The Oral History Project is a key part of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education’s mission to preserve and present the history of Oregon’s Jewish community. The current project expands and augments the Oregon Jewish Oral History and Archive collection assembled by Shirley Tanzer in the 1970s and the Holocaust survivor and witness interviews conducted by the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center from 1994 until 2012. We aim to collect a comprehensive range of oral histories chronicling the Jewish experience from community members across the state. OJMCHE currently has over 1100 interviews and continues to add to the collection with its ongoing project.
In 2014 OJMCHE received a grant from the Oregon Heritage Commission to provide online access to the collection. Our goal over the next two years is to post all of the Oral Histories in our collection. Please check back regularly as we continue to add interviews. Feel free to use the information in these interviews, but please use the following citation: Transcript, (Name of Interviewee) Oral History Interview, (Date of Interview), by (Name of Interviewer), Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. Online: <web address of cited transcript>. (Date of download).
For more information about the project or interviewees, to conduct onsite research, to be interviewed, or reproduction permission contact the Archivist Alisha Babbstein at ababbstein@ojmche.org.
We extend our gratitude to the Oregon Heritage Commission for their support of the development of this webpage.
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Karen Irwin b. 1924
Karen Irwin (nee Evelyn Aronson) was born on July 4, 1924 in Halberstadt Germany to Franziska (Emanuel) and Félix Aronson. Franziska was a chemist, born in Hedemuenden and grew up in Kassel. Félix was a businessman whose family came from Konigsberg, Prussia and grew up in Paris. Karen had no siblings. Karen’s parents moved several times …
Rabbi Daniel Isaak b. 1949
Rabbi Daniel Isaak was born in San Francisco on June 5, 1949, the son of Helmut and Ellen Isaak. His parents were German refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany. As a teenager, Rabbi Isaak actively participated in his synagogue, became involved in USY and attended Camp Ramah in Ojai, California, where he returned for several …
Lesley Isenstein b. 1946
Lesley Isenstein was born April 17, 1946 in Seattle, Washington. The family joined a Reform synagogue and Lesley went through Confirmation there. She studied for a year at Mills College and then graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in English literature, and from UC Davis with a master’s in English. She met …
Ilse Odenheimer Jacobsen 1924-1996
Ilse Jacobsen was born March 4, 1924 to Isidor and Marie Odenheimer in the town of Odenheim in southern Germany, where her father ran a dry goods store. Her family had lived there for many generations. At age ten she was sent away to a Jewish boarding school because the anti-Semitic condition of the school in her small town …
Garry Kahn b. 1936
Garry Kahn was born in San Francisco, California on April 20, 1936, to Wilfred and Mildred (nee Cooper) Kahn as the oldest of three. His sister Judith is a year younger and his brother Rick is nineteen years his younger. Wilfred and Mildred met c. 1934 when Mildred went on a trip to San Francisco …
Henry Kahn 1902-2001
Dr. Henry Kahn was born in Bad Nauheim, Germany on August 21, 1902. His paternal grandfather, Morris Kahn, was the proprietor of a general and dry goods store in the German state of Hesse, where he faced antisemitism from local villagers. Henry’s maternal grandparents, the Rosenthals, owned a butcher shop in Bad Nauheim. Henry’s hometown …
Suse Katz 1926-2001
Suse Katz was born on August 23, 1926 to Adolf and Betty Grombacher in Ludwigshafen, Germany. She had one brother, Gerd, who was three years older than her. In 1935 her parents obtained affidavits from relatives living in Chicago that allowed the family to travel to the States. They boarded a ship in December of …
Leonard Kaufman Jr. 1926-2018
Leonard Kaufman Jr. was born in Portland on June 11, 1926. His maternal grandmother was Emma Selling, who was related to the Sellings in Portland. His paternal grandfather was Isaac Kaufman (husband of Clara Dilsheimer) who started the A.P. Hotaling wholesale liquor and brewery business in Portland. Leonard Kaufman Sr. joined the military during the …
Alice Kern 1923-2010
Alice Kern was born Alice Lucy Koppel in Sighet, Romania on March 30th, 1923. She, her mother, father, and two older brothers all lived in a house on the same street as future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Weisel. Alice’s father traveled frequently around Romania for work, bringing home fresh cheeses and other dairy products …
