Bertha Lazarus Breibart, daughter of immigrants Louis and Rose Lazarus (Lazarowitz), discusses growing up in Charleston and Summerville, South Carolina, in the 1920s and ’30s. Louis arrived in New York in 1902, worked as a tailor, and, later, his wife and their first child, Max, joined him. The family moved to Charleston, where Louis ran a shoe repair shop in various locations on King Street. When they moved to Summerville, he reopened on Main Street. Bertha remembers that her father struggled to make a living; they were a “very poor family,” one that included three brothers, Max, Morris, and Herman, all much older than Bertha. The family traveled to Charleston to attend holiday services at Brith Sholom, one of Charleston’s two Orthodox synagogues. Bertha recalls the traditional foods her mother made, their Jewish neighbors in Charleston and Summerville, and her experiences attending Summerville public schools. When she was eighteen she represented Summerville in Charleston’s 1935 Azalea Festival beauty contest and won. Bertha attended AZA and B’nai Brith dances and other social events in Charleston, and on one of her many visits to the city, she met her husband, George Breibart. Note: the transcript contains additions and corrections made by the interviewee during proofing.
Beryle Stern Jaffe, born in 1945, talks about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina. She is the eldest daughter of Sarah Kramer and Henry Stern. After Henry was discharged from the military, the Sterns settled in Henry’s home city of Columbia, where he joined his father, Gabe Stern, in his dry goods business, at that time located in nearby Lexington. Beryle recalls segregation and how prejudice against African Americans manifested in public, as well as in her own home with regard to their hired help. The interviewee married Pierre Jaffe in 1967. Pierre, a native of Paris, France, immigrated as a child to the United States with his mother, who had married an American soldier. Pierre and Beryle raised two children, Jason and Erin, in Columbia. Interviewer Lilly Stern Filler’s parents, Ben and Jadzia Stern, were Holocaust survivors who settled in Columbia after World War II. Beryle and Lilly describe the degree to which Lilly’s parents, particularly her father, adjusted to life in a new country.
This panel discussion, "Looking at the Past and to the Future: From the Pulpit of Brith Sholom Beth Israel," was presented at "Jewish Roots in Southern Soil," a joint conference of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, and Brith Sholom Beth Israel Synagogue [BSBI] in Charleston, South Carolina. At the time, BSBI was celebrating its 150th anniversary. The panelists were Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, who served the Orthodox Brith Sholom from 1948 to 1950, prior to its merger with Beth Israel, also Orthodox, and Rabbi Hirsch Moshe Galinsky, who held the pulpit of BSBI from 1963 to 1970. Rabbi Klaperman notes "I came here in a period of tension," soon after a schism in 1947 when a significant portion of Brith Sholom's congregants left to form Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El. The loss of members and leadership that resulted from the split was "a kind of a blow to the ego" of the congregation and the split extended to families. "It was a terrible thing." Rabbi Klaperman was aware of a "pecking order" among the Jewish congregations in Charleston, which he associated with their degree of Americanization and religiosity. He closes his comments with this advice: "It's important for us to live together so that we can survive. We cannot rule anybody out of the Jewish community." Rabbi Galinsky recalls how he came to BSBI, stating that his additional duties as principal of the Charleston Hebrew Institute presented an appealing challenge. He was impressed with the people he encountered when he arrived in his new home city. "When you come to Charleston, you feel it, the unbelievable link to history." He describes how certain members of the Jewish community represented links to the past. Yet they had a vision of the future. He found the ties between Charleston's Jewish congregations and the connections among Jewish and non-Jewish Charlestonians remarkable. Rabbi Galinsky talks briefly about battling the Blue Laws, responding to the 1969 hospital workers' strike, and establishing a Head Start program at BSBI's day school for black children in the neighborhood.
Betty Hirsch Lancer, the daughter of emigrants from Mogelnitza, Poland, describes growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the decades before World War II. Her father acted in New York’s Yiddish theaters with limited success, and his father made and sold schnapps out of his house on St. Philip Street during Prohibition. Betty recalls the Great Depression, discusses how her parents made a living, and mentions other families in Charleston who were from Mogelnitza.
Betty Lindau Ustun reflects on growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, a city she describes as “not exactly welcoming to all Jews.” She remembers that the Orthodox Jews there did not consider Reform Jews “real Jews.” The Lindaus belonged to the Reform congregation, Tree of Life, and her mother, Beatrice Perl Lindau, worked closely with Helen Kohn Hennig in the synagogue’s Sunday school and sisterhood. Beatrice, the daughter of a baker from Szeged, Hungary, married Jules W. Lindau, III, a plastics engineer. Betty talks about how the family wound up in Columbia, where her father owned Southern Plastics and promoted the growth of engineering programs at local colleges. She briefly discusses her family’s feelings about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s and their response to the formation of the State of Israel. Betty was working for Voice of America in Washington, D.C. when she met her future husband, Semih Ustun, the son of a Turkish diplomat. They married in 1956 and raised two sons in the capital. Betty was a founding member of Southwest Hebrew Congregation in Washington, later renamed Temple Micah. The transcript includes comments inserted by the interviewee during proofreading. See Mss. 1035-392 for follow-up interviews conducted in 2014.
Betty Lindau Ustun revisits some of the stories she told about her parents in her 2013 interviews (Mss. 1035-378) and describes how her family celebrated Passover in Columbia, South Carolina. She discusses her “concept of God;” the founding of Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., where she was a founding member; and her involvement in establishing a Washington-Moscow art exchange in the late 1980s. The transcript includes comments inserted by the interviewee during proofreading. See Mss. 1035-378 for interviews conducted in 2013.
Marian Birlant Slotin discusses the history of her fathers antique business, George C. Birlant & Company, which he established in 1929 in Charleston, South Carolina. George married Lillian Marcus of Kingstree, South Carolina, and despite their Orthodox backgrounds, they raised Marian, their only child, in the Reform tradition. Marian reminisces about her childhood and many of her close and distant relatives. She married Phil Slotin of Georgia, and they raised two boys. As of 2011, the antique shop remains in the family, run by their son, Andrew.
Blanche Weintraub Wine and her daughter Dana Wine Johnson discuss how the experiences of Blanche's parents as Holocaust survivors have shaped their lives. Blanche, the oldest of six children, explains how Guta Blas and Leon Weintraub met in Wierzbnik, Poland, where they were incarcerated during World War II, and how they reconnected after liberation and ended up in Charleston, South Carolina. Central to Guta and Leon's story is sixteen-year-old Guta's brazen attack on a German officer just as she and other Jews, including her mother, were about to be shot. The force of Guta's personality is a recurring theme throughout the interview. Blanche recalls her mother telling her she was a replacement for her grandmothers, which she says didn't feel like that much of a burden, "but certainly, I knew there were certain things expected of me." She adds, "I was obligated to be the best I could be because . . . I was the product of two special people." Blanche describes how her parents introduced their memories to her as a young girl in an "age-appropriate" manner, providing greater detail as she got older. She became more emotional about her parents' experiences as an adult, when she was old enough to understand the "depth of suffering." Blanche acknowledges she had difficulty fitting in with Charleston's Jewish community and was lonely at times. She was aware that the other Jewish children were surrounded by extended family, something the Weintraubs were lacking. Dana says her experience is similar to her mother's in that she heard about the Holocaust from a young age and her sensitivity to it increased as she got older. She tells her grandmother's story whenever she is given the opportunity. She believes it's important to keep sharing stories so that the lessons of the Holocaust are not forgotten as the number of survivors diminishes. Blanche considers her negative feelings toward Poland and the Polish people, while Dana eagerly outlines her plan to visit Poland and retrace her grandparents' steps. This is one of a number of interviews conducted by Ph.D. candidate Lucas Wilson for his dissertation, "The Structures of Postmemory: Portraits of Survivor-Family Homes in Second-Generation Holocaust Literature." Wilson was awarded two Charleston Research Fellowships (May 2017, February 2019) by the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston.
Selma Blick Dickman of Columbia, South Carolina, is joined by her daughter Janis Dickman in this interview, which focuses on social issues dating to the late 1940s. Selma, a New York transplant, describes how she feels about living in the South. After moving to Sumter, South Carolina, in 1949, her tendency to talk about New York was greeted with advice from the Jewish natives: talk less about New York and more about her new home. Selma discusses her past perceptions of Jewish-Christian relations and notes how they have changed over time. She and Janis respond to questions about antisemitism and Janis recalls that as a child growing up in Columbia, "I always remember feeling different." Both describe their reactions to learning of the Holocaust and Selma remembers the arrival in Columbia of survivors Jadzia Sklar and Ben Stern, the interviewer's parents. Selma considers how her views of African-Americans have changed during her lifetime; both interviewees talk about racism, segregation, and present-day race relations, including the controversy surrounding the presence of the Confederate flag on the South Carolina State House grounds. Selma's husband, Max Dickman, who died thirty years before this interview, co-founded the scrap metal business, Columbia Steel and Metal. The Dickmans raised three daughters in Columbia. In a postscript to the interview, Janis describes the Dickman family's relationship with Florida Boyd, an African-American woman who worked in their home for forty-three years. The transcript also includes comments and corrections made by Janis during proofing and additional background information she provided upon request.
Jack Bloom describes growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, where his grandfather Harris Bloom, originally from Bialystok, Poland, established Bloom's Department Store around 1910. After serving in World War I, Jack's father, Julius, married Jennie Shatenstein, whose family lived for a time in a New Jersey agricultural settlement sponsored by the Baron de Hirsch Fund. Julius opened his own shop in Greenville, but later joined his father in business. The interviewee discusses his thoughts and current practices in regard to the laws of kashrut, and notes that his mother kept kosher but served classic southern cuisine. His family, including his brother, Melvin, and his sister, Shirley, celebrated all the Jewish holidays, and Julius, who closed his store on the High Holidays, was the cantor for their synagogue, Beth Israel. Jack recalls a few of the earlier Jewish families that settled in Greenville, and mentions several Jewish men, besides himself, who served in World War II. After discharge from the army, he attended Duke University Law School and returned home to open a practice. He married New Yorker Lillian Chernoff in 1963. Jack discusses his religious views and the history of Beth Israel, which, he notes, joined the Conservative Movement in the late 1940s. Note: the transcript includes comments added by the interviewee during proofing. For a related collection, the Julius H. Bloom papers, see Mss. 1034-012, Special Collections, College of Charleston.
Sara Bolgla Breibart, at the age of one, emigrated from Brest-Litovsk with her parents and four-year-old brother. They followed her grandfather, Avram Bolgla, to Augusta, Georgia, where he had established a shoe business. With input from her niece, Debra Bolgla, she recounts their family history, including the loss of those who remained behind in Europe to the Holocaust. Sara grew up in Augusta among a small group of Orthodox Jewish families. She discusses the discriminatory attitudes toward African Americans that she observed as a child in Augusta and an adult in Charleston, South Carolina. She married Solomon Breibart of Charleston and they raised two children, Carol and Mark. Note: the transcript contains comments made by Sara during proofing.
Ida Lurey Bolonkin and her daughter Joan Bolonkin Meir discuss the Lurey family's emigration from Russia to South Carolina, where they stayed briefly in Spartanburg before settling in Greenville. Ida's father, Morris, met and married her mother, Austrian immigrant Mollie Dolk, in Rhode Island, and brought her back to Greenville where he ran a general merchandise store and she opened a grocery store. Ida, the youngest of six children, talks about her siblings and meeting her husband, Martin Bolonkin, at an AZA (Aleph Zadik Aleph) meeting. Ida was raised in Greenville's Orthodox synagogue, Beth Israel (now Conservative), but she joined Martin in the Reform Temple of Israel after they married. Joan, born in 1957, is their eldest child; she was joined four years later by her brother, Fred. Ida owned Lake Forest Outlet, a women's clothing store, and Martin manufactured ladies' blouses. The interviewees recount stories associated with Martin's livelihood: Jim Crow laws forced him to throw separate Christmas parties for his white and black employees; Ida and Joan remember the family feeling threatened by union organizers from the North, who sought to unionize the plant. They recall Martin's uncle Shep Saltzman, owner of the Piedmont Shirt Company, and his sponsorship of World War II refugee Max Heller, who later became mayor of Greenville. They describe antisemitism they experienced and observed in Greenville, and Joan recounts how her Camp Blue Star experiences bolstered her sense of Jewish identity: "When I was at Blue Star, the whole world was Jewish."
Harold Jacobs, the only child of Sam and Mignonette Cohen Jacobs, discusses his family history and growing up in Charleston, South Carolina. Sam’s father, Isaac Jacobs (Karesh) emigrated from the area of Europe described by Harold as eastern Germany or Prussia. (Isaac Jacobs, grandson of the aforementioned Isaac and Harold’s cousin, states in his account of the family origins in a 1995 interview that the Karesh/Jacobs family came from Trestina, near Bialystok, Poland.) Isaac, the immigrant, made his way to Cincinnati, Ohio, during the Civil War and joined the Union Army. He married Jeanette Slager, and the couple settled in Charleston where they ran a dry goods store on King Street. Sam, Mignonette, and Harold lived in the St. Philip Street neighborhood before moving to Hampton Park Terrace in the northwest section of Charleston, where they opened Harold’s Cabin, a small store that sold snowballs and a few convenience items. Harold describes the family’s holiday and Sabbath customs, his aunt and uncles on the Jacobs side, the differences between “uptown” and “downtown” Jews, and the expansion of the family business, including how he came to be one of the first merchants in Charleston to sell frozen foods. As a child, Harold attended services at Brith Sholom, the Orthodox synagogue in which his father was raised, and Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE), where his mother, who was raised in the Reform tradition, was a member. Sometime after becoming a bar mitzvah at Brith Sholom, he began to “drift” more toward services at KKBE, ultimately becoming a lifelong member of the historic Charleston temple. Harold served in the army in North Africa and Italy during World War II and, after the war, married Lillian Breen, who grew up on a farm in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where there were too few Jews for a congregation. Lillian’s parents were from Riga, Latvia, and they ran a furniture store in Rocky Mount. The family traveled to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for the High Holidays.
Solomon “Sol” Breibart was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1914, the oldest of five children of Russian immigrants Ida Goldberg and Sam Breibart. The Breibarts moved from New York to Charleston in 1914, where they opened a corner grocery store. Sol describes the physical layout of his parents’ store on Meeting Street and how his father ran the business. He recalls the locations of his uncle Harry Goldberg’s grocery stores and identifies the owners of other markets and bakeries he knew while growing up. The interviewee discusses two groups of Charleston Jews known to locals as the Uptown Jews and the Downtown Jews: who they were in terms of origin, which synagogues they attended, and how they related to one another. He speaks briefly about the merger of Beth Israel and Brith Sholom and describes the first Beth Israel building on St. Philip Street. The Breibarts were Orthodox Jews and they kept kosher, yet Sam closed the store only on the High Holidays. Sol remembers how the shochet killed chickens for his mother and the dishes she cooked for the family, and he talks about his siblings, George, Mickey, Sidney, and Jack. Note: See Mss. 1035-279 for a second interview with Solomon Breibart dated March 16, 2004. Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston is the repository for the Solomon Breibart professional papers, Mss. 1084, and the Breibart family photographs, Mss. 1034-108.
