Howard Cohn

Rubenstein: Howard is a lifetime resident of Portland. Howard, first please state your name, your age, and your place of birth and we’ll go from there.
COHN: I am the second generation born in Portland. My name is Howard Cohn. My father’s side of the family came to Oregon in the late 1870s. They were one of 12 families that traveled from Bismarck, North Dakota in wagon train and on foot. The only other family that I know of that came in at that time was the Nudelmans. Aside from that I don’t know who the other ten families were but I do know that they told me that amongst the whole tribe of the 12 families, they had $20 in cash.

Rubenstein: [laughing] So they were flush, then.
COHN: They were flush.

Rubenstein: Do you know what prompted them? Why did they make the move from North Dakota? And were the families all Jewish?
COHN: No, these were ten Jewish families and why they came to Portland I have no idea. Somebody said, “Go Vest!” and I guess they did.

Rubenstein: What year were you born, Howard?
COHN: I was born in 1927. May 25th, which makes me almost 85.

Rubenstein: Now let’s go back to your earliest childhood memories. Where did your family live and who were your relatives, etc?
COHN: My relatives were the Vines, the Weinsteins, and the Cohns. In my father’s father’s family there were 12 boys and they each had a sister. So there were 13 of them. They came in two batches. The first family had six in the family. Then the wife died and it was the custom at that time to marry someone close. I think it was the housekeeper in this case who he married and she gave birth to the other six.

Rubenstein: Now is this coming from Europe?
COHN: In Portland. There were various different retail operations. In fact, I have somewhere in my possession a letter written by my grandfather from the year 1898 to his partner, who was a Hochfeld. He was happy that that day they had done a huge amount of business. They did $11! I have kept that. It was the year before my father was born. My father was born in Portland in 1899. They had a furniture store, when they got to be of age – Cohn Brothers Furniture, which my grandfather and his brother started. And then my father and his brothers, which was comprised of David Cohn (he was the youngest), Abe Cohn (who was the middle son). My father was the oldest. His name was Sol. Their sister was Essie Matin. Her husband became the manager in the office while my father was the buyer and Abe was the salesman extraordinaire. He would love to wait on people. The first time they said, “We’re going to ‘Jew you down’” the sale stopped right there. He sat them down and gave them lesson 101. He would win every argument and lose every sale [laughter]. That’s the way it was in those days. The first store was in downtown Portland. They had a musical and children’s show, which was well used until The Depression, at which time they couldn’t afford to do it anymore. Then my father’s half-brother, Nate Cohn (Uncle Nate), went over to Star Furniture and hosted Stars of Tomorrow. The original program was our program in downtown Portland. I still remember the song they used to sing on the radio – it was a big deal, “East side, west side, all around the town, Cohn Brothers Furniture Store could easily be found. Terms are very easy, a small payment down delivers your furniture to your door in an all-around Portland Town.” The motto of the store was “A dollar down and let’s grow old together.”

Rubenstein: That is fantastic.
COHN: They served almost all of the minorities in Portland. It was a wonderful feeling to be around them. All of that generation, my parents included, were all Damon Runyon characters. I think back to what they were and it was so funny. Nobody had any money; everybody was in the same boat – Depression time or coming out of the Depression – and being that everybody was poor, nobody knew they were poor. [laughed] They made do, what with my cousins Ronnie and Jerry Matin, and Marv Cohn, who died in the Korean War in the Navy (he was a pilot), we grew up being closer than just cousins because we grew up in the same neighborhood.

Rubenstein: Now where was this neighborhood that you grew up in?
COHN: We lived in the Irvington Neighborhood for the most part.

Rubenstein: So your family never had a South Portland experience?
COHN: No. My grandparents did but not me. We always lived in the Irvington District. In the early parts of the 1930s I think my family lost their home on 15th and Knott because they couldn’t make the payments on a $1500 mortgage balance. They used to rent lovely homes all over the area. The rentals at that time were between $25 and $35 a month and you didn’t stay there over a year or two because if you moved to another place the first month was free. That is they way they existed.

