third Avenue on the west side and they have three boys who are living. One of the boys became a very prominent violinist, internationally known. His name is Louis Kaufman. I am sure you may have heard of him. He has made many records. Yes, there were some people by the name of Fried who were also of Romanian background that we knew from South Portland. I think Mr. Fried had one of these horse and wagons and he would go out and buy and sell junk every day. But the Frieds had one very prominent son who in recent years became very high up in the movie industry as a writer and as a producer. Then I was thinking of another family here by the name of Sugarman. Mr. Sugarman had a little men and women’s clothing and haberdashery store in northwest Portland around l6th and Savier and we used to be very friendly with them. The Sugarmans, he was at least from Romania. So as I say, this was a little clan that used to get together. There was another man by the name of Turtledove. His son is here in Portland; no pardon me he has moved to Los Angeles. Leo Turtledove and recently his son David Turtledove who was a prominent attorney here in Portland died. Mr. Turtledove was a very, very huge [man] and I can remember him vividly driving a team of six horses with one of the huge wagons owned by a company called Clay S. Morse Co. He used to haul heavy machinery. Of course, he was a heavy fellow and I can still see him sitting there on top of this huge wagon carrying huge pieces on the wagon and driving these six large horses. I think that answers your questions maybe. 

Girl friends and boy friends, I will say this. That’s a very good question Judy. Girlfriends and boyfriends: having lived on the east side, most of my friends and most of my sister’s friends were gentile but in spite of that fact we still were very close to Jews; we were not ultra-religious but we were always close to the Jewish religion. My father always belonged to a synagogue and we sort of graduated, you might say, from the Shaarie Torah. I don’t say graduation to the point that one was any better than the other, but we graduated from the Shaarie Torah to the Neveh Zedek and then to the Ahavai Sholom and you know, Ahavai Sholom and Neveh Zedek are now one called the Neveh Shalom. So we were close to our Jewish people and yet we were very close to our gentile people and I think that it might have been some mistake. I am making this as an observation of some of our Jewish people who lived in the South Portland area who were so close to Jews that they really didn’t assimilate, not marriage-wise, but didn’t assimilate with the gentile people in a friendly manner. They didn’t have a chance to because they only associated with Jews. So I personally am very happy that I had the opportunity to associate with many, many gentile friends, friends that I have to this very day. 

Magid: Do you remember some of their names? 
FELDSTEIN:Oh yes, I remember them very well. One who unfortunately has passed away, his name is Vinton Douglas Hill. I will never forget him as long as I live. He was a very fine man. A longshoreman all of his life, all of his adult life practically, but he was always a very fine man and a very fine friend of mine. Another one I remember so vividly was a man by the name of Charles Ramsey and he now lives in Vallejo, California and we have seen each other here and there. Another fellow who was of Swedish extraction. In fact, his parents and family all came from Sweden. His name was Knute Nelson and I’ve seen him here and there too. And then I had a gentile girlfriend too, like most of us Jewish fellows, one of the loveliest girls that I think I ever knew. Clean cut, lovely, wonderful and I will never forget she used to visit us and I used to take her home on my bicycle. She used to ride the handlebars of my bicycle. I was around 16 and she was around 15-16. I’ll never forget at one time we were discussing marriage and the question of marriage was rather interesting to her because she kind of liked me and I kind of liked her too, but you know she said to me one day, she said, “Leon, you know, in case we should ever consider marriage you and I,” (I wasn’t considering marriage at all, but she said,) “I could never give up my Christmas and I could never give up my Easter,” and I said, “You know, Cecile,” that was her name, Cecile Ellis, “You know Cecile, I could never give up my Yom Kippur, my Rosh Hashanah , so I think it’s wise that we don’t talk about marriage. Let’s talk about a life-long friendship.” And do you know? She lives right now in the Bay Area of California near San Francisco. We are friends to this day. She has a wonderful husband, two charming sons and very recently she came to our house and visited us and has been visiting us quite frequently whenever she comes to Portland. She has a sister living here. 

Magid: What’s her sister’s name? 
FELDSTEIN:Her sister’s name is Louise. I do remember the name. It’s Louise Ellis because Louise never got married. She never did get married. Are there any other questions here Judy you want me to answer? 