Sandra Brett outlines her parents’ experiences during World War II. She responds to questions about her awareness of and reaction to her parents’ wartime stories, and how they have impacted her life. Raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, she describes home life for herself and an older brother and sister, saying they had a “pretty normal upbringing.” She notes that she was never interested in the Holocaust until she visited Theresienstadt, in the Czech Republic, about fifteen years ago, and was captivated by the children’s artwork she saw there. An artist herself, Sandra has worked with the Charleston Jewish Community Center and Jewish Federation of Charleston to teach Holocaust history through art, but not out of a sense of honoring her parents or the need to fulfill a mission of remembrance. She gives no more importance to her parents’ stories than to any other survivor, pointing to the large number of atrocities, past and present, worldwide. “I have trouble dissociating that horror from all the other horrors.” She adds, “I think my parents’ story is more important than any reaction that I have to it.” This is one of a number of interviews conducted by Ph.D. candidate Lucas Wilson for his dissertation, “The Structures of Postmemory: Portraits of Survivor-Family Homes in Second-Generation Holocaust Literature.” Wilson was awarded two Charleston Research Fellowships (May 2017, February 2019) by the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture at the College of Charleston.
Miriam Brotman Gordin was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1933, the only child of immigrants Charlotte Saltz (Galicia, Austria-Hungary) and Ralph Brotman (Polish Russia). Miriam and her daughter Rachel Barnett, who is an interviewer, share their family history. Miriam describes growing up in Charleston where Charlotte and Ralph owned a dry goods store on King Street near Read Brothers, at the corner of Spring. Ralph was in poor health much of the time, so Charlotte was the family's primary breadwinner. Ralph died when Miriam was twelve. The interviewee recalls spending Sundays at wholesalers' stores on Meeting Street while her mother negotiated with the owners, and she remembers other merchants and families they knew along King Street. Miriam tells a number of stories that offer a glimpse of daily life for Jewish merchants in uptown Charleston in the 1930s-'50s. The Brotmans were members of Beth Israel, one of two Orthodox synagogues, where Miriam was confirmed with two other girls when she was about fifteen. Miriam notes that "Mama was a casual Orthodox. She did what she could. She would have moments of being Orthodox, really religious, and then she would back away." Miriam graduated from the College of Charleston in 1955 and, that same year, married David Gordin, who grew up in Summerton, South Carolina, a small farming community about eighty miles north of Charleston. David had earned his pharmacy degree and returned to his hometown and opened a drugstore. His father, Morris Gordin, ran a general store there. Miriam and David raised their four children, Rachel, Debbie, Danny, and Stephen, in Summerton, and the family attended Temple Sinai in Sumter. Miriam and Rachel describe a "split" in the Sumter congregation, which they remember as "very Reform." Many members did not want to observe such practices as wearing yarmulkes or praying in Hebrew, nor did they want others to do so. Miriam reports that Summerton, home of Briggs v. Elliott, had a Citizens' Council, "which was very intimidating." The Gordins kept their children in the public schools until 1970, when full integration was enforced. Rachel and Miriam discuss the decision to enroll Rachel and her siblings in private school. Miriam notes that David felt they didn't have a choice. "He didn't want his children to be an experiment in a public school." Rachel argues that the white flight to the private academies was "pure racism," but not in her parents' case. "Daddy was really caught in a conundrum. You couldn't be the only four white kids. It was bad enough being the only four Jewish kids." Other topics covered in this interview include Debbie's illness and death at age thirty; funeral and burial customs; Jewish-gentile relations in Summerton; and the importance of Jewish identity.
Charlotte Saltz Brotman was born in 1901 in Kolbuszowa, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, the youngest of seven children of Miriam Wolfe and Sholom Saltz. Sholom was an egg wholesaler, selling to customers in large cities such as Vienna and Berlin. In this interview conducted by her grandson Stephen, Charlotte talks about growing up in Kolbuszowa, a small city with a significant Jewish population. She has many fond memories of her childhood, recalling wedding and bar mitzvah celebrations. She received a solid secular education, belonged to a Zionist club as a young girl, and attended Hebrew school. Her family was "very religious" and they kept kosher. Both of her brothers and one of her sisters immigrated to the United States prior to World War I. The rest of the family had to evacuate to Czechoslovakia during World War I to avoid encroaching battles. Charlotte recounts the difficulties she faced after the war ended and they returned home. Their house had burned down and her parents died within months of each other, prompting her to join her siblings in New York City in 1921. She describes living and working in Manhattan, and notes that there were plenty of activities to enjoy in her spare time. The interviewee met her husband, Ralph Brotman in New York; they married in 1929 and, two years later, moved to Charleston, South Carolina. Ralph had lived in Charleston previously, running a men's store with his father, Jacob. Charlotte and Ralph opened an army store on King Street, which did a brisk business during World War II, with shipyard workers coming in regularly. After Ralph died in 1946, Charlotte wanted to sell the store, but couldn't get the price she sought. The right offer finally came in 1962. She sold the business and moved to Summerton, South Carolina, where her daughter, Miriam, and her husband, David Gordin, were raising their four children. Charlotte opened The Towne Shoppe, a ladies' dress shop there. The interviewee discusses her support for the State of Israel and its people, and reflects on the accomplishments of her grandchildren, Rachel, Debbie, Danny, and Stephen.
Rabbi Burton L. Padoll describes growing up in a “totally assimilated, non-practicing, Jewish family” in Youngstown, Ohio, his decision to become a rabbi, and his experiences as a student at Hebrew Union College. With input from Solomon Breibart, he discusses personal and professional aspects of his tenure as rabbi at the Reform temple, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE), in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1961 to 1967, particularly the response of congregation members to his vocal position on and active involvement in local civil rights issues. In addition to covering events such as boycotts, sit-ins, and the integration of Rivers High School, the two men recall the rabbi’s other contributions, such as engaging the congregation’s youth in community activities and establishing an annual arts festival at KKBE. See also the Burton L. Padoll Papers, Mss. 1082, in Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston, and on the Lowcountry Digital Library web site.
Rose Surasky Seldin, born in 1917, and her sister-in-law Evelyn Goodman Surasky Caplan, born in 1918, describe growing up in Aiken, South Carolina. Rose’s parents, Annie Sarah Rudnick and Solomon Surasky, emigrated from Knyszyn, Poland, joining his brothers and brother-in-law H. L Polier in Aiken. The interviewees recall the family businesses, including Augusta Polier’s lingerie shop and millinery. Augusta was married to Morris Polier, Evelyn’s grandfather. When Augusta died, Evelyn’s mother, Rebecca Polier Goodman, took over the store. Rose and Evelyn discuss several family members, in particular, Rose’s first cousin, Mina Surasky Tropp. Among the topics covered: prejudice; keeping kosher; the Jewish farming community called “Happyville,” established in 1905 by its promoters in nearby Montmorenci; and how locals responded to and were affected by the building of the Savannah River Plant in the early 1950s.
Carla Donen Davis talks about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, where she was born in 1937 to Helen Cohen and Mordecai Moses Donen. She has one sibling, brother Stanley Donen, who left home at age sixteen to dance on Broadway in New York. Stanley went on to become a successful Hollywood director. Carla touches on her family history; her mother's family, the Cohens, originated in Germany; her father's family had roots in Russia. She grew up in the Shandon neighborhood of the capital city and notes that she never experienced or witnessed antisemitism. The Cohens were active members of and officers in Tree of Life, the Reform temple, as were the Donens, including Carla, who served as Sisterhood president. The interviewee observes that Reform practices have "moved slightly toward Conservative, and the Conservative . . . slightly toward Orthodox." Carla was married to Larry Goldstein from 1956 to 1969; they raised three sons, Miles, Donen, and Mark, in Columbia. She married Dan Davis in 1972 and, four years later, gave birth to her fourth son, Daniel.
Carolee Rosen Fox, born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, relates some of her Charleston family history. Her maternal great-grandparents, Caroline Goldstein and Isaac Belitzer, lived at 344 East Bay Street in Charleston, South Carolina. Carolee describes the home, known as the John Falls Walker House. It was passed down in the family to her great-aunt Gertrude Belitzer who, in turn, left it to the interviewee’s mother, Selina Leidloff, daughter of Blanche Belitzer and photographer Herman Leidloff. The house, featured in the Historic American Building Survey collection in the Library of Congress, was torn down in 1961. Carolee briefly discusses how her mother, Selina, met her father, Abe Rosen, a New York dress manufacturer.
Louis Funkenstein of Athens, Georgia, married Caroline Geisberg, a native of Anderson, South Carolina, and the couple settled in Caroline’s hometown where Louis established a paper box company. The Funkensteins describe their family histories and discuss a variety of topics including religious practices and Jewish-gentile relations in Anderson.
Caroline, Irvin, and Raymond Rosenblum reminisce about growing-up in Anderson, South Carolina, recalling their older siblings, relatives, neighbors, and Jewish religious observance. Their parents, Nathan and Freida Rosenblum, Polish immigrants, lived in several small South Carolina towns and Miami, Florida, before settling in Anderson in 1933. Caroline recounts her work history, and Irvin describes his eleven months in the navy at the end of World War II. Raymond served in the Naval Reserves while he attended medical school. Under the Berry Plan, his active duty was deferred until he completed his residency in urology.
In this interview conducted by her sister-in-law Sandra Lee Kahn Rosenblum, Caroline Rosenblum talks about growing up in Anderson, South Carolina, one of five children of Freida Bain and Nahum Rosenblum. Polish immigrants who arrived in New York in 1919, the Rosenblums moved first to Orangeburg, South Carolina, where they joined Nahum's brother Sam. Later they spent time in Miami, Florida, then the small South Carolina towns of Blackville and Greenwood. By 1932, the family had settled in Anderson where they ran a dry goods store. Caroline discusses her first experience with antisemitism as a schoolgirl; the difficulty of keeping kosher in a small town; and her father's reaction to the Holocaust. She recalls that the news of what happened to the Jews of Europe during World War II stirred an interest in Judaism among some of Anderson's gentiles. There were about ten Jewish families living in Anderson while Caroline was growing up. She describes their High Holiday traditions and notes that her father was cantor for the congregation, Temple B'nai Israel. For a related interview, see Mss. 1035-324, featuring Caroline and her brothers Raymond and Irvin.
Hyman Lipsitz is joined in this interview by his wife, Helene Jacobson Lipsitz, and his cousin Edward "Mickey" Lipson and his wife, Celia Pinosky Lipson. Born in 1913, Hyman was raised with his sister, Ethel, and brother, Joseph, in Beaufort, South Carolina. They lived over their downtown store with their parents, Bertha Rubin and Max Saul Lipsitz, who were immigrants from Latvia and Lithuania, respectively. Max had relatives all over the South, but followed a brother to Beaufort when he was in his teens. Hyman remembers a Reverend Rubinstein acting at some point as the cantor for Beth Israel, Beaufort's Jewish congregation. He also recalls Rabbi Jacob Raisin, of Charleston's Reform congregation K. K. Beth Elohim, traveling to neighboring Parris Island to lead services for the marine recruits on some Sunday mornings, and then to Beaufort's Beth Israel for afternoon services. Mickey Lipson, one of eight children born to Helen Lipsitz and Moses Lipsitz (they were first cousins), was born in Beaufort in 1921. Moses died when Mickey was five years old, and the family moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1929. Mickey joined his sister Freda and her husband, Sam Novit, in Walterboro, South Carolina, in 1936, and there he met Celia, a Charleston, South Carolina, native, at a wedding. They married in 1947 and lived in Walterboro a year before moving to Beaufort where they opened a shoe store. The Lipsons talk briefly about their shoe business, which was initially located downtown and later moved to Beaufort Plaza. The cousins discuss the Jewish merchants who were killed while working in their stores in rural areas around Beaufort, including Mickey's grandfather Aaron Lipsitz of Burton, South Carolina. The interviewees describe another tragedy: the death of Mickey's sister Rosalie Lipsitz Zalin of Belton, South Carolina, who was killed in 1937 when she was hit by a car. Note: Some members of the Lipsitz family went by the surnames Lipson or Lipton. For related oral histories, see interviews with Lucille and Joseph Lipsitz, Mss. 1035-093; Sandra and Morey Lipton, Mss. 1035-181; and Joseph Lipton, Mss. 1035-156 and -447; and the panel discussion "Growing Up Jewish in Beaufort," Mss 1035-204. For related collections, see Beth Israel congregation records, 1905-1961, Mss. 1076, and the Lipsitz family papers, 1876-1953, Mss. 1102, in Special Collections.
George Chaplin talks about growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Netty Brown (Bojarski) and Morris Chaplin (Tschaplinsky). Morris emigrated from Bialystok to the United States around 1906 and worked in shoe factories in Massachusetts. He followed his friend and landsman, Max Citron, to Columbia, South Carolina, where he peddled before running a retail, and later, a wholesale shoe business with his brother. Netty came to the United States from Lithuania, and worked in New York and then Boston, where she met Morris. The two were married in Columbia by Rabbi David Karesh. George names a number of Jewish residents who lived in Columbia during his childhood, and recalls that there wasn't much "mingling" between the Orthodox and the Reform Jews. When he was a sophomore in high school, the Chaplin family moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where Morris opened a pawnshop. George briefly outlines his career as a journalist, which included working alongside Charlestonian Earl Mazo in Greenville. He reflects on differences between American-born fathers and fathers like his, who were born in Europe, and he makes note of antisemitism he experienced in the South. About being Jewish, he says, "In the South, in those days, you were not permitted to forget it." George's wife, Esta Solomon Chaplin, a Charleston, South Carolina, native, joins him for a short time during the interview. They married in 1937 and raised two children. See Mss 1035-041 for a follow-up interview on October 3, 1995.