Rubenstein: So tell me before we get back to your growing up, what was your family’s Jewish involvement? Did they belong to synagogues? Were they active?
COHN: Sure. I went to school, as did my wife, at Temple Beth Israel from the time we were kids on through. We weren’t overly religious, except for going to the High Holidays, of course. [And when] people who passed on, you’d go to services and all. We weren’t extremely religious. My grandparents were. They kept kosher, especially on my mother’s side. My father told me the story of when he took out my mother. He thought he would bring them home a surprise when he was going with her and he purchased a bag of crawfish and he was almost thrown out of the house for being gentile. I remember when I was five years old having lunch with my grandmother in her home. She was becoming Americanized by that time. She was slipping me a glass of milk when I was having a meat dish. And my grandfather, from the other room, looked up and saw what was happening. He picked up a book and threw it right through the dining room into the kitchen and hit the glass right on the nose. He could have been a pitcher for the New York Yankees; he was so good.

Rubenstein: Now let’s go back to your childhood. In your household what was the family make-up? Who lived in your house?
COHN: Well, besides my dad and my mother, my older brother and my younger sister. We were all four years apart. My sister, unfortunately, passed on when she was just 40. My mother died in my arms when she was 48. My brother and I are still going strong. Dad, he always bragged to everybody. Throughout his entire life that I knew of he was about 300 pounds. He always claimed that Portland was a fantastic city because he only weighed 6 and a half pounds when he came to Portland. [laughter] He was very peculiar with his eating habits. He would have a steak, when he went to a restaurant, and tell the waiter in advance, “The second steak you bring me will have a chance of being what I want. The first one I know is going to go back. I’m going to say, ‘Bring it to me blood rare.” And I’m going to send it back because it is too well done. Just wave a match under it and bring it in warm from the heat of the day.” He would never eat anything that shouldn’t have had a bandage on it so that it could have the chance of getting well. And yet, through his 88 years of life he was never sick one day. Never saw the inside of a hospital except to get me home, being a child. He was healthy and happy his whole life. He did everything the way he wanted it done and he was fine. Now while he was weighing 300, my mother weighed no more than 100 pounds sopping wet. So when I got married I told my wife, “Dear, knowing my parents’ experience, if there ever comes a time when the two of us get on a scale and weigh 300 pounds plus, you have to go on a diet. That’s the way it has been.”

Rubenstein: [laughing] All right. Now tell me about your schooling. Where did you go to school?
COHN: I started off at Irvington and then I went to Holladay for a year and graduated from Hosford, over on the east side. I went to Washington High School until I was a sophomore. When I turned 17 I decided to join the Navy. After being turned down by every service that had brains, I decided that Dr. Enkelis was a Captain in the service at the Navy Recruiting Station. I went down to him and said, “Jake, I want to get into the Navy and I don’t want to be turned down anymore because of my eyes.” He said, “Howard, I can get you in; there is no problem with that. You are going to hate me in 90 days.” And he was wrong by 60! I hated him in 30 but it was an experience.

Rubenstein: What year did you go into the Navy?
COHN: I went in in ’44.

Rubenstein: So World War Two was still on.
COHN: Oh sure. I went through the Boot [camp] and everything to it and I was stationed in San Diego for a while. Then it was my turn to go overseas and we were climbing the plank to go up on the ship when they announced on the loudspeaker system, “The war is over.” So we turned around and went back to the base. In a short time we were ushered out. I didn’t want to go back to high school because most of my friends at that time were beginning to go to college. I took myself up to the University of Washington and talked to them there. Because I was a returning veteran they bent over backwards and said, “Okay, you can come in on a temporary basis and let’s see what you do.” That was all that was necessary. I went two years to the University of Washington and then my mother became ill so I came back to Portland and went to the University of Portland for two years (and I can say a Hail Mary faster than any of those other kids). 

Rubenstein: Wasn’t there a famous Father Delaney there?
COHN: Father Deloney, one of the nicest gentlemen I have every met in my life. He was just a super person. At that time there were a number of Jewish kids that went there.
Rubenstein: A lot of Jewish kids went there. And he seemed to have an effect on them.
COHN: Oh they loved him. He was a rotund gentleman and he loved life. I remember one time he pinned me against the wall with his stomach and he said, “Howard, you get to go to all the Jewish holidays as well as all of the Catholic holidays.” I said, “That is the reason I came here.” We got along fine.

