David Finkelstein

Zell: Where did you or your grandparents come from?
FINKELSTEIN: My grandparents never came here. I came here by myself. I came alone. 

Zell:  From what country? 
FINKELSTEIN: From Russia, which is Poland now; it’s the Ukraine. 

Zell: What city there? 
FINKELSTEIN: Well, it was a little town called Charterisk. I came from the same part of the country that the Schnitzers came from, the Rosenfelds came from and the Directors came from. The Tanzers did not come [from there]. Mr. Tanzer did not come from there. Mrs. Tanzer, Rissell Tanzer, came [from there]. In fact Rissell’s name is not Tanzer. Her name was Dorfman. You see she was married before, and the baby was born; he died and she was left with a little infant. Then when she remarried to Mr. Tanzer, he adopted him. The other one, Jack, is their child. Rissell was related to the Shenkers. There used to be a Bill Shenker. 

Zell: Now did all these people know each other in that community?
FINKELSTEIN: Well, I came here on January l, 1913, and I arrived by myself. It took me a week to get across from New York to come here by myself. I couldn’t speak a word of English, and in one place we stopped and sat around the whole day on the depot. I was afraid to walk away from the train, and I kept on running to the man. I would show him my watch, and he would show me something. Anyway I sat there the whole day from early in the morning until late in the evening, until we arrived here. I was met by Morris Rosenfeld, who was my brother-in-law’s oldest brother. You probably knew Ben Rosenfeld; he was the youngest of the Rosenfelds. We got off at the depot, January 1st at night, and walked a couple of blocks to Glisan Street. There was a street car running, and it was the Fulton Street car. It was going way down to South Portland. I carried my luggage tied up with a piece of rope.

Zell: Just like the picture show. 
FINKELSTEIN: Yes. I came to a sister. 

Zell: You already had some of your family here?
FINKELSTEIN: Oh yes. When people used to come to this country, they either had a relative or a landsman. Landsman, you know, means from the same town that they knew, and that’s the way they used to come. Somebody came to somebody. 

Zell: Why did the first member of your family decide to come? How was it decided that somebody should start coming?
FINKELSTEIN: Well, my sister got married. She was 24 years old, and her husband wasn’t even 17. After living for about six months, he decided he couldn’t make a living. He had a few dollars from the dowry that he got. He didn’t get all of it; it was promised to him. Some of it was given to him in the form of a note, which later he sent it back and tore it up. He came to this country. He came to New York, and in New York he got a little work. He was working in the shirt factory, and after he was here a couple of years he took my sister out. At the time he took my sister out, he was willing then to send me a ticket for me to come too. I didn’t want it. I worked in Poland, Lodz, and afterwards I was getting to be 19 years old, and I didn’t want to go into the army. My father was sick and I thought I had better go while the going is good. I really was one of the few that nobody sent…a ticket. I had my own money to come as far as New York. 

I had a funny experience. We wrote a letter and told him that there was a woman with children coming out here. Her husband was already here, and he sent for her, and we thought we were going. Another boy, a friend of mine, a relative of mine, came over, and the two of us were together. We came with this woman, but we got as far as the little town where you were supposed to cross the border. They sent her….She had tickets on another line altogether, and us they gave us the cheapest thing that we could possibly go on, on a German line, and it was steerage. So when I got there I didn’t have enough money from New York, and I didn’t have the $50. You were supposed to have $50 to show that you are not going to be a burden on the country. So they gave it to her because it was marked that we were coming with her. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t know anything. She took this money and the ticket and came to Portland and didn’t say anything to anybody. But when I came, I didn’t have the ticket. I didn’t have the money. I sat for a week at Castle Garden, Ellis Island. I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket. Everything was used up. So I borrowed a dollar from that relative of mine who went to New York and stayed in New York and sent a telegram. Then they started checking and they finally discovered that she had this money and the ticket. So I got the ticket. They questioned you pretty strict. 

Zell: Now, what kind of an organization helped you. Did some organization?
FINKELSTEIN: Yes. HIAS in New York. They came and asked could we help you, and I told them my difficulties. I imagine that they would have intervened if they really would have tried to send me back. 

Zell: Now did the Polish government give you any resistance to leaving the country?
FINKELSTEIN: No, we went right through. When we came on the train, a girl appeared on the train. She walked up to us and she said in a quiet way, “You follow me,” so we knew that she has something to do with the agent.

Zell: This was where?
FINKELSTEIN: In Poland, I don’t exactly know the name, but that was where the border was where it borders with the Germans. She said to us, “If you want to ride across the border, you will have to wait until 12:00 at night, but if you want to walk you can start right now.” It was around 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening. Well, I was scared to death. I was seeing many uniforms, and I thought everybody is looking at me, so I said, “We’ll walk,” and we walked. We walked in the water up to here, crossing the border. There were Russian soldiers, but they were bright. Nobody bothered me.

Zell: What year was this again?
FINKELSTEIN: That was in 1912. I arrived here in January 1913. It must have been in December. It took me 15 days on the boat to get over. I was sick on the boat, and it was terrible. We had to go with a bucket to get food, but who could eat. We were all sick. The lower you are the worse it is. 

Zell: Now, had you received letters from sister? Your sister was already here. In fact, she had already come from New York to Portland. 
FINKELSTEIN: When she arrived here (I think she came a year ahead of me), she already had a baby born. She was in bed as she had the baby a couple of days before I arrived. 

Zell: And she told you about Portland. 
FINKELSTEIN: She didn’t know very much. An elderly woman, a Mrs. Barde, was taking care of her.

Zell: You just knew that you were going to go wherever she was. Now what do you think made her decide, so many of the immigrants did stay in New York. 
FINKELSTEIN: My sister came to her husband direct here.

Zell: What made him decide to come clear across?
FINKELSTEIN: There was a relative here. There was one man who came here from Odessa and came to Portland. He had no children, a wife and himself, and to him came several families that were directly and indirectly related to him. He was the uncle. 

Zell: Do you know his name?
FINKELSTEIN: Oh yes, uncle Fox [Feder Fuchs]. That was their uncle, and everybody came to him. I found him here when I came here. He was an old man, and his wife died, and he married a woman from Seattle. The second wife had children from a former marriage. They lived here for several years, and then they moved to Seattle, and when I used to go to Seattle, I used to visit them. They were no relations to me, but they were related to a relation, my brother-in-law’s uncle. My brother-in-law, I was in business with him, and I lived in their house for ten years with the children.

Zell: You said you were about 19 then? When were you born? 
FINKELSTEIN: Supposedly March 15th, 1895. When I arrived here, I was 19 in March. 

Zell: Then you found employment right away?
FINKELSTEIN: I’ll tell you what happened in those days. When we came here, there was a terrific immigration in those [days] from 1890 until about 1925. We lived close to the Neighborhood House, and the Neighborhood House was the big thing, really, at that time for immigrants. We went to night school. I got a job first. My brother-in law was in with his oldest brother and Max Berenson, Moe Berenson’s father-in-law. There were three of them. They had a little junk shop, and they had another place. In those days money was so scarce, and the immigrants particularly didn’t have any money. There was no way of earning any money except going out peddling, and if they had lots of children, the children would go out from about six or eight or ten.

They would go out selling papers, even fellows who went to Reed College and became lawyers afterwards. Some of them, like Sam Weinstein, used to carry a route, early in the morning, three o’clock in the morning–carrying a route with the Oregonian. He earned enough money and then went to Reed College to classes, and then afterwards he became a lawyer. This was the life. The older people never made a living. They went out peddling, but it wasn’t like it is today. Today a peddler goes out. Today we waste stuff. We throw stuff away. In those days everything was saved. They peddled with rags. We would go out with a horse and wagon. They would bring a tire in, a sack or two of rags that they used to get from families, and the junk shops used to buy it. When I was in business yet, which was not in the early days (I didn’t go into the business until 1927), …I got in with my brother-in-law, and we used to buy bottles and buy rags, and also we used to wash the bottles there. We had a big place where they washed bottles, and he gave me a job. Sam Zidell, you probably heard of him, he came before me. He came about two weeks before. He was very happy, and he was working there, standing with a rubber apron, rubber boots and washing the bottles. He was making a noise. 

I was very discouraged and very disappointed, because the job that I had in Lodz, I was working in a wholesale textile firm. They produced in Lodz and around Lodz, a big factory that was producing goods for uniforms for governments, and they used to come from all over the country. They used to come to Lodz to buy goods, and [I] used to work in the place. I started out by dragging the stuff and showing a big bunch of different cloths, open it for inspection, and if they liked, they would put it away. I worked there for a couple years. It was a different life. I was dressed decent, and here they put on me a pair of rubber boots, and I didn’t like it. Well, I started going to night school right away at the Neighborhood House. 