George Chaplin, in follow-up to his September 27, 1995, interview (Mss. 1035-040), recalls some of the other Jewish families that lived in his native city, Columbia, South Carolina, in particular his relatives, the Berkovitzes. He remembers sensing a separation between Columbia's German Jews and the more recent Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. He describes incidences of antisemitism he experienced in school, noting he was "made to feel something of an outsider." When Chaplin was in high school, his family moved to Greenville, where his father opened Piedmont Pawnshop across the street from Zaglin's kosher meat market. The interviewee attended Clemson Agricultural College, at that time a military academy, and was responsible for ending compulsory church attendance each Sunday for the cadets. Chaplin, who comments on the necessary functions of newspapers and their editors, discusses his long career in newspaper journalism. First he worked for the conservative Greenville Piedmont in Greenville, South Carolina, right out of Clemson (he took a leave of absence from the Greenville Piedmont to accept the year-long Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, where he studied race relations and formed a discussion group consisting of Nieman fellows and black graduate students); then the Stars and Stripes Pacific during World War II; David Stern's Camden, New Jersey, papers, prior to and during a strike in 1947; the liberal San Diego Journal in the late 1940s, when the paper won a national award for investigative reporting; David Stern's "crusading paper," the New Orleans Item, which ultimately was sold to its competitor, the Times-Picayune; and finally the Honolulu Advertiser, from 1958 to retirement, during which time the paper won sixty national awards. Chaplin talks about his younger sister, Kay, and her family; his perception of race relations in Charleston in the late 1940s; his religious practices, and why he and his wife, Esta Solomon Chaplin, who both came from strict Orthodox families, chose to raise their two children in the Reform tradition. He is joined briefly during the interview by Esta. His daughter, Jerri, provided comments and corrections to the transcript during proofing.
Stanley Karesh grew up in the Hampton Park Terrace neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s and ’30s. His family kept kosher and attended Brith Sholom. Stanley describes the shoe store his grandfather Charles Karesh built at 545 King Street. Charles immigrated with his wife, Sarah Orlinsky Karesh, to Charleston, circa 1878, from their hometown of Trestina (Trzcianne), in Polish Russia. They operated a store in the small town of Greeleyville, South Carolina, for a few years before returning with their growing family to Charleston, eager to live in a larger Jewish community. Stanley refers to a number of Charleston families, including Rittenberg, Friedman, Bielsky, Barshay, Kaminski, Jacobs, Banov, Livingstain, and Pearlstine, many of whom are related to the Kareshes. He also mentions his maternal grandparents, Harry and Anna Smolensky Feinberg, and cousin Rabbi David Karesh of Columbia. Stanley attended dental school in Baltimore, where he met Charlot Marks. The couple married in 1945 in her hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. They raised three daughters in Charleston, and they were one of the first families to move to South Windermere, a subdivision west of the Ashley River. Stanley discusses the changes over time in relations between members of the Orthodox and the Reform synagogues and between the two Orthodox congregations, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel. He and Charlot, the youngest charter members of Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El, which broke away from Brith Sholom in 1947, recount its origins and offer their view of how its members differed from the Orthodox congregants from whom they split.
Joseph Chase, Charleston, South Carolina, native and older son of Freda Lerner and Marty Chase, discusses his family history. Freda’s family immigrated to Charleston around 1920 from Biala, Poland. On a visit to her sister in Detroit, Freda met Marty Chase, who had emigrated from Vilna Gubernia, Poland, to New York City in 1912 with his mother. In 1930 Marty left his factory job in Detroit and moved to Charleston to marry Freda. The interviewee notes that his uncle Morris Sokol, a furniture salesman, helped Marty get his start peddling furniture. Eight years later Marty rented a building on King Street and opened a store. He purchased the building in the early 1940s and replaced it with a new one in 1946, still the location of Chase Furniture at the time of the interview. While Marty “was not an observant man”—he opened his store on the Sabbath—Freda adhered to the laws of kashrut and led the family in Sabbath and holiday rituals. Joseph and his brother, Philip, joined the business in the 1950s, a time when there were more than thirty furniture vendors on King Street, and offering credit was routine. Joseph reflects on the history of the business and how it changed over the years in regard to customer loyalty and demographics. He considers the future of the business, which, at the time of the interview, was in its third generation with Ben Chase, his nephew, at the helm.
Philip Chase grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, the younger son of Freda Lerner and Marty Chase. In this interview he describes how Freda, who emigrated with her family from Poland to Charleston in the early 1900s, met Marty, also a native of Poland, while working with her sister in Detroit. The couple married in Charleston and settled there. Marty peddled furniture initially and, by 1938, was selling furniture from a building on King Street, previously occupied by Carolina Furniture Company. Eight years later, he constructed a new building on the same site, still the location of Chase Furniture at the time of the interview. Philip recalls growing up in a small community where “everyone knew everybody else,” and most of the furniture dealers on King Street were “friendly” competitors who traded merchandise to help their fellow store owners make a sale. Philip and his brother, Joseph, joined the business in the 1950s and, later, Philip’s son Ben became a part of the enterprise. The interviewee discusses the history of the store, particularly its customer base and the effects of Hurricane Hugo.
In her second interview for the Jewish Heritage Collection, Leah Feinberg Chase describes how she was drawn to journalism. The Georgia native earned a certificate from the University of Georgia's Peabody School of Journalism after taking classes for one year as a special student. The abbreviated program accommodated her plan to marry Philip Chase of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1957. The couple raised their four children in Charleston. Leah provides details about her career at WCSC-TV in Charleston, including the various positions she filled from copy writing to producing and cohosting shows in the 1960s and '70s. She credits WCSC owner John Rivers, Sr., with fostering creativity and independence in the work environment, and that extended to the women working at the station. Leah never encountered sexual harassment there, nor did she feel as though she had to prove herself to the men with whom she worked. She experienced one antisemitic incident that Rivers responded to with a vehement threat to fire the culprit, in the event that person's identity was revealed. Otherwise, being Jewish did not pose any difficulties, for example, when Chase wanted to take time off for religious holidays. Around 1980, the interviewee was hired by John Rivers, Jr., to produce videos for a company called Custom Video. Leah discusses working for that outfit and for United Christian Broadcasting Company of Atlanta, for whom she produced video in Israel for the film "Where Jesus Walked." In the 1980s, she turned down an offer to produce Mike Hiott's WCSC TV program to become editor of Charleston Jewish Federation's newspaper, "Center Talk," later renamed "Charleston Jewish Journal." She briefly outlines her work as editor and the recognition the Journal received from the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and the Advertising Federation of Charleston. Leah revisits her involvement in the Foreign Affairs Forum, mentioned in her first interview, remarking that while she held the positions of secretary, treasurer, and vice president, she believes the male-dominated group would not have elected her president had she pursued the office. The transcript contains comments and corrections made by the interviewee during proofing. See Mss. 1035-563 for Chase's January 31, 2020, interview.
Leah Feinberg Chase was born in 1938 in West Point, Georgia, the eldest of three girls of Norma Beryl Goldstein and Morris Feinberg. In this interview, she talks about growing up in the small Georgia town bordering Alabama, roughly eighty miles southwest of Atlanta, then home to West Point Manufacturing Company. Her father opened a shoe repair business in West Point, later switching to ladies' and children's ready-to-wear clothing. Leah was the only Jewish student when she was attending the public schools in town. She says she "never experienced outright antisemitism in West Point," and she had many friends. "We were very cliquish." Yet, she notes "I always felt I was different," pointing out that she spent her weekends doing very different activities than her Christian friends. She and her sisters, Helen and Ina, attended Sunday school in Columbus, Georgia, where her paternal grandparents, Jake and Ida Feinberg, lived. Other weekends she traveled to youth group functions, such as Young Judaea conventions. Leah married Philip Chase of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1957. For a year before their marriage, she studied journalism at the University of Georgia, while Philip finished his last year in college at The Citadel. They raised four children?Stephen, David, Benjamin, and Freda?in Charleston. Leah describes her career in journalism at Channel 5, WCSC-TV; Custom Video; and Charleston Jewish Federation, where she edited the Federation's newspaper, Charleston Jewish Journal, which won national awards at the General Assembly of Council of Jewish Federations. The Journal also attracted unwanted attention during her tenure at the paper. She received death threats, including a bomb threat to Chase Furniture, the family business, prompting police protection. Leah gives an overview of the local civic organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, that she has belonged to and served over the past decades, in particular the Foreign Affairs Forum. She makes note of her advocacy for and regular visits to Israel. Thirty years prior to the interview, Leah made a career change and became a travel agent. Other topics discussed include how observant Leah is of Jewish traditions compared with her parents, and an antisemitic incident that occurred when she applied for a job at the Evening Post/News and Courier in the late 1950s/early '60s. The transcript contains corrections made by the interviewee during proofing.
Claire Krawcheck Nussbaum, daughter of Polish immigrants Jack and Esther Bielsky Krawcheck, describes growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1930s and ’40s. Her parents were Orthodox Jews who observed the Sabbath and kept a kosher kitchen, with the help of Agnes Jenkins, who worked for the family for decades as housekeeper, cook, and third parent to Claire and her three siblings. The Krawchecks lived downtown on Colonial Street, many blocks from the uptown neighborhood, north of Calhoun Street, where the majority of immigrant Orthodox Jewish families lived at the time. Claire was close to a Catholic girl who lived on the same street, and she attended Ashley Hall, a private girls’ school. She had few Jewish friends, but became quite familiar with Catholic and Episcopalian traditions. Her father had men’s clothing stores both north and south of Calhoun Street—Jack’s on the corner of King and Vanderhorst Street, and Jack Krawcheck’s on King Street between George and Liberty Street. Claire discusses the buildings that housed the latter of the two stores, 311 King Street, which her father built, and 313 King Street, which he restored. Changes to the properties included gardens behind the buildings featuring iron work by Philip Simmons, and specially-designed, second-floor meeting rooms, used by local clubs, with paintings by William Halsey. Jack and Esther were members of Brith Sholom and they were active in a number of Charleston’s civic organizations, such as the Preservation Society and the Garden Club. Claire, who had difficulty relating to Judaism as a child—she couldn’t understand the Hebrew services and no one explained why they were following certain rules—convinced her parents to allow her to attend services and Sunday school at the Reform synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE). It was there that she became connected to the spiritual and religious aspects of Judaism. In 1950 Claire married Maurice Nussbaum of Ehrhardt, South Carolina, and they raised four children in Charleston. She discusses her siblings, children, and grandchildren, and her views on religion, antisemitism, and the changes in KKBE’s congregation since she began attending as a teen.
Claire Fund recounts how her Jewish parents survived World War II. Her father Charles Fund and his sister Esther were born in Yeremsha, Poland, in the early 1900s. Charles trained as an engineer in France, joined a branch of the French Army, and ended up in Glasgow, Scotland. There he met his wife, Aurelia Frenkel of Vienna, who had escaped Austria on foot in 1939. Esther, a dentist who had returned home to practice, hid in a farmers barn for more than a year to evade the Germans. Once it was safe for her to come out of hiding, she joined the Free Czechoslovakian Army, where she met her husband, Miroslav Kerner.
George Visanska Rosenberg is joined by his wife, Edith Cochran Rosenberg, in this interview that begins with George explaining how the Visanska, Winstock, and Rosenberg families on his father's side are related and how they came to settle in Abbeville, South Carolina, around the middle of the nineteenth century. George was born in Abbeville in 1916, the second of five children of Solomon Rosenberg and Octavia Harby Schwerin, a Sumter, South Carolina, native. George describes the family business in Abbeville. Rosenberg Mercantile Company, incorporated in 1872, occupied several connected buildings on Trinity Street and carried goods ranging from groceries to heavy farm equipment. The family also owned farm land in Abbeville and McCormick counties where sharecroppers grew cotton. George discusses his upbringing and the family's Jewish identity. Abbeville never had a congregation or visiting rabbis, but George's great-grandfather G. A. Visanska and his family "did maintain their Jewishness." They kept kosher and G. A. provided the kosher meat for his family, slaughtering the meat himself. George notes, however, "I was up in high school . . . at least, before I knew the difference in being Jewish and gentile." He became aware as an adult of having missed a close connection to his Jewish heritage and traditions by not having a synagogue in town. His parents observed the High Holidays, but not the Sabbath, and they celebrated Christmas, but not Hanukkah. He reports he never experienced any "anti-Jewish sentiment in Abbeville." George covers a number of topics, including forebears who fought for the Confederacy; the Eureka Hotel in Abbeville; his father's involvement with Abbeville County Memorial Hospital; the African Americans who worked for the Rosenbergs; the effects of the Great Depression on his family and their business; Rosenberg's Men's Store in Greenwood, South Carolina, run by his cousin Ernest Rosenberg; Uncle Julius Visanska, who ran Bentschner & Visanska in Charleston, South Carolina; and the Poliakoff and Savitz families of Abbeville. The Rosenbergs and interviewer, Dale Rosengarten, consider how certain expressions based on stereotypes can be offensive. The interviewees talk about white-black relations when they were growing up and at the time of the interview. George recalls how he ran his medical practice in the days before integration and contemplates the disadvantages that local African Americans face. Edith was born in 1922 in Due West, South Carolina, and grew up in Laurens, South Carolina. She and George married after he graduated from medical school in 1941. They recount his nearly four years in the service during World War II, followed by his residency in Wilmington, North Carolina. George describes how he established, in 1948, his OB/GYN and surgery practice in Abbeville and briefly discusses some of the changes in obstetrics over the decades. The couple adopted three children, Herbert, Patsy, and Grace. Edith, who was raised Presbyterian, relates how her parents and George's parents felt about their mixed marriage. She tells the story of their divorce after 27 years together and their remarriage ten years later. She converted to Judaism prior to reuniting with George, studying under Rabbi Magidovitch of Sumter's Temple Sinai.
Leonard Cohen grew up in Latta, South Carolina, the son of dry goods merchants, Isadore and Hannah Horowitz Cohen. Isadore emigrated circa 1910 from Lithuania and, after working briefly in Baltimore, followed his brother Harry’s advice and came south. His train ticket got him as far as Dillon, South Carolina. He peddled first, and then worked for Mr. Blum in his Latta store. Baltimore Bargain House extended credit to Isadore to start his own business, which prospered, enabling him to expand his store and, eventually, buy his own building. Two other Jewish families lived in Latta at that time, the Blums and the Kornbluts, and Leonard recalls being the only Jewish child in his classes at school. The Cohens attended services in Dillon, with Rabbi Jacob Raisin of Charleston officiating. Leonard remembers the Fass family, prominent members of the Dillon congregation. At Camp Osceola in Hendersonville, North Carolina, Leonard studied Hebrew with Rabbi Solomon and prepared for his bar mitzvah. He attended The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1941 until 1943, when he was drafted into the army. He describes his experiences in the military, particularly the action he saw in Europe as a soldier serving in the 102nd Division. After the war, on a visit to Baltimore, he met Mildred Friedman, daughter of emigrants from Poland. Leonard and Mildred married in 1948 and settled in Latta, where he had already joined his father in business. They raised three children in Latta and were members of Temple Beth Israel in Florence, South Carolina. Faced with competition from discount chains, the Cohens closed their store in 1987. Other topics mentioned in the interview include: Baltimore Bargain House and changes in the wholesale industry, Charleston Jews Leonard met while attending The Citadel, Mildred’s mikvah experience before her wedding, and the first bat mitzvahs at Temple Beth Israel.