Magid: One thing I would like to ask is the fact that you were friendly with the non-Jewish people. Who did you share your traditions with? Did you share their holidays and they yours? 
FELDSTEIN:We only shared them to the limited extent that we respected their holidays. We didn’t follow their holidays; we didn’t believe in their holidays. We never, for example had a Christmas tree in our house or observed any of the Christian holidays anymore than we would expect our gentile friends to share our Jewish holidays. There was respect, of course. I mean observance. You would expect them to respect. I will tell you one incident that might be rather comical in a way. I was going to grammar school, a school called Hawthorne school. It is no longer in existence. I came home one time. It still makes me laugh to myself. I came home and I was singing, “Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas bells.” When my father heard this he practically beat me up, not in the sense of beating me up. He says, “No Jew should sing any Christmas carols.” And furthermore my father called the principal of the school and told the principal that his son is not supposed to sing Christmas carols. This is a free country, he heard, and we are not supposed to observe any gentile holidays. And he would appreciate it if the principal would tell the teacher not to make me sing Christmas carols. Well the principal wasn’t a very nice fellow apparently and he told my father, “Look, we do this and that’s the way we work it.” 

At that time there was a man, a very fine Jewish man in Portland named Ben Selling, a man of great importance. Greatly respected in Portland. My father called Ben Selling and Ben Selling called the principal of the school. The principal told the teacher and the teacher told me I didn’t have to sing Christmas carols in school, and I didn’t. How did my father know Ben Selling? After all, Ben Selling at that time had a beautiful clothing store on Fourth and Morrison. My father knew Ben Selling because when he had to help us, my mother, my sister, myself, and my grandmother come from Europe; he had to send us some money. So he borrowed $100 from Ben Selling. He paid Mr. Ben Selling back. Mr. Ben Selling knew my father from the fact that he had loaned my father $100 and he knew him better because of the fact that my father paid back the $100. These are some of the happy things. 

I might go into something else. After all, we don’t want to go entirely into statistics. My father’s sister came to Portland from Romania with her two daughters and they stayed with us; the two daughters and the mother stayed with us in our little house. We were jammed into that little house, the whole group of us, which is something I’ll never understand. They stayed with us for many months. Anyway, the two daughters, one was Lucille and their last name was Abramson. Lucille and Rose Abramson. I was talking about my aunt and her two daughters who came from Romania and living with us in this very small quarters, but the two girls, Lucille was age 14 and Rose was age 16. Rose had already been in high school in Romania and Lucille had just been finishing grammar school, so I understood. So anyway they were quite educated in the Romanian language, but they didn’t know English. In fact, they didn’t speak one word of English when they arrived. So before starting school, we were instrumental in teaching them the alphabet and a few words, etc. Then they entered school and what school do you think they entered?” The school where I was going! And what class? The class that I was in, which was at that time (if I recall correctly) was the fourth grade. So the teacher was already apprised of the fact that these girls spoke no English. So the two girls sat behind me. Rose sat directly behind me and Lucille behind Rose. We were three in a row and I was the translator. The teacher would ask a question. If the girls didn’t understand (which they didn’t understand most of the time) I translated into Romanian. They answered back to me in Romanian, which I translated back to the teacher in English. 

Magid: Do you remember the teacher’s name? 
FELDSTEIN:Yes I remember the teacher’s name very, very well. She was such a lovely, lovely woman. Her name was Nettie May Rankin. She was so understanding of the problems of foreigners who came to the country and didn’t understand the language. She was really an international woman. Oh, I might say too that in this school we were the only three Jewish kids in school, excepting my sister. 

Magid: What was the name of the school? 
FELDSTEIN:The name of the school was the Hawthorne School, which I think I mentioned possibly before. Anyway, this is the way the girls got started in their scholastic situation in English and of course they began to learn English. They were very intelligent girls. They began to learn English very quickly and naturally after they learned English they didn’t have to stay in the fourth grade because they were far advanced to my education. I was in the fourth grade and one was already in high school. They advanced very quickly and they lived with us for a number of months and finally my aunt, who was a widow, found a man here in Portland whom she married. His name was Joseph Serkin and after they were married they lived here in Portland for a while and then they moved to San Francisco, where they lived for a great number of years until both my aunt and her husband passed away. These are very nostalgic memories for me and I think part of the reason that I am so (as Judy mentioned a while ago) internationally minded is because I have been intermingled with international things in our own home. As I said, with my aunt and her two daughters and other people, our home was the haven, for example of Romanian people who came to Portland, because they could speak the language with my parents; they could enjoy with my parents. They would sing Romanian songs with my parents. Our home was the refuge of happiness for the Romanian colony here in Portland. My mother used to play the piano and the guitar and we would sing and we would dance and many times I remember so vividly, dancing the Hora. I don’t know whether the Hora is an Israeli invention or not, but I know the Hora was danced. Maybe it was a Romanian Hora but it was danced right in our house in the year 1912. It was a happy occasion and I said it before, it made me rather internationally minded. I have learned in my older years, several languages, Spanish, a little French, German, Italian, Romanian and Yiddish and it has been very helpful to me in meeting people on their own level in foreign countries that we have been very fortunate to visit in the last number of years since I sold my business. 

