Augusta Kirshner Reinhardt

REINHARDT: Before we start the interview, I would like to say a word about how I feel about the Oregon Jewish Oral History Archive Project. I feel it is a very important project because this is one way to recapture something that we have lost so much of, the background and story of the people who made up the Jewish community of Portland 50 and 60 years ago, when they came to Oregon. They brought with them many of the traditions and customs and European life that were very important for them and for their children to know and to carry on. This has disappeared to a great extent, and it is only in projects of this kind that we can find out the story of these people who made up the Jewish community in those days. 

Magid: Tell me, how long have you lived in Portland? 
REINHARDT: Practically all of my life. When my father came to the United States and arrived at Ellis Island, he had nobody to take him off the ship there, so one of the men with whom he had struck up a friendship with on the ship had his relatives take my father off the ship. After that, in 1903, he ventured to Oregon from New York. He came to the United states because he was a musician in the Czar’s army, and at the time that they were beginning to enlist the soldiers for the Russian-Japanese War, my father had “pulled the ticket,” which meant that he would go to the training for the war immediately. He and my mother had an agreement that if he should pull that ticket he would not go to war but would instead leave immediately for America and for Salem, Oregon, very far away from Odessa, Russia. They were courageous, and they weren’t about to give their life for a purpose that they had no desire to further. 

Magid: Where in Russia did they live? 
REINHARDT: In a village very close to Odessa. When my father arrived in Salem, Oregon, to his uncle whose name was J.J. Brownstein, he had in his pocket a fifty-ruble piece and that was all. Of course, he also had, which was really his shield, his tallis and his tefillin. When my father left my mother, my elder sister, and my brother in Russia — my brother, I don’t think he was born yet; I think he was almost born when Papa had to leave because it was almost a year that my father worked for his uncle and saved enough money to send for his wife and his children, who came almost a year later. My brother was a very little boy, not even a year old as I recall Mama’s story, and my sister was 2½ years old. 

My brother was very ill on the ship, and it was her prayer that he survive at least until they came to land because if he had not, she knew that they had to throw the bodies of those who died on ship overboard. So it was a wonderful answer to her prayers when he not only survived but immediately broke out into measles when he came to the shores of the United States. Of course, that was his difficulty, and from then on he was a healthy, strong boy. 

Magid: Why did your parents leave Russia? 
REINHARDT: As I said, they really left Russia because my father did not want to go to war against Japan for Russia. He was a musician, and musicians in those days led the soldiers to war, which meant that he would be in the front lines. After living in Salem, Oregon, for quite a short time, my other brother was born, and then I was born, and then my mother and father decided that it was time to move to Portland, where there was a Jewish community and where the boys, particularly, could learn the teachings of the Torah and begin to prepare themselves to be Jews in a community of Jews. This was the real reason that we left Salem and moved to Portland. That must have been around 1909-1910. 

Magid: Where in Portland did you move to? 
REINHARDT: We moved to 250 SW Meade Street. We moved to this little house that had a small barn alongside of it. When my father realized that a living would be difficult to earn, he decided to add a part to the barn and make it a place where the junk peddlers could keep their horses and wagons, and in that way it brought in a monthly fee to him. This served as a part of his earnings for his family. There must have been 30-35 junk peddlers who kept their horses and wagons in Papa’s stables. I remember, as a little girl, standing in front of the house and watching the poor horses as they pulled up that block to the barn, wondering if they were really going to make it. Most of the junk peddlers had horses that the fire department had given up; they could buy them for five or ten dollars. They were pretty weary horses. 

Magid: What was the area called that you lived in? What part of Portland? 
REINHARDT: It is South Portland, and of course, it was always referred to as South Portland. When anybody said that they lived in South Portland, you knew that they lived in a community of Jews or Italians. There were Negro people, and I can remember as a child in school that there were also Chinese people. So there was a mixture of people, but most of the people were Jewish. If there was a ghetto in Portland, South Portland would have been the ghetto. However, it was a self-imposed ghetto; they chose to live close to each other. 