Morris Rosen is joined by his cousin Dorothy “Dutch” Idalin Gelson Cohen and her husband, Mordecai “Mortie” Cohen, in this interview. Morris’s son Robert is also present as interviewer and videographer. Morris, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1919, was one of four children of Annie Blatt and Sol Rosen. Sol and his siblings, including Dutch’s parents, Zelda Rosen and Louis Gelson, emigrated from Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century, following their older sister Ida and her husband, David Goldberg, to Poughkeepsie, New York, where Dutch was born in 1919. The cousins talk about the Rosen (Rachelkin) and Gelson (Getchen) families of Poughkeepsie and their ancestors in Russia. Morris briefly mentions his maternal grandparents, Mamie Wildman and Morris Blatt, who ran a bakery in Columbia, South Carolina, before moving to Charleston. Morris and Dutch describe how the Rosens wound up in Charleston. Their uncle Sam Rosen moved to the area from Poughkeepsie for reasons unknown and opened a store in Awendaw, a small settlement about twenty-five miles north of Charleston. In about 1919, Sol Rosen and Zelda and Louis Gelson followed and bought an established country store from a member of the Geraty family in Yonges Island, nearly twenty miles south of Charleston. Louis died within a year, and Sol sold his interest in the store to Zelda, who moved the business and her three children to Meeting Street in Charleston after a few years. Sol was in the grocery business and later opened liquor stores. Morris traces his father’s moves from Yonges Island to King and Romney streets in Charleston, to the town of Meggett, and back to Charleston at King and Race streets. Morris and Dutch discuss growing up in Charleston in an area of the city where there were no other Jewish families. They did not experience antisemitism and Morris blended easily with the Catholic teens who lived nearby. The cousins did connect with other Jewish children when they frequented the neighborhoods around the synagogues and while attending religious school. They didn’t notice any friction between Charleston’s Reform and Orthodox Jews and played with children from both groups. Dutch was confirmed and Morris became a bar mitzvah at Brith Sholom on St. Philip Street. The two consider the degree to which their parents were observant Jews and speculate as to why their parents and others of their generation did or did not adhere to certain Jewish traditions. Mordecai “Mortie” Cohen was born in 1916 in St. Matthews, South Carolina, where his father, Isaac, ran a dry goods store and two farms. All the general merchandisers in St. Matthews while Mortie and his two brothers were growing up were Jewish. They met for High Holiday services in the town’s Masonic temple and were joined by families from Orangeburg, Ehrhardt, and Elloree. Most of Mortie’s friends were Christians; he doesn’t remember experiencing any antisemitism in St. Matthews. Mortie recalls how he came to know the Rosens, and he and Morris describe the role of the drummers, or sales reps, who visited retail storeowners when their fathers were in business. Morris talks about how he met his wife, Ida Tanenbaum. Her brother Lou Tanenbaum came to Charleston and opened a clothing store with his brother-in-law Louis Lesser. Morris, an ensign in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II, was assigned to a LST (Landing Ship, Tank) in the Pacific. The group discusses what they and other American Jews knew about what was happening to Jews in Europe under Hitler.
Isadore Cohen (b. 1918) and Samuel Rosen (b. 1929), Charleston natives and sons of immigrants from Russia and Poland, share their early memories of the Orthodox synagogues, Beth Israel and Brith Sholom, and discuss the relationship between the two congregations before and after their merger in the mid-1950s. They describe their Hebrew education, including their teachers—a number of rabbis plus a Mrs. Allen, daughter of Rabbi Gillman. Topics relating to the first half of the twentieth century covered in the interview include Jewish merchants, the Kalushiner Society, founded by immigrants from Kaluszyn, Poland, popular venues for Jewish functions, and the Cohen and Rosen family businesses, both small grocery stores. Interviewer Professor Jeffrey Gurock from Yeshiva University also provides information he discovered while conducting research for his book Orthodoxy in Charleston: Brith Sholom Beth Israel and American Jewish History.
Lisa Collis Cohen, born in 1958 in Kingstree, South Carolina, is the elder of two daughters of Jennie Goldberg and Moses Collis, both natives of Charleston, South Carolina. Lisa discusses her grandparents, Rebecca Leah Kirshtein and I. M. Goldberg, whose families migrated from Kaluszyn, Poland, to Charleston. Lena Schiawitz and Meyer Collis, who emigrated from Bialystok in the early 1900s, owned a Jewish bakery at 165 King Street in Charleston, and Lena ran a kosher catering business. Lisa describes the bakery, which closed, she believes, sometime during World War II. Her father, Moses, began working as a young boy for Charleston plumber W. K. Prause, whose shop was across the street from the bakery. Ultimately, Moses became "the state's youngest licensed journeyman plumber at age sixteen." His sister Becky married Harry Schreiberg. Harry's brothers Morris and Nathan had a store in Lane, South Carolina, and they lived in Kingstree. Morris encouraged Moses to come to Kingstree, where there were no plumbers. With help from his sister Sadie, Moses pursued the opportunity and, by 1947, he was in business in the small town about seventy-five miles north of Charleston. Later he became a licensed mechanical contractor. Lisa talks about growing up in Kingstree where she joined her Christian friends in their religious activities and went to their camps. The Collises observed the Sabbath on Friday nights with a family meal and services at Temple Beth Or in Kingstree. Lisa recalls the other Jewish families that lived in Kingstree and surrounding small towns, who were members of Beth Or, which was founded in 1945. The congregation relied on rabbis from Charleston's Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El to preside over bar mitzvahs and recruited students from Jewish Theological Seminary for the High Holidays. Lisa recounts how the family kept kosher, adding that every summer her father made large quantities of kosher dill pickles. Lisa went to Jewish camp in the summers and was involved in the Temple Youth Group that met in Sumter. "My Judaism, for me, was a very natural thing." When she was young, Lisa's mother, Jennie, tried to keep Lisa and her sister, Rhonda, "almost shomer Shabbat." Moses didn't agree with that degree of observance and encouraged assimilation. "My father didn't want me to feel different." Lisa, who attended public schools through sixth grade, discusses why her parents sent her to a private academy when integration was enforced in South Carolina. Among the topics covered in this interview are the Collis connection to the Mazo family of Charleston and Lisa's memories of her aunts and uncles, including Davy Collis, his band, Buddy Shaw, and his music company, Carolina Instrument, competitor of Fox Music House. Note: transcript includes comments and corrections made by interviewee during proofing. See Mss 1035-550 for part two of this interview. For a related collection, see also the Collis family papers, Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Mordecai "Mortie" Cohen, born in 1916, the middle of three sons of Raye Needle and Isaac Cohen, was raised in St. Matthews, South Carolina. The Cohens had settled in the small town about forty miles southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, around 1912, and opened a general merchandise store. Isaac also owned two farms, raising corn, cotton, cows, and hogs. About St. Matthews, Mortie says, "It was a good life for a kid, growing up." He recalls five other Jewish families who lived in the town at one point: the Savitzes, Pearlstines, Bergers, Yelmans, and Goldiners. They held High Holiday services in the Masonic Hall over a store in St. Matthews and were joined by families who lived in neighboring towns. "My mother kept halfway [kosher] because you couldn't keep kosher in a small town." He and his brothers, Harold and Leroy, didn't have a Jewish education. "My parents were involved in the Christian community a good deal." Isaac played poker every Sunday in the back of his store with the prominent men in town, including the mayor. Growing up, Mortie socialized mostly with Christians and even attended church with them. "Never in all my growing up did I ever feel like I was different, that I was not wanted." Mortie, a pharmacist, describes how he met his wife, Dorothy "Dutch" Idalin Gelson, who joins him in this interview shortly after it starts. Dutch and Mortie settled in Walterboro, South Carolina, in 1941, after living briefly in St. George, South Carolina. Mortie, who ran one of seven drug stores in Walterboro, notes that they "were very active in the Christian and Jewish community there and I never felt out of place." He relates a story about his working relationship and friendship with a black doctor who settled in Walterboro in the mid-1940s. Mortie and Dutch traveled to Brith Sholom in Charleston to attend services until Walterboro's small Jewish community organized Temple Mt. Sinai in the late 1940s. In 1954, the couple moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where Dutch had grown up. Mortie opened South Windermere Drugs in South Windermere Shopping Center, part of a new suburban residential and commercial development across the Ashley River from the Charleston peninsula. Dutch remembers feeling happy about the move to Charleston because of the larger Jewish population: "I was happy to come back to a Jewish environment." Mortie and Dutch made connections with prominent Charlestonians?Mortie was on a bank board and a member of the Country Club of Charleston?and they were invited to high-profile social events, but they declined because they wanted to reserve time for involvement in Jewish organizations and activities. The interviewees discuss the effects of intermarriage on Jewish identity, citing examples in their family and others of "the vanishing American Jew," a reference to The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century, a book written by their son-in-law, Alan Dershowitz, and published in 1997. Mortie recounts an instance of antisemitism at the Country Club of Charleston when a Jewish person applying for membership was blackballed, but when the vote was re-cast openly at the insistence of Mortie's non-Jewish friend, the negative vote disappeared. When asked about "the relationship between the white community and the African-American community in St. Matthews," Mortie tells the story of a black man, a plumber, who was beaten and run out of town by white men for being "arrogant." The Cohens, who have two children, Marvin and Carolyn, talk briefly about daughter and son, Joyce and Stephen, they lost to illness while living in Walterboro.
Lisa Collis Cohen, in the second half of a two-part interview, talks about her nursing career at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where she worked in obstetrics and gynecology, and at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, where she says, "I found my home on the cardiothoracic service." In 1996, she retired to take care of her family, which consisted of her husband, Sherman Cohen of Atlanta, and her young children, Michael and Meredith. Lisa and Sherman are founding members of Congregation Or Hadash in Atlanta. The interviewee describes the Conservative congregation's break from Ahavath Achim Synagogue in 2003; their spiritual leaders, Rabbis Analia Bortz and her husband, Mario Karpuj; and their synagogue, which was created through the "adaptive reuse" of a Chevy dealership's auto repair shop. The Cohen children attended Jewish day school, and, for that reason, Lisa feels, "it's been a lot easier for them to be Jewish" than it was for her. Contrasting her children's constant exposure to other Jewish Atlantans with her own childhood in the small rural town of Kingstree, South Carolina, where there were few Jewish residents, Lisa thinks her children take Judaism for granted more than she did. Lisa's parents kept kosher in their Kingstree home, but not outside the house. About her mother, Jennie Goldberg Collis, Lisa says, keeping a kosher home "was the one thing she did that would still cement her Jewish identity." Lisa believes it's important to give your offspring an identity and hopes Michael and Meredith will incorporate Judaism into their homes in some way. She explains why she is proud to be a Jewish southerner and offers her thoughts on the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments. She honors her family's past, stating, "I'm really proud of the fact that I am keeping the ideals that my grandparents risked their lives for to come over to this country." Lisa has not experienced antisemitism as an adult, nor did she as a child in Kingstree, recalling that she and her Christian friends were respectful of each other's religious traditions. She remembers one headmaster of her private school in Kingstree as a bigot who "espoused a lot of commentary about Hitler and the Nazi party." When her parents brought it to the attention of the board, he was fired. That single instance of intolerance from her childhood contrasts sharply with her current outlook: "I think in the last few years I have personally felt like there is more of a mandate that supports hate in this country across all borders... I think this is the first time in my life, as an American Jewish citizen, that I really feel like we are facing a credible threat to what everybody knows as their... way of life." Other topics covered in this interview include how the Collises celebrated the holidays when Lisa was young and how Lisa and her husband celebrate now; the impact the Holocaust had on her family; Lisa and Sherman's support for Israel; Lisa's observations of the Jews of Atlanta; and Lisa's connection to Marian Birlant Slotin?now deceased?of Charleston. Note: transcript includes comments and corrections made by interviewee during proofing. See Mss 1035-549 for part one of this interview. For a related collection, see the Collis family papers, Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Rabbi Gerald Isaac Wolpe, a descendant of Polish and Lithuanian Jews, grew up an only child in Roxbury, Massachusetts, surrounded by extended family. After graduating from rabbinical school in 1953, he served as a chaplain in the United States Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune. Two years later, his civilian career was launched in Charleston, South Carolina, where he led the Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El until 1958. The rabbi discusses far-ranging topics including the Jewish businessmen of Charleston, his view of what fueled the Conservative movement, how he balanced his personal beliefs about segregation with the concerns of his southern congregants, the making of Porgy and Bess, and how South Carolina Representative L. Mendel Rivers got his name. After serving Temple Beth El in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for eleven years, Wolpe moved to Har Zion in Philadelphia, where he led the congregation for three decades before retiring.
Ella Levenson Schlosburg, the daughter of emigrants from Lithuania, recounts her family history and describes growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family in the small midlands town of Bishopville, South Carolina. Her father, Frank Levenson, one of a handful of Jewish merchants in Bishopville in the early 1900s, ran a general store that sold everything from groceries to mules. Ella married Elihu Schlosburg, the son of Anna Karesh and Harry Schlosburg, and they moved to Camden, South Carolina, where they established a liquor business.
Hyman Rubin describes his upbringing in Norway, South Carolina, and later in Columbia, where his family owned a wholesale dry goods store. He talks about his experience at the University of South Carolina, and recounts his political career and tenure on Columbia's city council (1952-1966) and in the state senate from 1966-1984. In 1940, he married Rose Rudnick of Aiken, South Carolina.
Ellis Irvin Kahn, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, describes his family background and his years growing up in the coastal city where his father owned a wholesale and retail grocery business. His great-grandfather, Josiah Kaminitsky, appears in the South Carolina Supreme Court records of 1885. He lost both legs in a train accident, sued the North Eastern Railroad Company, and won. Ellis, an attorney and former president of the Charleston Jewish Federation, recounts the aftereffects of Hurricane Hugo (1989) on the areas residents and the relief efforts of local, national, and Israeli Jews. He married Janice Weinstein of Shreveport, Louisiana, and the couple raised three children in Charleston.
Cousins Max Furchgott and Dale Dreyfoos review their family history. Dale's maternal grandmother Lillian Furchgott married Pincus LeRoy Pinkussohn (he changed the spelling of the family name to Pinkerson during World War II), whose grandfather settled in Charleston, South Carolina, around 1850. Lillian's father, Herman Furchgott, and his brother Max, grandfather of interviewee Max, opened a dry goods store on King Street in Charleston in the 1860s. Max describes growing up in Charleston and recalls the moves his family made during the Great Depression to Orangeburg, South Carolina; Goldsboro, North Carolina; and Florence, South Carolina, before returning to Charleston. The Furchgotts have been members of Reform Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) since the first generation in Charleston. Max discusses the conflict that arose among members of the congregation in the 1960s during Rabbi Burton Padoll's tenure, and notes how KKBE has changed over the years. Max married Marcelle Kleinzahler and they raised three children in Charleston. Both interviewees discuss Jewish identity - Max, in terms of how he believes his children view themselves, and Dale, in terms of his relationship to his ancestors. Dale tells the story of his great-great-grandparents fleeing Atlanta during the Civil War in anticipation of General Sherman's arrival with Union troops. Other family surnames mentioned in the interview include Brown, Sorentrue, Foote, Ritzwoller, and Dreyfoos. For related information, see also Marcelle Furchgott's May 14, 2014 interview, Robert Furchgott's February 28, 2001 and April 18, 2001 interviews, the Arthur C. Furchgott papers (Mss 1043), and Furchgott and Brothers department store newspaper advertisement, 1910 (Mss 1034-090), Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Sam Kirshtein is the son of Polish immigrants who, like many of their landsmen from Kaluszyn, Poland, settled in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1900s. Sam, who was born in 1925 and grew up in the St. Philip Street neighborhood, describes the “Uptown” and “Downtown” Jews, and the two Orthodox synagogues, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel. After serving in the army’s Chemical Warfare Service during World War II, he returned home to help out at the family’s furniture store on King Street.