Zell: They ran a night school there, besides English?
FINKELSTEIN: They taught us English and they did a lot of stuff. They tried to help you with a job. Particularly single girls came in. A lot of girls came, and they got them jobs in laundries, which was the only thing they could do. 

Zell: Who were the personnel in the Neighborhood House?
FINKELSTEIN: Well I remember the first ones. I remember the teachers. The one woman was a Mrs. Meyer. She was an elderly lady and very capable, and she used to explain or teach by action. Like she wanted to say, “jump,” she would get up on the chair and jump. I’ll tell you a little joke that happened at the time that I went there and started going there. When I worked with this fellow, with Sam Zidell, and I worked maybe a month or six weeks, that’s all. So I worked with him, and I said, “Are you going to school?” He said, “No,” and he really was not educated at all. He couldn’t read or write, not even Yiddish, which anybody who…came from Europe could. So somebody wrote him from Castle Garden. He met somebody that wrote a letter to his parents that he arrived safely. They couldn’t read the letter, so they sent it back to him, and I rewrote it so that they could read it. So I said to him, “Why don’t you go to school?” And I started making him to go to school. The teacher was teaching him about dogs with pictures, and there was a little cat, so she said the kitty’s name was Topsy, but he couldn’t get it in his mind, name, kitty, so she said to him, “What is your name? He said “Sam.” Then she said, “What’s the kitty’s name, Sam?”

Zell: I’ll start back with a general question about the South Portland neighborhood. You were telling me about life in South Portland and the people. They could get all their services, all their needs. 
FINKELSTEIN: There was more closeness at that time because there were no automobiles. As I said, in the wintertime they used to have dances The different synagogues would have a dance, the different organizations would have dances, and the Jewish boys and girls used to get together in the evening. The B’nai B’rith Building always used to have dances, very often, and all the girls and boys used to come there, and everybody from that era were good dancers. I used to love to dance, and then we started going even out not to the Jewish organizations. There was Christian Dance Hall on Tenth and Yamhill, and they used to have dances there on Wednesday night and Saturday night, which I used to go, and there were dances at the Murlock Hall on 23rd and Burnside, where a better class of girls used to come. [They were] from school, not working girls, but most of them high school girls. There was the Cotillion Dance Hall on 13th and Burnside, and they had a big floor. 

Then in the summer time we used to go to Council Crest. They had a big dance hall, and we used to go on the Council Crest streetcar to go out there on Saturday nights, and in the summer time we used to go out to the picnics. Different organizations gave picnics, and they would organize it. They would start from First and Alder Street, and just about when they were supposed to leave, say 9:00 in the morning, the street cars would start out, and there was some Jewish woman with the children, running with a basket of food, waving and making noises for the street car to stop and pick them up. We would go out for the day. Crystal Lake Park, Oaks Park, different places, one…near Oregon City. We used to go quite a way. We would go out there. There was a band, there was dancing in the afternoon, mostly evening. The elderly people were sitting playing cards, and the younger people were dancing. We used to go sometimes to Crystal Lake Park, dancing in the afternoon, and at night and we didn’t have the money to pay for it. It cost 50 cents, …so one fellow would go in, and another one would pull the rest of us in, go into the men’s room and open a window and pull some of the boys in. We didn’t have the money to pay for it. Money was scarce.

Zell: I am going to ask a question again that I did before about the religious life in South Portland as you remember it. The synagogues, you said the names of them.
FINKELSTEIN: The elderly people, the middle-aged people that came there with families, followed their religion just the same as they did in the old country. We used to go out like on Saturday night. The women were very much concerned about their budget. A penny and a nickel, everything was money. Meat, I think at that time was about 15 cents a pound, kosher meat, but it was more expensive than the goyisha meat. There was a goyisha butcher shop on the street too. 

Zell: Did everybody keep kosher in South Portland?
FINKELSTEIN: Oh yes, very important. They had a kosher butcher shop. They had a mikva. I still think they do. In those days they really used that; they went there. There were several butcher shops, and each butcher shop had a separate shochet, a fellow that did the killing. They were fighting among themselves, and they weren’t making a living, so they decided why did they need so many shochets, three or four. I remember there was Rabbi Halper, then there was Medovdosky, so they decided to form a corporation, and they did. They all got together three or four butcher shops, and they raised the price a couple of cents a pound, and the women came out and broke the windows in the butcher shop. Simon Director was a butcher at that time, and he was there at the time when they broke the windows. Mrs. Rosenblatt, she was the leader. 

Zell: Was it effective, did they lower their prices? 
FINKELSTEIN: They broke up anyway. They couldn’t get along. 

Zell: I think there must have been a certain strength with the women in the home.
FINKELSTEIN: There were the women, and there were the days of the Misses and the Boarder. You see there was a lot of single people came. Young people, not married, and some left families at home, but they were single. There was no such thing for a Jewish man to go out to a cheap hotel and get a room in a hotel and live there, so they lived in somebody’s house. Most of the homes in South Portland had some outsider living there, and of course, there was a lot of gossip, the same as today only on a different basis.

Zell: Was there a lot of matchmaking,
FINKELSTEIN: Oh yes, there were a lot of them. Most all the girls got married. 

Zell: Now you had told me before about working at Meier & Frank, and I had asked you a little bit about their hiring?
FINKELSTEIN: After I was here a short while. Once you come to America, they think that you shovel money, you know, you just go out and pick it in the street. So right away I got a letter from my mother that my father was very sick. From what I understand he had cancer of the throat. He had to go to Vienna for an operation, and so they needed $15.00, which is 300 rubles in Russia, and in those days I was working at Meier & Frank for $30.00 a month to start. I was paying $12.00 a month to my sister for board, and $10.00 I was sending home to my mother to the family to help them, so that left me $8.00, so out of the $8.00 I tried to save money. You can imagine what kind of a life and what kind of a spendthrift I became. 

After I was here a year or two years, a younger brother I brought out here. He was two years younger than I was, and I wanted him to go to school. I was willing to help him. At that time I was making more money already, and he moved in also with my sister. We were all crowded in that little house. It was a two-bedroom house. When I first came, I used to sleep with Morris Rosenfeld, the oldest of the Rosenfelds. His family wasn’t here yet. Before he brought them over, I slept with him, and then when I brought out my younger brother, he slept with me also at my sister’s house. There was no hot water. The only hot water we had was from a stove that we used to get. It was barely enough to wash the dishes up. On Front Street there used to be a Japanese barber, so for 15 cents we would get a bath and towels. So anyway, I brought this boy here, and he didn’t want to go to school. He wanted to go to work.

Zell: How old was he? 
FINKELSTEIN: He was younger than I was. Maybe when he came here he was 17 years old. 

Zell: Was this about 1915? 
FINKELSTEIN: It was about 1915. He got a job in a grocery store. He got up early in the morning and went to the store and something happened. There was an explosion, something going; whatever it was, there was a fire there and he got killed. So [at] Meier & Frank there was a woman in the store, a Jewish woman. She was a demonstrator for food items in the grocery department. I was in the grocery store. She went upstairs and talked to Julius Meier. He said to find out what I need, how he could help, and he actually paid for the funeral.

Zell: There were awfully nice.
FINKELSTEIN: They were very, very nice. They were nice to me always. I remember one time it was before Yom Kippur, and I wanted to tell the manager from the grocery department that I want to go home early. They told me he was in the office on the sixth floor, so I went up to see him, and there he was standing outside Julius Meier’s office talking, and I said to this Mr. Porter, “I want to go home.” Julius Meier said, “Where are you going. Why so early?” I told him, “Well tonight is Yom Kippur.” He said, “Yom Kippur is from sundown.” I said, “That’s only in the reform synagogue, but I go to an orthodox synagogue. We won’t be able to eat dinner after 5 o’clock.” So he laughed. 

When Julius Meier was building his home in Corbett, Oregon, which is about 30 miles from Portland, they called it Menucha. It’s a Hebrew word! It means “peace.” So he built a house there, and he wanted some mezuzahs, so he called for me to come to the office. He says, “Can you get me some mezuzahs.” He didn’t pronounce it. “We call it a mezuzah,” I said. “ I think I can get it.” I got mezuzahs for him.

Anyway, I use to work pretty hard in the grocery store. I used to work a lot [of] over time, and then they never gave you anything. When you had to send out orders right before Thanksgiving, we would maybe work 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning to fill orders, and even when we worked to 7:00, 8:00, or 9:00 pm, we would get nothing, but when we had to work to 12:00 or 1:00 at night, they used to give us a quarter for dinner; to go out for dinner we used to get a quarter.