Roselle Levy Kleinberger 1922-2011
Roselle Kleinberger was born on May 8, 1922 to Elsa Rosenstihl Levy and Julius Levy in Dahn, Germany, a small, Catholic town near the French border. Her father was a traveling salesman and aided families with legal issues, and her mother ran their textile store. There was a synagogue for the 15 Jewish families who …
Jakob Kryszek 1918-2019
Jakob Kryszek was born in 1918 in the tiny town of Podebbitz, Poland. He was the fourth of six children, three boys and three girls. He moved to Lodz, Poland when he was a young man and began working. When he was 21 years old, the Nazis invaded Poland and his entire family – brothers …
Arnold Labby b. 1924
Arnold Labby was born in Portland, Oregon on August 25, 1924. He attended Laurelhurst Elementary, Grant High School, and Lewis & Clark and Reed colleges. His father’s family, originally named Labkowski, was from Georgia and came to the US in 1905 with Arnold’s father Harry, who became a dentist. His mother’s family (Goldfarb) came to …
Daniel Labby 1914-2015
Daniel Labby’s life experience reflects the second generation Jewish immigrant experience of the Portland Jewish Community. Born in New York on September 1, 1914, Daniel moved with his parents, and his father’s extended family, including uncles, aunts, and grandparents to SW Portland before 1920. They were sponsored in their immigration by Henry Miller. Daniel’s paternal …
Eva Lamfromm Labby b. 1929
Eva Lamfromm Labby was born on June 25, 1929 in Augsburg, Germany to Paul and Marie Lamfromm. Eva had two older sisters, Gertrude Lamfromm Boyle and Hildegard Lamfromm. The family fled Nazi Germany in 1937 and came to Portland, Oregon, where Paul’s older brother Max had immigrated in 1903. Paul purchased the Rosenfeld Hat Company, …
Lore Caro Labby 1926-2019
Lore Labby was born on January 19, 1926 in Düsseldorf, Germany, the only child to Paula and George Caro. Her mother died when she was 11, and her father was frequently hiding from Nazi authorities, so Lore lived for several months at a time with family friends. The day after she turned 14, on January …
Manly Labby 1900-1983
Manly Labby was born in Golta, Russia. He came to the United States with his family in 1906 and moved to Portland in 1910. While in grade school, Manly was a newsboy in order to help earn money for his family. After high school, rather than attending college or trade school, Manly went to work …
Sally Landauer b. 1939
Sally Katherine Landauer, née Clarke, was born June 21, 1939 in Bellingham, Washington. Her family moved to Portland when she was two. She lived with her father, Milton Clarke, a shopkeeper; her mother, Katherine, a teacher; her younger brother, John; and her half-brother, Robert. Her parents were of Protestant background, but not religious. Nonetheless, the …
Edmund Lang 1920-2007
Edmund Lang was born December 25, 1920, in Perleberg, Germany; he was an only child. His father, who was awarded the Iron Cross after serving in the German army during the First World War, was the owner of the biggest store in their small German town. The Langs were secular Jews, and Ed had no …
Edith Rosenthal Lavender 1913-2005
Edith Rosenthal Lavender was born in Wiesbaden, Germany on November 24, 1913 to Emilia and Leon Rosenthal. She had one younger brother, Frank. Edith grew up in a comfortable household, was able to attend public school through graduation. Following graduation, Edith found work as a typist and held that job until 1934 when the business …
Paul Walter Lavender 1911-2005
Paul Walter Lavender (born Lewandowski) was born on February 10, 1911 in Kassel, Germany. His parents, Jacob and Lina Lewandowski had three other children: Herbert, Irma, and Paul’s fraternal twin brother, Hans. His sister died when he was five years old, and his father died in 1936. Paul’s mother and his brother, Hans, died in …
Irv Leopold 1926-2021
Irv Leopold was born on April 3, 1926 in Portland, Oregon to Sam and Pearl Nudelman Leopold, who arrived in the United States as children from Russia and Germany. His mother was a part of the large Nudelman family that came to the US to start an agrarian community in North Dakota. Many of those …
Eve Steinberg Leveque 1924-2004
Eve Emmy Steinberg Leveque, was born on January 14, 1924 to Walter Steinberg and Freida Korneffel. She was raised with no specific religion in a well-to-do, professional household; her physician father had his practice in their house and often took Eve on his afternoon rounds to neighboring farms. Her family moved to Berlin and …
