Jewish Heritage Collection: Oral history interview with Mathilde Ezratty Lehem
Date:
1996
Interviewer:
Rosengarten, Dale, 1948-; Jacobs, Ruth Bass
Interviewee:
Lehem, Mathilde Ezratty, 1916-2001
Description:
Mathilde Ezratty Lehem, was born in 1916 to Rachel Ezratty and Saady Ezratty, members of two separate Ezratty families who were part of the large community of Sephardic Jews living in Salonika, Greece. Mathilde talks briefly about life in the northern port city, where she and her younger brother, Alfred, lived comfortably with their parents and attended a Jewish school staffed by teachers who had been trained in France. Saady worked in insurance and Rachel's brothers sold crystal and fine fabrics. Jewish-owned shops closed on Saturdays, a practice that ended forcibly sometime after Hitler came to power in Germany. Saady took this change as a sign it was time for the family to leave Salonika. Around the mid-1930s (Mathilde admits she is not good with dates), Rachel and Saady acquired traveler's visas and, with Mathilde and Alfred, boarded a ship bound for Mandatory Palestine, where Saady's brother lived. Rachel's brothers, believing they would not come to harm, stayed in Greece. Mathilde never saw them again and assumes they, like many of Salonika's Jews, were sent to the gas chambers. Mathilde notes that living conditions in British-controlled Palestine were harsh, a stark contrast to their life in Greece. When she was about twenty, she married a man (Lehem) she had known for a month. The marriage was troubled from the start and never during the interview does Mathilde utter his first name. She moved with him to Aden, then a British colony, where he had a business. A year or two after they wed, daughter Florette was born. As fighting in nearby East Africa intensified, the Lehems decided, in 1940 or '41, to move to Shanghai, based partly on the advice of a ship captain. Another draw: Mr. Lehem's sister lived there. Mathilde recalls that in, possibly, early 1942, they were among the British and American civilians living in Shanghai who were interned in camps by the city's Japanese occupiers. She describes the living conditions where they were held for three and a half years and mentions how they and other Jewish prisoners celebrated their first Passover. The interviewee spends considerable time on health problems she experienced while in Shanghai, most while being held in the camp. She discusses her symptoms and the treatment she received, which included hospitalizations. Once freed, Mathilde sought a way to return to her parents in Palestine. She held a British passport, but passage to Palestine was denied. An American doctor who was a fellow detainee, helped her obtain a United States visa so she and Florette could seek out her paternal aunt in New York. To Mathilde's relief, her husband stayed in Shanghai. Mathilde recounts how she and Florette made their way from Shanghai to San Francisco to family in Queens. She required lengthy hospitalization once in New York. Seeing that Mathilde's illness was going to be protracted and Florette needed a parent, a member of the family tracked down Mr. Lehem and arranged for his entry to the United States, unaware that Mathilde wanted nothing to do with him. The reunited Lehem family settled in Manhattan and, after Florette was grown, Mathilde managed to escape the bad marriage. Florette married Isaac "Ike" Ryba and they later moved to Charleston, South Carolina. Mathilde followed in 1970. See Mss. 1035-056 for Mathilde's second of two interviews. For a related collection, see copies of her family photos in the Inventory of the Holocaust Archives Field Researchers Collection, Mss. 1065-049.