Now Judy was asking me a question about, this goes back a ways now from today, but it was apropos at certain times to talk about, the Depression. Now, of course, at my age I went through the Depression. Without telling you my life’s history, I was working up until 1929. I was working for my father in the furniture store and Esther, my wife, and I were going together. We had agreed to get married and we were to be married on March 9, 1930. 

Magid: What was your wife’s maiden name? 
FELDSTEIN:Esther Gumpert. So, sometimes I am a little emotional when I think of some of these things but my father, on account of the Depression, lost his business in February of 1930 one month before we were to be married. And to make a long story very short, I lost my job. I had no money. But my wife Esther decided that we had made up our minds to get married and we were. So if I were going to look at happy things that the Depression brought it would be to the marriage to my wife Esther. Well, we’ll go further here, talking about the effects of the Depression. The effects of the Depression on me were such that I made up my mind that I was never, never, never going to permit myself to be left without a penny, no matter what the conditions of the world might, or might not be. So Esther and I started saving, whether it was 10¢ or 5¢ or a quarter and we were (although thank God it hasn’t been necessary) from then on and to this day ready for any rainy days, which I hope they never come. And I hope as we are talking right now and whoever might be listening to this tape that the doom and gloom purveyors that we are having around the country right now makes me very sad because we have always had very great hopes in the United States of America. We think that this country is the greatest country on the face of the earth. We have our problems, but we are always going to have problems and I don’t think any of us should sell our country short. Never. 

Now, let’s talk about a couple of other things, which Judy talked about, which we discussed, and that is in regard to World War II and what it did to us and what memories I have about the War. Well, it was a sad moment in our history, but what I remember of World War II is that maybe we still haven’t learned a lesson of it. When Hitler began dispossessing Jews of their effects, putting Jews in jail, putting them in concentration camps, it was amazing to me then to realize that in this United States of America, we didn’t have a knowledge of what was really going on in the world and what a danger this man Hitler was bringing to the world. 

Magid: Did you have relatives in Europe at that time?
FELDSTEIN:Yes, relatives in Romania. As you know when Hitler came to power and began taking Czechoslovakia and taking Austria, he also had group of Nazis who went to Romania and they called themselves the Iron Guard and they began killing Jews. They began with pogroms. Many Jews got away, but the most unfortunate incident of that, and I am deviated a bit for a moment to answer your question Judy. Did I have relatives? There was a ship full of Jews that left Romania. They left from the port of Costanzia on the Black Sea, that’s a Romanian seaport. As you know the Black Sea empties into the Dardanelles then into the Mediterranean. The name of the ship was the Struma and on that ship were maybe 1000 Jewish people on their way to Israel and on that ship were two of my cousins and when the ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, my cousins and all those beautiful, wonderful Jewish kids went down with the ship and I don’t believe, at least to my knowledge that there were any survivors. Yes, I had a cousin of mine who lived in Berlin, George Feldstein. He had a wonderful voice. He had visited us in Portland many years ago and he was singing. He had a principal part with the Deutsche Opera, the German State Opera and he was killed by Hitler or by Hitler’s henchman. So getting back now to our thoughts about Hitlerism and what started the Second World War. We in the United States were not aware, we were not aware of what was happening and even many of our Jews might or might not have been aware of what was happening to our Jewish people in Germany and in Austria, but the worst part is that the United States of America didn’t realize that Western Europe didn’t realize or let’s say, they didn’t care. They said, “Why these are only Jews, what do we care?” I mean, they didn’t say so, but this is the way they felt. They didn’t realize that this man Hitler, after he had killed Jews, he began to kill Catholics or whoever else and finally, finally, finally he began killing French and he began killing Englishmen and he began killing Americans when we finally entered the war. We didn’t realize what was going on or let us say maybe we didn’t care. I know there was, at least to my knowledge, one ship of German refugees who came to our shores and this ship was denied entrance to the United States of America and these were Jews who had run away from Hitlerism. I think this ship finally went to Argentina and they were accepted, I think, by Argentina. But the United States of American did not accept the shipload of Jews. 