In 1942, Paula Kornblum and her sister Hannah escaped the mass murder of Jews in their home town of Kaluszyn, Poland, at the hands of the Nazis. Assuming false identities, the two lived and worked in Cz?stochowa, Poland, until the Russian liberation. Paula describes returning to Kaluszyn after the war, living in a Displaced Persons camp, and the emigration process. She married Henry Popowski, also of Kaluszyn, and they and their first-born son immigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, with the help of their landsmen.
Eileen Strauss Rubin grew up in Sumter, South Carolina, the only child of Isaac and Pearl Weinreich Strauss. Isaac, who was born in New York, moved in the 1870s as a teenager, first to Mayesville, South Carolina, where relatives, the A. A. Strauss family, owned a store. After relocating to Sumter, he invested in land and helped a nephew get started in the printing business. He died when Eileen was only five years old. Eileen recalls celebrating the holidays and attending Sunday school at Sumter’s Temple Sinai, where she was confirmed. As a girl, she visited her mother’s family in Ohio and, having made a number of friends there, decided to go to Ohio State University (OSU). She met her husband, Herman Rubin, at a fraternity dance at OSU. Herman was an M.D. and practicing in Akron. About a year after they married and shortly after their first daughter was born, Herman, who was in the army reserves, was called up for active duty. After five years in military service, the Rubins returned to Akron, where their second daughter was born. In the early ’50s, in search of a milder climate, the Rubins moved to Sumter. Eileen discusses her family history, her daughters, and the family’s real estate business. Interviewer Robert Moses, a Sumter native and friend of the Rubins, contributes to the conversation. Note: daughters Ellen Rubin Eber and Gayle Rubin provided additional information noted in the transcript during proofing.
Lawrence and Sylvia Polan Weintraub provide background about their parents and grandparents, primarily their activities after they arrived in the United States from Eastern Europe. Sylvia was born and raised in Mullins, South Carolina. Her father had moved to Mullins from Baltimore to manage a store. Her mother, a Levin of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, joined him after they married. Sylvia describes how the family kept kosher in a small southern town, where she and her sister endured antisemitic taunts from schoolmates. Her family traveled to Dillon, South Carolina, for services and Sunday school lessons. Larry was born and raised in Brooklyn where his father and uncle manufactured ladies’ blouses. After serving in the army during World War II, Larry moved to Walterboro to join his maternal uncle, Harry Zahl, who ran a wholesale business. Larry worked for Harry as a traveling salesman, and it was on his route through Mullins that he met Sylvia, working in her father’s store. The couple married in 1947 and lived briefly in Petersburg, Virginia, before returning to South Carolina. They raised their two children in Timmonsville and were members of Temple Beth Israel in Florence.
Hanna Pearlstine, audio interview by Dale Rosengarten and Marilyn Cohn Fine, 28 August 1996 and 29 August 1996, Mss 1035-088, Special Collections, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.;Hanna Pearlstine, daughter of first cousins Shep and Sara Pearlstine, was born in 1903 in St. Matthews, South Carolina. She describes growing up in the small Midlands town where her father owned a grocery business and Puritan Farm, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. After attending Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Columbia College in New York City, Hanna taught history from 1928 to 1968 at Columbia High School in Columbia, South Carolina. She and her niece Marilyn Cohn Fine outline their family history, beginning with the emigration of Janetta (Jeanette) Karesh and Tanchum (Thomas) Pearlstine (Farber in the Old Country), Hanna’s great-grandparents, from Trzcianne, Russia, in the mid-1800s. Pearlstine relatives mentioned include the Hyams, Vineburg, Wolff, Jacobs, and Cohen families. Hanna also discusses her visit to Washington, D.C., as a guest of Senator Strom Thurmond, her membership in Tree of Life Congregation in Columbia, and relations between her family and the African Americans who worked for her parents in their home and their warehouse. Note: for several related collections, search for “Pearlstine” in Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Lilly Stern Filler was born in Munich, Germany, in 1947 to Holocaust survivors Jadzia Szklarz and Ben Stern. The Sterns immigrated two years later to Columbia, South Carolina, where Gabriel Stern, Ben’s uncle and immigration sponsor, lived. This interview opens with Lilly describing a Stern (Szterenzys) family photo taken, presumably, in Poland when Ben was a little boy. Ben met Jadzia after the war through Jadzia’s brother Ben Szklarz, who was his bunkmate in the concentration camps. Lilly recounts how her parents were reunited with their siblings after the war and talks about her aunts, uncle, and cousins. The oldest of four, she shares memories of and thoughts about growing up as a daughter of survivors. After encountering antisemitism when trying to join a high school social club, Lilly’s involvement with Jewish youth groups intensified. She elaborates on what Judaism means to her, and what it means to have a Jewish home. The interviewee recalls meeting her husband, Bruce Filler, a Rhode Island native, at Rusk Institute in New York City, where both were working as physical therapists. They married in 1972, moved to Massachusetts, earned graduate degrees, and in 1975 welcomed daughter Rachel before deciding to relocate to Columbia, where they opened their own practice, Columbia Rehabilitation Clinic. Sons Alex and Michael were born in 1978 and 1980. Four years later, Lilly, pursuing a long-held dream, started medical school at the University of South Carolina. She relates some of the issues she faced going to medical school and starting a new career as a woman in her thirties and forties, and as the mother of young children. She describes partnering with Richland Memorial Hospital to open Women Physicians Associates, an all-female OB-GYN practice. In 2000 Lilly followed up on an initiative her parents had started years before to erect a Holocaust Memorial in Columbia. She discusses how the project grew to include various members of the Columbia community, Jewish and non-Jewish. The monument, located in Memorial Park, was dedicated in 2001. The Columbia Holocaust Education Commission was established with surplus from the memorial fund and shared the same goals: “remember the six million . . . honor the survivors and the liberators . . . and educate South Carolinians about the Holocaust.”
Conie Spigel Ferguson was born and raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the daughter of Geneva Fulk and Julian Spigel. She talks about her great-uncle Joel Spigel and her grandfather David Manuel Spigel of Prussia, who immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s. The brothers, who were jewelers, lived for a time in the Newberry-Columbia area, where David met and married Theresa “Daisy” Mittle. The Spigels, Joel included, moved to Spartanburg in 1903, where they opened a jewelry store. Conie’s father, Julian Spigel, was pushed to go to medical school by his parents. He met Geneva at a hospital in North Carolina where she was working as a nurse. Geneva came from a family of Moravians and was expected to leave school before completing her education to work on the family farm. However, she left home, took a job and a room with another family, graduated from high school, and earned a nursing degree. She married Julian in 1941, and they moved to Texas where Julian, an M.D., worked at a hospital before being called home to Spartanburg by his father in 1947, shortly after Conie’s brother, Joel David, was born. Julian helped out with the family jewelry business and took over after David Spigel’s death in 1949. He did not work again in medicine. Although Geneva did not convert to Judaism, she raised Joel and Conie in a Jewish household, insofar as they observed all the holidays. The children attended Sunday school, and Geneva was active in the B’nai Israel Sisterhood and B’nai B’rith. As the daughter of a gentile mother, Conie discusses how she was received by the rabbi and members of the temple. She recalls Rabbi Max Stauber who was hired in 1955 and served the congregation for nearly 30 years, noting that he was “like a second father” to her. The interviewee describes her devotion to Jewish religious observance and what she values in a rabbi. She relates incidences of antisemitism she experienced while in secondary school and at Spartanburg Junior College (now Spartanburg Methodist College). Conie responds to questions about race relations in Spartanburg, and reports that she never witnessed any conflicts between black and white students in her high school.
Isidore Denemark was born in 1910 in Mayesville, South Carolina, the son of Eastern European immigrants Sara Lee “Lizzie” Siegel and Jacob Denemark. Jacob arrived in New York and, at some point, moved to Georgetown, South Carolina, where he worked for the Fogel Brothers in their general merchandise store. Isidore doesn’t know when or where his parents married. He describes a number of moves the family made after Jacob left Georgetown. They ran stores in Mayesville, South Carolina, Sumter, South Carolina, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. They returned to Sumter around 1935 where Jacob went into business with Sara’s brother Harry Siegel on Main Street and Sara opened the Smart Shop, which sold dresses. Isidore recalls his father packing up his merchandise and following the tobacco workers around during harvest season in the Carolinas and Tennessee. The interviewee talks about his family’s religious observances as Orthodox Jews when he was growing up and his practices as an adult. He and interviewer Robert Moses are members of Sumter’s Temple Sinai, a small Reform congregation. Both men express frustration and concern about the lack of attendance at Sabbath services by members of the younger generations. They contemplate the reasons for the low levels of participation and compare the Jewish community of Sumter to the large and vibrant one in Charleston, South Carolina. Isidore earned an accounting degree at New York University and returned to Sumter in 1936 to work for Boyle Construction Company as a CPA. He was joined by his first wife, Gladys “Jimmy” Goldsmith, and they raised two children, Bennett and Adele. He talks about how he met Jimmy, who died in 1966. He married Rae Nussbaum Addlestone, originally from Charleston, who was present at this interview. Isidore was one of six or so people who put up money for a new summer camp for Jewish children. They bought more than two hundred acres in Cleveland, GA, and named it Camp Coleman, for the man who made the largest donation. Isidore and Robert discuss the absence of antisemitism in Sumter and how Jewish residents have been prominent in every part of Sumter life. Isidore addresses the issue of the Confederate flag flying on the South Carolina statehouse grounds.
Joan Weisblum Steinberg Loeb, born in 1918 in Brooklyn, New York, married Matthew Steinberg and moved to his native city of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1936. Joan, a daughter of Elsie Aleskowitz and Philip Weisblum, recounts some of her family history, and describes how she met Matthew, who earned his M.D. from the Medical College of South Carolina, and their wedding in the Weisblum’s Brooklyn home. Her mother-in-law, Anna Bell Kaminski Steinberg, taught her how to keep a kosher home. The interviewee, who had no formal religious upbringing, recalls attending High Holy Day services at her husband’s Orthodox congregation, Brith Sholom. She notes that Matthew served as mohel for the congregation following Reverend Feinberg, who was also the cantor and the shochet. Interviewer Sandra Rosenblum reports that her husband, Raymond Rosenblum, a urologist, later assumed the role. In 1947, Joan and Matthew left Brith Sholom and joined roughly seventy families in becoming founding members of the Conservative Synagogue Emanu-El. Joan points to the leadership of Charleston native, Macey Kronsberg, the congregation’s first president, as pivotal in organizing the faction that was dissatisfied with Orthodox practices. Joan notes the source of discontent: “It was the fact that the women were not part of the service at all, and the families did not sit together. This didn’t satisfy this generation. They wanted the children to be part of it and to learn and to have an interest, and not to have to just be banged over the head in Hebrew school to learn enough for a bar mitzvah, and goodbye Charlie.” Joan and Matthew donated the first sanctuary, an army chapel, for Emanu-El’s Gordon Street property. Joan lists many of the names and professions of the charter members. She discusses the differences among Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism, and some of the changes that have taken place in her lifetime. Participants recall the mid-twentieth century practices and attitudes of Charleston’s Reform congregants (Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim) and the two Orthodox congregations, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel, and they examine their own, and others’, experiences of keeping kosher—or not. Joan briefly mentions the three women’s organizations she joined in Charleston: the National Council of Jewish Women, the Daughters of Israel, and the Happy Workers. She goes into some detail about why her father thought U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the “biggest hypocrite and enemy of the Jews.” Matthew Steinberg died in 1968. Three years later, Joan married B. Frank Loeb of Montgomery, Alabama, where she was living at the time of the interview. She provides a brief history of Montgomery’s Reform congregation, Temple Beth Or.
Sidney Rittenberg, born in 1921, talks about growing up in Charleston, South Carolina. He relates memories of his parents, Muriel Sluth (Slutsky) and Sidney Rittenberg, Sr., and his older sister, Elinor, who married Art Weinberger, also of Charleston. The interviewee’s paternal grandfather, Samuel Oscar Rittenberg (1867–1932) emigrated from Lithuania and, after living in New York for a time, ended up in Charleston working in real estate with Triest & Israel. Samuel served as president of Brith Sholom Synagogue and was a South Carolina state legislator. Sidney Sr. was a reporter for the News and Courier before becoming a self-taught attorney, partnering with Louis Shimel in the law firm Shimel & Rittenberg. He was a Charleston City Councilman, active in local civic clubs, and associated with many prominent Charlestonians of his day. Although his parents often attended Shabbat services at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, Charleston’s Reform synagogue, the interviewee notes that they didn’t observe the High Holidays. Growing up, Sidney had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. He says, “I didn’t really like being Jewish because it separated me from the other kids. . . . I thought, ‘I’m an American. Why should I be anything else?’” Sidney noticed tension between the Reform Jews and the Orthodox Jews. “People looked down on each other because they weren’t strict enough or they were too strict.” He describes instances of antisemtism; portrays an African-American man who made baskets and wove figures like dolls and ships; and recalls enjoying children’s programs offered by The Charleston Museum. The interviewee discusses an incident that deeply affected him as a fourteen-year-old; he witnessed the unjust treatment of a black man by the police and was powerless to stop it. See also Sidney’s second interview with Dale Rosengarten on June 19, 2013, and his two interviews with cousin Deborah Lipman Cochelin on July 27, 2013, and October 27, 2013.
