71. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Doris Lerner Baumgarten
Number of results to display per page
Search Results
72. Jewish Heritage Collection Panel Discussion: Growing up Jewish in Beaufort
- Date:
- 1998-10-24
- Description:
- “Growing up Jewish in Beaufort” is a panel discussion held in 1998 at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina’s fall meeting held in Beaufort, South Carolina. Beaufort natives Joseph Lipton, Stanley Farbstein, Michael Greenly, Gerrie Lipson Sturman, and Thomas Keyserling share childhood memories from the 1920s through the 1960s. Topics addressed include antisemitism, assimilation, and the transition from Orthodox to Conservative practices in Beth Israel. The panelists recall rabbis and lay leaders who served the congregation, and identify Jewish merchants, tradesmen, and professionals.
73. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Sophia Marie Friedheim Beers
- Date:
- 9/22/1999
- Description:
- Born in 1927, Sophia Marie Friedheim Beers was raised in the Protestant faith in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Her grandfather Arnold Friedheim, a German Jewish immigrant, settled in the town after the Civil War. His brother, Julius, followed him to Rock Hill and together they ran A. Friedheim and Brother. The department store, which supplied uniforms to Winthrop College students, closed its doors in 1964 after nearly a century in business. Sophia recounts the story of her cousins, the Schwartzes, who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and came to Rock Hill.
74. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Richard Gergel and Belinda Friedman Gergel
- Date:
- 2016-02-29
- Description:
- Richard Gergel, born in 1954 in Columbia, South Carolina, is joined in this interview by his wife, Belinda Friedman Gergel. He is the youngest of three children of Meri Friedman and Melvin Gergel, who owned a number of stores in the capital city. Richard provides background on his immigrant grandparents and how they came to the United States. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Gergel, was from Ukraine; he married Jean Fingerhut of Toronto, Canada. Before running Gergel?s Men?s Shop on Main Street in Columbia, Joseph peddled and operated a store on Assembly Street. The interviewee explains how his maternal grandparents, Rebecca Dreiziak/Dreiszek and Sam Friedman, ended up in his hometown after raising Meri and her sisters in Kingstree, South Carolina. Richard describes growing up in Columbia and talks about the merchants who lined Main Street, most of them Jewish and many related to the Friedmans. He attended Keenan High School and served as the student body president in 1970?71, the year the school transitioned from a junior high to a high school and became fully integrated. ?I was very committed to this issue of making school desegregation work.? Regarding antisemitism in Columbia, Richard remembers ?isolated episodes in my childhood, but they were so unusual that they actually stood out because that was not the norm. Jews were generally very accepted.? However, he does cite instances of antisemitism in earlier decades reported to him by his father. Richard notes ?there was no institution more important to my family than the Tree of Life Congregation,? and recalls studying with Rabbi Gruber in preparation for his bar mitzvah at the Reform synagogue. He discusses his family?s involvement on the boards of the congregation and the Columbia Hebrew Benevolent Society. After earning his law degree at Duke University, Richard returned to Columbia to work in private practice; in 2009 he was nominated to the United States District Court for South Carolina by the Obama administration. The interviewee recounts how, about a decade ago, he learned of Gergel relatives living in Russia. When his grandfather Joseph and Joseph?s three brothers, Isidore, Max, and Gustave, came to Columbia, they left behind four brothers and a sister in Ukraine. The separated branches of the family confirmed their connection when both were able to produce the same family photo, taken on the occasion of Isidore Gergel?s visit home after immigrating to America. Note: see also interviews with Melvin Gergel?s sister, Shirley Gergel Ness, January 21, 2016, Mss. 1035-449 and Meri Friedman Gergel and her sister Rae Friedman Berry, July 17, 1997, Mss. 1035-154.
75. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Emma Bogen Lavisky Bukatman and Belle Lavisky Jewler
- Date:
- 3/4/1997
- Description:
- Emma Bogen Lavisky Bukatman and Belle Lavisky Jewler, audio interview by Dale Rosengarten and Michael Samuel Grossman, 4 March 1997, Mss 1035-135, Special Collections, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.;Emma Bogen Lavisky Bukatman, interviewed with her daughter, Belle Lavisky Jewler, discusses the Katzenelenbogen family history, a name they attribute to a city in Poland, although their genealogy traces the family to Bialsytok, Russia, and long before that, Italy. Emma’s parents, Bella Weinberg and Joseph Bogen (Katzenelenbogen) were first cousins who met and married in New York City. Emma, born in 1906 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, the oldest of four children, notes that their family moved frequently, and in each location her father opened a general merchandise store. She remembers living in New York City before moving to Denmark, South Carolina, when she was eight years old. Emma recalls that they “felt a lot of antisemitism growing up” in the small town where the Bogens were the only Jewish residents until the Ness family settled there and opened a dry goods store. When she was sixteen, the family moved about fifty miles north to Columbia. She met her first husband, Michael Lavisky at Chaplin’s wholesale shoe business where she was employed as a bookkeeper and he was a shipping clerk. They married in 1926 in House of Peace Synagogue on Park Street. Belle, who was born in Columbia in 1936, offers some background on her father’s family, the Laviskys, who emigrated from Russia to Columbia in 1912. Emma describes her siblings, the Bogen family’s religious practices, and her memories of Rabbi David Karesh of Columbia. She recounts how the women of House of Peace Congregation transitioned from sitting in the balcony in the Park Street building to sitting downstairs, separated from the men, in the new sanctuary on Marion Street. Other topics include Columbia merchants, in particular, the Rivkins; Belle’s brother, Saul Lavisky; letters Emma’s mother wrote to her sister in Yiddish that have been translated into English (copies are available in Jewish Heritage Collection vertical files, Special Collections, College of Charleston); and how Beth Shalom (formerly House of Peace) evolved from an Orthodox to a Conservative congregation, a development in which women’s roles in services were at the heart of the issue.
76. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Belle Lavisky Jewler
- Date:
- 2015-11-04
- Description:
- Belle Lavisky Jewler, born in 1936, grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, the only daughter of Emma Bogen and Mike Lavisky. She talks about her brother, Saul, and her extended family, in particular the Katzenellenbogens, from whom her mother was descended. Belle's father owned a number of stores in Columbia, among them, King's Jeweler's, which he opened with his partner Eddie Picow. Growing up, the interviewee says, "I felt different. I never knew antisemitism. I was kind of raised to stay with your own kind, so almost all my friends were Jewish." She met her husband, Allen "Jerry" Jewler, in Columbia when he was stationed at Fort Jackson. They were married in 1960 and moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, where she gave birth to daughter, Melissa, and son, Scott. Jerry's jobs took the family to Charlotte, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina, before they returned to Columbia to stay in 1972. Belle discusses her children, her involvement in Beth Shalom, her Jewish identity, and her support for Israel. For a follow-up interview conducted on December 21, 2015, see Mss. 1035-459. See also Belle Jewler's March 4, 1997, interview with her mother, Emma Bogen Lavisky Bukatman, Mss. 1035-135.
77. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Belle Lavisky Jewler
- Date:
- 2015-12-21
- Description:
- In this follow-up to her November 4, 2015, interview, Belle Lavisky Jewler discusses in more depth her childhood memories of House of Peace in Columbia, South Carolina, at the time an Orthodox synagogue, and her involvement as an adult with the same congregation, which, by the late 1950s, had changed its affiliation to Conservative and had begun using its Hebrew name, Beth Shalom. She recalls the changes in practices that took place in the congregation over the years, in particular, allowing women to participate in services. Belle relates stories about her father's family's experiences upon arriving in America and describes her mother preparing for Passover. She mentions two of her mother's ancestors and their claim to fame: Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen was the King of Poland for a day and a half and Louis Katzenellenbogen was a founder of the Bialystoker Shul in New York City. She remembers spending a lot of time in Caba Rivkin's deli: "A lot of what went on in old Columbia happened in Caba Rivkin's grocery store-delicatessen." For Jewler's November 4, 2015, interview, see Mss. 1035-458. See also Belle Jewler's March 4, 1997, interview with her mother, Emma Bogen Lavisky Bukatman, Mss. 1035-135.
78. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Sarah Belle Levy
- Date:
- 2015-02-11
- Description:
- Sarah Belle Levy was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1923, the fourth of six children of Annie Blumenthal and Israel Levy. Israel, a Lithuanian immigrant who became a naturalized citizen in New York in 1904, likely followed his sister Anna Levy Goldberg to Charleston, where he peddled before opening a grocery store at Line Street and Ashley Avenue. Annie Blumenthal, born in Poland, came to the United States with her aunt and uncle Rachel and Abraham Addlestone. Sarah talks about her siblings, Alexander, Sidney, Lillie, Doris, and Jeanette, and growing up in Charleston. They all pitched in at the store and did what they could to bring in additional dollars. She describes how the family helped Alexander make, bottle, and sell insecticide, while her mother made and sold matzoh. Sarah joined Girl Scout Troop 14 and Junior Hadassah, and when she was in high school, she worked at Edward's Five and Ten Cent Store, owned and operated by the Kronsbergs. She attended one year of Rice Business College, then worked for Sarah Bielsky Ellison, acting as a "girl Friday" in the office of Ellison's Shoe Store on upper King Street. Levy recalls Bob Ellis Shoes, run initially by Sarah Ellison's brother Sammy Bielsky, later purchased by Morris Kalinsky of Holly Hill. In 1959, Sarah Belle ventured west to Los Angeles to help her sister Jeanette, who was about to give birth. She ended up staying in California for nearly fifty years. She shares memories of her activities as a member of an outdoor club in which she and other Jewish adults toured parks and natural sites in the West. Sarah returned to Charleston after she retired to be near family.
79. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Ben Chase
- Date:
- 4/21/2001
- Description:
- Ben Chase, a Charleston, South Carolina, native, followed his father, Philip, and uncle, Joseph, into the King Street business his grandfather Marty Chase started in the 1930s. In this interview he discusses the challenges Chase Furniture faces, particularly “the shift of the population out of the city,” which he anticipates will require the store to move to the suburbs in the near future. Besides losing a large part of their client base, the diversity of the remaining customers has been difficult to accommodate. Limited downtown parking adds to the list of reasons for a change in location.
80. Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Ben Stern
- Date:
- 3/4/1997
- Description:
- Ben Stern, audio interview by Dale Rosengarten and Michael Samuel Grossman, 4 March 1997, Mss 1035-137, Special Collections, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.;Ben Stern, the youngest of Chaim and Hadassah Stern’s four children, was born in Kielce, Poland, in 1924. For a decade beginning in 1930, the family lived in Lodz where, Ben recalls, antisemitism was rampant. The Sterns returned to Kielce in 1940, hoping conditions created in the wake of the German occupation of Poland the year before, would not be felt as harshly in a smaller community. For a time, that was true. Ben comments on Hitler’s strategy and the Germans’ willingness to take part in his plan. His sister Faye and their parents were transported to Treblinka in 1942; he never saw them again. Ben was put to work by the Germans in a number of jobs that required intense physical labor, before being sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He describes how he got to the concentration camp, what happened when he arrived, and the effects the dehumanizing conditions had on the behavior of the inmates. He was transferred to a number of different camps before being liberated by Americans. He was reunited with his sister Sophie after the war. She had been sent to the same camp in Pionki as their brother, Joel, who died in a death march the day before they were liberated. After the war Ben lived in an apartment in Munich, Germany, where he met and married his wife, Jadzia Szklarz, also a survivor. The couple, with their daughter Lilly, immigrated to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1949, sponsored by Ben’s uncle Gabriel Stern, who had left Lodz many years before to escape antisemitism. Ben talks about his first jobs in Columbia, his four children, and how his belief in God changed.