Rubenstein: Now what about your Jewish education? Did you go to Hebrew school? Did you have a bar mitzvah?
COHN: No, Temple Beth Israel didn’t have bar mitzvahs. They had Confirmation classes with Rabbi Berkowitz. I did go for a short time to Hebrew school in the Irvington District there. I remember sitting in the far back of the class. When the teacher (I think his name was Robinson) would turn to work on the blackboard I turned to the back window and went out very gently and dropped out. [laughs] As far as Hebrew goes, I can read some Hebrew. Rabbi Berkowitz had the Confirmation class memorize the entire ten commandments in Hebrew, which I can still state to this day and not know one word of what I’m saying.

Rubenstein: What about your brother? Did he get a Jewish education like that?
COHN: Yes, my brother speaks six languages and I flunked Spanish 1. It isn’t in the genes but he loved language. Rabbi Berkowitz wanted him to become a rabbi. He was torn between that and the theater. He went for the theater and has enjoyed that for the last 65 or 70 years now.

Rubenstein: Isn’t that wonderful? Now in your neighborhood were there a lot of Jewish people in your close neighborhood?
COHN: The Irvington neighborhood was … I don’t know if there were many gentile people there. Even the principal at Irvington School, a gentleman by the name of Barr, was Jewish. It was quite a few Jewish people there.

Rubenstein: So after you graduated from the University of Portland what did you do?
COHN: I immediately went into business with my father, as did my cousins Jerry and Ron Matin. It was there for us; I enjoyed it.

Rubenstein: Was that Cohn Brothers Furniture?
COHN: That was Cohn Brothers Furniture. I stayed there until I was 25. At that time my father retired (or took a short retirement anyway) and I didn’t want to be at the store with my cousins at that time because I would have had a minor partnership instead of an equal one. So I took what I had coming to me and opened up a store. Cohn Brothers had a satellite store in Oregon City. I took that store as my end of it. I can remember very distinctly the first day that I was there and the sign of Cohn Brothers came down and the sign of Howard’s went up. The first customer in the store said, “I’m certainly glad that we got rid of those Jews.” I put my arm around the guy’s back and said, “You are right. Us Goyim got to stick together.” [laughter] I was there in Oregon City for close to 40 years. After that, why, I retired in 1988 and after a week of doing nothing and going crazy and missing all of my customers I decided I would go into the estate sales business: furniture, silver, rugs and what-have-you in homes. I did that for 20 years until my wife said, “You are now 80. Enough is enough.” And I said, “Okay, we’ll try this again.” Another week went by and I said, “Yup. I’ve had it.” Then I got myself involved (and I still am) with the coin, silver and gold jewelry operation in the Multnomah district. I go there a couple or three days a week and help them out. It is very enjoyable I get to see all of my old customers.

Rubenstein: Wonderful. Now you married a Portland girl.
COHN: Yes, Barbara Schnitzer. Her father was Bernard. They had Bernard’s Jewelry downtown on Fourth and Alder. I remember distinctly because I got a call one day from my dear friend Leonard Zell, who said, “I’ve got a girl for you that I want you to take out. You don’t have to marry her, just take her out.” So every year (and our 56th anniversary is coming up now in May) I call him up and tell him how much more he owes me for putting us together. We have a nice relationship. We have a daughter, who turned out to be fantastic and she gave us two grandchildren, both boys. One boy is now a junior at Santa Barbara UCLA and the other boy is four years younger. He is 17. He attends West… something High School off of 185th in Portland. Since he was a freshman he loves football. He is so good at it that they made him varsity his freshman year. He is a varsity player and as a center can toss the ball a long distance behind him three seconds faster than anybody else so he is up for a scholarship.

Rubenstein: How wonderful.
COHN: And they are both 3.5 or better students. The 

Rubenstein: Those are the dividends.
COHN: Well the dividends are that they are decent human beings and they know what is right and wrong morally. It is a pleasure to be around them.

