Gladys Loewenberg Trachtenberg

Blumenthal: To start this interview, I am just kind of curious to know who named you Laddie. I know your true name is Gladys?
TRACHTENBERG: Well, I don’t know whether I referred to it or not, but my grandfather was associated with Mr. George Weidler on bringing Bull Run water into Portland in the 1880s. One of Mr. Weidler’s daughters was named Gladys (Mrs. DeSchweinitz) and her nickname was Laddie. She was a very, very close friend of my mother’s and that’s how I got the name. 

Blumenthal: Was this Grandfather Loewenberg or Goodman? 
TRACHTENBERG: This was Grandfather Loewenberg. 

Blumenthal: That’s very interesting. Laddie, may I call you Laddie rather than Mrs. Trachtenberg? 
TRACHTENBERG: Please do. 

Blumenthal: What can you tell me and what do you remember about your maternal and paternal grandparents and their names? 
TRACHTENBERG: Actually, I never knew either of my grandfathers. Grandfather Loewenberg died in 1899 and Grandfather Goodman died in 1904, which was a few years before I was thought about. Now, my Grandmother Loewenberg, Mrs. Julius (Bertha) Loewenberg, she was born in 1848 in Nederhofstadt, Bavaria, Germany. My Grandmother Goodman was Mrs. Newnan Goodman. Her first name was Jenette. She came from Russia in the area between Russia and Poland, which is historically referred to as the pale of settlement. Both of my grandmothers arrived in this country when they were teen-agers. Interestingly enough, both settled in San Francisco. My grandmother Lowenberg came over with her mother, her brothers and her sister. It was a large family. My grandmother Goodman arrived with both of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Julius Rothschild and her sisters. I do not recall her ever mentioning having a brother. To refer back to my grandmother Loewenberg, her mother was Mrs. Sophie Kuhn. She later came to Portland’ when my grandparents were married in 1871 and-lived with them; until her death which was sometime in the 1890s. She is now buried in the family plot at Beth Israel Cemetery.
 
Blumenthal: Laddie, I am going to zoom in on your Grandfather Loewenberg rather than Goodman. What did your mother tell you about your grandfather, about his childhood, his schooling, where he was employed, things of that nature? 
TRACHTENBERG: Actually, when my grandfather came to this country at the age of 14 he arrived with his older brother. They landed in New York and went to Schenectady, where there was some sort of very menial employment available for immigrants who were unable to speak English. My grandfather had had a grade school education in Germany and had attended the gymnasium there for one or two years prior to leaving the country. He left Germany in 1847. He stayed in Schenectady long enough to accumulate sufficient funds to pay his fare from New York to San Francisco. He went by boat, a 16-year-old boy all alone, knowing no one. The boat went down the Atlantic coast. He disembarked in Nicaragua, went across the Isthmus of Panama by mule back, picked up another boat on the Pacific Ocean side of Central America and came up to San Francisco. He remained in San Francisco until 1849 when he came to Portland and established his first business here.

Blumenthal: Who came with him Laddie?
TRACHTENBERG: He came alone. 

Blumenthal: All alone to Portland? 
TRACHTENBERG: Yes and then he went into the merchandising business here, wholesale dry goods, as I recall. He stayed in that business for a few years until he had accumulated sufficient funds when he and his brother started a pack train between Portland and Orofino, Idaho. They would load their mules with various hardware items, pots, pans, hammers, sledges, you name it, whatever a pioneer would need they had on these pack mules. They had all sorts of yard goods, things of this sort that they could carry. They would separate at Orofino and grandfather would go up into the Nez Perce country. It was on one of these trips into Nez Perce country that grandfather met Chief Joseph. They became devoted friends. My grandfather, I am told, always talked of Chief Joseph as one of the most intelligent men he had ever known. He especially stressed the fact of Chief Joseph’s love for peace. He felt very badly when Chief Joseph was sold down the river by the white man, because he always said that he was one of the finest gentlemen, white or red skin that he had the privilege of knowing.