Magid: How were the Jews in Portland affected at that time? 
FELDSTEIN: Well, the Jews in Portland at first, unfortunately, were not 100% aware of what was really going on. True, we raised money for Israel, for the Jewish people through all of our agencies. But the Jewish people themselves were not as aware as really and truly they should have been of what Hitlerism was really and truly doing. Thank God, today the Jewish people of the world are aware of what is happening to our people. Thank God that the United States of America in its support of Israel today is realizing that it is not only supporting Israel (after all there is only 3,000,000) but it is supporting the only democracy in the Middle East and if Israel is sold down the line for a pittance of oil then the United States will suffer so immeasurably from it that we may not, in our history, in our life time recover. Because the Russians will then be in full control of the Red Sea and of the Mediterranean and of the Suez Canal. So the repercussions from World War II are such that I hope that the American people, the Congress of the United States and all of our public officials will realize that they have to read the signs because the signs sometimes become truisms. 

Now, I think maybe we should kind of draw a conclusion to what we have been talking about. To the best of my knowledge, the conclusion is rather not as bright as I would like to believe that it should be. When we came from the old country we came to the United States of America because it was a free country, because we could pray as we like, we could vote as we like, we could live as we like, and we could talk as we like and we have no fears such as we had in the old country that we left. Because of that situation, because of the closeness of the Jewish people, having been immigrants, not knowing the language, wanting to become American citizens, because of that particular fact, the Jewish population was a better Jewish Population, I am regretful to say, than it is today from a standpoint of being Jews. True, we belong to synagogues. True, we support synagogues, but so many of us today don’t appreciate the greatness, the most wonderful thing about our Jewish faith, which goes back so many thousands of years and I think one of the big problems we have facing us today is that we, (and I don’t want to say that I am perfect either, by a long way I’m not), we are paying too much lip service to our religion and not enough actual physical, manual service. Unfortunately when this happened, many of our young Jewish people are intermarrying into the Christian faith to the extent that it is becoming a huge problem in the United States. I don’t know what the latest figure is, but it goes as far as maybe 50% of inter-marriages in the United States. So we are not aware of the problem that is facing us because of the fact that this situation exists, and I think that the young Jewish people should start to realize the importance of their religion. Not that they have to be terribly religious, but they should realize the importance of sticking by their faith and I just want to give one quick comparison. The Jewish people of Germany before Hitlerism were intermarried tremendously. Some people that Hitler classified as Jews didn’t even know they were Jews. They had maybe Jewish grandparents, but the point being, let us not wait for somebody to point us out as Jews and we don’t even know that we are Jews and that’s what can happen to the offspring of the present intermarriages. So I say that the happy thought is that we Jews are together, but the unhappy thought is that we are separating because of the intermarriages (because I am repeating myself) we are paying more lip service than actual service to our faith and to our belief. Judy, I don’t know if there is anything further you would like to know, but I think I have tried to answer whatever questions you have given me and I hope that it will help in the research that you are so industrious in working at – research for the archives of the Jewish people of Portland. 

Magid: You were talking about the Depression and that your father lost his business and you were working for him. What did you do at that point? 
FELDSTEIN:Well, at that time, after my father lost his business, I had to seek a livelihood right away, because after all I was going to be a married man within a month. So I had a small insurance policy that I had borrowed money on and I started in on a little second-hand furniture store on my own with about $750. I rented a location on the corner of First and Morrison Street and my little business was started in that location. From that little $750 Esther and I both worked together very strenuously, very hard, long hours. We finally even went into the tobacco business for a few years, in addition to the furniture business, to try to make a livelihood. At that time not only for Esther and myself, but at that time my father had become very ill, had no earning capacity and I had to make enough money not only for myself, but also for sustaining my father and my mother. 

Magid: What was the name of the business? 
FELDSTEIN:The name of the business when my father had the store (and by the way I worked for him in all the years) was Feldstein Furniture Company. But I had hoped someday that I could move out of First Street, out of the Westside and over to the Eastside. I liked the area of the Hollywood District of Portland, so when I had the store with $750 worth of second hand furniture in it I called the store the Hollywood Furniture Company, and I registered the name, Hollywood Furniture Company to myself. And to this day, the name Hollywood Furniture Company still exists. I did open up the store in 1946. I did open up on Sandy Blvd. in the Hollywood District, the store which most people know [is] called Hollywood Furniture. 

Magid: When did the Jewish people start moving out of South Portland, do you remember? 
FELDSTEIN:Yes I do. I can’t pinpoint the years when the Jewish people started moving from South Portland, but I would say it began about the year 1915 to 1917, somewhat before the World War I and the Jewish people began moving to an area in Portland called Irvington and from the semi-ghetto idea (not a ghetto exactly) of South Portland it became a ghetto idea in the Irvington district because hundreds, maybe thousands of Jewish people from South Portland moved to the Irvington district. 