It was a wonderful way to live, very much as we think of a shtetl, because in this small area everything that anybody needed for good living was available within walking distance. There was the library within a few blocks. There was the public school within a few blocks. There was the synagogue within a few blocks. There were the grocery stores, the laundry, the hospital, the community center. You name it and we had it in our so-called ghetto. It was sweet living, and everybody really helped each other. 

When Congregation Kesser Israel was first — not built, because actually it was bought from a church — when it first became a synagogue, I can remember a wedding that lasted almost a whole week because all the people of the community were invited, and everybody brought food and we ate in the synagogue as long as the food lasted. I can remember going to the synagogue night after night for dinner because there was still food left. The weddings were always wonderful because the klezmer, as it was called, the musicians played the Russian kazachkiz, and they played all the Jewish dances that had come from Europe with the people who were living in the area. 

Magid: Do you remember who got married? 
REINHARDT: Yes, I do remember who got married. She’s now Mrs. Veltman. Her name was Bertha Unkeles and she married Louis Burda. That’s the one wedding that I remember very plainly. 

Magid: Do you remember some of the other people who lived on your street? 
REINHARDT: Yes. Directly across the street was a Negro family. Their name was Williams. Next door to the Williamses was Mrs. Narod and her family, who later became Eppstein and then Baker. Directly behind us was a Mr. Murray, who owned sort of like a little orchard where there were plum trees and apple trees, and next to the Murrays were Bernice and Jimmy Winton, the Winton family. They were on the corner of Second and Meade Street. We lived on Third and Meade Street, right on the edge of the gulch. There was a big ravine there. The Laytons lived on the opposite corner to the Wintons. Across the street from the Wintons was and still is the Kesser Israel synagogue, known to us always as Meade Street Shul. On the other side of the street there was and still is a flat that housed the Berg family — and Minnie Berg, it seems to me, is a singer today — and the Pearlman family. Maxie Pearlman is a fine person who now lives in Los Angeles, and I understand that the $10 gold piece that he found when he was playing football with my brothers and some of the other boys in the neighborhood was a wonderful omen to him because Maxie has done very well. Downstairs from the Pearlmans and the Bergs were the Holzmans. Diane Nemer is a Holzman. Then there was the Unkeles family and the Cohen family and the Turtledoves. Well, I could go up and down those streets, I think, and still name everybody that lived there [laughs]. 

Magid: What did you like most about the neighborhood? 
REINHARDT: The fun as a child! I remember the fun we had. We had wonderful games that we played every night before we went to sleep, so when we went to sleep we were tired kids. The one game that I remember that I loved especially was “run sheep run.” We chose up sides, our generals would hide us blocks and blocks and blocks away from home, and then the other side had to catch us. The generals, by calling out numbers, or colors, or names, told us how close the enemy was, and we would find ways to work ourselves to home base, going in the opposite direction to the direction that the enemy was coming for us. In that way we would run fast to get to home base before the enemy got there. It was a great game. I also remember “kick the can,” standing on the corner with a can. This too was played in teams. It was as though it were a baseball game, only we kicked the can and ran to the four bases, and the four corners of the intersection were the bases. That was a swell game, too. 

Then, of course, we were always on the alert because we had to be off of the street at 9:00 PM, and if we weren’t, the policeman would come and somebody would yell, “ISBB!” — I spy brass buttons — and when we heard somebody yell that, we flew in all directions to our homes. We knew that if we didn’t we would be taken to the police station. I remember one night hearing somebody yelling ISBB. Everybody ran into our house, and they ran under the tables and under the chairs [laughs]. We really enjoyed ourselves as children, and these are the sweet memories that we carry to this day. 

Magid: What about the hard times in your neighborhood? 
REINHARDT: If anybody in the neighborhood was sick, everybody prayed for them. Everybody was concerned. The County Hospital was up the block across the street. Lair Hill Park, as a matter of fact, that’s where the County Hospital was. I can remember so well carrying soup to the County Hospital. Mama would always see to it that those who were in the hospital from the neighborhood had things to eat that she felt would be helpful to them. This is the way the entire neighborhood helped each other. 