Blumenthal: It would be very interesting to know how the two of them conversed?
TRACHTENBERG: Chief Joseph spoke English and of course, my grandfather was fluent in English by that time so there was no problem. However, you always did have the Indian sign language to return to.

Blumenthal: Was your grandfather, in his growing up, of course, he was very busy trying to make a living, how did he meet your grandmother?
TRACHTENBERG: He used to take trips to San Francisco. He went by boat and buy goods and during one of these trips he met my grandmother. She was the youngest of all of the Kuhn children. They became in love and were married in San Francisco in 1871, at which time he brought her to Portland as a bride.

Blumenthal: What made him settle in Portland particularly? Why not San Francisco?
TRACHTENBERG: In San Francisco he felt there was not the opportunities to get ahead in the world and that he would have this opportunity in Portland. He had been here before as early as 1849 and had been very successful business-wise and my grand mother being the fine pioneer type of person she was, came along with him.

Blumenthal: Did your grandfather have any so-called landsmen in Portland? Did he know anybody here?
TRACHTENBERG: He made many friends here. One of my grandmother’s cousins lived here at the time, who later married one of my grandmother’s sisters, now this was Mr. Anson Goldsmith, who married my grandmother’s sister, Judith.

Blumenthal: So there was a double relationship there?
TRACHTENBERG: There was a bond and a double relationship both, yes. In fact, interestingly enough, all of my grandmother’s sisters and brothers moved to Portland after she and my grandfather were married, as did her mother and there were many times when my grandmother would have a good half or more of her family living in the house and my grandfather never complained. He was a very good natured, long-suffering man. He always found employment for his own brothers. He set one brother up in business in Spokane and he just was a very fine, generous, kind person.

Blumenthal: He was a true patriarch.
TRACHTENBERG: He was the patriarch, but he never made anyone feel that he was the patriarch. As I understand he was very soft spoken, a very determined man, a tremendous worker, tremendous will power. In fact for the last eight or ten years of his life he suffered from very severe migraine headaches as well as from angina, but he never let it interfere with his family life or his business life in any way. In fact, when he would come home with a severe migraine, his greatest pleasure was to sit down in the music room and have my Aunt Ida play the piano and accompany my mother with her sister Zerlina and her brother Sid singing to him; he always wanted to hear German Leder.

Blumenthal: That was a gentle life.
TRACHTENBERG: Oh, it was a gentle life, a beautiful life and the home was the main point of interest, around which their entire life, social and family revolved. Grandmother and Grandfather arrived in Portland in 1871, following their wedding in San Francisco. They lived on what today is SW Fourth and Oak Street. This was just a block from what had become Temple Beth Israel which was located on SW Fourth and Stark at the time. The center of the Jewish community, naturally, revolved around Beth Israel, since it was the first Jewish synagogue in Portland. My grandparents had all four of their children in this house on Fourth and Oak. Aunt Ida was born in 1872, Zerlina was born in 1874, my mother, Rose, was born in 1876 and my uncle Sidney was born in 1881. It was shortly after the birth of my Sidney that grandfather built a home up on what today would be SW Park and Washington Street, directly across from the Pittock B lock. This house stood on a quarter block of land. They lived in this house and my mother and her two sisters, all attended St. Helen’s Hall, which at that time was on the property where City Hall now stands. My Uncle Sidney attended the Bishop Scott Academy. It was during the years that the head of the Merchants National Bank and the northwest Fire and Marine Insurance Co. He also was a partner in the firm of Goldsmith and Loewenberg, a large wholesale hardware company here in Portland. He later joined with Mr. Clint Going in forming a foundry business. He conducted all these businesses at the same time as he was running the bank, although he was only titular head of the insurance company at that time. They stated a large foundry here in Portland at the foot of Southwest Jefferson Street. The building was torn down during the Urban Renewal period, but I remember having it pointed out to me. It was a very large brick structure. They also, at that time, were able through my grandfather’s contracts through the bank and the insurance company, to start a second foundry. This was started by a contract entered into by my grandfather and State of Oregon, to have a foundry at the State Penitentiary in Salem, so that the inmates could not only learn a trade as a foundry worker, but also, so that they could earn some money, and when they were released from prison, they would have a little with which to start a new life. This was the charitable, humanitarian side of my grandfather, which is so well remembered by any, who knew him. In 1890, my grandparents decided it was time for them to take the grand tour of Europe and what could be better for them, my grandmother, my mother, her brother and sisters to be in Europe while grandfather supervised the building of their new home which was a copy of an old castle on the Rhine in Germany, with which my grandfather had become intrigued as a boy. This was built at the head of what then was known as Park Avenue. It was on the northwest corner of Park Avenue and Washington Park. It stood there for many, many years. In the meanwhile, my grandmother, my mother and the rest of the family went to Hamburg, Germany. Grandfather took them there, got them settled in an apartment and hired servants (because my grandmother never raised a hand in all her married life). It was my grandfather’s great pride that she would be free to run the house and raise her children without the worries and cares of taking care of the house herself. They lived in Hamburg for over a year. Grandfather made two trips over to see them from Portland. It was a trek to go from Portland on the primitive railroads across the continent to New York and then by packet boat to Europe. Each time he would come over they would travel to another section of Europe, which was of interest to them. During that time they visited France, all of Germany. 