Zell: It seems as if there were so many Jewish merchants. Can you remember a little bit about the Jewish community? 
FINKELSTEIN: Yes, I’ll tell you. One time Aaron Frank was up on the ninth floor, that’s where the grocery department used to be. They had a bakery and a candy department, and I had no particular place. I used to take care of all of the displays. There were about a half dozen demonstrators, demonstrating coffee, pancake flour, and they used to come up to the floor and report to me, and I would get them the supplies, whichever each one wants and also the displays on the floor. We used to have stacks of canned goods, and before the holidays, like Christmas, we would have candy and different stuff. That was my department. So he came up on the floor one time and I said, “Mr. Frank I would like to ask you something.” He said, “What is it Dave?” And I said, “I would like to get a vacation, a couple of weeks.” So he said, “Who’s stopping you? You can go on vacation.” I said, “Well I want to get paid.” He said, “Why we don’t pay anybody for vacations.” I said, “Well then I can’t take it.” He said, “Well how long a vacation do you want to take?” I said, “Two weeks.” He said “How about if we pay you for one week, and you pay for one week?” I said, “I’ll only take one week.” [So he said,]”Well, we will I pay you for two weeks, but don’t say anything.” And you know all the time that I worked for Meier & Frank, for about six years, they never docked me for any days. It used to be on my envelope; it was marked, absent, two days allowed, absent, a day and a half, allowed. They treated me [well,] as I said, but he said, “Don’t tell anybody.” I was their first paid vacation. 

Zell: How long do you think it took them before they made that a general policy? 
FINKELSTEIN: That was years later. Then they had a big strike with the truck drivers. 

Zell: About when was that? 
FINKELSTEIN: About in the ‘20s. They never organized. When they started bothering Meier & Frank was when they unionized during the days when Franklin Roosevelt came in, and that’s when Abe Rosenberg got in the store because he was representing. They had the NRA when Roosevelt started to bring us out of the depression and different things, so the cloak and suit in Portland, quite a few manufacturers. Abe Eugene Rosenberg become their lawyer and became an expert on that, so through them he got into the Pendleton Woolen Mills. They had a strike, and they hired him because [of] Goldstein’s, which used to be Goldstein’s Inc. He and Nate Hellman were partners they were in the Pendleton building. Pendleton was downstairs, and they were upstairs, and they told Bishop about getting Abe Eugene Rosenberg, and through them he got in with Meier & Frank. Meier & Frank hired him. They didn’t want the clerks to organize and be office workers. They are still not organized, except the drivers. Then when I came back from the service, it was a different ball game already. When I left I think I was getting something like $80.00 a month, and when I came back I went up for a raise. You had to fight for a raise all the time. You had to go see the top man, Julius Meier. I went up there and got a $20 raise to $100, and about two months later, I went back again, and he said, “What are you doing here again?” [I said,]”I want a raise, I’m not getting enough money.” He said, “We just gave you a raise.” I said, “ I’m not getting enough.” So he gave me a raise to $140.00. It was a lot of money in those days. 

I’ll tell you about the businesses. Most of the businesses were in South Portland. People had little stores, grocery stores, a little second hand store, and then some had stores in North Portland, First Street all the way up to Morrison Street. Solomons had a store on First and Morrison. Weinstein Brothers had a store on First and Yamhill, a big store. Rosenstein had a clothing store on First and Taylor Street, where the Goodwill Industry used to be there in that building. There were all kinds of small stores. On the north end of Third Street, it was a wide-open town when I came here. Wide open. Prostitution and saloons. There was a saloon downstairs, and upstairs there were women. Some people would come in. There was just a little merchandise, maybe $30 or $40 worth, the whole thing second hand, a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a hammer, something like that. This was on Third Street. Sixth Street was the business street, North Sixth Street, because the depot was there. All the travelers used to come from the depot, and people would walk by, and the storekeepers used to pull in the customers inside to try to sell them, offering them postcards, just to get them inside to see whether they could go in and sell them. That was the merchants on Sixth Street. Eventually there were complaints about Sixth Street. In fact, at one time, Ben Selling was a leading Jew. He was a very fine Jew. We were talking about helping. I tried to do something about bringing out a family after the war, so I went to see a Jewish lawyer, Isaac Swett and D. Solis Cohen, Bernstein, two brothers-in –law. I went down to D. Solis Cohen, and I told him you had to make out some papers, and I offered to pay him for it. He said, “No. Give me $1.50.” That’s just the cost of the stenographer, which she typed out the paper. She was a Jewish girl. I remember that.

Zell: Now did Ben Selling do that and D. Solis-Cohen?
FINKELSTEIN: The people were willing to help. They were helping if you would come to them. Then they complained about the behavior on Sixth Street, when they used to pull people in, and some took money from them, taking and cheating. So Ben Selling one time went and dressed himself up as a farmer and walked through the street. He wanted to be sure. They were very much concerned for the public, how the Jewish people were behaving. They didn’t want that. We’ve come a long way now. It’s much easier now. There was a lot of antisemitism in those days. 

Zell: From the gentile community?
FINKELSTEIN: From the gentile community. Even in World War II. There was the officer’s club. A fellow came in, a Jewish man, and he said, “I don’t know what to do. My wife is coming in tonight. I have no room here. I can’t get a room.” So there was a fellow there, and he said, “I’ II tell you where you can get a room.” It was awfully hard to get a room. He said you can get a room at the University Club, and he called up and got a reservation for him. His name didn’t sound Jewish, but when this man came over, claiming his room, he had a reservation. They said there must be a mistake some place, and he took a look at him and because he was Jewish. It is only until just recently that there are different clubs. That’s when they started the Tualatin Club, because Jews in those days, the German Jews, they wouldn’t let them play golf, so they started the Tualatin Club.

Zell: Do you remember when the club was started?
FINKELSTEIN: It was already in at that time, and I remember at that time that they had a choice of getting the property where the Portland Golf Course [is] and Tualatin, and the reason that they chose Tualatin, which is farther. Tualatin, there was a way to get there; there was a train. There was a railroad there so they could go there. There were no automobiles at the time. And they also opened up a Jewish club downtown, the Concordia Club.

Zell: About when are we speaking now, after the war?
FINKELSTEIN: No, no, before I came yet. When I came here, they already had it. They had the Concordia Club; they had the Tualatin Country Club. They just started it a couple of [years] before. But the Concordia Club, the building is still in existence. It is right across the street from the Scottish Rite building. 

Zell: Now, how is the Concordia Club different…I’ll have you mention it again, as I may have missed it on that part [about] the little groups of people? Mention the names of those little groups again in South Portland. 
FINKELSTEIN: You see the Concordia Club was the German Jews, people who could afford to come there and have big card games, whatever they wanted to do. That was their city club, and then they had their country club, Tualatin. Our Jews didn’t think of playing golf. Sure I joined there about 35 years ago, I joined Tualatin. I belonged there for about 29 years, but not in the early days I didn’t. 

Zell: How did the German Jews finally decide to open up and let [in] the other Jews?
FINKELSTEIN: You see they had the same discrimination as the Russian Jews, the people who come from Eastern Europe. To them they were Jews. It didn’t make any difference. Then there were all the big stores downtown. There are a lot of them that are gone. There used to be the Feldenheimers, a big jewelry store, in my days when I came here. There was Aaronson’s Jewelry. There were all kinds. There was Jacoby’s Jewelry.

Zell: What factor do you think forced the German Jews to open up their membership in these things to the other Jews? What kind of pressure? 
FINKELSTEIN: There was no pressure then, oh no.

Zell: Just a change of time?
FINKELSTEIN: Just a change of time. I don’t know. I had a lot of friends who were German Jews. When I had worked in the grocery store, the Feldmans were some of my friends. In fact, when I got back from the service, they wanted me to come to work for them. They used to come there to sell soap. They were manufacturing soap, the Feldmans, they are still doing it, and they used to sell a lot of soap there, and I used to see them. I talked and got acquainted with them. Rabbi Jonah Wise was the Rabbi in those days, and after Jonah Wise there was another man and then Rabbi Berkowitz. Berkowitz was there for many years. He went into the service and then he died. Then came Rabbi Nodel.