If there was anybody who had come to the neighborhood and needed a place to stay — I can remember families that came into our house. We only had five little rooms and there were six of us, but somehow or another there was always room for a family that needed a home until they could find their own. It was good living. I also remember Mama delivering a baby because the doctor didn’t get there on time. When they ran to Mama and told her so-and-so was delivering her baby, Mama ran. I remember running after her, and that she delivered the baby and held it until the doctor came. 

I remember when Mr. Layton got the first machine in the neighborhood. It was a Chalmers, and it had jump seats. I remember the way he would take us for rides in that Chalmers car. We really were stuffed. That was pretty grand living. It didn’t take very long before my brother prevailed upon my mother and father to buy him a Hudson from Dr. Fenton. It had shock absorbers. I think he took that car apart and put it together again in the backyard. I remember that we were so impressed because it had shock absorbers. Mr. Layton’s car didn’t have shock absorbers, but my brother Hymie’s car had shock absorbers. He would take the whole family out riding in that car, and that was great living. I can remember my brother looking up into the sky when the planes — and there were very few of them in those days, very few — he would look up in the sky and watch those planes, and to this day I wonder how he happened to escape being a pilot. 

My sister worked at the library. The library was on First and Hooker. Then she worked in the library when the library was on Second and Hooker. She worked with Miss Zerlina Loewenberg. I was a little girl then, and I can remember when I grew older that Miss Loewenberg said to me, “Gussie, whenever we wanted the children to gather together for story hour, we’d always send you out to gather them.” So I guess even in those days I was pretty good at organizing. 

Magid: What about some of your friends, your girlfriends? 
REINHARDT: Mrs. Hyman, who was at that time Mrs. Shapiro, lived across the street — there was an alley directly across the street from us — and her daughter Dina and I were very good friends. As a matter of fact, we sealed our friendship at the age of three by having a hair-pulling fight. From that time on Dina and I have always been close friends with lots in common. Then Rose Zidell and Patsey Steinberg lived right next to the alleyway. Their house was sort of a flat that faced Second Street. Heavens knows that we’re still solid friends. And every now and then I see Bernice Winton, who was a nurse. I haven’t seen her for a year or two, and it’s always so wonderful when we see each other. Toby Rosen, who today owns Toby’s Maternity Store in Morgan’s Alley, lived in the flat right in front of Mrs. Weinstein’s home, and across the street from the flat the Kulchinskys lived. Ruth Wernick’s father and family, Rose Israel, Rose Himmelfarb, lived next door to the Weinsteins, and Goldie Jermulowski, Golda Hahn, Mrs. Arthur Hahn, lived on the corner of Second and Arthur. There was a Singer family that lived on Second Street very close by there. 

In the early days there was a huge laundry across the street from the houses that lined Arthur between First and Second. I remember when the laundry burned. There was such a conflagration. The flames went sky high. My father was out on the road then, and I can remember my mother taking the four of us up to the top of the hill where the library was on Second and Hooker, and a little bundle that she tied in a handkerchief of what was important to us. I remember that we were so frightened she would say to us, “[Yiddish phrase beginning with Gott.] Don’t be frightened, God is with us.” It’s feelings of that kind that have really sustained us, I am sure, through the many years. 

The hill that we stood on top of doesn’t seem like such a hill today, but as a child I can remember the toboggans that used to start above the tracks on Fourth and Hooker Street where the trains used to go. The toboggans would go all the way along Hooker to Second and then down Second to First and Arthur without stopping. Those were great winter days! All the children in the neighborhood and some of the fathers would help us with those toboggans. 

