Dora Ail

Rogoway: Okay, Mrs. Ail, where did you come from?
AIL: When I was eight years old we lived in a small little village — Ugrain. The name of it – Ugrain – that was tied up with Yekaterinoslav, like Portland and small places. In those days the women made a living for the whole family. My father was a wonderful person. He would go away to the German villages; he was really an artist — the things that he would make for them, you know. My mother was the main one, so we had a couple of cows and chickens and all that. My mother was a very outgoing person. Then one day, [a] pogrom broke out and we didn’t know it. We were sitting in the front room; we had a little front room. That was our own house. My mother bought a house, and through the window, our good neighbors that we used to be with every day — we liked them and they liked us, my mother was a loved person — they went into that house, and they took the pillows. That’s like diamonds here in this country. They took the pillows, and they tore them, and feathers were flying. My mother just begged them, “Take it; please don’t destroy something like that!” And they said, “No.” That’s the way — the police, the government, told them to do whatever they felt like. 

So early the next morning we were running to hide someplace. It took about three or four days, and we went into a ditch; our little grandpa was running with us, and we were lying there. I was eight years old at that time, and I was dreaming about this for about two years. It was all on my mind, and we were lying there for a long, long time. Then it quieted down, and my mother took me to this big city, Yekaterinoslav. There she had her brothers and her sisters, and they thought that they [the pogrom participants] killed us. They didn’t know what happened to us because they were looking for relatives at that time. Anyway, my father came from Germany, and we were together again; and then we went back to the village. My auntie’s husband had brothers in Providence, Rhode Island; they were in the wholesale business. They were very well-to-do, very fine people; their name was Davinskys. They sent him a ticket for him to come out, to come to the states.

Rogoway: Your father?
AIL: That was my uncle. We were a very close family. And then my aunt was writing to us and was telling us that my father and my younger uncle, that’s my mother’s brother, should come to America, and they will send them tickets. My mother went and sold some of her jewelry, and she sent them off; then we followed. And then, you know, the War came out.

Rogoway: How old were you when you left?
AIL: I was 15 years old. We had our little grandma, and my mother wouldn’t leave her there. And we took her with us — that was her mother — and we were traveling for about a year. We went through Siberia, we went through China, we went into Vladivosto. There was the “Grinitz,” and there I met a girl [and] became very chummy there with her. Her father was a shochet, and they took the Christian religion. They wouldn’t let Jews live there. I had the most wonderful time with that girl, but I do not remember her name. One day she said to me (my name was Dascha — in Russia it was Dascha. When I came to this country they didn’t know Dascha, you know, so I changed to Dora): “Let’s go to a ball.” That’s the first time I ever, ever seen anybody dance; I seen that ball and it was just heart melting, and it was so nice. Anyways, in a few days we left. We left, and we went through the Grinitz on a small little boat, and we stopped in Japan. In Japan we took a train, and we went into Yokohama – that was Japan also – and there, where we were waiting for the boat, we were there 2 months. And in the meantime they had a volcano there; it was just terrible, and there, of course, I met my husband in Harbin. 

Rogoway: Before you went to Japan?
AIL: Yes, Harbin. It was China and Russia; they were at war at that time. I wasn’t even born yet. 

Rogoway: So you went Vladivostok to Harbin?
AIL: Vladivostok… and from Vladivostok I went to Japan, and there went my husband, too. I was about 15 years old, and he was 16 when we met. And we used to go… they have gorgeous, gorgeous parks there where we would go get together, quite a few girls and boys, and we would go to the park. And he had a soprano voice; it was just gorgeous. And all the people would surround him. He sang. He always was the type that liked to entertain. And in the meantime, Rosh Hashanah came along while we were in Japan, and there were a few Jewish men that ran away from Russia, from the soldiers. They didn’t want to be in the war. And who did they meet up with? Japanese women. They didn’t have cent in their pocket, and they were hungry; that’s what made them do it. They didn’t really want to do it. 
We met a fellow by the name Goldberg. We stayed in the Moria Hotel, and it was very reasonable there. Downstairs was his restaurant, that Goldberg’s restaurant. He had about eight children, and they all looked like her — Japanese. He closed the restaurant, and he put curtains on the windows, and my husband, at that age, led the services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He was very concerned about this, Mr. Goldberg, and we were very grateful because we were Orthodox; and that’s what happened. Then we waited to get on the boat. They wouldn’t let the white people go on. They first took the Japanese; whatever was left, they took us. And that’s the reason we stayed there that length of time. Then when we did go on the boat, we came into Seattle, my mother and my grandmother and my brother and I.