They visited my grandmother’s relatives. She had many cousins who were still left in Niederhofstadt. They went and visited Italy, Austria. My grandmother had relatives in Vienna whom they visited and parts of countries adjoining the aforesaid mentioned ones. On the last trip around Europe, grandfather accompanied them and ordered or bought all of the furniture, the carrarra marble bathtubs, basins and other types of necessary plumbing for the house, which was being constructed on Cedar Hill. They even went so far as to ship a concert grand Steinway piano back to Portland from Hamburg. My aunt loved it and had studied, using this piano while they were in Hamburg. She had a very fine piano teacher. In the meanwhile, my mother and my other aunts studied voice with a German. His name was Herr Anton Schott. My grandfather was so taken with this gentlemen, that when Herr Schott spoke to him of coming to the states, he paid for his fare and brought him out to Portland where he continued coaching, not only my mother and her sisters, but also many of the prominent young women of Portland. Meanwhile, they returned to Portland in 1891 and moved into the castle on the hill. It stood there on that spot until 1960 when it fell at the hands of the wreckers. The property had been sold after my grandfather’s death, by my grandmother to Colonel Frederick and Mrs. Ledbetter. Mrs. Ledbetter was one of the older of the Henry L. Pittock children and a very close friend of my mother and her sisters. Mrs. Ledbetter moved to Santa Barbara with the Colonel in the 1840w or so, correction 1940s or so. In the middle of the 1950s, she donated her home this famous castle to the Oregon Historical Society, to be used as a museum. However it was not feasible to convert this old home into a museum, as there would not have been sufficient rooms for the various exhibits. There was a move on in which I was somewhat involved for a gentleman, whose family had had the home next door, to buy the property jointly with me. However, I could see no point in doing that to preserve this home. The price asked by the Historic Society was far too much to merit consideration of this proposal. In the first place they still had the old wood furnace, which took four-foot logs. The kitchen was in the basement as was the billiard room. On the main floor was a tremendous, large hallway, which had been used as a music room with all of the other rooms leading off it, as well as a balcony around this hall, with a huge dome and skylight on top of it. It would have been totally unrealistic to think of my ever living the house or knowing what I would ever do with it, with this gentleman, and so eventually it did fall to the hands of wreckers. Commonwealth Incorporated bought the property from the Historical Society, wrecked the home, sold off whatever was saleable and put up an apartment house at the spot. There was a full block of land on the property, which had been completely landscaped when my grandfather and the family lived there.