Magid: Where did you go to school? 
REINHARDT: Failing school. I went to the new school, which is today Portland Community College. Those were fun days. I remember so well the Rose Festival parades where we were all a part of the parades. I can remember being a butterfly in the parade. There is an old superstition that you don’t sew on people because you might sew up their brains, and that, of course, for a Jewish person would be a disaster. So my mother used to give me hard-boiled eggs to take to school when they would sew the butterfly dress on me. I would eat hard-boiled eggs so that my brains wouldn’t be sewed up. I really like hard-boiled eggs, so that was fun. 

Another thing that I remember so well when I was going to Failing was coming home one day and saying to my mother, “I’m in another play.” My mother would say, “Did you ask my permission?” I said, “No, Mama.” And she said, “Next time you come home and tell me you are in another play without asking my permission, you’re not going to be in another play. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you should be in another play; it’s too difficult for me to keep washing and ironing all those petticoats for you.” I can remember that those petticoats were very important to the costumes, and I kept Mama very busy keeping me in the kind of clothes that would keep me in the drills and plays. 

I remember once going to a party. Sammy Narod across the street had a birthday party. He had a porch that had a fence on it. I was in all those starched petticoats with my party dress, of course, and one of the games that we were playing was to see who could lean over the fence the farthest. I remember I leaned over the fence the farthest, and I landed on the other side of the fence. And you know Portland. It was raining and wet, and I came in the house with all those petticoats all drenched, and my mother was beside herself. 

Another thing I remember very plainly as a child is a swing that was really a block swing. The Williams children and the Narod children and the Laytons and the Kirshners, we would swing on this big swing. Unfortunately, I was the one that swung the highest. I cracked my head open against the side of a house, and I can remember my mother sitting with me. She put Lysol on my head, and I sat like an Indian with a band across my head. It took a long time for that to heal. Many times I can feel that scar still in my head and then I am reminded. Not a very good idea to be the one who swings the highest. Anyway, it was a lovely neighborhood.

REINHARDT: As I look through your interview format here, I find a few questions that perhaps I haven’t touched on as fully as I could, so I am going to go to the different community organizations that you want to hear about and perhaps talk a little more about the synagogue. That will bring to my mind my mother and my father. My mother was Anna Kirshner and my father was Oscar Kirshner. When they first moved to Portland from Salem, Papa was a member of the First Street Shul, which is Shaarie Torah synagogue, and at that time my brothers were very, very young. Being the youngest, I was always pretty close to my mother. 

At that time, the men and women sat separate as they do at Kesser Israel. Mama was upstairs and I was with her, and I can remember looking down and seeing my brothers and my father. My brother Isadore would sit on Papa’s knee — he was a tiny little fellow — and my brother Hymie would sit next to him. My sister Ora would come to the synagogue, but not as regularly as I did because she always seemed to have other things that were interesting to her. 

Then the time came when Papa decided that at it would be better for us to be members of the Kesser Israel synagogue, which was only a block from where we lived, and so we joined. As a child I can remember lying in bed in the early morning and hearing somebody go through the street hollering, “Tsvay tse minyan,” or “Drei tse minyan,” or “Ainse tse minyan.” [Two for a minyan. Three for a minyan. One for a minyan.] I can also remember my father going into my brothers’ bedrooms and scolding them and saying, “Wake up! Wake up! Get to the synagogue!” Or “Wake up! There’s work to be done.” Of course, this was all said in Yiddish, This is the way the minyans were formed at Kesser Israel in the early mornings, every morning. 

Mama never went to synagogue on the Sabbath because she had worked a very hard week. Friday was a particularly difficult day for her, getting ready for the Sabbath, and when the Sabbath came she was satisfied to just sit quietly at home. Many times, especially when it was the Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of the new month, I would sit and watch Mama benching, praying for the new month to be a good month. The only time I can remember Mama going to the synagogue was for the special holidays. 