Rogoway: Do you remember which boat you took?
AIL: “Anaba Moru.” Anaba is the name and Moru is the boat, in Japanese. Then, when we came into Seattle, I just could swear it was the Council women [National Council of Jewish Women] came and greeted us. They brought us nice clothes, if we wanted to take it, and it was quite cold. I remember I had a nice coat they gave me. And my mother and all that. Then we took the train to go to Providence, Rhode Island, where our family was.

Rogoway: How long did the train take?
AIL: Oh, it took about two weeks and maybe more. Those people in Seattle asked us if we needed money and clothes; they were real wonderful. And I just could swear that was the Council of Jewish Women. I couldn’t think of anybody else. And there was a man that took us off the boat that we became very close with. His name was Aigren. Because we talked Jewish and they talked English and we couldn’t understand them; this man did, you know. He used to talk Jewish with us. Anyways, we came into Providence, Rhode Island to our family. I was very lonesome for my girlfriends because I didn’t know the language; it was so strange to me, and I wanted to go back. But after awhile I gotten used to [it], and I loved family. My cousins and I had a girlfriend from Europe that I knew there, and things got a little bit better for me. And I went to work in a jewelry shop by the name Silverman; Mrs. Silverman was here in Portland one time. She spoke for the Hadassah; she was a very fine person. That was a jewelry shop, and there I worked, and my father was working. He made $8 a week, and I made $6; and that’s the way we got along. But my auntie had a grocery store, and she was a very kind person. That’s my mother’s sister. She would give her a lot of things from her grocery, and that helped us out. 
My husband was in Portland. He went to his family with his mother and sisters; he went first because there was no room, so he went first. So one day my mother-in-law said to him, “Have you written to the girl that you met? Gee, she was a gorgeous girl, have you written to her?” He says, “No, I haven’t.” So then she reminded him a lot. Oh, he was bashful. I don’t know. He started writing to me, and I said to him, “Well, there was a lot of young men after me,” so he went and he sent me an engagement ring; that’s the way we got engaged, through mail. He had a gorgeous, gorgeous voice. We went to school, and the principal said to him, “ I know a woman by the name of Olsen.” And that was Judge Olsen’s wife. She was a music teacher, and she didn’t charge him anything. He was her prize pupil. She gave him lessons; and then they had an opera by the name of Marta — I gave you the picture of it. They asked him to sing in that, and he didn’t even he know the language, but being that he knew how to read music, he read it. I think that was in English, they had at that time. 

Rogoway: Where did you get married?
AIL: In Providence, Rhode Island. He came there. See, he was going to study in New York. It was awfully hard on him, because he wasn’t used to their ways, and Portland is a better looking city than New York. So he decided that he will come to Providence and go into Boston; Boston was just an hour to go and stay. And there was a lot of good teachers there. During the day he worked, and Sunday or Saturday, he would go down to Boston and take his lessons, and then they heard about him —there was a synagogue. In fact, he [the rabbi] married us. I think I have his name… Salensky? So anyway, we were married in Providence, and he participated in the synagogue there. Then he was working in the printing shop, and they had a strike. It was really rough; I lived with my mother, and it was not enough room, and it wasn’t really good. So when I had the baby – my son Nathan – he was three months old, he [her husband] said to me, “I just can’t take it anymore. I’m going to Portland, and I want you to follow me.” Well, my child was too small. So I waited until he was seven months; I hated to leave my family and he begged me and he begged me, and I came out here.