Rubenstein: Now let’s go back. How did the Jewish population react during World War Two? Was there an undercurrent of hatred to the Germans, etc.?
COHN: World War Two was unlike any war that we have had since. Everybody mobilized. The people on the home front were as important as the soldiers in the field. As far as the Jewish population was concerned we knew, “If we lose this one we might as well commit suicide.” Because they (the Germans) would kill us all off. Everybody did their part, no matter what it was, everything from food stamps to gasoline rationing, to saving certain types of suet or grease that we returned. Everybody, no matter young or old, they all did something to help the war effort. If the Japanese had known how defenseless Oregon, Washington and California were they could have walked in. Nobody would have stopped them. There was no defense. I remember going to Seaside and having to put lights with a little slit on our cars.

Rubenstein: Right, they tried to blackout the city as much as possible.
COHN: Right. And at that time you couldn’t walk down the street in Seaside when you visited there for all the Jewish people that would go to Seaside. It was a really remarkable feeling. And those were the days when it took all day (and I really mean it, all day) to drive to Seaside. They didn’t have the highways; they didn’t have the automobiles or the tires to drive on. It was terrible. And that is the time that they had a railroad system that went from Portland to Seaside. It cost a dollar round trip. It was quite a deal. Years later I asked my father. I said, “This was during the Depression times, very early 30s. How did you afford to let our family go to Seaside for three months out of the year and live in a lovely home on Fourth Street?” He said, “Well how much do you think it cost?” I said, “I’m asking you. I don’t know.” He said, “It cost a dollar a day. $100 for the three months.” It was on Fourth Street. The house is still standing there. A couple of years a go a Nudelman (Jerry Nudelman lives next door to it). We were walking by the house and I said, “Jerry, I used to live in this house. There used to be a fish pond right there in the center.” A woman of the house was outside and she overheard what I said. She said, “No there wasn’t.” I said, “There was.” She said, “Well I want to let you know, young man (thank you for the compliment), it’s 65 years I’ve been living in this house and there is no fish pond.” I said, “I’m not talking about modern times! I’m talking about 75 years ago.” We both started laughing.

Rubenstein: We talked about your Jewish education. Now did you raise your daughter Jewish?
COHN: Of course.

Rubenstein: Did she have an education?
COHN: Yes. In fact to a point where I remember when she was 14 I arranged for her to go to Israel. She was on a kibbutz for three months. That taught her a whole bunch. She came back and she said, “I know what it is to work.” They were picking oranges or whatever it was and she said, “The kids there didn’t appreciate Americans over there but by the time we finished they loved us like everybody else because we were interested and felt for them.” Yes she got an education and she brought her children up that way, too.

Rubenstein: So her children were brought up and they know they are Jews. We are continuing the traditions. What changes have you seen? You have been in this community probably as long as anybody that we talk to now. What changes in the community have you noticed?
COHN: Well, number one, the population in Portland now… my God; it is over three million in the state of Oregon. When I was a young man it was barely a million. The Jewish population has increased. I understand there are some 40,000 Jewish people in the state of Oregon. We had a fraction of that. But the fraction that we had were all very close to one another. I blame, not blame in the sense of hating, but of loving, the fact that we have the B’nai B’rith camp in Neotsu, Oregon that accounted for the closeness that we have in the Jewish community. No matter if you were rich or poor, if you went to camp as a young person or as an adult, you felt very close to one another. I went from the time I was ten years old to B.B. camp. I served as a counselor as well and went to Men’s Camp. 

Rubenstein: Are there two names that stick out in your memory from B.B. Camp?
COHN: Well of course the two people that we know we all loved were Polly [Harry Policar] and the swimming instructor. I can’t recall names anymore. [Mickey Hirschberg]. They were marvelous people. They spent their lives helping people along. I learned to swim in The Crib. That is the way it was. It was a lot of fun. And at that time I think it cost maybe $10 or $12 a week, which was hard to come by. Now I don’t understand how people can afford it. But I have only warm memories of B.B. Camp, absolutely. When the men make their donation at the end of a weeks time, we had a little Jewish guy that would come there. He was not all mentally there. He was a newsboy in Portland. I think his name was Scotty Cohen, if I’m not mistaken. He would get up and he would donate $25 and he got just as big a hand as the guy giving $5000. That is why the Portland community was close.