As children, especially on Passover, we would play games where we all had walnuts that rolled. We would play games with a board to roll the walnuts, and this we played outside the synagogue and along the sides of our houses. The children in the area had different games for all the different holidays. I can remember Purim time, Mama taking the best cut glass that she had and taking imprints on the cut glass, with delicious dough, and then making sort of sandwiches and filling a basket with beautiful white linen napkins and giving me the baskets to carry to our neighbors, shlachmunes. Then the neighbors would send to us the shlachmunes. And this is the way the children went through the neighborhood at Purim time carrying shlachmunes one to the other. 

I can remember very well, Mr. Shapiro. He was the father of Mrs. Noah Director, Estelle Sholkoff’s grandfather, May Georges’ grandfather. He kept his horse and wagon in Papa’s barn, and when he put his wagon away and put his horse to sleep and fed the horse, then he’d come in the house. I can remember sitting and listening to him and Mama and Papa talk about Zionism, about Eretz Yisroel. It’s no wonder that Mrs. Noah Director was such a beautiful Zionist. She definitely, I am sure, got it from her parents. These were the days when we began to feel the need for a Jewish homeland, when we first heard the talk of a Jewish homeland. In every home in South Portland there was always a Keren Kayemet L’Yisroel, Jewish National Fund blue box. 

One day I can remember asking my mother how long would it be before the Jews could have a homeland of their own again. And Mama said to me, “I can tell you a story that was told by somebody in Russia. We went to a Zionist meeting in Russia. It was held in a kind of a barn. The man who spoke said to one of the elderly people who was sitting there, ‘Stand up please and go to the door and back again.’ This older person got up and slowly walked over to the door and came back to their seat. Then the speaker said to a very young person who was sitting there, ‘Stand up and go over to the door and go back to your seat.’ And this young person got up, ran to the door and ran back to the seat. The man said, ‘When the young people take hold with the old people, then the homeland will come sooner. It’s as you’ve seen. The young move fast; the older people have to move slowly. Up until now, it’s been the older people who have been working for the homeland. We hope and pray that the young ones will join with us. We’ll have our homeland sooner.’” And that was Mama telling me that if I would begin to work for it, the homeland would come sooner. 

I have spoken about the County Hospital that was up the block, and I have spoken about Failing school. Now I must mention the teachers and the principal of Failing School. Miss Fanny Porter was the principal. She was a great lady. Of course, some of the young boys didn’t think she was when she’d give them uppercuts, but when she gave them an uppercut, it was because they deserved it! Her sister was the teacher of the 8th grade. I can remember there was Miss Porter, the teacher of the 8th grade, there was Miss Coy, another teacher of the 8th grade, and there was Miss Peterson, another teacher of the 8th grade. I am not going to tell you which teacher was my brother Hymie’s teacher. 

Isadore was pretty good; he really didn’t get into so much difficulty. But my brother Hymie came home one day with a bloody nose. That was more than my mother could take, so she asked him what happened, and he said his teacher gave him a bloody nose. So Mama went across the street to Mrs. Layton — Mrs. Layton spoke English beautifully — and asked Mrs. Layton to go to school with her because nobody was going to give her son a bloody nose. If anybody was going to give him a bloody nose, it was going to be she, nobody else. And Mama never spanked us in our face — she would spank us sometimes where we should be spanked — but this was something that she just couldn’t reconcile herself to. 

So Mrs. Layton got herself dressed, and Mama got herself dressed as best they could, and they went to the school and told Hymie’s teacher that this was never to happen again. If Hymie wasn’t a good boy, she could tell his mother, and his mother would see to it that he was punished, but there would be no more. Miss Porter knew about it, and believe me, Hymie never came home with a bloody nose again. Of course, it really wasn’t his fault when you hear his story. Miss Fanny Porter was a wonderful principal and an understanding woman. She was a majestic sort of a person. Those of us who went to Failing School remember her very well to this day, and lovingly. 

The Neighborhood House was a wonderful place. I am sure that the Neighborhood House will be spoken of many, many times in this oral history. I would like to tell about the sewing school because it was there that I really first began to have a sense of being a part of groups. I went to kindergarten there, and then I went to the sewing school there that the Council of Jewish women sponsored. 