Rogoway: Do you remember when that was, how long ago?
AIL: Well, Nathan is 52 years old, and he was seven months old. So that was 51 years ago, wouldn’t it be? And I went on the train. And at that time we were carrying diapers, and I used to wash my diapers on the train and make bottles for him. I came to Portland, and my mother-in-law said to my husband…[??] ‘Course he didn’t have no money in that time. He started out with his — he wanted to go in business. He always wanted to advance himself. So he took a little table down in the business they had, and he opened a little shop. He used to set type. 

Rogoway: In the house?
AIL: No, no — that was in the Newflander building. In one room – he rented a room there – and by hand they used to work on the press. So one half the day he was setting type, and one half the day he was working the press. He didn’t have customers; people didn’t know him. That was during the Depression. He went through an awful lot. And then he— but he was still studying. He still had a mind to go to Italy and become an opera singer; that’s what he said. Because when he was seven years old he was in a choir in Odessa, he wanted to be an opera singe. He loved singing. We lived with my mother-in-law for quite a while and, as a young bride, and I got disgusted. I lived first with my mother and then with my mother-in-law, and I wanted to go on my own. So finally we moved into Solomon’s apartments. There was a lot of Jewish people, which I liked; on First street, I met Mrs. Sugarman, and the butcher shop was right there. 

Rogoway: Whose butcher shop?
AIL: Brill and Schnitzer. And I met a lady by the name of Levitton. Becky Levitton. They had a drug store on First street. We became very close, and there were quite a few other people. That was what I was used to in Providence like that, with family; my neighbors would come every Saturday and we would play a little cards, and I loved family. We were very close. I went to visit my mother, and when I came back, we moved in on Sixth Street at Steinberg’s apartments. 

Rogoway: Why did you move?
AIL: Why did we move? Well, [it was] a little bit nicer. The apartment wasn’t as big [as the one] my husband rented while I was still in Providence. There I got acquainted, too, with the Steinbergs, and I became very, very close to them. And my whole life was – is – my husband’s music. Then came a very dear friend of my husband’s from New York; his name was Marsby. He liked opera and his life was wrapped up in opera. But when he came it was Rosh Hashanah; they had hired him for the holidays. He was very capable as a cantor, and he participated in the Shaarie Torah. My husband would always help him, and we became very close friends. He would come over and explained to me a lot about operas— not that I would go into an opera and hear someone sing, but I knew what the play was about. He would always tell us about [that], and he would come every day and all that. My husband was the type… he always like to be around those kinds of people, and what he liked, I liked it, too. He [her husband] used to sing out quite a lot, in the Jewish Community Center, all over — he never refused anybody — and the Jewish shuls would come in and ask him to participate, and he would do it. So they heard of him, so they [Neveh Shalom] asked him to come and participate on the pulpit.

Rogoway: What was the synagogue called then?
AIL: Ahavai Sholom. And they asked him to stay there, steady.

Rogoway: Where was it located? Where was the building?
AIL: It was on Park and Clay; that was the first synagogue. And this Marsby always gave him [her husband] ideas on what to do, because my husband was much younger than him, and my husband always dictated because he was a very clever man. So my husband said to him one day, “Do you know, they asked me I should stay there steady. What do you think of it? They wanted me to be a cantor.” He [Marsby] said, “Well, I wouldn’t be a steady cantor, but it doesn’t hurt, a few dollars.” (And it was in the Depression time.) “I would take the job and stay there a while and see how you like it.” And the more he stayed, the more he liked it, as he got older. 

Rogoway: What was the synagogue like when he first started?
AIL: Oh, it was a little bit of a synagogue, but it was a very warm and it was very few people. In fact, they called it the “Polishe shul.” One day, we went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Perlman — they had a son who was a doctor, Sam Perlman. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who knew the Perlmans. She used to be a caterer, and she had a woodstove. Nathan tried to crawl down the woodstove, and she tried to pull him out, and he couldn’t hear. Her husband was in the other room and she hollered him to come and help. And in the meantime the synagogue was on fire, and my husband said, “My synagogue is burning!” And he left us all there and ran to help. 

Rogoway: Was it a bad fire?
AIL: It was quite a big fire there. But they fixed it over, and they owed that… yeah. And when the rabbi came, they always would rent a place right across the street from that synagogue.