Blumenthal: Laddie, do you know if there was much of a Jewish population? Who would have been contemporaries of your grandparents in those days?
TRACHTENBERG: Yes there was a very large Jewish population, considering the hardships which the pioneers had to go through from the 1870s on up until around 1895 and 1900. Among the prominent Jews in Portland were Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Wasserman. Mr. Wasserman was one of the early Mayors of Portland. He was in the tobacco business, incidentally. His wife, Sophie and my grandmother were raised together, and were extremely close friends, closer almost than sisters, over in Niederhofstadt, Germany and their two families came to this country together and settled in San Francisco. Also, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Goldsmith were here. Aunt Emma was a very attractive person; in every charitable affair which the Jewish people sponsored. Mr. Goldsmith, Uncle Bernard was twice the mayor of Portland. He also was on the school board and was a member of the first volunteer fire department in Portland. There are no members of the Bernard Goldsmith family in Portland today. All of his children have passed away and he has one grandchild still living now in Seattle, with whom I correspond periodically and see when I go to Seattle or she comes to Portland. However, other than that, there are no relatives of that particular Goldsmith family in Portland in today. Now, as to the Wasserman family, Mr. Wasserman has one granddaughter living here in Portland, who I see periodically. Her name is Nancy Chipman and he also, there is also another granddaughter Mrs. Myrt Proctor who is living in San Antonio, Texas. Those are the only remaining family members of the old Philip Wasserman family. 

Blumenthal: Were they [your grandparents] religious people? Did they follow the religious aspects of Judaism?
TRACHTENBERG: Let me put it this way. My great grandmother Kuhn kept kosher all of her life. She had her own dishes, her own cooking utensils, everything which was kept in a separate place from all the other dishes and things in my grandmother’s kitchen. My grandmother did not keep kosher. In fact I believe my great grandmothers on either side of the family, either Loewenburg or Goodman were the last ones to keep kosher. However my mother and my aunts used to tell me beautiful stories about their grandmother inviting them down to eat her kosher food. They thought it was a real treat. It was an honor when she would invite them to have dinner with her rather than upstairs with the rest of the family. 

Incidentally, speaking of dinner with the family, when they moved up to the house on the hill, the castle, my mother never could recall sitting down for dinner with less than 14 at the table. Many times there were many more, in as much as my grandfather being as prominent as he was in the entire business community, there being very few hotels, in Portland, and those that were, were of low caliber, all of the visiting business men from Count Ludwig who came from Germany for the driving of the last golden spike of the Northern Pacific Railroad and then came on to Portland with Mr. Villard, were all house guests of my grandparents.

Blumenthal: Your grandparents’ home must have been the core of all social activities in Portland.
TRACHTENBERG: Well, actually yes, in a way, because the home was where all activities took place. Now, you were mentioning earlier about the social life of young people in Portland in those days. I might say that the entertaining was done at home. The young gentlemen came to call on the young ladies in their homes and were always duly chaperoned. However they also were permitted to go in groups to the various concerts and theaters, plays and such that were brought to Portland. I remember hearing my mother tell me of going to the Newmarket Theater for various plays. Also of their going to here Madams Schumann-Heink in concert, of hearing Caruso, of various famous singers. Nellie Melba and Alma Glück, these all were attended as part of their cultural and social life. As to going out anywhere afterwards, up until 1900, all of this took place in the homes. They would go back to one of the homes where they would be served cake, hot chocolate and such. I still have my grandmother’s LaMoge hot chocolate set which is a magnificent piece of porcelain china.

Blumenthal: Laddie, was your grandfather active in organized club work? Was there a B’nai B’rith here at the time?
TRACHTENBERG: No, not that I know of. There may well have been but he was not active in it. He was active, however, in the founding of the Portland Public Library, now known as the Multnomah County Library, to which he was a life subscriber. It sounds like something tremendous. What it amounted to was that each of the businessmen I Portland put up $100.00 a piece for a life membership in the public library. This was merely a core to the start the library and get it on its feet, although there had been a free library here in Portland for quite a number of years prior to this time. I hold his certificate, which has been transferred to me and is transferred within the family as infinitum, of a life membership in the library association. His number was 38 and I still have that number on my library card, which is a life card. He also was active in bringing Bull Run water to Portland. He served on the original committee to bring water on. There were many civic activities, which had to do with the betterment of Portland. I suppose today you would call it the Environmental and Conservation Movement. In those days they had no such fancy names. If there was a need for good water, a committee was formed and action was taken. Today, we don’t work quite this easily. Of course Portland did not have that many people living here in those days and it was a very simple process for a group of seven, eight or nine men to get together and take care of the situation and they did it very rapidly, I might say, and at a minimal cost.