When my sister Ora was in sewing school, she was a student of Clementine Hirsch. Solomon Hirsch, who was the Ambassador to Turkey at one time, his daughter was a teacher of the upper class. Ora would have to take me to sewing school with her because Mama was pretty busy, and Clementine told me that one time I fell asleep either next to her or in her arms, and I couldn’t have been more than four years old. She never forgot that. She followed me all the way through my high school and my college career, and when I graduated college she gave me a gift which made it possible for me to go to Columbia and get my master’s at Teachers College. This was the beginning of my career as a dancer. I spent many years earning my living teaching dance. 

Magid: How did your parents adjust to the new country? Do you remember how they were when they came to Portland? 
REINHARDT: I remember the stories Mama told me about her experiences in Salem when she first came there. Of course, being a foreigner, she couldn’t speak English at all. She lived in the upstairs of a house. Papa had this place rented for Mama and Ora and Hymie before they came. The house was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Day, a sweet, good couple, and they were going to teach Mama English. Mama told me many years later that instead of them teaching Mama English, she taught them Yiddish [laughs]. So it took quite a long time for my mother to really speak English. 

As a matter of fact, it was when she was taking some English classes at Failing School, night classes, with my father, and Miss Bess Segal was their teacher, that they were sitting one night, listening to Miss Segal explain the alphabet. Mama and Papa had left their four children asleep when they went to take their Americanization class. Ora, my sister, was the second little mother so to speak, so she was in charge of the three of us, and she was very young. Mama and Papa heard a fire engine running outside, and they both got up and ran as fast as they could home to be sure that their children weren’t in any danger from the fire. 

Of course, the fire wasn’t anywhere near their home, but they never went back to the Americanization classes because they both felt that their duty was at home with their children. When their children grew up, then they would learn English and everything else that came with it, but until that time, they felt that their children and their home was their first call to duty. This is where they spent their evenings. And I am sure that this is the way most of the Jews in South Portland felt about their home lives. 

Magid: How has Portland changed? 
REINHARDT: It’s a difficult question to answer. In many ways there is progress, but what some people regard as progress I can’t help but look at with feelings of a certain amount of sadness. What was family living has become big city living, in the sense that where individuals lived for many, many years, we now find replaced by big apartment houses and lots and lots of concrete. I feel sad that the area to the north of the triangle that’s left doesn’t any longer house the people that it did many years ago. It’s a little sterile. It doesn’t have the vitality and the life that it could have had if there were a mixture of people living there as there used to be. Now people are restricted because of income. There are only people of a certain income who can live in the old South Portland area, outside of the triangle. 

Magid: How long did you stay in South Portland? 
REINHARDT: We lived in South Portland until I was a senior in high school, and we probably would have lived there until today — because we loved our little house very much, and we liked the barn next door to our house — but as I said before, we lived right on the edge of this gulch, and the gulch began to be filled. They began to fill the gulch with garbage from all over the city, and it was an impossible situation. It smelled so badly that Mama and Papa felt that it was unhealthy for our family to live there, and so when I was a senior in high school we moved to North Portland. That was the reason we moved away from South Portland. 

Magid: What about the other people who lived in South Portland? 
REINHARDT: Many of them had moved away way before then. Many of the South Portland Jewish people moved to Irvington, parts of Laurelhurst and parts of Irvington, “the other side of the tracks.” Then it was difficult, of course, for them to get to the synagogues. There was a time when they were very anxious to get a synagogue on the Eastside, but outside of Tifereth Israel — of course, Alberta was always a little bit of a Jewish community as well as the South Portland community. Irvington and a little bit of Laurelhurst. It wasn’t until many, many years later that Jewish people began to move farther southwest and outside of the immediate city, where we now find so many of our people living. 

Magid: What kind of changes did World War II make? 
REINHARDT: I really don’t know the changes that went on in South Portland during the World War II period. I was living in New York at the time. My family was not living in South Portland at that time; we were already living in North Portland. So I can’t help you there. 