Rogoway: Who was the rabbi when your husband first started as cantor?
AIL: There were several rabbis. There was Rabbi Sidney, Rabbi Sandrow — we were close with every rabbi. They used to come to our house, and we enjoyed their company. 

Rogoway: Why did they have so many rabbis?
AIL: Well, the rabbis, as soon as they stayed here a while, they wanted to go to a bigger place. That’s what it was. Rabbi Parson, there was an awful lot… Rabbi Bernstein is in San Francisco. Rabbi Sandrow is in New York and Atlantic City. He came here a lot of times. The members were mad at them; they didn’t like the idea of it, but they used to get other rabbis. But my husband was there for 35 years in that synagogue; and then they built the synagogue across the street from the center. 

Rogoway: When did they build that?
AIL: I don’t remember, honey.

Rogoway: Why did they move?
AIL: They wanted a bigger, more modern synagogue. That’s the reason they did it. And then later on, Rabbi Stampfer wanted to go on the other side [of town]. He could see things were growing there. So he took the synagogue out there. And when my husband was about sixty years old, they got together with the Neveh Zedek and they retired him. He didn’t like the idea. So he went to the Alberta synagogue [Tifereth Israel]. And the Alberta synagogue used to say, “It’s their loss and our gain.” 

Rogoway: But he was with them for 35years.
AIL: Yes. And one year, before Rosh Hashanah, he asked them for a raise. And they wouldn’t give him; they were always broke when it came to the cantor. They took him for granted because he had a little shop, but they didn’t know what he made in that little shop. Because he had to leave his work – he had to get someone to set the type. He was an artist all around. So he asked them for a raise and they wouldn’t give it to him; they thought he was just fooling around, that he’s not going to go any place. They gave him the raise, and he stayed there a while, and then it came, a letter to the office that the Hertzel synagogue would love to [have] him for a steady cantor. So they never showed it to him, that letter. But when Rabbi Sandrow left and my husband happened to be in the office and he looked through some of the things that he needed for himself there was the letter right there that Rabbi Sandrow wrote that was a copy: “Leave our cantor alone; we need him here.” But they paid him very, very little. Because he was in business, he was in that, you know, but he loved the singing so well that he never cared a lot about money. He always used to say, “We do have more than the next person has.” That’s the way he always would say it. That’s the type he was. 
Then they got together with the Neveh Zedek. They decided that they want someone steady, but he always fulfilled the same thing the steady man did. Whenever they called him, he was right there. And he was hurt, because he had put in so much. He would go ahead and pick up some business printing, and he would meet some of the fellows that never even knew something about giving something towards the synagogue. And he would say, “Now listen here. They called your mother’s name, they called your father’s name, and you should give towards the synagogue, that’s the way. This is the old tradition, and you should do that for your parents’ sake.” That’s the way he would always bring in money, members into synagogue. His whole life was wrapped up in the synagogue; in fact, if they would of sit down and talk it over with him, he might have gotten someone to manage the shop, and he would have been there steady.

Rogoway: Tell me more about the early days of the synagogue. What it was like when you first came and your husband first became cantor?
AIL: When I first came? Oh, well, the thing is that he liked it very much because he started in Europe as a little boy of seven years in a choir, and he was very capable; he loved it in the first synagogue. But they felt, “Oh, he’s just a young kid, you know; whatever we give it’ll be okay.” They didn’t realize he had a wife and a child.

Rogoway: Did they synagogue have many members? Was it very big?
AIL: No, they didn’t have very many members. They must have had about a couple of hundred or maybe a little bit more, not any more. But people would come and buy seats. It was the synagogue in those days; they used to call it the “Parlor Shed Shul.” And he was very happy there.

Rogoway: And they moved across from the Center [Jewish Community Center on SW 13th].
AIL: And then when they moved across from the Center it became a little bit more modernized. He met a man — the synagogue was all his life — he met a man, they used to call him “Good-Hearted.” That was the name of his place. He bought and he sold old cars and he was “Good-Hearted Bill.” So he would invite him to dinner here in order to get him in to buy a seat, that the synagogue would have a few more dollars. He didn’t ask me if I could have him or not, but when he brought him, that’s fine. And this “Good-Hearted Bill,” he couldn’t attend synagogue, so he would give Morris back the ticket, and Morris would go ahead and sell it to somebody else, the ticket, and he would tell him about [it]. But in the meantime, I had to feed him. See, that’s the way we lived. My life was wrapped up in his life.