Max Kirshstein relates the experiences of his father, Nathan, and uncle, Abe, natives of Kaluszyn, Poland, who immigrated to the United States in 1920 to avoid conscription into the Polish army. They followed their three sisters to Charleston, South Carolina. Nathan’s wife, Sarah Ingberman, and their two sons, Yankel and Max, both born in Sarah’s hometown of Laskarzew, Poland, joined him in Charleston a year later. Max credits Sam Rittenberg with helping newly-arrived immigrants and notes that Etta Gaeser was one of several teachers who provided instruction in English. Nathan, who peddled to support the family, which had grown to include three more children, died in 1930, when Max was only ten years old. After graduating from Murray Vocational School in 1936, Max took a job in Isadore and Dave Solomon’s pawn shop on King Street. Four years later, Ben Barkin offered him a position as an administrative assistant in Aleph Zadik Aleph’s (AZA) Washington office. Two and a half years at the national headquarters “changed the whole course of my life, my thinking, and everything else.” While serving in the navy during World War II, Max continued his association with AZA as an advisor for Virginia’s Tidewater chapters. After the war he returned to Charleston and, in addition to his advising duties, he became the first chairman of AZA’s southern region, and, later, helped to organize a new local chapter to accommodate the growing number of Baby Boomer teens. In 1946 Max opened Metropolitan Credit Company, which he renamed Metropolitan Furniture Company. A year later he married Sylvia Lazarus and together they raised three children. Max touches on the antisemitism he experienced growing up, the breakaway of a number of Brith Sholom members to form Emanu-El, Charleston’s Conservative synagogue, and the merger of the two Orthodox congregations, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel. Note: comments on the transcript made by Larry Iskow, the interviewee’s son-in-law, are in brackets with his initials.
“Oldtimers and Newcomers” is a panel discussion held in 2004 at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina’s spring meeting convened in Georgetown in honor of Temple Beth Elohim’s centennial year. “Oldtimers” Philip Schneider and Meyer Rosen provide background on Georgetown’s Jewish history, noting former mayors, prominent members of the community, and their own family stories. “Newcomers” and New York natives Ariane Lieberman and Gene Vinik discuss how their experiences, growing up in New York among a large population of Jews, differ from the small-town, southern culture of Georgetown. Bari Heiden, born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, joined the Georgetown congregation just six months before the panel met. She describes raising her children in Florence, South Carolina, where they were members of Beth Israel. Audience members contribute their memories of growing up in Georgetown and share their small-town stories.
Faye Goldberg Miller, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1938, talks about growing up on St. Philip Street, one of three children of Polish immigrants Jeanette Altman and George Goldberg. She explains why her father changed his name to Goldberg from Geldbart after arriving in the United States. George followed his brother Israel to Charleston and opened a men’s clothing shop on King Street. The family observed the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays and Jeanette kept a kosher kitchen. Despite encountering antisemitism from a few neighborhood children, Faye says she “had a wonderful childhood in Charleston.” Faye married Ivan Miller and they raised three children, Shira, Robert, and Bruce, in Columbia, South Carolina. She discusses the family business, Groucho’s Delicatessen, purchased in the early 1940s from the Rivkins by Ivan’s father, Harold Miller, with the help of Harold’s brother-in-law John Gottlieb.
Sidney Rittenberg, in this follow up to his interview on June 17, 2013, recalls his initial encounters with the idea of Communism. While attending Porter Military Academy, the school chaplain, Reverend William W. Lumpkin, got Sidney’s attention when he stated, “There are people working in little Communist cells around the South, secretly, for equality and justice that are Communists and they don’t consider themselves Christians, but the lives they lead are like Christian lives.” As a teen Sidney was exposed to “socialists, communists, anarchists, everything imaginable liberal,” when he spent a summer at the New Jersey resort run by his maternal grandparents, Martin and Sadie Sluth (Slutsky). “I was struck by the fact that the one who was a Communist, who was a lawyer, was very reasonable and seemed to make a lot of sense to me.” While attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Rittenberg volunteered to teach local mill workers how to read and write, and he began working with unions in Durham, North Carolina. Sidney also joined the American Student Union, eventually becoming president of the left-wing campus organization. In 1940, Sidney left school. By that time he had joined the Communist Party [CP] in defiance of a federal investigation of the college’s president, Dr. Frank Porter Graham, “on charges of Communist sympathy.” Sidney traveled to New York and to his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, to collect CP dues and renew contact with members. The interviewee describes his experiences as a trade union organizer in High Point and Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and his work on behalf of the Alabama Sharecroppers Union [SCU] in the early 1940s. Rittenberg and interviewer Dale Rosengarten share stories about union organizer Clyde Johnson and labor organizer Claude Williams. Dale’s fieldwork for her undergraduate thesis on the SCU led her husband, Theodore Rosengarten, to record the story of a black tenant farmer named Ned Cobb, and produce a book called All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, which won the National Book Award in 1974. Sidney describes how his union organizing for R. J. Reynolds workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, led to him being drafted into the army shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, despite being rejected earlier because of poor eyesight. Rittenberg outlines his service in the U.S. Army, particularly while stationed in China, beginning around the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945. Serving as a claims investigator for the army and, later, after his discharge in January 1946, serving as a famine relief observer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration [UNRRA], he witnessed the inner workings of Chinese society. “These people were not only in the grip of a terrible backward oppressive system . . . they accepted it as fate, as proper. . . . That’s the great thing that Mao and the Chinese Communists did; they broke up that concept of fate, that you can’t do anything about it, and they made people feel that they could do something.” Sidney joined the CP in China and contributed by supplying books, helping people who were in danger leave the area, and providing whatever assistance was needed. He notes the difference between the CP in the U.S. and the CP in China. After leaving UNRRA, Sidney, intending to head home to the U.S., instead met CP leader Zhou Enlai and General Nie Rongzhen, who offered Sidney a job helping the CP reach out to the American people. Sidney touches on how he coped with being imprisoned in China for more than a dozen years. Imprisonment and solitary confinement “didn’t change me . . . because I believed in the principles. I believed we were working for a better world and there was nothing better to do than that.” He comments on the positive reception he received when he returned to the U.S. in 1980, and notes that “I didn’t really turn from Marxism/Leninism until about a year after I got out of prison the second time. Then I began reexamining basic premises.” In 1993, he co-authored with Amanda Bennett the story of his life in China, The Man Who Stayed Behind. See also two more interviews with Sidney Rittenberg, conducted by his cousin Deborah Lipman Cochelin on July 27, 2013, and October 27, 2013.
Sidney Rittenberg talks a second time with cousin Deborah Lipman Cochelin in follow-up to their recording session on July 27, 2013. Some of the interview covers the same ground as Sidney’s June 17 and June 19, 2013, interviews with Dale Rosengarten, including stories about his family; the unjust treatment of an African American by Charleston, South Carolina, policemen in the mid-1930s; and Rittenberg’s experiences living and working in China. Sidney attended Sunday school at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE), the Reform synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, and relates his memories of KKBE’s Rabbi Jacob Raisin. When he was about fourteen years old, Sidney met Joseph Nelson Mease, a College of Charleston freshman from Canton, North Carolina. Mease introduced Sidney to topics in natural science and historic figures like Charles Darwin. “The main effect that Joe Mease had on me was that I immediately declared myself an atheist.” Sidney describes his after-school activities, family vacations, and how he befriended medical school students and helped them with their studies while he was still in high school. He discusses why he chose to pursue his college degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, instead of taking advantage of a full scholarship to Princeton. For graduate studies, he was sent to Stanford University by the U.S. Army to study Chinese language, politics, culture, history, and anthropology. In September 1945, Rittenberg was assigned to the army’s claims department in the judge advocate’s office in Kunming, China. While in China, he observed that the foreigners who were allowed into the country between 1946 and 1966 came from all over the world and the vast majority were Jewish. “Why? Because, like me, they grew up with, first of all, a natural affinity for oppressed people.”
Sidney Rittenberg, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1921, is interviewed by Deborah Lipman Cochelin, whose great-grandmother Rachel Rittenberg Sanders was a sister of Sidney’s grandfather Samuel Oscar Rittenberg. Sidney tells stories about his parents, Muriel Sluth (Slutsky) and Sidney Rittenberg, Sr., and his sister Elinor Rittenberg Weinberger. He talks about growing up in Charleston, including the schools he attended and the friends he made. A good bit of the narrative is similar in content to his June 17, 2013 interview with Dale Rosengarten. The cousins recall several members of their extended family and Sidney describes time spent as a child on Sullivan’s Island. See also Sidney Rittenberg’s other interviews on June 19, 2013 and October 27, 2013.
Selden K. Smith, a South Carolina native who taught history for nearly four decades at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina, talks about his role in the development of Holocaust education courses. He describes meeting local survivors and says of interviewer Lilly Stern Filler’s mother, “The most compelling person of all—it was all compelling—was Jadzia [Stern].” What started as an experimental course featuring presentations by survivors grew into a standard offering at Columbia College. Dr. Smith notes he was not involved in or even aware of the effort to create legislation that established the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust (SCCH) in 1989. However, he was appointed to SCCH in 1990. He credits Margaret Walden, who then worked for the South Carolina Department of Education, for much of the progress made with Holocaust education in the state. Among SCCH’s projects was a joint effort with South Carolina Educational Television to interview survivors and liberators, resulting in the publication of the teaching guide South Carolina Voices. The interviewee discusses the status of Holocaust education in South Carolina and suggests that the challenge is how to make it “relevant to one’s day and time.”
Rabbi Harvey Tattelbaum shared his memories in an address titled “Rabbinic Reminiscences of Beaufort” at the April 2005 meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in Beaufort, South Carolina, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Beth Israel Congregation. His first pulpit, from 1960 to 1962, was the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina. While serving as chaplain for the recruits and their officers, he was hired to lead neighboring Beaufort’s Beth Israel Congregation. He also traveled weekly to Walterboro, South Carolina, to provide services for the members of Mount Sinai
Rabbi Harvey Tattelbaum delivered this speech titled “Struggling, Growing, Reaching New-Old Conclusions” at the April 2005 meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina held in Beaufort, South Carolina, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Beth Israel Congregation. Rabbi Tattelbaum, who served Beth Israel from 1960 to 1962, describes his secular and religious education, and how reading Night, by Elie Wiesel, contributed to his “search for religious meaning.” He discusses his evolving concept of God and the “necessary challenge” of “spiritual uncertainty.”
Shirley Gergel Ness talks about her father, Joseph Gergel, who served for three years in the Russian army before immigrating in 1914 to Columbia, South Carolina, where two of his brothers resided. Joseph volunteered for duty in the United States Army during World War I and worked as a supply sergeant in New York. He met his wife, Jean Fingerhut, when he was invited by a fellow soldier to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for Passover. Shirley, who was born in 1928, talks about growing up in Columbia, attending public school, and working in her father's store. The interviewee intended to go to law school after graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1948; she describes how Coleman Karesh, law professor and son of Rabbi David Karesh, blocked her admission that year based on her age and gender. Shirley recalls how her husband, Everett Ness of Sumter, South Carolina, courted her; they married and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1949. They ran the Nursery Nook, a children's toy and furniture store on King Street for fourteen years before going bankrupt. Their children attended Addlestone Hebrew Academy. In 1966 the Nesses moved to Columbia, the Midlands being a more convenient location for Everett, whose job as a manufacturing representative required travel to other southeastern states. Shirley contrasts the Jewish communities of Charleston and Columbia and tells the story of how a member of the Gergel family in Russia tracked down her American cousins in South Carolina, uniting the descendants of Joseph and his siblings who stayed in the Old Country.
Virginia Moise Rosefield, born in 1909 to Anita Harby and David DeLeon Moise, describes growing up in her hometown of Sumter, South Carolina. She relates stories about a number of Harby and Moise ancestors, among them the first to arrive in South Carolina, Abraham and Sarah Moise, who fled a slave uprising in St. Domingue in 1791; their grandson and Virginia's great-grandfather Edwin Warren Moise, who raised a cavalry regiment in the Civil War and established the law firm Lee & Moise in Sumter; and her great-grandmother Octavia Harby Moses, daughter of Isaac Harby, a founder of the Reformed Society of Israelites in Charleston. Virginia explains why her father changed his given name from Harmon to Davis. Davis, who followed his father, Marion Moise, into the law practice co-founded by Edwin Warren Moise, was a South Carolina legislator. Virginia describes a trip she took across country in 1931 to visit her cousin Alva Solomons, who was a naval officer stationed in California. She married New Englander Herbert Rosefield, whose father opened a hosiery factory in Sumter. Also present are Virginia's daughter, Anita Moise Rosefield Rosenberg, and fellow Sumter native and distant relative Robert Moses. The three discuss their congregation, Temple Sinai, in particular, its rabbis, lay leaders, and Sunday school when they were growing up. They note the changes in the rituals of Reform congregations that have occurred across three generations of the Rosefield/Rosenberg family.
Corinne Levy Philips, born in 1923 in Sumter, South Carolina, to Pauline Greenwood Gardner (of Savannah) and George Davis Levy, relates her father's family history, including stories dating to the Civil War. She describes how her family celebrated the Jewish holidays, noting that they were ultra-Reform and members of Temple Sinai in Sumter. She recalls decisions made by their rabbi, Samuel Shillman, that she believes drove members away. He held Sunday school classes on Saturdays, in direct competition with a popular local theater program. In later years he refused to marry Corinne and her husband, John Philips, because John was Catholic. John, a New Jersey native, met Corinne during World War II when he was a cadet at Shaw Field, an army air base in Sumter. The interviewee discusses her feelings about being Jewish and the changes she has observed in Reform practices. "I feel like they're running people away. Instead of modernizing, they're going backwards. . . ." Corinne and interviewer Robert Moses, a friend and neighbor, talk about Jewish stereotypes and their desire to "not be different." They also share their impressions of school integration in Sumter in the 1960s. Note: the transcript includes comments and corrections made by the interviewee during proofing.
Everett Ness and his wife, Shirley Gergel Ness, discuss his family history. Everett recalls accompanying his mother, Esther Berger, a Polish immigrant, on a visit to see her parents, Fishel and Molly Nachman Berger, in Poland in 1931, when he was four years old. Esther helped several of her siblings to emigrate; most of them, unable to enter the United States because of quota restrictions, settled in Argentina. Everett's paternal grandfather, Yehuda Seiden, changed his surname to Ness (Nass), his mother's maiden name, to avoid conscription in Poland, and immigrated to New York, where Everett's father, Benjamin grew up. Benjamin joined his brother Morris in his dry goods store in Manning, South Carolina, before opening his own ladies ready-to-wear business in nearby Sumter. He met Esther in Charleston, South Carolina, while attending High Holy Day services. They raised Everett and his sister, also named Shirley, in Manning, and attended Temple Sinai in Sumter. Everett and Shirley Gergel married in 1949 and lived for seventeen years in Charleston before moving to Columbia, South Carolina. They were initially members of the Reform synagogue in Charleston, but switched to the Conservative congregation, Emanu-El. Everett, who began studying Hebrew as an adult, notes that "as we became more aware of our Jewishness, the Reform Movement did not meet our needs, did not meet my needs." The Nesses talk about their relationship with Sam and Sophie Solomon of Charleston and describe Sam's funeral in 1954. Everett discusses his mother's philanthropic work for the March of Dimes and his involvement with Chabad and the chevra kadisha in Columbia.
