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 1100 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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Sanford Adler 1892-1980
Sanford’s father, Carl Adler, left Stuttgart, Germany in 1882 on a ship via the Panama Canal to Berkeley, California, where he had a sister, Theresa Eisenberg. He then moved to Astoria, Oregon and met Laura Hirsch, who lived in Salem, Oregon. By 1885, the Adlers had married and settled in Baker, Oregon near Laura’s sister …
Leo Adler 1895-1993
Leo Adler was born in Baker City, Oregon, the youngest of three Adler children, in June of 1895. His father, Carl Adler, owned Adler’s Crystal Palace, where he sold jewelry, books, music, candy, and cigars. His brother, Sanford Adler, ran the store for five years after the death of their father until he became the …
Leslie Aigner b. 1929
Leslie “Les” Aigner, one of three children, was born Ladislav Aigner in 1929 in Nové Zámky, Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s his family moved to Csepel, Hungary on the outskirts of Budapest in the hope of escaping oppressive Nazi discrimination against Jews. But in 1943, the Nazis forced Les’s father into a slave labor camp …
Eva Speigel Aigner b. 1937
Eva Erica Aigner (nee Speigel), one of two daughters, was born in 1937 in Košice, Czechoslovakia. Eva’s mother stayed at home with her and her younger sister while her father ran his own hat-making business until his business license was revoked in 1939 because he was Jewish. Soon the family moved to Budapest, Hungary, joining other …
Miriam Boskowitz Aiken 1886-1976
Miriam Aiken (nee Boskowitz), born July 3, 1886, was the second daughter of Sarah Bloch and Isaac Boskowitz. Her paternal grandparents came west from New York after the Civil War in search of opportunity and were among the first Jewish families to settle in Oregon. Miriam’s father ran a general store in Union, Oregon when she …
Dora Ail 1901-1990
Dora Ail was born in the small village of Ugrain, near the larger town of Echelanislov in Poland in 1901. Fearing the pogroms then prevalent in that area, the family traveled a circuitous route through Siberia, Vladivostok, and Yokohama, finally reaching Harbin, Manchuria when Dora was 15 years old. Her memories of Harbin are mostly …
Louis Albert 1891-1976
Louis Albert was born in 1891 in Kiev, Ukraine where his father was a Rabbi. He was supposed to be one too, but when he was 13 years old, he went into the forestry business with his uncle. In 1906, he immigrated to America. After a few years in Portland, Oregon, Louis moved to Fall River, …
Joy Levy Alkalay 1920-2014
Joy Levy Alkalay was born in 1920 in Vienna, Austria, the only child in a Sephardic family. Perceiving the German threat, the family was permitted to leave Austria because they were Yugoslav nationals. Joy’s family went first to Zagreb and from there to Sarajevo and Split. Later she was interned by the Italians on the island …
Alfred Apsler 1907-1982
Alfred Apsler was born in Vienna, Austria to Hermann and Helene Pasternak Apsler. Hermann was an accountant. He studied German and history at the Matura on Erzherzog-Rainer-Gymnasium and received a PhD in education in 1930 from the University of Vienna’s College of Education. While still in high school, Alfred became very active with a group of Socialist students …
Erna Apsler b. 1912
Erna was born in Poland in 1912, but moved to Vienna with her family when she was a year old. She was the eldest of three daughters. Her parents were Orthodox Jews, and her father owned a kosher restaurant. Erna graduated from medical school in Vienna, and married Alfred, a literature student, in 1935. When …
Harry Arnsberg 1911-1994
Harry Arnsberg was born in 1911 in Republic, Washington to immigrant parents from Grodno gubernia, Russia (which is sometimes in Poland). Harry’s parents met in England and married in Liverpool in 1900. They had their first child, Harry’s oldest sister Mildred, in England before moving to South Africa, where they had their second child, Harry’s …
Gertrude Rosumny Bachman 1900-1998
Gertrude Rosumny Bachman was born in 1900 in Lidvingka, Ukraine. In 1905, her family came to Old South Portland, where her oldest brother was living, and her father opened the Zion (later Star) Bakery. Gertrude attended both Failing and Shattuck elementary schools, as well as Lincoln High School. After graduation in 1917 she went to business …
Tillie Cohen Baderman b. 1922
Tillie 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 …
Elizabeth Hirsch Baer 1899-1977
Elizabeth Baer was born to Sam and Sally (Hirsch) Baer, both of German origin in Baker, Oregon. She graduated from high school in Baker and attended two years at the University of Oregon before transferring to Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After graduation she taught mathematics and German at Baker High School until her retirement. Elizabeth’s father …
Irene Goldbaum Balk 1922-1995
Irene Balk was one of six children born to Peter and Rebecca Goldbaum, who had immigrated to Portland in 1911 through Argentina from a small village near Odessa. Her siblings included Al (Tom and Michael Grant’s father, also a vaudevillian performer), Larry (both brothers changed their last name from Goldbaum to Grant), Betty Stone (Marilyn …
Evelyn Diamont Banko b. 1936
Evelyn Diamont Banko was born January 21, 1936 in Vienna, Austria. Her father, Joseph, was an engineer and her mother, Frieda, a housewife. In March 1938, when the Nazi’s annexed Austria and enacted numerous anti-Jewish laws, it became increasingly clear to Evelyn’s family that they could not remain in Austria. In August 1938, a Nazi who …