Rogoway: How did the synagogue change when it moved?
AIL: More modern. It was about the same but a little bit more modern. It was a bigger book, a thicker book. And it was a little bit more modern.

Rogoway: And the services?
AIL: And the services were about the same. Services can’t change. 

Rogoway: And what about the people?
AIL: The people could change but services could never change. And that’s the very same way here. Whenever he would get a hold of someone, he would say, “Now you buy books; we need more books.” He would always make the next person feel that they should participate, too. 

Rogoway: Let’s go back to and talk a little bit about your neighborhood when you were first in Portland — Solomon’s apartment and the people and the things that were there. 
AIL: Yes, in Solomon’s apartment we were very close. We were all Jewish people. And there was the fish market. 

Rogoway: Whose?
AIL: Levine’s. And the Rosenfeld. There was a Rosenfeld — he [Mr. Rosenfeld] would go up and catch the fish, and she [Mrs. Rosenfeld] would sell. In fact, she is in the Robison home yet. And there was the butcher shop. She would sit there and reel together, and I would go down and buy my meat and my fish; every Friday night that was our meal – the fillet of fish. I was a little kid and I tried to learn and I did. I did my own baking, my own cooking, everything my own I did. And then I used to like to go to learn how to sew to make for my little girl clothes and for myself. And that’s the way we enjoyed life. 

Rogoway: Who taught you to sew? Where did you to learn?
AIL: In the schools, in the public schools.

Rogoway: Which schools?
AIL: The Neighborhood House had a school. I used to go when I lived in that area. And then when we moved to Irvington I went to the Irvington school and to the Sabin school. I went and I was learning how to sew. I used to make all my little girl’s clothes because we couldn’t afford to go up and buy clothes; it was the Depression. And you know something? In those days, if you didn’t pay your water bill on time, they shut your water off. Now they don’t do it. If you were left without water, you had to go and take some water from your neighbors; outside they had the faucets.

Rogoway: Did you have everything you needed in South Portland when you lived there?
AIL: No, I didn’t have everything I needed. I tried to stretch everything that we needed.

Rogoway: But were all the shops all there that you needed?
AIL: Yes, the shops were all there, like I told you, all the shops. We didn’t know anything else, about going to a goya shop or anything. We went into the Jewish butcher shop; that was the way I was brought up. That’s the way I used to do because I had a grandmother who was very religious. She used to light fourteen candles for her dead children, for her husband. She said, “That’s the way I started it, and that’s the way I’m going to finish it.” And that’s the way I seen it at my mother’s house, and I have seen it at my mother-in-law’s house. And I do the same thing. I didn’t do it any different. I never cooked on Shabbos. Shabbos was my day off all the time. 

Rogoway: What sort of places besides the synagogue were important to you? Where did you spend your time?
AIL: Which family? What family. We had a few friends that we used to get together, like the first people I met when I came from Providence, Rhode Island is Ben Jacobson, the Cohens, the Shimshacks. We used to get together on Saturday night, and we would have herring and potatoes. We would have our little children with us because we couldn’t afford baby sitters. And that’s the way we used to spend [time]. We used to do that every Saturday night. And we had a lot of fun. And then we were starting to play cards. We used to play bridge. And we used to take our little children with. I used to take my little girl and used to put her to sleep, and we used to play bridge. We had a little sandwich and we enjoyed ourselves. We met at Else Blike and a lot of other people… Unkeles, and that was later on. We used to go to Else’s, and she had a party room; we would dance, and then we played cards, and they would play a little poker. And that was our good time. And when it came in the summer, we would go to Seaside. We didn’t look for a special place. We were tickled to death to get anything. I did all the cooking and get some fish. Most of it because there was no meat. They used to send in meat from Portland, the butcher shop, so we would ask them to send in meat to Seaside; we would go down to the post office and pick it up. But fish, there was a lot of fish — smoked fish and cottage cheese and all that. We used to buy things. We used to stay there for about two weeks, and my husband would come on the weekends. We had a wonderful time. 