Rubenstein: What a terrific tradition.
COHN: It was. I marvel at the kids now taking our place there, keeping it alive and getting tremendous money that all goes back to the camp and to under privileged children who haven’t got a place to go, whether they are Jewish or not.

Rubenstein: Scholarships and improvements, that is right. Tell me about when World War Two was over. What was the feeling toward the Japanese in Portland? Was there…?
COHN: Well, I felt, as did a lot of people, at the time maybe it was important that they not be seen on the street. I still don’t understand that. It is beyond me. They were American citizens. There wasn’t one person that was bad in the entire United States of Japanese decent and they had to be imprisoned like they were in concentration camps! I went through the one in California and you wouldn’t want to put your dog there. They got nothing for their property and have never received compensation properly. They had to sell out for whatever they could get and it was generally ten cents on the dollar or less. We had a lovely Japanese population at the beach. They had groceries and home deliveries of food stuffs. They were fine people and they formed an air force of Japanese and a battalion of Japanese and they sent them to Europe (not the South Pacific).

Rubenstein: [Shouts out at epithet for Japanese soldiers, can’t hear]
COHN: Yes, but they were wonderful people.

Rubenstein: All right. Now let’s touch on a new subject. Can you remember any incidents or many instances of your growing up at school, at the play, whatever…
COHN: Antisemitism?

Rubenstein: Antisemitism.
COHN: Sure. I got into more fights that your car has pills. It’s all education that brought us a better way of life for everybody, but at that time in the ‘30s or ‘40s there were all kinds of antisemites around. Oregon itself had a huge population of KKK. We had a senator named Rufus Holman. He was appointed to being a senator by a Jewish governor. Governor Meier appointed him. He would get up in the United States Senate and make terrible remarks. That is who Wayne Morse ran against. And of course, when Wayne Morse ran and we needed him terribly, there wasn’t a Jew in the entire state that would have voted for anybody else. He was a statesman of the first water. I wish we had more people like him today. It was very antisemitic. Most of the clubs in Portland would not allow Jews. I remember not being able to get into the Multnomah Athletic Club. You couldn’t get into a golf course (that is how Tualatin came around and became a Jewish course). The fraternities, Sigma Alpha Mu, and Zeta Beta Tau, and the other one would spring up because you couldn’t get into the other fraternities. So we formed our own. 

Rubenstein: Were you in a fraternity at Washington?
COHN: Yes I was a Sammy at Washington. But I was over at the Zeeb House as often as I was at the Sammy house.

Rubenstein: I’m sure that is right. Do you remember having large family seders? How did your family celebrate the High Holidays?
COHN: It was very important to us. We always had the family get together for Seder. To this day we still do.

Rubenstein: Would it be a blend of Cohns and Matins, etc.?
COHN: Yes. The family would get together for that. And as the families grew somewhat apart (because you make your own spider web and you can’t do it) we would always have family get-togethers. That was the fun part. There were wonderful people. Everybody had a nickname. My father’s nickname was The Gergol, because he could stretch his neck. When he was playing cards he could see three people down. Leo Matin’s nickname was The Gray Goose, or the Claw. He had one fingernail that he always kept long and, of course his hair was beautiful and he was the Gray Goose. Abe Cohn was Abstu. And Deeny Cohn, we used to call him Genghis Kahn. We would be playing cards all the time at the Tualatin and my cousins and I would do anything to beat him in a game. The harder we tried the more we would lose. He was very good. He was also the greatest dry needler that ever lived. He could tell you with a straight face something that would make you want to kill him but it was very funny when you look back on it.

Rubenstein: Your family has a wonderful reputation for their sense of humor. Big kibitzers. Now, Howard, did you have help in your house?
COHN: Yes. But when you are talking about help, it was not like today. In the ‘30s you used to have help even in the worst of the Depression but you didn’t pay fortunes on it. Nobody had fortunes. They used to get farm girls who would come and live at the house and they would get room and board and maybe as much as $12 -15 a month. And that was the help. And that went on for years until things started picking up. Everybody’s god in the 1930s was President Roosevelt. He could have run for a fourth, fifth and sixth term. He would have been elected if he had been alive because he took us out of Depression and everybody loved him for that. He did some great things in Oregon: Mount Hood, Timberline Lodge, dams that we built, highways. They got people back to work. They had jobs.