Zell: Your own life. You kind of covered up to the time you went into the service. Tell me about your service experience in World War I.
FINKELSTEIN: My service experience went along beautifully. I went in there, and they trained me for overseas in the infantry. I didn’t want to go. In Fort Lewis, I broke my glasses one time, and I went to the doctor, and he said, “Who in the hell passed you in the army? Your eyes are very bad.” I said [that] I wanted to go because in World War I, if they saw a young fellow walking around the street they thought there was something wrong with him. He had an illness or something. So then afterwards, they pulled me out for going overseas and put me in the headquarters company. It was just like civilian life. I wore a uniform, but I was in a group where we slept like in private barracks, not one of those big ones. Each one of them had special duties. Some of them were selling bus tickets, and of course, each outfit had a store which we would buy from, and I was working in the one for the officers and a regular little department store. There was a barbershop. They had uniforms for sale. We had a lunch counter. We had a soda fountain. We had all kinds of stuff selling, different things, and I worked in that. There were men working under me. 

One time a fellow called me a “Christ killer,” and they went down; I didn’t. There were only two of us Jewish boys. Dave Wax was working under me in the exchange. He was sleeping in the same barracks as me, and next to me was a fellow by the name of Matchek, of the W. C. L. Candy Company here in Portland, a German. We were very close friends. He was in the hospital, and he was sick, and when we had to move to another place, …when I moved myself, I moved his bunk. They went down to the company commander, and they claimed that they wouldn’t stand for it. He said, “Take that man out,” and they took that man out. That was the only one incident that I found in the Army. I’ll tell you the truth. I have never, directly, met up with antisemitism.

Zell: That’s good. You always feel that sometimes it is there.
FINKELSTEIN: You see, I wasn’t the kind that walked around with a chip on my shoulder, ready for a fight or anything like that. 

Mrs. Finkelstein: I think it was cute when Dave was in Vancouver. He had a grocery store in Vancouver, Washington. The Ku Klux Klan was beginning to be very prominent, and they had an office right upstairs from the grocery store. He was very friendly with all of them. 
FINKELSTEIN: I was very friendly with them. First of all, when I bought the store, I bought it from Norton Simons’ father. I bought this store with another fellow.

Zell: Now when was it?
FINKELSTEIN: After I came back from the service before I got married. It was about 1920-1921. 

Zell: So you came back from the service and you went back to Meier & Frank? 
FINKELSTEIN: I went back to Meier & Frank and worked for about a year and a half and I quit. I was looking for and bought a grocery store on First Street. I didn’t like it. I didn’t get along, so I sold it and went to work for Simon Brothers. After, I went into business for myself.

Zell: What kind of business did they have?
FINKELSTEIN: Simon Brothers had everything. They had a regular department store, but they were selling a lot of surplus, and they were liquidating. I bought it with a fellow by the name of Bernstein. We bought the store in Vancouver, and the Ku Klux Klan started. Simons had two men there and a woman running the store. When we came in, there were two of us men, so we fired the other fellow and told him we didn’t have anything for him to do. All of a sudden a committee comes into me the Ku Klux Klan in the store, and they said, “Where is Mr. Whittaker?” I said, “Mr. Whittaker isn’t with us anymore.” “That’s why we came to see you. Mr. Whittaker was born under the Stars and Stripe and he is 100% American,” and this and that. I listened and told him that there were the two of us. There wasn’t enough business to justify keeping him. I would like to be reasonable. We kept this woman. The woman happened to be Catholic. So you see, we kept the Catholic and fired the other. It wasn’t because she was a Catholic, but we thought it would be nice to have a woman. She could keep care of the cases, sweep out. She was a widow with children, and we felt we would keep her. So he started threatening me. He said, “You’ll go broke here. You’ll find out that we people are very good merchants, and when the time comes that I’ll have to have the Ku Klux help me make a living, I’ll quit.” And I said there’s the door and get the hell out of here, and I actually threw him out. 

Zell: What kind of people in Portland did the Ku Klux Klan appeal to?
FINKELSTEIN: They appealed to everybody. They were so active that they got rid of every Catholic Judge in the courthouse during elections. In those days they used to give the returns. The Oregonian was on Broadway Where Rosenblatt is, was The Oregonian, and across the street was a little low building, just a two story building that’s the Bedell Building or the Cascade now. That wasn’t there yet, and that’s where they used to show the returns, and they would see all those people watching the returns Their car was a yellow car that they had, and if there was one of their men leading, “Hooray for the white man.” We didn’t start any arguments. I was working at Meier & Frank, and I used to run out and watch. When Wilson was running against Hughes, then it wasn’t decided for almost a whole week. Finally Wilson won. I was friendly.

Upstairs was the headquarters in the building where we had the store, and those men used to come in, and some of them would pick up something. I used to talk to them, and they used to sell searchlights, and a fellow used to peddle the searchlights. I was a customer of his, and I bought his searchlights. I always liked to know what’s going on, and he solicited my membership, so I said, “Find out,” and he come back with an answer that I couldn’t join the Klan, but they would take me in as a second something. I said, “If I can’t be a first class member, I don’t want to belong at all.” I was kidding. One time when I was married and we lived in Vancouver, they had a big doing up on the hill. They were burning the cross. Sadie and I, she was in her eighth month, we went there, and the people were in masks and they were burning the cross. People were saying, “Hello, hello Dave,” I wouldn’t know who it is, but they could see me. 

Zell: You know of any particular incidents where they actually did go out after a Jew? 
FINKELSTEIN: Yes, really what beat them were the Catholics. We had a good ally. The Catholics found out that the only way is to hit the pocket book, and a lot of them joined the Ku Klux Klan. They went into meetings, and then when they discovered…I’ll tell you how bad they were. Before we moved to Vancouver, we lived for a while on Tenth and Hall in on apartment. We lived there for about six months. I remember after we got married I came back on a Friday, and I went home, and they burned the Temple. It was absolute arson. It was the Ahavai Sholom. I happened to be on the streetcar, and I jumped off the streetcar, and at the Ahavai Sholom I came by bus where the bus depot is even now, the same one. When I came by bus, I walked the balance. I came from Vancouver by bus, and I walked through the park, and I saw the Ahavai Sholom broke out in fire, and I called the fire department. They broke the door, and they were pouring water, and I was joggling, and I asked someone to help carrying out all the Torahs. 

Zell: You feel it was the Ku Klux Klan that was…?
FINKELSTEIN: Oh yes. That was positive arson. I used to go home sometimes. We had a fellow we used to buy groceries from, Hudson-Duncan was the name of the company, and I was in very good terms with him and a fellow selling the groceries, calling on us. He called on that district up there, the little towns, [and] he would stand and wait for me to take me home, drive me home. We were very close friends, and one night…. I belonged to the Masons. I joined the Masonic Lodge, and I went to a meeting. We were on the Fifth floor. The Ku Klux Klan was in the Pythian Building on Park and Yamhill, and the Masons didn’t have the Masonic Building where they have the building now on Park Street, so we used to rent space up there, and by golly they opened the door to let people out that were going to the Klan meeting. I was I going to the Masonic meeting. I was going in with them, and I see this salesman that used to take me home was up there. I couldn’t believe it. I went upstairs, and I cut it short. I didn’t stay long. I wanted to be sure. I went downstairs and waited on the sidewalk to see him come out and make sure that it was him. Then I went to the store the next [day]. I said to my partner, “I’m not going to buy anything from him,” and I didn’t. I never told him why. I told my partner I saw it with my own eyes. You see you never knew really who it was. Some people it was hard to identify, but when I was boycotted by the Ku Klux Klan, and they didn’t come to buy from me, all of a sudden one Saturday night, I see a couple of cars come in from the hospital. The Catholics found out that I was being boycotted, so they came down and started buying and became customers of mine. So it worked out. 

It was so bad in this state. Different communities had it very bad. There was Grants Pass, which was a hot spot, very bad. Dr. Brill‘s brother used to travel around and buy up bankrupt stock. I used to fool around with that stuff too, so he bought a store out from a fellow who was a Klansman. He opened the doors and advertised, and nobody showed up. The Catholics thought that the Klansman is still running the store. The Klansmen knew that a Jew bought the store out, so he had no customers. He had to pack up the store and bring it into Portland. He couldn’t run a sale up there because of that. 

Zell: Well now there isn’t an active Klan now in Portland. 
FINKELSTEIN: No, there is no such a thing. 

