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.