Rubenstein: Let’s talk about the family business, the furniture business. Your competition was mainly other Jewish entrepreneurs?
COHN: Some, but they weren’t competitors in that sense. Everybody was a friend of everyone else. I remember if we were out of an item and we knew another store downtown would have it there was no question. We would call them up and say, “I need it.” And it was automatic. I did that even when I was in business myself. Bush Furniture was my dear friends in Oregon City. We were a block apart. We never badmouthed each other. He was Catholic; I was Jewish. If I didn’t have something and he did I would call him up and he would give it to me and vice versa. In fact I remember one time a man came in and wanted a certain kind of recliner and I didn’t carry the brand but he did. I said, “Let me show you something that will never happen at any other store in the city.” I took him out the door, walked up a block, went into his store and said, “Tommy, I’ve got a customer here. I want to take him through the store.” I sold him a chair on his floor, which he gave me at his cost and he even offered to deliver it for him but enough is enough. He needed something and I went out on a limb and got it for him, too. We were friends.

Rubenstein: Now let’s get back to the city of Portland. What were the other Jewish furniture stores?
COHN: Oh my, there was Pearlman, Gevurtz, Directors, B & L, Star. I knew each and every one of them and we used to love the salesmen that represented outside furniture operations. They would come in to sell you furniture. During the ‘30s and the ‘40s and ‘50s Portland had approximately 18 to 20 furniture manufacturing plants – big ones. The unions just killed them. There isn’t one today.

Rubenstein: How many Jewish owned furniture stores are there today?
COHN: Well, aside from Shleifer… Shleifer would be the only one that I can think of in the Portland area. He and his cousins. There is Shleifer Furniture and Broadway Furniture. Outside of that I don’t know of any other furniture stores. Well, the business is not like it used to be. Everything today is, unfortunately, bait and switch. You can’t find any truth in any advertising, not only in furniture. That goes for any business that is on the market. They don’t tell the public the honest truth. They tell you “ifs and ands” and not the truth. We had a great following in our store. I really enjoyed all the customers. Everybody knew everybody else. I remember one incident. We needed a helper for the warehouse, so my uncle, Genghis Kahn, Deeny, advertised in the paper and there was a line of people waiting to get in. He was asking them all simple questions to see if they could…. And he asked this one rather dark looking gentleman from the east side, from North Portland. He said, “Why should I give you a job?” and I will never forget. The man answered, “Mr. Cohn, I will tell you why. I owes you a lot of money. And unless I gets a job I can’t pay you.” [laughter] And he says, “You are hired.” Those are the kinds of stories we had. I could fill a book with these stories.

Rubenstein: We are more interested in those stories about Jewish life and Portland Jewish life.
COHN: Oh, my uncle Deeny was one of a kind. He was fantastic. He was a tremendous businessman. That is why the store was a success. He knew how to advertise and display it all. He had a temper, though. And this man’s temper was unbelievable. As he was talking to one of the salesmen, the best salesman on the floor. He did something wrong for some reason.

COHN: He was talking to the fellow and explaining to him what he was doing wrong and as he is talking to him he is getting hotter and hotter and his face is turning red. He is blasting him up one side and down the other. He gets all through and he is out of breath and this salesman looks at him and says, “You know Mr. Cohn, you are absolutely right in what you are saying. What does that make you for hiring me?” [laughter] That broke up the whole thing.

Rubenstein: So the sense of humor was throughout the whole place. 
COHN: Oh yes. We had a lady salesperson during the War Years. Now during the War Years you couldn’t get anything with springs. All of the metal went to the war effort. Whatever you had you could sell. You would get these sofas, davenports, in with no springs. Now we used to refer to those sets as “TB” sets, “tuches breakers.” And this lady was a very heavy-set woman. She would go to the sofa and say, “Look at this, how nice it is.” And she would sit down. I thought she would get splinters. And the customer would say, “But it doesn’t have springs.” She would say, “Not to worry. After the war you can get springs to put in there.” Sure you could! I would cost you four times as much as the davenport. That’s the way it was. 