Sally Hanna Levin 1926-2020
Sally Hanna Levin was born in Raguva, Lithuania in 1926, to Shlomo and Freidel Glaserine (Glaser). Her father died when she was six months old. Her mother had two brothers in Cape Town, South Africa, so she took Sally there when she was 10 months old. They live first with Freidel’s brother, Maurice, though five …
Henry L. Levinger 1907-1998
Henry L. Levinger was a lifelong Baker City resident and prominent businessman who owned Levinger Rexall Drug Store. Henry was born in Portland, Oregon on August 29, 1907 to Lyle and Louis Levinger. He was a 1925 Baker High School graduate, and attended Stanford University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree …
Sonia Liberman b. 1933
Sonia Liberman was born September 15, 1933 in Kletsk, Belarus, near Eastern Russia. Her Yiddish name was Shayndl. She lived in a small town near Kletsk with her parents, Gershon and Adel Berkowitz, her sister Ruth, her brother Pesach, and extended family, including a gentile girl, Marisha, who helped raise the children. Her family was …
Shlomo Libeskind b. 1937
Shlomo Libeskind was born in Poland in 1937 and spent the war years in numerous locations around Warsaw and with various families under difficult conditions. In 1947 he emigrated to Israel where he lived in several kibbutzim, learned Hebrew, gained matriculation and served in the Israeli Army during the Sinai campaign. After earning his doctorate …
Vicki Lichtenstein Lind b. 1945
Vicki Lind was born Vicki Lichtenstein to Arthur and Anja Lichtenstein in Hagerstown, Maryland, while her father was stationed there for military service. Her parents changed their name to Lind when they moved to Portland in 1947. Vicki grew up as a secular Jew in Southwest Portland, graduating from Wilson High School and then Antioch …
Ruth Lindemann b. 1933
Ruth Lindemann was born in February 1933 in Vienna, Austria. Ruth’s mother was a secretary and her father worked in a warehouse. When Ruth was six her father was taken to Dachau and she and her mother were forced to move into a house with several other Jewish families. Ruth’s mother enlisted the help of …
Selma Loney 1922-2001
Selma Loney was born in Covallis, Oregon in 1922 to William and Sarah Konick. William had come to Corvallis in 1913, when there was only one Jewish family living there (the Reicharts). He opened a jewelry store. He and Sarah married in 1921 and had two children: Selma and Alvin. The family traveled to Portland to celebrate …
Eva Lowen 1929-2017
Eva Lowen was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. Her father, a dentist by profession, had come to Vienna from Lvov, and her mother was born and raised in Vienna. Eva grew up in a German-speaking Liberal-Reform Jewish household, although Eva defined her parents approach to religion as more “intellectual.” Although she was mainly “sheltered” …
Leland Lowenson 1902-2001
Leland Lowenson was born in 1902, in Portland, Oregon to George and Daisy (Dorothea Hermann) Lowenson. The family had been in Portland since 1883, and in San Francisco before that. They lived in Northwest Portland and Leland attended Couch and Ainsworth Grammar Schools, Lincoln High School, and Stanford University. His family was involved with Congregation …
Lotte Goldschmidt Magnus 1920-2006
Lotte Goldschmidt Magnus was born on March 17, 1920 in Frankfurt, Germany to Lily and Adolf Goldschmidt. She had an older brother, Hans. In 1926 she began attending a liberal Jewish school in Frankfurt and was a student there until she had the opportunity to emigrate to the United States via the Kindertransport in 1934. She was …
Susan Woolach Marcus 1936-2019
Susan (Woolach) Marcus was born on October 23, 1936 in Portland, Oregon. Her father, Harry, worked for the May Company tire division, and later at his brother Jay’s business, the Woolach Brothers Tire Store. As a child, Susan took Spanish lessons at a church across the street from Alameda Elementary School, as well as swimming …
Flora Schwartz Marcus 1905-1997
Flora Schwartz Marcus was born in Russia in 1905 and came to the United States with her mother, her sister Sadie, and brother Nate when she was eight years old to join her father and brother, Sam, who had come earlier. The family lived in South Portland and attended Shaarie Torah Synagogue. Flora learned English at …
Gayle Breslow Marger b. 1944
Gayle Breslow Marger was born on April 4, 1944 in Portland, Oregon to Max and Gertie Levin Breslow. Max was a professional jazz musician, who came to Portland from Lincoln, Nebraska. He died when Gayle was quite young. Because both of her aunts married Sephardic men, Gayle grew up with both Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions. Her …