Joseph J. Lipton discusses growing up in Beaufort, South Carolina, the eldest of three sons of Helen Stern and Samuel Lipton (Lipsitz). Samuel emigrated from Lithuania as a teen in the early 1900s, arriving first in New York. He followed a relative to Dale, South Carolina, not far from Beaufort, and worked in his store for a time before opening his own business in a small crossroads nearby called Grays Hill. He met Helen while on a visit to Charleston, South Carolina, where she lived with her brother, Gabe Stern, and worked in Kerrison's Department Store. They married in 1922 and moved to Beaufort. After graduating from Clemson College, the interviewee earned his law degree from Mercer University, a Baptist-affiliated institution in Macon, Georgia, where he was the only Jewish student. He describes how, fresh out of law school, he assisted a lawyer whose case regarding asbestos and interstate commerce advanced to the United States Supreme Court. He took a job with the South Carolina Legislative Council, where he was employed for thirty years. Lipton remembers visiting his cousins, the Sterns, in Columbia as a teen, and participating in AZA (Aleph Zadik Aleph) activities. He comments on Congregation Beth Israel in Beaufort and recalls singing Kol Nidre in the synagogue during the High Holidays.
Klyde Robinson continues his account of growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, begun in his first interview on August 26, 1997. His father’s business was a bicycle and toy store on the corner of King and Ann Streets, and everyone in the family worked there. Even as a U.S. district attorney and circuit court judge, Klyde helped out at Christmastime when sales peaked for the year. The Robinsons lived in the Hampton Park and upper King Street neighborhoods, and summered on Folly Beach and, later, on Sullivan’s Island where, Klyde recalls, a number of Jewish families had houses beginning in the 1930s. Emma Brown, the African-American woman who worked for the family for nearly 50 years, was well-versed in keeping kosher. Klyde attended The Citadel and at the end of his junior year, he and some of his classmates joined the army to fight in World War II. Despite near-blindness in one eye, Klyde was allowed to serve; ultimately, he went to Europe with the 141st Antiaircraft Artillery Gun Battalion. He notes that while he was aware of the existence of the concentration camps before he left the States, German townspeople claimed to know nothing about them. When he was discharged from the army, almost three years after signing up, he returned to The Citadel to complete his undergraduate education. While attending Harvard Law School, he met Claire Zuckernik of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1949 he graduated from Harvard and was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. He and Claire married in 1950 and she joined him in Charleston, where they raised their children and he started a law practice. Klyde describes his career, including how he acquired his positions as Charleston County’s attorney, assistant U.S. attorney, and circuit court judge. Among the other topics discussed: the social barriers among the Jewish community in the first half of the 20th century; the establishment of the Conservative synagogue, Emanu-El, in 1947; the merger, referred to by the interviewee as an amalgamation, of Charleston’s two Orthodox synagogues, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel, in 1954; joining the Masonic lodge, Friendship Lodge, No. 9; and the debate about whether to open the Jewish Community Center on the Sabbath and High Holidays. Also mentioned are Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, leader of the congregation at the newly merged Brith Sholom Beth Israel from 1955 to 1963, and Bill Ackerman, developer of the South Windermere neighborhood who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for mayor of Charleston in 1971. Note: see transcript for corrections made by interviewee during proofing. See Mss. 1035-165 for the preceding interview on August 26, 1997. See the Klyde Robinson Collection, Mss. 1024, in Special Collections at the College of Charleston Library for related material.
Max and Trude Schönthal Heller discuss growing up in Vienna, Austria, in the 1920s and ’30s, and the hardships and losses their families experienced as a result of the Anschluss, the German invasion of Austria in 1938. They describe how they and their family members escaped Austria and made their separate ways to the United States. Max, by chance, had met Mary Mills of Greenville, South Carolina, while she was visiting Vienna in 1937. He appealed to her for help in leaving Austria. Mary contacted Shep Saltzman, a Jewish man who owned a shirt factory in Greenville, and he sponsored Max’s immigration and gave him a job. Max and Trude, who met at a summer resort in Austria in 1937, married in the United States in 1942, and Trude joined Max in Greenville, where they raised their three children. Max served on Greenville’s city council from 1969-1971, and then was elected mayor for two terms, during which he spearheaded a major revitalization of the city’s downtown.
Doris Levkoff Meddin recalls her experiences growing up in Augusta, Georgia, where her parents, Shier and Rebecca Rubin Levkoff, ran The Smart Set Dress Shop. Shier and Rebecca, descendants of Russian and Polish immigrants, were born in Charleston, South Carolina. They and their children frequently visited Charleston and summered on Sullivan’s Island and the Isle of Palms. Doris married Hyman Meddin, who was born and raised in Savannah and ran a meat-packing business in Charleston. While raising three children, she devoted her time and energy to philanthropic work. Among her many contributions to local organizations, Doris helped to establish the Pink Ladies, a volunteer group at Roper Hospital, and served as president of the Charleston Area Mental Health Association. As a member of the National Council of Jewish Women, she assisted German refugee Margot Freudenberg after she arrived in Charleston.
Helen "Elkie" Rosenshein recalls childhood friends and neighbors from the 1920s and ’30s in Charleston, South Carolina. Her parents, Sam and Hannah Garfinkel, immigrants from Divin, Russia, followed Sam’s brother to the coastal city and opened a mattress factory. She describes the traditional Jewish foods served by her mother, who kept a kosher home with the help of an African American woman named Louisa. After working at the Charleston Navy Yard, Helen and her good friend, Freda Goldberg, spent a year in San Francisco, where they took advantage of local cultural events and volunteered at the Jewish Community Center.
Olga Garfinkel Weinstein, born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1917, describes her childhood, including her siblings, the Jewish Community Center, and the traditional Jewish foods her mother served. Olga experienced no anti-Semitism as a schoolgirl, but discusses her awareness, as a young woman during World War II, of what was happening to the Jews in Europe.
Brothers David and Sam Draisen, descendants of Russian immigrants from the Draisen and Poliakoff families, describe the family jewelry and music businesses and their experiences growing up in Anderson, South Carolina, in the years after World War II. They also discuss the history of Andersons Jewish congregation, Bnai Israel, and provide details about their careers and immediate families.
Sura Wolff Wengrow grew up in Allendale, South Carolina, in the first quarter of the twentieth century where her father, Henry Wolff, a German immigrant, ran a general merchandise store. In 1901, Henry married Rachel Pearlstine of Branchville, South Carolina. The family kept kosher and observed the holidays, but Sura did not receive a Jewish education, formal or otherwise. With no other Jewish families in town, she socialized, as a child, with gentiles and attended their church events, a pattern of assimilation she would repeat while living in Allendale during the early years of her marriage to Sam Wengrow of Beaufort, South Carolina. Longing for a connection to Judaism, and wanting her children to be involved in synagogue life, the Wengrows moved to Columbia when their oldest son was twelve. Note: This transcript appears to have been heavily edited with corrections, deletions, and additions by the interviewee and/or her son during proofing. Therefore, the transcript differs somewhat from the audio.
Sylvan and Meyer Rosen, brothers and natives of Georgetown, South Carolina, recall growing up in the coastal city and socializing regularly with gentiles. The Jewish congregation, Beth Elohim, too small to support a rabbi, received support from Charleston’s Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. The brothers name of some of Georgetown’s Jewish families and provide background on their extended families, the Lewenthals, Weinbergs, and Rosens. Their father, Harry Rosen, and their uncle Albert Schneider, who married sisters Dora and Fannie Lewenthal, operated The New Store, which initially sold men’s and ladies’ clothing and later furniture and appliances. Besides practicing law in Georgetown, both men held political office—Sylvan as mayor and Meyer as a state legislator.
Leila "Sugie" Rosenfeld Einstein, born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1936, grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, at a time when there were few Jewish youth in the small Upcountry city. One of three children of Cyvia Shapero and William Rosenfeld, Leila talks about her childhood. Her family belonged to Congregation Beth Israel, the Orthodox synagogue that later affiliated with the Conservative Movement. She attended Women's College in North Carolina for a year, then transferred to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she met her husband, Nathan Einstein. They married in 1957 and raised three sons in Greenville. Nathan joined Leila's father in his business, William Rosenfeld Insurance, and later, with their son Dan, formed a new insurance company, Rosenfeld Einstein. The interviewee discusses several aspects of Greenville's organized Jewish community, including cemetery upkeep and changes in practices at Temple of Israel, Greenville's Reform synagogue (she and her husband are members of Temple of Israel and Congregation Beth Israel). She considers the possibility of a merger of the two congregations, a topic that has been raised among members of both groups in the past. Einstein and interviewer Sandra Lee Rosenblum describe the effect Chabad's presence has had on the Jewish community in their respective cities of Greenville and Charleston. Leila recounts her impression of events surrounding Autherine Lucy's enrollment as the first black student at the University of Alabama.
Lillie Goldstein Lubin grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s and ’30s. Her parents, Abraham and Bessie Lazerovsky Goldstein, emigrants from Russia and Lithuania, ran a shoe shop in Charleston that evolved into a men’s clothing store. As a youngster, Lillie’s singing talent was recognized by her mother and teachers. She began taking voice lessons when she was nine and performed at a number of local venues as a child and teenager, notably, singing with the Charleston Oratorio Society in a performance of Haydn’s Creation. Lillie, whose stage name as a professional opera singer in New York was Lisa Lubin, discusses her early training and the artists who influenced her most. During her singing career, she performed in several languages, including Yiddish and German. She describes Charleston’s Jewish community in the years before World War II as “unique” because of the “camaraderie” and the “kinship” that she felt. Lillie recalls her mother’s visits to the mikveh, attending Rabbi Axelman’s Hebrew school, going to Folly Beach to listen to bands, and the black Charlestonians who worked for the family, both in their home and at their store. She married Herman Lubin of New York, whom she met in Charleston while he was working at the navy yard as an engineer. During the course of the interview, Lillie sings a few lines from some of her favorite songs.
Freida Zaglin Kaplan, born in 1908 in Wilmington, North Carolina, is joined in this interview by her nephew and his wife, Jeff and Erica Lieberman Zaglin. Freida's father, Charles Zaglin (Zaglinski), trained as a rabbi in Vilna, Lithuania, before immigrating to the United States around 1907. Soon after he sent for his wife, Evelyn Rose Goldberg, and their son, Sol, and they moved from one southern town to another, wherever Charles could find work as a rabbi, shochet, and mohel. They were a family of six, living in Greenville, South Carolina, when Evelyn died. Charles gave up his position as a rabbi, opened a grocery business, and sent the children to live with their aunts and uncles: Sol and Freida to Massachusetts; Harry (Jeff's father) to Tennessee; and Joseph to North Carolina. They returned home at different times over the next few years. When Freida came back to Greenville at age thirteen, her father had remarried. His second wife, Annie Glickman Zaglin, came to the marriage with four children; she and Charles had four more. Frieda discusses her father's grocery business, which, after World War I, included an abattoir. The Zaglins were members of the Orthodox congregation, Beth Israel, in Greenville. Freida remembers people coming from the surrounding small towns for High Holiday services conducted in the Woodmen of the World hall before the synagogue was built in the early 1930s. She married Nathaniel Kaplan in 1931; she had known him as a child while living with her aunt in New England. The Kaplans lived in Massachusetts for about six years, then moved to Greenville after Charles Zaglin became ill. Freida recalls how she made the sukkahs for Beth Israel, and how the women of the congregation prepared the chickens for the synagogue seders. A member of the chevra kadisha for many years, she describes the process of preparing a body for burial. Jeff discusses how his mother kept a kosher home when he was growing up.
Rose Rubin, daughter of Polish immigrants Sophie Halpern and Morris Rudnick, recounts stories about her family’s life in the Old Country and her parents’ immigration to New York. Sophie moved with her first husband, Ralph Panitz, to Aiken, South Carolina, for his health. The town had a reputation as a salubrious retreat for people with pulmonary problems. Morris followed his sister, Anne, who had married Solomon Surasky, to Aiken, where he married Sophie after she became widowed. Rose describes her mother’s awareness of the dangers of the Nazi regime and her efforts to convince family members to come to America, and discusses the history of “Happyville,” a Jewish farming community, established just outside of Aiken in 1905. Rose married former state senator Hyman Rubin of Columbia, South Carolina.
Isaac Jacobs, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, discusses his family history, including the 1855 immigration of his grandfathers Louis Pearlstine, who settled in Branchville, South Carolina, and Isaac Jacobs (Karesh). Jacobs, a native of Poland, operated a dry goods store in Charleston and was a founder of the Orthodox synagogue Brith Sholom. The interviewee’s father, Louis Jacobs, ran a shoe store in Charleston for 28 years before switching to the hosiery business. In 1931, he opened Jacobs’ Hosiery Company, and was joined by his sons, Isaac and Melvin. Isaac describes how his father got started in the wholesale sock industry and his own experiences as a traveling salesman selling merchandise to immigrant Sephardic store owners in Myrtle Beach, among others. Isaac briefly worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and served in the army in the Pacific theater during World War II. He married Ruth Bass of North, South Carolina, who joins him in this interview. Note: The audio quality of this recording is poor. Corrections and additions to the transcript were made by Isaac and/or his wife, Ruth, during proofing. See Mss. 1035-009 for the second part of this interview, dated February 22, 1995, and Mss. 1035-173 for another interview on January 26, 1998.
In the second part of an interview, Isaac Jacobs continues his discussion of his family history, including how his mother’s family name, Farber, was changed to Pearlstine in Trestina, Poland. His mother, Ethel Pearlstine of Branchville, married Louis Jacobs (Karesh) in 1908, and the couple raised eight children in the Hampton Park Terrace neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina. Isaac describes his siblings, his aunts and uncles on the Jacobs side, and relays anecdotes passed down in the family about life in Charleston. Isaac also talks about his experiences in the military during World War II. He married Ruth Bass of North, South Carolina, who joins him in this interview. Note: The audio quality of this recording is poor. Corrections and additions to the transcript were made by Isaac and/or his wife, Ruth, during proofing. See Mss. 1035-005 for the first part of this interview, dated February 1, 1995, and Mss. 1035-173 for another interview on January 26, 1998.