Magid: What about the effect of Urban Renewal? 
REINHARDT: I spoke to that, at least I tried to, when I spoke about changes in the northern part of South Portland. I don’t feel that it was a change for progress, but then — let me go back a little because I think this might be interesting to hear. When we were living in South Portland, and as I said, there was this big ravine that our barn and house was on the edge of, the ravine had water at the bottom of it, and the boys in that part of South Portland used to play on rafts in that water. One time my brother Hymie was on the raft with Phil Eppstein, and for some reason or another, Hymie fell off the raft. If Phil hadn’t been with him, he could very well have drowned because the water was fairly deep there. But Phil pulled him out of the water, and I never see Phil Eppstein that I don’t want to put my arms around him and hug him because I remember. 

This is the way we all lived together. We really did help each other. The young people helped each other, the older people helped each other. The young people helped the older people, the older people helped the younger people. It was a warm, family-like atmosphere, the whole area of South Portland. Oh, I am sure there was plenty going on underground that wasn’t always pleasant, but that wasn’t the general feeling of the area; those were the incidents that made it a normal life. The general feeling of the area was one of family living, although it was really a community. 

I remember that the Turtledoves had a grocery store on the corner of First and Meade, and then the Maccobys had a grocery store there. It was that grocery store that taught me how to spend money for food. Mama would send me to the grocery store with money, and I’d have to buy what she told me to buy. Mrs. Maccoby or Mrs. Turtledove — and Mrs. Turtledove is still at the Robison Jewish Home — they would count the money back into the palm of my hand, and then I’d run home and count the money back into Mama’s palm, so that I always knew what it took to make a complete transaction in marketing. 

I can remember that we all used to have piles of wood. This was the way we learned to do business as kids. Everybody would have a pile of wood outside their house delivered before the winter, and then the pile of wood would stay outside for a month or so, so that it would get seasoned. Then somebody would come around and saw the wood. This is the way somebody made a living. They would go from one house to another and saw the piles of wood. There was a gang of us that used to go from one house to  the other when the wood was sawed, and we’d pile the wood in the basements, and then we’d get pennies for doing it. Everyone of us would get a penny and run as fast as we could to the corner grocery store and buy ourselves jellybeans or these things that came on a long strip of paper with candy and you would pull them off the long strip as you ate them. Of course, sometimes we would buy shemeshkes, sunflower seeds, too. These are the memories that I have as a child, swell memories. 

Magid: When you look back, how do you feel as a Jew living in Oregon? 
REINHARDT: I feel very much at ease living in Oregon as a Jew. I think it’s because my childhood was Jewish. I don’t have to make any adjustments to being a Jew. I was brought up in Oregon as a Jew. My friends who weren’t Jewish had no difficulty accepting me as I was, and so I had no feeling of being different from anybody else because I was a Jew. I felt very much at ease as a child and still have this feeling personally, but I see signs around me that aren’t happy signs as far as Jewish and non-Jewish relationships are concerned. 

Magid: Did World War II present any problems to you as a Jew in Oregon? 
REINHARDT: I wasn’t living in Oregon during the time of World War II except for the last year and a half. When I came back to Portland, I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. I can’t remember any problems that were presented to me personally. However, I became very involved at that time with Zionist groups because I realized. When I was in Europe and in Russia in 1937, of course I was fully aware of the beginning of Nazism. 

I had heard Stephen Wise in 1935 at Carnegie Hall at one of his Free Synagogue services. I was going to Columbia, and on Sunday mornings I and friends of mine would go to the Free Synagogue to hear Stephen Wise. I heard him say to a crowd at Carnegie Hall, “There is Hitler and he’s only starting with the Jews, but he won’t stop with the Jews.” So I was very aware. When I came back to Portland, I was aware of the message that Stephen Wise had left with me, and I realized that not only as a Jew, but as an American and a human being, I had to extend myself in every way possible to a homeland for the Jewish people.