Zell: What do you think got rid of it and when?
FINKELSTEIN: Do you really know what I think now? I really think that these Klansmen, most of them who were…idiots. They were not intelligent, but this man who was on the Today Show, what’s his name interviewed him; she didn’t do all the interviewing, she just asked a few questions. He was interviewed for almost 15 or 20 minutes. He was a very intelligent man. He speaks well. He looked well. He looked presentable. I think he is doing propaganda work for the Arabs. That’s what really is because [that’s] all he was talking about. He was talking against the blacks and the Jews, and he didn’t mention once the Catholics. I think that the Catholics are kind of letting them out, and I think that’s what started it. But here in Portland, I remember when I came back from the Army, there was a governor here who was against the Ku Klux Klan, and he came out against them, so the Klan was out to defeat him. He was a Republican, so I registered as a Republican. It was the first time I voted. I never voted before. I got my citizenship papers in the Army. They gave me my citizenship papers, so I registered as a Republican.

Zell: Just for serving did they automatically give you your citizenship?
FINKELSTEIN: They gave me my citizenship papers in the Army.

Zell: You didn’t have to take a test or anything.
FINKELSTEIN: No, nothing. I was ready for it because I applied the first month that I came here.

Zell: You were speaking about the service and the citizenship.
FINKELSTEIN: The governor at that time was Governor Olcott, so he got the nomination against a fellow by the name of Hall from Marshfield, who was a Kluxer, who was running against him on the Republican ticket. He got the nomination, but he was defeated by a fellow by the name of Pierce, a Democrat from Eastern Oregon. He was a Klansman. There was nothing we could do about it. I don’t remember whether Olcott is still alive or whether he died. He used to live in North Portland. I went around that time, and I rang doorbells to vote for this and that, but [that was] the only way they were defeated. I had a fellow, I remember, Jack Barde; he was an insurance man, and somebody saw him at the meeting of the Klan, and he came in and Jack Barde cancelled his policies. He came down crying, “It’s a lie,” and I said, “Listen, there’s no argument, this is it, and that’s what did it.” The Klansmen, for a while were very, very active.

Zell: You mentioned the Masons. Did many Jewish people belong to the Masons?
FINKELSTEIN: There were some lodges that were against taking them in, but it was not open. 

Zell: There were different Masonic Lodges. Did some take Jews? 
FINKELSTEIN: No, I knew some Jewish boys who belonged to Columbia and some belonged to East Gate. I belonged to Harmony. Harmony was mostly, there were a lot of goyem, but the majority are Jews. If a Jewish boy, if he couldn’t go, if they wouldn’t take him, they…actually advised him if he wanted somebody to take his application, they would say, “Why don’t you go to Harmony lodge, you got a better chance.” They have a secret ballot, and they can blackball you. 

Zell: Yes, that right. 
FINKELSTEIN: Well, they played politics there too. You know when they blackballed a Jewish boy in Harmony, we would go ahead and blackball the next one. Innocent people. Non-Jews. We would blackball them just for retaliation. 

Zell: After the war you came back, but you didn’t come back to South Portland?
FINKELSTEIN: We moved. When I came back we moved to Second and Hall Street. We had a bigger house. 

Zell: Your sister?
FINKELSTEIN: My sister. I moved with them. I had an exceptionally fine relationship with my brother-in-law.

Zell:  What business was he in during this time? 
FINKELSTEIN: In the junk business. 

Zell:  What was his name again?
FINKELSTEIN: Abe Rosenfeld. He was a brother to Ben Rosenfeld and to Mrs. Tanzer, Hershel‘s father and mother. I retired very early in life. I retired at age 46. I was in business for 14 years. 

Zell: And this was the store in Vancouver?
FINKELSTEIN: No, No. This was before I was married. After I sold out in Vancouver, I bought a store in Portland, a grocery store, and I didn’t like it. I got out of it and monkeyed around, buying stocks. I closed out with a fellow, Honeyman Hardware Company, when they went broke, just at the beginning of World War II, and I didn’t want to be tied up that I would have to go out every morning, get up at 6:00 am in the morning and run to business. I didn’t want it, so when the boys came back from college, Morrie and Victor, I practically helped raise them, because I lived in the house while they were born, so I was with them all the time. We were very close, and I decided to go out of business, but when my daughter got married and my son came out of the Navy, that’s the one who is in San Diego, I went in with them. They had to make a living. So I told them find a business and I’ll buy it for you. So they found a business. I was in California at that time. They called me up. I had just got there. My son called me up and said, “Dad, I hate to disturb you, but I found a store that I like very much, a furniture store on 42nd and Sandy Boulevard. So I said, “Alright.” 

I came there to stay there a couple of months, but I stayed there one night. I came in on a Friday and left Sunday morning. I couldn’t get a plane so I took a train, my wife and I. We came home. They showed it to me in the evening. My son-in-law was already there. When my daughter Nancy and my son-in law got married, he still had a year to finish college. He got back from the service. She didn’t like to live in Seattle, and she said, “What are you waiting for, do something.” So we looked at the store at night at the windows. I said it looked good, a nice looking store, and I said, “Well, we’ll have to call,” and my son [said], “I already made an appointment already for you.” My son was very fast and quick. He said, “I made an appointment for you for nine in the morning.” I went in at 9:00 am, and in 30 minutes I had the store. There were no arguments. What do you want for the store? He said I want so much, dollar for dollar for the merchandise, so much for this. So I overpaid $5,000, $6,000, but if you want business…

Zell: What store was this, what business was there? 
FINKELSTEIN: West’s Furniture Co. It is still there. It is Harold Kelley’s store now. The bookkeeper wanted me to have some active part there. Neither one of them knew anything about the furniture business. Neither did I. Nobody knew anything. I went in, and they made a bookkeeper out of me. I kept the books, a ledger, and then my son met a girl. She was at Reed College from San Diego, and he married her, and they wanted him there. He had the store here, and my wife advised him not to go. Stay at least a year. Get used to your wife here. So they got a place, and he stayed on. Then he sold out the business to Henry, my son-in law. I arranged that. Then he went away. Then somebody bought the business from under us. The lease expired, and so Henry went out of business. He was collecting his accounts and his notes receivables and was fooling around. 

I went down to see Morrie Rosenfeld and told him that he has got to do something for Henry. He was a very fine boy and a very good businessman. So he says, “What do you want me to do, a job? I’ll be glad to give him a job.” I said, “No, he’s got two children, and you couldn’t pay him enough.” He says, “What do you care what I am paying others. I’ II pay him enough.” So he wanted to go into business. Anyway, Morrie Rosenfeld arranged and he went into the steel business. There was something new. He bought some equipment that they didn’t have here but they had it in California. Morrie knew about it. So they set me up some books, and I really went to work and for a year and a half. I wouldn’t have stood it; I would have gone out of it. It was something new what he had to offer, and you would have to go around, and we got one man. He fixed up a little place, and it wasn’t here nor there. He lost some money the first year and the second year, and then the third year there was a steel strike, and then Morrie Rosenfeld and Victor were half partners with him. By that time I was already an experienced bookkeeper. I kept the ledger, and I went to work every day. I went in in 1957, and by 1959 he already made some money that covered all the losses that he had the previous two years. He was still short a little profit. 

So then there was a time already to move to a new building. We needed more space; we needed more equipment. So Morrie had some land, and I went to talk to Morrie about the land, and we just didn’t agree. He said, “What’s the use of arguing with you. Whatever you want, whatever you think it is worth.” I said, “Alright,” and then that week Morrie died. So I went to Victor, and I told him, and I asked whether Morrie had told him anything about this, and he says “Yes.” [I said], “Did he give you a price?” He says, “No.” Victor said, “Did he give you a price?” And I said, “Yes,” and I told him, and he said “Okay.” So then I bought out the widow, Morrie’s widow, so Henry owned three quarters of it, and Victor owned a quarter. Later I went to Victor and I said, “You don’t need it, I’m going to buy you out,” and I bought him out, and Henry owns the whole thing. I was working first a half a day, then I would go to lunch with Henry, and he would take me home. When I would go away to California, Nancy would do the necessary work that has to be done, like accounts receivable. Money comes in. You have to make deposits, but the ledger they left alone. They accumulated, and when I came back I used to catch up.

Zell: Of course you said that you retired. Let me go back to just a little bit to when you and your wife were married and you established a home and you became a part of the community as a married couple, the social part of marriage, where you lived, the people you saw in your early married years. When were you married?
FINKELSTEIN: We got married in 1923, isn’t that was she said? Yes, in 1923.

Zell: And your wife’s maiden name?
FINKELSTEIN: My wife’s maiden name was Goldman. Do you want me to tell you how I met my wife? 

Zell: Yes. 
FINKELSTEIN: I had this job in Fort Lewis when I was in the army. I had a pass that I could go any time. I had a permanent pass. I wasn’t tied up to the place. In fact I used to hang around a lot at the YMHA in Fort Lewis. When a new man used to come in, I used to go out and meet the train, and I would ask [if there were] any Jewish boys around. The same things, the Catholics had a group, the Protestants, but we had the Jewish Welfare Building. I used to ask them to come into the place whenever they got around, and I would register them, to keep their names, and there were certain occasions when I read services for them in Hebrew. 