Ralph Geldbart tells the story of his father, Israel Geldbart, who immigrated to New York from Mogielnica, Poland, early in the 20th century. He used his mother’s maiden name, Goldberg, on the advice of relatives living in New York, who believed it would be an easier name for Americans to understand. (The family later reverted to Geldbart.) Israel, who began working as a tailor in New York, volunteered to serve in the United States Army during World War I and was sent to France, where he was wounded. After the war he brought his wife, Rebecca Cygielman, and their daughter, Sylvia, to the United States. They settled in Charleston, South Carolina, where Israel opened an army surplus store on King Street. The family, which grew to include Helen, Ralph, and Jack, belonged to Brith Sholom, one of the city’s two Orthodox synagogues. Ralph describes relations among members of Orthodox Brith Sholom and Beth Israel, and the Reform temple, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. He discusses his family’s Shabbes traditions, local Jewish merchants, and the Kalushiner Society, an organization founded by landsmen from Kaluszyn, Poland. Ralph was a sophomore at The Citadel when he joined the army to fight in World War II. He recalls landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day in the second wave. About a month later, while his unit was pushing into Normandy, Ralph was wounded, and he describes his experiences during transport and hospitalization in Europe and the United States. Ralph completed college at the University of Chicago and earned his optometry degree at Northern Illinois. After returning to Charleston, he opened an optometry office on George Street near the College of Charleston. He was the first contact lens fitter in the Southeast. He married Madolyn Cohen of Lincolnton, North Carolina, and they raised two daughters, Laurie and Jill, in Charleston. Note: the transcript contains additions and corrections made by the interviewee during proofing. For related material, see the Goldberg family papers, Mss. 1051 and Family tree, descendants of Oise Sokol, Mss. 1034-035 in Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Rachel Raisin and Mordenai Hirsch, daughters of Jane Lazarus (1887–1965) and Rabbi Jacob Salmon Raisin (1878–1946), describe their experiences growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years between the First and Second World Wars. Jacob Raisin emigrated with his family from Russia to New York City when he was twelve years old. The son of Orthodox Jews, he attended Hebrew Union College and served a number of congregations in the United States before he was hired in 1915 by Charleston’s Reform synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE). Jane Lazarus, who could trace her Sephardic ancestry in America to the 1700s, was a member and Sunday school teacher at KKBE. The couple married in 1917 and raised Mordenai, Rachel, and their brother, Aaron, in a home that was one of seven rental properties on Wragg Square known as Aiken’s Row. The sisters describe the house and property where they grew up, and where members of Jane’s family had lived for generations. Jane’s father, Marks Hubert Lazarus, ran a hardware and cutlery store, the M. H. Lazarus Company, on King Street. Topics addressed in the interview include merchants, private kindergartens, and Jane Lazarus’s involvement in organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and Hadassah (she founded the local chapter). The sisters also discuss issues of assimilation and identity, particularly as they relate to the early members of KKBE. Rachel attended Radcliffe College where she majored in government, and earned her degree in library science from Emory University. She worked in several cities in the East and Midwest. Mordenai studied early childhood education at the College of Charleston and Smith College. She received her master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. She married sculptor Willard Hirsch, who co-founded Charleston Art School with fellow artists and teachers Corrie McCallum and William Halsey. Mordenai provides some background on her husband and his family and gives examples of his commissioned works. See Lazarus and Hirsch family papers (Mss 1018), Rabbi Jacob S. Raisin papers (Mss 1075), and Willard N. Hirsch papers (Mss 1074), for related materials in Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Moses Kornblut grew up in Latta, South Carolina, the son of Leon Kornblut and Lizzie Schafer. He operated the family business, Kornblut’s Department Store, for 76 years, served on the Latta City Council for over three decades, and was a leading member of the Dillon synagogue, Ohav Shalom.
In this interview Rabbi Lewis Aryeh Weintraub provides details of his personal history leading up to his arrival in Charleston, South Carolina. He was born in Uscilug, Wolin Gubernia, Poland, in 1918 and immigrated with his family to Montreal, Canada, when he was twelve years old. He graduated from Yeshiva College in New York in 1941 and from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1944, the same year he joined the Canadian Army Chaplaincy Service. After discharge from the army in 1946, he served as assistant rabbi to Rabbi C. E. H. Kauvar of Beth haMedrosh Hagadol Congregation in Denver, Colorado. In August 1947 Rabbi Weintraub became the first rabbi of a newly formed Conservative congregation in Charleston, South Carolina. The founders had just broken away from Brith Sholom, one of the city’s Orthodox synagogues. Weintraub discusses the dissension in the Jewish community surrounding the split and the decisions involved in the creation of a new congregation, such as choosing a name—Synagogue Emanu-El—acquiring property, and hiring Jacob Renzer as cantor. He mentions a number of the founders and explains how Dr. Matthew Steinberg came to be the congregation’s mohel. The rabbi provides dates and some details regarding the start of Hebrew and Sunday school classes, the first bar mitzvah, the first confirmation, and other “firsts” in the congregation. To enhance the adult education program begun in January 1948 and to aid in “molding the ideology of Conservative Judaism for the community,” he brought to Charleston as guest speakers Jewish scholars such as Arthur Hertzberg, Max Arzt, and Robert Gordis. Rabbi Weintraub credits his parents for his decision to enter the rabbinate. He discusses why he chose Conservatism, the aspects of Conservative Judaism that appeal to Jews, and how a break with certain traditions is not necessarily a renunciation of “other basic, central, ideological principles of Judaism.” He married Fannie Goldberg, a native Charlestonian, four years after arriving in the Holy City, as Charleston is called. “With great regrets” the rabbi resigned at the end of his seventh year at Emanu-El. He and Fannie left Charleston for the sake of their two young children—they wanted them to attend a Jewish day school, not available at that time in Charleston. Note: the transcript contains additions and corrections made by Rabbi Weintraub during proofing.
Melvin Jacobs and Rose Wexler Jacobs, audio interview by Sandra Lee Kahn Rosenblum and Ruth Bass Jacobs, 14 January 1998, Mss 1035-172, Special Collections, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.;Melvin Jacobs reminisces about growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father, Louis Jacobs, ran a shoe store on King Street. The Jacobs family attended the Orthodox synagogue Brith Sholom and observed Shabbos, although around 1913 Louis began opening his shop on Saturdays. Melvin was drafted into the marines at age thirty-four; he served in the supply corps, stateside, from 1943–45. In 1947 he married Rose Wexler of Savannah, the daughter of Romanian immigrants. They raised four children in Charleston. Melvin, who joined Louis in the family business, describes how his father made the switch from selling shoes to selling hosiery. The couple discusses the schism at Brith Sholom that produced the Conservative congregation, Emanu-El; the merger of the two Orthodox synagogues, Brith Sholom and Beth Israel; and their involvement in the establishment of the Jewish day school, Charleston Hebrew Institute. Note: this is the second of two interviews; the first was in 1997 (Mss. 1035-139). For several related collections, search for “Pearlstine” in Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Hannah Prystowsky Rubin, born in Charleston in 1916, recounts the story of her grandparents’ immigration to the United States from Zabludow, Poland, circa 1890. Ezra and Mollie Prystowsky followed the Jacobs family, also from Zabludow, to Charleston, South Carolina, where Ezra repaired shoes for a living before opening a men’s clothing store. Hannah’s father, Mike Prystowsky, was a tailor and worked with his brothers in the family’s King Street store, “E. Prystowsky & Sons, Mike-Sam-Jake.” She describes growing up on St. Philip Street, surrounded by extended family, and recalls members of two branches of the Mazo family—the Uptown Mazos and the Downtown Mazos—who operated delicatessens above and below Calhoun Street. In 1938 Hannah married Samuel Rubin of Columbia, son of wholesaler Joseph Rubin and Bessie Peskin Rubin. Within five years they had three small children. Hannah discusses Sam’s two-year stint in the army during World War II, and how she helped two German Jewish families, who survived the war, become acclimated to life in America after settling in Columbia.
Rudolf "Rudy" Herz shares his story of survival with students at the College of Charleston in a presentation for Professor Theodore Rosengarten's class, "History of the Holocaust." Growing up in Germany, Herz remembers being made to feel different from German Christians because he was Jewish. Just eight years old when Hitler came to power in 1933, Rudy found Nazi propaganda confusing. He notes that German society made "a totally seamless transition from religious hatred of the Jews to a racial hatred of the Jews." He describes the harassment and persecution Jews experienced at the hands of the storm troopers and the increasingly harsh restrictions placed on them, leading to loss of their rights as citizens, loss of jobs, and exclusion from society. His family was living in Cologne at the time of Kristallnacht in 1938. Rudy recounts the events of that night, the family's unsuccessful attempts to flee Germany, their transport in 1942 to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, and subsequent transfer to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Rudy was selected to work in Schwarzheide, Germany, rebuilding a factory that was routinely bombed by Allied Forces, and was later transferred to a labor camp in Lieberose, Germany, then to Sachsenhausen on the outskirts of Berlin, and finally, in February 1945, to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria. Besides describing the details of what he and his fellow prisoners endured, he explains why Hitler's platform appealed to the German people and answers questions about his loss of faith in God and his sense of Jewish identity. He relates how he immigrated to the United States, where he found his brother, and recalls his post-war visits to Germany. For related information, see the Rudolf Herz papers (Mss 1065-050), Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston.
Ida Berry Ginsberg, in an interview with her nephew’s wife, Cydney G. Berry, discusses the Berry (Berzin or Berzinsky) family history, with a focus on her father, Barnett Berry, who emigrated from Russia around 1892. After spending two years in New York, he moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where he opened B. Berry’s, a shoe repair and sales shop on Assembly Street. He married Annie Levine and they raised seven children. Ida recalls that the family observed the Sabbath at home, with only the men attending weekly services at House of Peace Synagogue. She remembers the Depression, but notes that it did not negatively affect her family’s welfare.
Melvin Jacobs and Rose Wexler Jacobs, audio interview by Michael Samuel Grossman, 7 March 1997, Mss 1035-139, Special Collections, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.;Melvin Jacobs, born in 1909 in Charleston, South Carolina, discusses his family history. His maternal grandparents, Rebecca Tobish and Louis Charles Pearlstine, settled in Branchville, South Carolina, where they ran a dry goods store. Louis emigrated with Melvin’s paternal grandfather, Isaac Jacobs (Karesh) from Trzcianne, Russia, circa 1852. Melvin’s father, Louis Jacobs, an observant Orthodox Jew, ran a shoe store in Charleston on King Street. Under mounting financial pressure, Louis began opening his store on the Sabbath, a decision that created tension between him and his father, Isaac. Melvin talks about his siblings and his aunts and uncles, specifically his uncle Dr. Kivy Pearlstine, who practiced in Charleston. Melvin married Rose Wexler of Savannah, who joined him in this interview. They recall their courtship and wedding, and Rose touches on the issue of how women dressed for synagogue services in the past and at the time of the interview. Note: for several related collections, search for “Pearlstine” in Special Collections, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston. The Jacobses recorded a second interview in 1998 (Mss. 1035-172).
Larry Freudenberg relates the history of both sides of his family. His mothers forebears, the Triests, immigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, from Bavaria in the 1850s, opened a clothing store on King Street, and joined the Reform congregation, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. Larry's father, Henry Freudenberg, was a young boy when he escaped Nazi Germany in 1939 with his parents and grandparents. They eventually settled in Charleston. Larry discusses his experiences growing up in the 1960s and 70s, and feeling trapped between two cultures. Gentile children teased him for being Jewish, while Orthodox Jewish children accused him of being not Jewish enough. Larry runs the family's insurance business established in 1903 by his great-grandfather, Montague Triest.
Joe Engel, who was twelve years old when the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, describes life in his home town of Zakroczym, Poland, before and after the invasion. His family fled to Warsaw and then Plonsk, the ghetto from which they were transported to concentration camps. Joe was imprisoned at Birkenau, Buna, and, Auschwitz. He made a daring escape from a train after surviving a death march. After the war ended, he immigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, where decades later his vision led to the construction of the Holocaust Memorial.
Sandra Garfinkel Shapiro grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1930s and 40s, the youngest of six children of Jewish immigrants from Divin, Russia. She recalls her childhood years, including her involvement with Young Judea, the African-American woman who worked for the Garfinkel family, and her fathers mattress business. She has donated her personal collection of genealogy books, photos, and ephemera to the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston.
Philip Garfinkel, one of six children of Sam and Hannah Garfinkel, natives of Divin, Russia, grew up in the 1930s and ’40s in Charleston, South Carolina. Philip discusses his siblings, friends from the St. Philip Street neighborhood, and the family’s religious practices. He fondly recalls summers on Sullivan’s Island and afternoons at the Jewish Community Center on St. Philip Street.
Karl Karesh, born in 1912, discusses growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, focusing on his neighborhood, the local merchants, his Hebrew school training, and his family and their adherence to Orthodox religious observances. He addresses the differences between the uptown and downtown Jews before World War II, and describes his clothing business, and other Jewish- and gentile-owned dry goods stores, in Charleston during the post-war years.
Marshall Stein, born in Allendale, South Carolina, in 1935 to Lena Young and Max Stein, recounts the Stein and Young family histories. Lena, a Beaufort, South Carolina, native, was a daughter of Russian immigrants Toby and Julius Young, who, having lived in a number of northern cities, including New York, moved to Beaufort to take advantage of the lower cost of living and the less populated, rural atmosphere. Besides opening dry goods and furniture stores in Beaufort, the Youngs ran lumber mills in neighboring Burton and in Allendale, about sixty miles inland. The interviewee relays anecdotes about Julius, who was fully accepted by his fellow businessmen in Beaufort, so much so, he had the dubious distinction of being invited to join the Ku Klux Klan. Max Stein was one of four sons of Lena (same name as her daughter-in-law) and Morris Stein of Indianapolis, Indiana. Morris ran a tannery and frequently went on the road to sell his hides. Julius Young was one of his customers, and Max met his future wife, Lena, after accompanying his father on a sales trip. Max and his new bride tried living in Indianapolis, but Lena didn't like it, so they moved to Allendale where Max opened a grocery store. The family relocated to Beaufort when Marshall was six years old; by then, he was a big brother to Bernard. Max joined the Young family in the lumber industry, which expanded to include a building supply and contracting business in Beaufort. Marshall describes growing up in the Lowcountry town with his brother, Bernie, and his sister, Leonora Lynn, born four years after the move. He shares fond memories of the Youngs, particularly his four cousins, who were like brothers, and his aunt Sanie, who married Ben Fox of Asheville, North Carolina; Ben ran Fox's Jewelers on Bay Street in Beaufort. The interviewee cherished the small-town atmosphere and the intimacy of services and gatherings at Beaufort's Orthodox synagogue, Beth Israel, led by Rabbi Spier. He recalls one or two "Germanic Jewish" families living in Beaufort who didn't attend Beth Israel; instead they traveled to the Reform synagogue in Savannah or Charleston. "Because of that they didn't fit in too well with the rest." Note: the transcript includes comments and corrections made by the interviewee and interviewer during proofing.
Holocaust survivor, Pincus Kolender, tells the story of his life from his boyhood in Bochnia, Poland, to the significance of the Holocaust Memorial in his adopted city of Charleston, South Carolina, where he and his wife, Renee, a fellow survivor, raised their children. He describes life in Bochnias Jewish ghetto after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, his captivity at Birkenau, Buna, and Auschwitz, evading selection for the gas chambers, being wounded in an Allied air attack, surviving a death march, escaping the Nazis, hiding in the Czech forest, working for an American army unit, and immigrating to America.