During the war they opened up the shipyards, Kaiser. They were bringing help in. They didn’t have any help here. They were bringing help out of the south or from wherever they could get it. And they were paying ridiculously high wages at that time.
Rubenstein: A dollar an hour.
COHN: Yes, that’s about what it was. They gave them $50 a week. They didn’t know what to do with the money. All of the theaters in Portland stayed open 24 hours a day to take care of the people working in the shipyards. They would get off work and they would have no place to go. I remember one time we sold a gentleman an electric range. He had it at home for a couple or three days and he calls up

He calls up and he is screaming over the telephone, “You sold me something that doesn’t work!” I said, “It’s brand new. Why would it not work?” So they sent me out. This was an older fellow. We go to the house and we go in the kitchen and he is burning up. He is mad as hell. I said, “Where is the stove?” I open up the oven and he has it set up very nicely with kindling wood in the oven. He had no idea that you plug it into the outlet. That was the caliber that they were bringing in. They were bringing anybody who could work. I will never forget that episode.

Rubenstein: Then business was good during the war.
COHN: If you wanted to be in business you limited yourself to the amount of hours because if you stayed around the clock, which you could do at that time, you would be sold out in no time at all.

Rubenstein: Now what high school did you say you went to?
COHN: Washington.

Rubenstein: Okay, now were there many Jewish students there at Washington High School?
COHN: Yeah, there were quite a few. Not a huge amount. Most of the Jewish kids at that time were either going to Lincoln or to Grant. Those two areas had most of the Jewish kids.

Rubenstein: Now was the Jewish Community Center a part of your life?
COHN: It was my whole life. I belonged to the Center. I got myself involved with AZA, where I became their Aleph Gadol, the president of the area here. Then I became the president of the tri-state area and then the entire district, which included California and a few other states, I was vice president. I really enjoyed it. The gentleman that helped us – we always had somebody from B.B. and we got my uncle Lou Schnitzer. He was over there. He used to yell at us, “Guys, get up and talk. You are like bumps on logs.” I remember when I was 14 or 15 we had the war bond drives. I was a punk kid and in one session I was able to sell $350,000 worth of bonds to the businesses in Portland. How the hell they would trust a kid I don’t know. I went to all the Jewelry stores and the furniture stores. They were always family and they would make out checks to this amount. Most of them were Jewish places. We won the medal for selling the most bonds that year. Looking back on that we had some great kids. We lost a few during the war – nice people. 

Rubenstein: So are you glad that your family picked Oregon to come to?
COHN: Oh my I can’t imagine being from Minsk or Gubernia or some other place. My mother told me stories about when she lived in a city, I think it was Volenski Gubernia, and one day it’s Russia and the next day it’s Poland. She remembered the Cossacks coming into the city there and they would hide in the cellar. It was okay to kill as many as you wanted there. There was no holds barred; it was just a shooting gallery. So yes, I thank God that my grandparents would come. My uncle came first. He turned out to be Vine’s Jewelers, which was on Third and Washington. He was there over 50 years. Little by little he would send and get the rest of the family to come. When my grandmother came with my mother, my mother was six years old. I can’t remember if she came in 1903 or 1906. She was six years of age. They were on a train coming to Portland and a stranger saw my mother and reaches into her bag and gives her a banana. My grandmother says, “Nicht kind Kosher?” She had never seen a banana in her life and she didn’t know if it was kosher. I love that story.

Rubenstein: Well, I am just delighted with some of the stories that you have to tell. It makes this whole review of history of the Jewish life in Portland… it adds so much to it. That is what they want. There are all sorts of statistics but we like the stories.
COHN: Everybody was everybody’s friend and you just help. You could help – that’s all. During the Depression I still remember the knocks on the door from people out of work who would do anything for a bite to eat. They would knock on doors, “Do you have some work for me for a sandwich?” “You can have the sandwich but there is no work to do. Sit down here and eat with us.” Everybody did that. We weren’t alone. Everybody did.

Rubenstein: Well Howard. Is there any other facts that you would like to pass on to the citizens of Portland and Oregon and world? All of these histories do get recorded and I am going to have you sign this paper to allow us to print it.
COHN: Oh, of course – automatic.

Rubenstein: And we want to thank you very much for your interview.