Jan Baross b. 1943
Jan Baross was born on February 5, 1943 in Bakersfield, California; she had one brother, Dr. Thomas Meadoff. Her fatherDr. Nathan Meadoff was born in Gomel (now in Belarus) and came to the US as a young child. Her mother Estelle Kaplan Meadoff was born in Memphis, Tennessee. They metat UCLA. The household was a secular …
Charles Baum b. 1905
Charles “Ted” Baum (1905-1979) was born to a family of Austrian and Bavarian descent. His maternal Grandfather, Charles Lauer, came west from New York with the wagon train of Eugene Skinner (for whom the city of Eugene is named) in the 1850s.. He became an important citizen in Eugene and a banker. Baum’s paternal grandfather, …
Jimmy Berg 1914-2003
Jeremiah 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. …
Jacques Bergman b. 1923
Jacques Bergman was born in Vienna, Austria to Ceciel and Ignatz Bergman in 1923. He had one brother named Leo who was four years older than he. On December 10, 1938, at age 15, Jacques’s parents were able to put him on a Kindertransport to Holland in the hopes of escaping Nazi extremism. Jacques was …
Solomon Bernstein 1886-1981
Solomon Bernstein was born in Odessa, Russia on June 22, 1886. In 1907, he was drafted into the Russian Army and served 39 months in the North Pacific. He married in Odessa in 1912 and left soon after the birth of his first daughter because they found Russia too antisemitic. Sol traveled through China and …
Hans Ludwig Biglajzer 1926-2017
Hans’ father, Wolfe Ruben Biglajzer, originally came from Poland. Wolfe was drafted into the Russian Army during the First World War. He was a prisoner of war in Germany where he met his wife Julia Nathan, who was from Bonnheim. They were married in 1918. Wolfe was a tailor and furrier, as was his father …
Max Birnbach 1912-2008
Max Birnbach was born in Vienna, Austria. His father came from Poland, which he left to avoid the army draft. Max’s mother also came from Poland, from a small shtetl and moved to Vienna when she was young. They were married in 1911. Max went to school and began working. Soon the Nazis invaded Austria Max …
Helen Bissinger Bloch 1903-1986
Helen Bissinger Bloch was born on February 16, 1903 in Portland, Oregon, the daughter of Newton Bissinger and Mildred (Millie) Heilner of Baker, Oregon. The Heilner’s owned the Neuberger-Heilner store. The store opened in 1874, just as Baker incorporated as a city. An 1896 newspaper advertisement described Heilner as a dealer in provisions and groceries …
Phil Blank 1922-2009
Phil 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 …
Judy Blauer b. 1941
Judy Blauer was born on March 17, 1941, the second daughter of Sol and Mildred Albert Sax. Judy’s maternal grandfather, Louis Albert, had immigrated from Russia as a young man and settled in Portland. He was well-known in Portland as the “Soda Pop King” as he invented and marketed several popular flavors of soda. Judy and …
Stan Blauer b. 1935
Stan Blauer, born September 19, 1935, is the only child of Meyer and Rose Stein Blauer. His father came from Austria-Hungary at age 13 (date unstated); his mother was born in Portland in 1914. His father worked mostly as a traveling salesman for a variety of clothing lines until the founding of the umbrella company. …
Anneke Bloomfield b. 1935
Anneke Bloomfield was born on April 19, 1935, in The Hague in the Netherlands. Anneke’s father worked for Shell Oil, while her mother (a retired schoolteacher) stayed at home with Anneke and her three brothers. Anneke also had a younger sister who was born right at the end of the war. When Anneke’s father realized …
Kathryn Kahn Blumenfeld 1921-2004
Kathryn 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 …
Helen Blumenthal 1923-2001
Helen Weinberg Blumenthal was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 5, 1923 to parents of Russian and Polish descent. She interrupted her studies to become a doctor to enter military service during the Second World War. She served as a Navy nurse at Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, where she became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. Helen …
Mollie Blumenthal 1911-2005
Mollie Blumenthal was born and raised in Portland to immigrant parents: her father from Latvia and mother from Romania. Both parents had children from previous marriages and Mollie lived with a large blended family, eight children in a two bedroom house in South Portland. She attended Failing School and took classes after school in sewing and …
Reuben Blumenthal 1891-1977
Reuben 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 …
George Bodner 1919-2018
George Bodner was born on April 13, 1919 in Portland, to Jacob and Hannah Mihlstin Bodner. He had two brothers, Herbert and Robert. George’s father owned his own tailoring business on NW 23rd and Savier, and as a child George lived in a mixed gentile/Jewish neighborhood behind the tailor shop. The family moved to New York …
Hannah Mihlstin Bodner 1891-1980
Hannah 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 …
Harriet Goodman Bodner 1920-1997
Harriet Bodner was born on June 17, 1920 in Portland, Oregon to Helen and Victor Hoeflich. After they divorced in 1925 Victor moved to New York where he was a musician and later a successful manufacturer of party favors. Hannah changed their last name back to Goodman and moved in with her parents, Dora and Charles …