They were going to give a dance. So we sent word to the Seattle YMHA. By the way, Seattle had the most marvelous set up for Jewish boys in the Army and the Navy. See in Bremerton there were a lot of boys in Bremerton. They would have Saturday night when we came there. I think they used to charge us 50 cents or 75 cents the most. They would have a dance and the girls would come and they would dance. In the back, in a big place they would have cots, clean linen, and everything, and the boys would sleep overnight, all for the 75 cents. And in the morning they would serve us breakfasts. The girls from the community there, a lot of girls, I still know them, and I still run into some of them. They are old women already, so we sent word to Seattle’s YMHA that we needed girls, so they sent a bus load of girls, 15 or 20 girls there. 

I was in charge of the dance. I liked dancing. So I was standing on the floor, and this girl, my wife comes up to me, and she introduced herself. She asked if I knew a fellow by the name of Cohen, Harry Cohen here. I said yes, I knew him well. She said she would like to meet him, somebody told her about him. He was a relative of somebody’s here, so I said I think he’s here. I took her by the arm, and I saw Harry and I walked up. This Harry Cohen used to have a drug store on Fifth and Yamhill. His wife died recently, but he died very young. He was a druggist. So she met him, and I said to her, “I would ask you for a dance, but I want to get this thing started, and once I get started I’ll have the next one.” I danced with her and took her name, and the next time I came to Seattle, I called her. I used to take her to the shows and drop her a line, and sometimes I would send her a gift from the store we had. Pillow tops, I used to send, and then a year after the war, I went to Seattle, and I proposed to her. She said, “Talk to my father.” So I went and talked to her father, and the father said no. That isn’t the way we do, to let the younger one go before the older one. He had an older girl. He said if you want to marry Nettie, I would say Okay, but the younger one, I’m not going to let her go. It happened a year later the older one got married to a Klineberg, a cousin of Lena Holtzman, and Sadie was going with another boy there. She got engaged to another fellow. I was still single, and then she broke the engagement to the other fellow, and then one day I get a call. She came to Portland. She came to see me. She came with another girl to go out that night. I think we went to the Oregon Grille. They used to have dances there. She’s never forgotten that night. We walked in the rain. I didn’t have sense enough to call a cab. She was staying with a family by the name of Soble, Sam Soble’s mother, who she knew somehow. Well, anyway, I got married in 1923. 

Zell: Where did you settle first?
FINKELSTEIN: I lived in an apartment. At that time I had the store in Vancouver, and then we rented a house in Vancouver. This fellow owned the house. I didn’t take a lease, and I furnished it [with] everything, and then all of a sudden everything caved in on me. The partner that I was with, my wife somehow didn’t get along well with this other one’s woman, and when the baby was born that she was carrying, Nancy. I didn’t have a car at that time, or did I have a car, but I thought in case of an emergency I would want a cab, something that would take me real fast. So [I] inquired of the taxicab company how late were they open, and I told him what I am talking about. Sure enough at 12:00 pm, my wife says (we were walking in the street), “It’s coming right now.” I called the cab, and they took us down to Portland, and I stayed there all night, and about 6:00 in the morning the baby was born, so I took the bus and I went home. 

In the evening my partner tells me we are going on vacation tomorrow. Well, I says, “My gosh you can’t do that to me.” I said, “I’m here alone. My wife is in the hospital in Portland. I have to go down and see her in the evening. I’ll be tied up with this.” He says, “I am sorry. My wife, I wouldn’t disappoint her. We agreed and decided to go on a vacation with another couple, and we are going.” I said, “Alright go ahead. Are you going to come back Friday, so that I can go to the hospital and bring my wife home?” He says, “Yes I will.” So he came back, but the next morning he didn’t show up in the store. I am all alone, no help, no arrangement. I couldn’t go out to breakfast, I couldn’t go out to lunch, so when he arrived from his vacation a week afterwards, I said, “That’s it. Buy me out or I’ll buy you out. No more partnership.” 

Just as I sold out, within a week I couldn’t decide where am I going to go. Am I going to stay here, or [am] I going to stay there? The guy got married and wanted the house, and I had to move out of the house. I didn’t know what to do with the furniture. I didn’t know where I was going. So I put the furniture in storage, and I came back to Portland. I lived in a furnished apartment. I went through what most of the young marrieds went through.

Zell: Now this was all before the depression?
FINKELSTEIN: This was all before the depression. During the depression I was in business.

Zell: So what did you do to start in again in business? Did you start something else? 
FINKELSTEIN: Well, I monkeyed around with the 40 thieves. The people who are buying up bankrupt stock, so I fooled around. I bought a little department store in South Bend, Washington with a fellow. We went over there and ran a sale and made a few bucks. I came back. What happened, actually, was my mother arranged it. My mother was in Europe. When I left Europe, my mother said to me in Yiddish, “When I call on you, you should answer me.” My mother never had to call me. I sent money. To me sending money home was just as much to feed my own family here. My children and my mother never had to ask me for anything, except the last thing she asked me. Well, I told her one time, I used to correspond with her one bit, and I was away. I was out of town for about a month, and I didn’t write to her, and I told her that I was away in another city. I tried to explain to her what I was doing to make a living, so she wrote back a letter, and she wrote it to my sister. She had a permanent address there in the home and told them that they can’t understand it why I don’t go into partners with my brother-in-law that we should be together. We lived then in Overton Street in an apartment, so my sister and brother-in-law came over one Sunday and they brought me the letter. I read it and didn’t make any comment on it, and my sister said to me, “What do you think about it?” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that business.” I always worked in a store, and this was dirty work and you had to have overalls, so my brother-in law suggested that I should go in. You see he had a partner, and his partner wanted out. He was a partner with a Schnitzer, and he needed a partner. It was an awful tough job to run it alone.

Zell: What was this partner’s name?
FINKELSTEIN: Beryl Schnitzer, the oldest brother of the Schnitzers, an uncle to the boys. So my brother-in-law suggested, “Why don’t you come down for a couple of weeks and see how you like it. See if you can take it.” All my friends said I wouldn’t last a week. I knew different. Before I would see my children hungry, I would do anything in the world. I would steal. I would rob. I would do anything before I would see them hungry. It was dirty work. I could see it was a good living there, so I decided I’ll go in. I stayed there for two weeks, and I didn’t get paid for it, but I said Okay. Then the other guy changed his mind. He didn’t want to go out, so I went in as a third partner. I remember I had $16, 000; that was a lot of money then. So I put in this money, and then my wife got pregnant with the second child. Anyway we needed a house. So we were partners, and I bought a house in Irvington. In those days I bought a house for $7,200 brand new, a beautiful little home. We were a block from the Zells. Harry and Hannah lived on 17th Street, and we lived on 16th.

Zell: Were there other Jewish families in the area?
FINKELSTEIN: Oh yes, Mrs. Taylor was across the street, and Jock Vines was on the corner, and Harry Vines was on 15th. There were a lot of Jewish people who moved into the Irvington district. I bought the house, and we bought out the partner, and I had a mortgage on the house. The State of Oregon gave to the ex-serviceman at 3% interest or 4%. Very reasonable. I borrowed the money, and I had to make payments $15 a month, every three months, $45. All of a sudden, the Depression came, and I didn’t even have the money to pay the interest, but I never neglected my mother. I was sending her money, and I remember I went out and borrowed from friends $50 to send to my mother. But the difference was in the junk business. See we were dealing with raw material. As soon as Roosevelt came in we were out of the Depression right away. Our materials became higher. The Brownsteins went broke, and we bought the business back for them. Then they couldn’t make it again, and they finally gave it up and…came to work for us. I left the business in 1941. I decided I had problems with my eyes. The doctors kept on telling me to get out of the dust. I went to the Mayo Clinic, and I came back. I was disgusted, and I said well, so I went out of the business.