Magid: Was there any particular reason that they moved to that area? 
FELDSTEIN:Well, Irvington area was kind of a newer area at that particular time and it seemed that Jewish people sort of followed each other. In other words, the First Street Jews moved to the Irvington District and they had friends and they had relatives and so they began to induce these people to sell their homes in South Portland. Most of them, however, were renting their places in South Portland, so they moved from South Portland to the Irvington District. Even at that time there was a synagogue established in Alberta Street, which, by the way, still exists, for some of the people in the Irvington District who wanted to go to that particular synagogue. 

Magid: What’s the name of the synagogue? 
FELDSTEIN:I don’t know the name of it. [Tifereth Israel] But I might say, maybe this is historical, that there are certain ways in which Jewish people have moved from one district to another, one by one, two by two. As I mentioned, from South Portland to Irvington, from Irvington to Laurelhurst, from Laurelhurst now to Southwest Portland. Some people even live in Lake Oswego but there is a pattern. The interesting thing about the pattern, I don’t know if it is so much in Portland as it is in other cities, but I recall a district in Chicago which is called Maxwell Street and that was strictly a Jewish area, strictly Jewish. So the Jews began moving out of the Maxwell Street area to a part of Chicago called Jackson Park on the Southside and then from there they became more affluent they moved to the Northside. The interesting part of these moves is this, that the minute the Jewish people moved out of these Jewish areas, like I say Maxwell Street, or maybe South Portland, colored people began moving in. It’s a way of movement of populations which is interesting, not only in Portland, not only in Chicago, but in New York. We all can recall the streets like Delancey Street, Essex, Orchard in New York, which were strictly populated by Jews. There are still a great number of Jews there, but they have gradually moved out into other areas. In other words, there is a movement of populations [that] is rather interesting. 

Magid: Do you remember what South Portland was like after World War II? 
FELDSTEIN:After World War II? Yes, I remember it very well because at that time there was a movement afoot to try to rejuvenate that whole area. But it took a long, long time to convince the people of South Portland that that area has to be rejuvenated. Those houses, as I recall as a young boy in South Portland, were old at that time and that goes back 65 years ago. You can imagine how old those houses were in the year, say, 1950. I know there was a great objection on the part of some of the Jewish people who still lived in the South Portland area. There was a great objection to being dispossessed, you might say, although the city tried to give them a fair price for their houses for some of the people who lived in that area. I do remember even the days when I was delivering furniture for my father in the South Portland area that some of those houses were very, very old, very dilapidated and I might say, unfortunately, full of all kinds of rats, because of the fact that the houses were old and dilapidated. Those of us who know as I really know the conditions of those homes, I am very happy that the Urban Renewal has done what it has done in the South Portland area. It has cleaned up the area, widened the streets, there are beautiful trees having been planted, new buildings, and I think one of the happiest things that has been done to Portland, Oregon is the renewal of that area into a progressive, tax-paying, clean part of Portland. The Urban Renewal, the South Portland Urban Renewal project has been conducive to other renewal projects beyond the present one. 

Magid: Excuse me, are there any Jewish people living in South Portland now? 
FELDSTEIN:There are some Jewish people living in South Portland, but most I would say, the greatest percentage of the Jewish people have moved out of the South Portland area. I don’t think they ever intend to go back. I’ll take that back. They are building in the Urban Renewal area, some very beautiful apartment houses and condominiums, so if the Jewish people do move back to the South Portland area, it’s going to be a considerably nicer area than when the Jewish people left the area some 20-25 years ago, The Urban Renewal, up to Arthur Street, if you know the area, up to Arthur Street, has done a beautiful job and now I am sure that the Urban Renewal, beyond that area is going to make Portland a very beautiful city in an area that is very dilapidated and rat-infested I might say. I walked around the area and I know it very well. 

Magid: When you were a young boy, what were the conditions in South Portland? Were they still more or less on a dilapidated scale? What was the neighborhood like, compared to today? 
FELDSTEIN:Naturally, the area was younger but it still was an old area and let us never forget that slough that was in South Portland, that ill smelling slough there in the gulch which was there for many, many years before it was finally filled up. Personally, I have fond memories of the time that we lived in South Portland and the times we visited in South Portland. I have very fond memories of the friendships and the happiness that we had in meeting with, talking with and being with the people of South Portland area. But I do not have any beautiful memories of any lovely homes. I’m not talking about wealthy homes; I’m talking about lovely homes. I have no memory of any of those in the South Portland.