Rogoway: You mentioned the Neighborhood House — did you spend much time there?
AIL: Yes, my husband belonged to the South Parkway Club, and they would have give a lot of doings; I would go with him. And they would give dances and banquets and an awful lot of nice things at the Neighborhood House. And that time… gee, I just can’t think of her. Her sister was a librarian, and she was the main one in the Neighborhood House [Ida Loewenberg]. And we used to spend a lot of time with them. And then it was…I gave you the name of the other one, the name of the man and now I don’t remember. He was a principal of the school and then he became rabbi, and we were very close to his wife and him. And Geshkowitz came in; he was a conductor, and he didn’t know a soul in Portland. My husband got him together with the Bergs and all those people who were interested in things like that, and they opened up a studio for him. He was leading the children—he was conducting [the] children. They took lessons, and she was a piano teacher.

Rogoway: Where did they teach? What did he conduct? 
AIL: I can’t remember where.

Rogoway: Gershkowitz?
AIL: Gershkowitz. They lived on 14th — NE 14th. And they had [us] many times in their home there.

Rogoway: How long did you stay in South Portland?
AIL: Oh, it must’ve been ten or 12 years. My husband always wanted to go someplace else.

Rogoway: How did it change while you were there? From the time you came?
AIL: It didn’t change. Oh, way later on it changed. You have seen from the baker Gordon, who came from the same town in Russia, and he had a bakery there and a coffee shop. Mrs. Gordon would tie up her little boy Frankie. He’s an accountant right now. He’s married and he has four lovely boys. And she would tie this little boy up on her back and make up the pastries and the bread and the all that. Things have changed. They’ve gotten old, and some of them went on to different things; that’s the way it happened. My husband always wanted to go different places. I didn’t want to go away from South Portland because when we came from Europe… so we lived in a place on the World Avenue. We got married on that avenue, on that street. They used to parade there and meet each other, and it was like one big family. So when I came to Portland and I lived in Solomon’s apartments, I loved it. I didn’t care. I didn’t run away from my people. I loved it. 

Rogoway: You moved from South Portland where to?
AIL: To Laurelhurst. My husband rented a place in Laurelhurst. The reason why we moved away from there is that it was an estate; they wanted to sell the house, and we didn’t have no money to buy. And we rented this house; we had a hard time in that time to rent a house. It’s just like now, we couldn’t find it. And we stayed here until my son was about 30 years old almost, and we lived in five rooms. We needed another room for him. He used to love to read. He used to read with a search light on underneath his blankets. Because my daughter wanted to sleep and he wanted to read. He was born a reader. Then we lived here for a while, and we needed another room. We told our landlord that we were looking for another house but we didn’t have no money to buy a house. And we told him about it, and he said, “No, you’re not moving away. You’ve kept the place up so nice, and the house belongs to you. You can just give me a couple of hundred dollars and then later on give me another couple of hundred dollars and pay out the $25 a month.” And that’s the way we got a house. 
Then later on we wanted to modernize it. It was old-fashioned, and at that time, we went in more for modern. And we got a man for $600 — he put in hardwood floors in our bedroom. He closed up a door that led into the front room and he made the room upstairs. And he did so much for $600. And I asked my husband, “I’d like to have a couple of arches.” It was those French doors, and it would cost $25 for two arches. He said, “We can’t afford [that].” But then later on, it was always in my mind; I wanted the arches, and I got the arches. That’s all, that’s the way we lived. We were happy. We had a car, and we took our children; we would buy them some candy, and we would take our ride. And it was the biggest pleasure. We used to go out on picnics. That was our good times. We would get together with people. I belonged to the B’nai B’rith, I belonged to the Rose City, and the Yiddish shuls would come every once in a while. And my husband would participate, and I would go, and when he sang out a lot, I would go. He sang at the Paramount. When they first opened the Paramount, he sang in a quartet there. One week he would sing in Portland, and one week he would go Seattle to the Paramount to sing. Because we needed the money and he loved to sing. I never was in his way. 
And then one day he said to me, when we lived on Water Street in South Portland (it was closer to where he was) and he said, “Well, I want to go to Italy. I think the time has come. I’ve gotten older, and I want to go to Italy.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll go to my mother.” And he sold out all the little things that we had accumulated. Whatever he wanted to do, I was with him. I never said no. Maybe it would have been better sometimes to say no. But I was a youngster, and I had so much faith in him; I figured he’s doing the best. And he wants to learn more and more and more. So he sold the few things, and I went back East. He was trying to sell his little shop, and he just couldn’t do it. People didn’t have the money. And the way he started, he didn’t want to do. But he was still cantor at Neveh Shalom. 