Zell: Let me ask you something. You said at the time you borrowed from friends, which kind of opens something up. Was it the banking business in town, or let’s say the businesses that I assumed always were managed perhaps by the gentiles. Were they sympathetic to helping out Jewish businessmen? You would be more likely to borrow from another friend.
FINKELSTEIN: Let me tell you something. The Jewish people, there was a little bank called Ashley and Rumlin Bank…on Second and Oak Street. That’s where the Jewish merchants came. Nobody thought of going to the First National Bank. There was a Mr. McNaughton here in town. McNaughton was an architect by profession, but he once told me he owed his success to two Jews, Ben Selling and the other one was, I can’t think of his name, but it was Dr. Brill’s father-in law. He was in the wholesale millinery business. They taught him business. They liquidated the Ladd & Tilton Bank. The Ladd & Tilton Bank used to be on Third and Washington where the Oregon Bank is now. When he liquidated that, he went into the First National Bank. McNaughton was quite a figure. He was President of Reed College at one time. When we had problems with antisemitism and the Ku Klux Klan, we had a very bad Senator there. This Senator, again, I remember everything, but I can’t remember names. It comes to me later eventually. This man promoted Julius Meier to run for Governor. He was a politician, and he thought he would be able to handle him, but when he went into the State House, Julius Meier had a mind of his own. Julius Meier didn’t listen to him, and he became very, very antisemitic, and we were fighting. Julius Meier only stayed the one term and resigned. I mean he didn’t run again, and he ran for Senator and got the seat. And that was the time that he became very antisemitic. McNaughton promoted that they kick him out of the Senate, and we got Morse. That was the time we put up some money to promote Morse. 

Zell: When you say we, you mean who?
FINKELSTEIN: The Jewish community.

Zell: This was the Jewish community and this was Wayne Morse. 
FINKELSTEIN: Wayne Morse was the Dean of Law at the University of Oregon. I remember I gave $50 for the nomination. He got the nomination and I gave $50, and all the years afterwards I used to mail him a check for $25. I used to play bridge, and whenever we used to win we saved it. He had competition one time. This fellow McKay was running against him, and he needed money. I never took the winnings [when] we used to play bridge. We used to play in those days with Harry Vines and Morris Meadows. We used to play a half a cent a point bridge. We used to lose $25 or $30, and we used to win that much too. We would take the winnings, and I supported Morse all the way through. 

Zell: Now you have mentioned EB McNaughton. 
FINKELSTEIN: I was telling you about EB McNaughton. He was the one. He went to Aaron Frank; he got money from him. EB McNaughton went and looked over the set-up. He was President after which [he was] Chairman of the Board at the First National Bank. He looked over, and he didn’t see any Jews in the bank, so at a meeting, he asked, and that’s the story that came to me direct from Mr. McNaughton. He was at my house for dinner one night, talking and discussing and he said, “Why haven’t you got any Jews.” “Well, the reason is they’re not a good risk.” He said, “What is the record have you ever had dealing with them?” He said, “I’m just the opposite. I owe everything I’ve got to two Jews.” 

Zell: Wayne Morse is saying this? 
FINKELSTEIN: No McNaughton is saying this. 

Zell: Whom is he saying this to? 
FINKELSTEIN: To the people in the bank. I forgot who it was. It was the same people who were the owners of the First National Bank. They had a lot [of] it from another family in the 
US bank too. The connections I forgot, but later on they gave him a job with the Federal Reserve. I used to know the people personally. So he went around on Front Street asking Jews to come to the First National, and he took us in the First National Bank, and the Schnitzers went in the junk business. The Schnitzers are still with them and got everybody in. I remember there was a bank that went broke, the Hibernian Bank, and there was a fellow who needed a bank, and he lost everything he had in that bank. He was in the Multnomah Trunk Company, in the manufacturing business, a fellow by the name of Joe Haimo. I went to the bank and I said to McNaughton, “I want this fellow, he is nice man and he is good.” He said, “What happened,” and he got into the bank and the bank loaned him money. I’ll tell you what kind of a man he was. How good a man he was that during the Depression I never went to the bank for money. The bookkeeper used to go down to leave a note or whatever it was. I was, after all, the junior partner. My brother-in law was older than I was. He was in the business before, so I was kind of in the background, and he said to me, “Dave, why don’t you go down to the bank and see if you can get a loan.” There was no money. 

Zell: About what time was this, time wise? 
FINKELSTEIN: About in 1932, the height of the Depression. So I went there. I hated to go. I would sooner get a licking, so I stopped at Mannings, got a cup of coffee, and then I went to the bank. When they told me Mr. McNaughton was out, it was a relief. Just like that’s going to help. I would have to come again. I had lunch and went back to the bank, and when I came in I had my head down, and he said, “What’s on your mind Dave.” I said, “We need some money, we need it very badly,” and I had tears in my eyes. He said, “How much do you need?” I said, “We need $5,000, but we can get by with $3,000.” I knew what we needed, and he said, “I can’t give it to you from the bank, but I’ll give it to you from my private account.” He gave me a $3,000 personal check. Believe me, I have never forgotten him. I thought that was the greatest thing for those days in the bank and then afterwards.

Zell: Was he an isolated case or were there other men, other gentile men?
FINKELSTEIN: But this is what I meant that I had experience. Yes, there were others too, but the bank became a friendly bank to the Jews. Like for instance, it was also during the Depression there was a firm, Nate Hellman and Goldstein, partners, and they were manufacturing ladies’ coats. I get a call from Mr. Goldstein: “Dave, could you come down to see me?” I said, “Yes.” So I threw my overalls off (I used to work in a pair of overalls). I was in the shop all the time and waited on customers. I schlepped and did everything. I worked hard. It wasn’t easy. That’s why I retired and we can go for the winter. So I came over, and he was walking around like this. I have to go into the hospital and checks are coming back, and I am afraid we will be closed up and I’ll never withstand the operation. I said, “I haven’t got it. We haven’t got anything. You can help yourself.” He didn’t know what to do. I said, “Alright, I’ll go to the bank. Give me a man to go there.” There was a man there, and I got in the car with him. and we drove up to the bank. There was a fellow by the name of Freeman up there. He was one of the Vice-Presidents. 

Zell: A Jewish man?
FINKELSTEIN: No…this fellow who was with me and drove me in his car, he worked for Goldstein, and he stood aside. I said, “Mr. Freeman I need $1,500 for Goldstein. I know what you’re going to tell me, that they’re broke and that their checks are coming back, but I want to borrow $1,500, and I’ll sign it. To me it’s life and death. It’s important. The man is sick and going to the hospital, and this way he will feel better and it may help him.” And the man gives me $1,500 and writes a check. A couple of fellows rush right down, and I stood and talked with him. From upstairs they asked, “What are you doing? You’re giving money to Goldstein. They’re broke. There is a check now for $1,400 now come back.” He says, “I’m not giving it to Goldstein, I’m giving it to Dave Finkelstein, and he says he is good for $1,500. He’ll pay me.” I got the $1,500 for him. He never came back from the hospital, and he had insurance something like $30,000 that went to the business. It saved the business and Sidney Stern went in with him in the business afterwards. 

But anyway, the First National Bank just reversed, and the US National Bank still hasn’t got anybody from the junk business. Everybody was at the First National Bank. Mr. McNaughton, as I said, was always…he used to come down. When his wife used to go away, his wife died and he re-married. He married the widow of the President, Mr. Shultz, who was the President of Reed College. He married his wife, and he lived around here. This are the experiences. I have never had any experiences with gentiles. I’m not saying that I am a different kind of a Jew. I don’t bother anybody. A lot of people get into something, and you mention something, and they get so…. 

There was a fellow, I think you knew him, Charles Cohen. I am sure you knew him. You know Sally Cohen. That’s a second marriage. Sally Cohen had a husband, before she divorced him. Very hot headed fellow, actually a mishugena. He was telling me one time he was dealing with people that I knew. We used to sell him bags, grain bags, grain bags from the harvest. We were in the bag business too. This fellow used to sell some chemicals that farmers were using for crops or anything, so he comes down one time, and he tells me about a fellow named Shaw in Woodburn, Oregon and what an antisemite he is. I said, “What in the hell are you talking about.” Sometimes a goy likes to crack a joke about a Jew. That doesn’t bother me. I tell a Jewish story to a goy just the same. So one time I came down to see this man, Mr. Shaw in Woodburn, Oregon. I used to sell him a lot of bags. We became friends. Everybody I dealt with was on a friendly basis. They were friends of mine. I came in, and he said, “How do you feel this morning?” It was on a Monday morning, and I said, “I don’t feel too good, the market broke, you know the stock market.” We were interested in commodities. We were dealing in copper and brass, and we owe a lot of money in the bank. We had problems. He said to me, “Dave, I’ve got about $3,000 or $4,000 in my private account, and if that will help you, I will be glad to give you a check and I’ll take it out in merchandise.” Is that an antisemite?

Zell: No. You see, you have to approach people in a certain way.
FINKELSTEIN: I never had any problems. Some people are looking for it. I never looked for it.

Zell: Let me go back. Did you say your mother did finally come to this country? So it was just your sister and brother-in-law? 
FINKELSTEIN: My mother wrote me a letter years later maybe 35 or 36 years ago. I was still in the business. You see my mother lived in that little town. The Germans were just as bad during World War I as they were in World War II, and they were coming into town. My mother ran away. She had three daughters, a sick husband, and on older brother of mine, and they all ran away. Left everything there, took a few little things they had, some silver spoons and kiddush cup in the pockets, and left everything. They ran as far as to Odessa, which was about 3,000 miles away from there, like New York from here. They landed in Odessa, and my mother lived there and established herself. My mother was not the average woman. My father was a very learned Jew. He would sit and learn. My mother used to say to him, “You’re poison to me, and you’re poison to the children, but you would be a nice machitin, a shayna machitin,” because he was a learned man. People used to come to him for advice. My father was a sick man, but my mother, when she came there, …she had a few dollars in her pocket. She bought flour and started baking bread, and the girls would help with it. She would send them out, and she would get customers, and they would peddle it from door to door. They would sell bread, and they liked it, the girls. 

My father died then, and my older brother died in Odessa, but when the war was over and they became Communists there, my mother went back to her hometown alone. She had a nephew with her. During World War I, her brother and her sister-in-law died and left some little children, and my mother took one who was five years old. She took him and raised him. He lives in Israel now. I visited him in Israel. My mother went back, and then she wrote me a letter; she said I’m getting old. I’m not going to live much longer, and she said you were a wonderful son and good to me. I never had to ask you for anything, but I want you to take out Breindl. That was her name. She died here about a month ago, my sister. We brought her out from the business, but I did all the work. I hired Dave Robinson, who was at that time head of anti-defamation, and he was a lawyer. I didn’t know how to go about it. I went to the Community Center, saw Mrs. Swett, asked her advice. [I] told her what it was for. She said there was only one man in town who can help you. Go down and see him, his name is Dave Robinson. I went to Dave, and he said, “Well I’ll take it professionally,” and I said, “That’s the only way I want you to.” I didn’t ask him how much or what, and it took a year and $6,000 to bring my sister over with a husband and three girls. Two of them live in Los Angeles now, and one of them lives here. Her husband works for Victor. My sister got along well here. Her husband went into a little business here, also the junk business. He opened up a little place. He died about six years ago. She had a heart attack about two years ago, and I asked Dr. Semler about her. He didn’t tell me how seriously ill she was. There was nothing I could have done. But this time again she got sick, and she went to the hospital. She only lasted about two or three days, and she died. 

Zell: Now when you moved away, I’m going back a little bit to South Portland, when you moved away and were involved in business, did you have any more contact with South Portland? Did you go down there to visit friends still and to do shopping?
FINKELSTEIN: No, when I got married it became different. Particularly, you see a man or husband goes where the wife goes. It’s the wife that picks the friends. In fact, I had to give up some of my friends. Some of them got married and moved away, but we were in a different group. I started going with a different group, and that’s the way we continued.

Zell: Now your wife, she met these friends from the neighborhood. You said you moved into the Irvington area. How did she kind of meet the friends that you ended up seeing? 
FINKELSTEIN: We met a few, some of them who we knew from before and some of the new ones in the neighborhood. We used to play pinochle. We used to sit up until 2:00 or 3:00 am in the morning on Saturday night. There was Golda and her husband, her first husband, Percy Malkin, then there was Lou Kaplan. He worked for Weisfeld in the jewelry business, a very nice man, him and Bertha, his wife. Then there was a fellow by the name of Pete Doryan. He represented Dreyfuss & Company. He was buying grain. He was in the grain business. He lives now in Minneapolis. I and another couple of fellows…used to play pinochle, and then we started playing bridge. It was a different group. The others went away. This one died. I lost all my friends, most of them.

Zell: So you really didn’t follow that South Portland convention?
FINKELSTEIN: No. The only time we used to come there [was when] we always used to go to Seder to my brother-in-law when they lived there. You see he built this house on the corner; Harold Schnitzer owns it now. I used to go downtown. I go downtown every morning. I take a walk. I used to go down and go into Harry Weiss’s store. They all know me. I used to kibbitz around. I used to telephone, …all the time friends from the Depression, where we used to change checks, even before. And then Dave Light of the Star Furniture. I used to visit with him.

Zell: These were your friends from South Portland?
FINKELSTEIN: No, they were previous friends, not from South Portland. I used to know them from South Portland. These are friends after. The friends I had when I was single, some of them died, some of them moved away. They went in a different direction. My wife started going with different groups, and naturally I got involved with the same people. Most of the South Portland people have died off. There hasn’t been a South Portland for many, many years. 

Zell: The last question would be when you look back, how do you feel as a Jew living in Oregon? And then I would also ask was it necessary for the Jews to have had that feeling that they all belonged to on area like South Portland? How was South Portland important to the Jews then?
FINKELSTEIN: Well, it was their home. It was their life. You see it was a completely different life. The whole thing has changed. I would say that really in the last ten years, I would say, it went more than the 50 previous years. Things changed so. 

Zell: Because of the Urban Renewal?
FINKELSTEIN: The Urban Renewal, with the behavior of people, you know boys and girls. The whole thing is different. The values are different than they used to be. It is a different life. 

Zell: How do you think the life is for a Jew in Oregon?
FINKELSTEIN: I think it is all right. I think it is as good as any. I don’t know of any other places, but what I hear. I mean there is everything. You can even see how our elected officials are behaving. All right, we don’t like Hatfield, because I personally am very disappointed in him. He is an intelligent man and everything else, but I don’t like his policy. The way he is friendly with the Arabs, some of his best friends in this town, the Bitars, the Syrians. I am very pleased. Although I am a Democrat, I remember only one time I voted for a Republican. I don’t know what happened to me. I voted for Eisenhower once, and that included Nixon, too. I knew Nixon from way back, and I wouldn’t vote for him for a dogcatcher. He ruined the country. Actually, he did more damage than five or six other Presidents put together. I think all the representatives what we have and what we have elected are all fine. When the 70 some Senators signed that we should give the aid to Israel, the only one from Oregon that didn’t sign it was Hatfield. My wife called in to his office. They didn’t know it right away, but we wanted to know how he voted. He voted against it. I think Packwood is all right, although I didn’t vote him, but I’ll vote for him next time. I think Packwood is good.

Zell: I think we have finished although I know we could go on and on.
FINKELSTEIN: It’s a world by itself. They followed the rituals where the Jews come up before Yom Kippur and they lay down, and a fellow with a whip…. They call it in Yiddish “shloog Malkas” and all the rituals. We laugh some times. 

Zell: They brought these rituals with them?
FINKELSTEIN: With them and followed it, but the children didn’t.

Zell: Did it upset them that their children didn’t, or did they accept it?
FINKELSTEIN: They did not accept it. They do accept it now more than before, but today the parents are already a second generation. The second generation accepts it. We don’t believe in it. We don’t believe in letting children do what they please. “Oh, let my child do whatever he wants it.” We didn’t. 

Zell: But going back to South Portland, did it upset the parents? Did they try to control their children more? 
FINKELSTEIN: Yes, oh yes. Well listen, there were intermarriages in the olden days, and the first ones it happened were to the most religious people in town. It happened to them. One of them was a rabbi. His son had married, and another one was somebody else who intermarried. You know our Mayor Goldschmidt. You know, Goldschmidt’s grandmother was not Jewish. In other words, his mother was half Jewish. I know them very well, the old family. This also was in a religious family. His great grandfather was a shochet. So you see we didn’t raise our children. We didn’t force them to do things. But we kind of directed them. Just like when I used to work with my son-in-law in the business. He used to call me and ask me for a little advice. I used to tell him, “If I was in business, this is the way I would do it. But it is your business; you make the decisions,” The same thing–we put it up to our children, “We feel that way, you don’t. You do it your way.” but some of the children were open-minded. There wasn’t the problem that there is today.

Zell: Of course there was a problem in the new world or don’t you think in the new world or new country? Trying to hold on to the old ways for those who wouldn’t let go of the old ways. 
FINKELSTEIN: You don’t remember because it wasn’t in your days. When I come here, there were Jewish newspapers from New York. The Daily Forward and Der Tag. There were about three Jewish papers, and we used to read them all the time. Among them, in The Forward, they had a “Bintel Brief,” and each one used to write and tell their troubles, just like “Dear Abby.” They used to give answers and it was true. In fact, my grandson, the one now who goes to medical school in San Diego, he brought it to me when he came from the East. He went to Harvard, and he brought me this book. And he’s got the Bintel Brief. I would like to give it to you to read. You take it home and give it back.