Rogoway: Do you remember what year or when this was?
AIL: When? Oh, it must’ve been about ’41 or ‘42, something like that. Then it went by, almost a year. And he got very despondent here, that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. I picked myself up with my children and that was during the winter; it was a terrible, terrible storm. I walked into my mother-in-law’s house. He didn’t even know that. I surprised him. I came home and lived again with my mother-in-law. Then one of the boys got married, and they needed that room. So I was happy. I knew then a man named Shautz; he was a painter. They had… I think I was it on Second Street, close to the Shaarie Torah at that time. You know, the Shaarie Torah was on First Street. So we moved out there, and we lived there for a short time. That’s the time when we went to Laurelhurst, from there. 

Rogoway: What are your memories of your happiest times here?
AIL: Happiest times… Happiest times was later on, honey. When my children got married. And my husband and I, we didn’t have to worry so much about their schooling. I had to save every little bit to send my son to college, and we didn’t have it. My husband would say to me, “Why do you do that? You just tear at yourself.” He says, “I’m willing for him to get an education, but not like the way you’re doing.” And I says, “We’re going to get interest someday.” The interest was when he became a lawyer, and I always used to remind him of that. But he did some work too. He waited on tables, he ran a soda stand for some people, and he worked in a shoe store. He did some, but it was not enough. So I helped him. And when the children got married, later on in life, they didn’t need as much, and things gotten a little bit better and still, we used to go in our car. I didn’t want to go in a plane, because I felt like it cost too much money, and that extra money, they still could still use it, and that’s what we did.

Rogoway: What’s your unhappiest memory of life in Portland?
AIL: Well, the unhappiest moment of my life was when I left my family. And I knew how much my son meant to my mother. That was the unhappiest time I had. When I was here, and that was strange, and I had a wonderful family there, although my husband’s family was good to me; they were fine people. And I was really good to them too. I felt like they were my own relatives. I used get in and do a lot of things for my mother-in-law that some wouldn’t do. In those days you did for the parents. But my parents have done for me; they were that type of parents. But they had a lot of children, and my parents had only two. That made a big difference. But still, they didn’t have nothing when we came from Europe. They had old furniture and old this and old that. 

Rogoway: Looking back, how do you feel as a Jew living in Oregon, thinking about the past and now?
AIL: Well, we were very free in Oregon. Our doors were open, at night we used to go out; now we are just scared stiff, even with the doors closed. I have to keep a light on all night. And in those days, even if I had small little children, the bedroom was right next to the bathroom, and we couldn’t have the light on because it would cost too much money in those days. Another fifty cents a month meant an awful lot — we could get a couple of pounds of meat for that money. In those days it was about 25 cents or 30 cents a pound. And now I keep a light on all night, and many times I’ll look out the window. I don’t want to go to the apartment because my house is all paid; it doesn’t cost me as much as an apartment.

Rogoway: As a Jew, has Oregon been a good place to live?
AIL: Well, to me it has been wonderful. I have some gentile neighbors and friends, and they have been very good to me. Oh, every once in a while they say, when it comes Christmas, “Why do you bake cookies when you don’t believe in Jesus?” I would say, “Why don’t I believe in Jesus? Jesus was Jew.” And we had fun, and I still go in there, and if I don’t go in one day, they call me. They’re very good to me.