Blumenthal: I gather from hearing you talk about your grandfather and the community at the time, that the Jewish men and women and the non-Jewish men and women co-mingled. There wasn’t any trace of antisemitism was there?
TRACHTENBERG: No there wasn’t until the mid-1890s when a couple arrived here from Germany. The lady, whose name I shall not mention, because her grandchildren and great grandchildren are still active both socially and civically in Portland, came here to live. He later became one of the very prominent lumberman in Portland. She brought antisemitism to Portland, unfortunately. However, there were not too many of the old families, who had been here prior to their advent, paid much attention. They simply could not be bothered. There was complete co-mingling of Jew and Gentile and mutual respect on both sides. My grandmother not only was active in the Jewish activities such as the Ladies Benevolent Society and some of that sort, of thing, but she also was equally active in non-Jewish activities, such as the Old Children’s Home, where care was given to children who had been orphaned. Most of them were children of pioneers who had come across the continent in wagon trains. Some of them had only one parent. They were given a Home and cared for until such time as other more suitable arrangements could be made for them. grandmother was active on that Board and served in a honorary capacity in her later years when she was unable to participate actively. I would say having served on the board and having been a honorary member, probably covered a span of 35 or 40 years. She was head of the house committee which she chaired with Mrs. A. [Aaron] Meier of Meier & Frank and the two of them did every bit of the purchasing of all supplies for the Children’s Home during their tenure of office.

Blumenthal: I would say that your grandmother was a good match for your grandfather, keeping up with all the activities, both social and in all the amenities that age permitted.
TRACHTENBERG: Yes, she was able to because she had fine help at home and did not have to worry. There was a governess; there was the houseman; there was the groom; there was the upstairs maid and always the cook. The original group of servants, when my grandparents moved into the big house on the hill, were all brought here from Germany. They had worked for my grandmother during the year that she lived there with my mother, her sisters and her brother. These were the people who formed the core of the house and kept it running under her direction so that she was free to be very active both socially and in a civic way in Portland. This was her great love.

Blumenthal: Laddie, did your mother and two aunts and your uncle have a religious background?
TRACHTENBERG: Let me put it this way. They went to Sunday school. My mother’s one memory that she always told me was about the Sunday school teacher who was here when she went to Beth Israel Sunday School. Incidentally, my grandfather was one of the first members of the Congregation Beth Israel. He was not in Portland at the time it was founded.

Blumenthal: I want to interrupt you Laddie. Who was the rabbi at that particular time?
TRACHTENBERG: When my mother went to Sunday school?

Blumenthal: Yes.
TRACHTENBERG: Dr. Bloch.

Blumenthal: Go ahead.
TRACHTENBERG: Her only memory was of a teacher who had an affair with a woman of ill repute, (as they would say in those days; using the vernacular of the time) who was booted unmercifully out of Portland. That was my mother’s only memory of Sunday school.

Blumenthal: A lasting impression.
TRACHTENBERG: He was a man. But they did attend there and my uncle, I actually had his birth certificate signed by Dr. Bloch of Temple Beth Israel as well as I had my grandfather’s citizenship papers in my collections.

Blumenthal: I am going to bring their life quickly and up to date and I am going to move ahead. Your mother was the youngest of the three girls? 
TRACHTENBERG: That’s correct.

Blumenthal: Did your mother ever tell you about her courtship, how she was wooed by your father?
TRACHTENBERG: Actually, that was very interesting, because my father was living in Gervais, which is upon French Prairie. It was one of the old communities up there, the old settlement. It was one of the places where father stopped on his way to St. Paul where he established one of the earliest Catholic Churches in Oregon, in this area. Dad used to come down to Portland regularly, four times a year on buying trips. Every other one he would buy in Portland and on the alternate ones he would take the boat to San Francisco to buy the merchandise that he needed. He ran a general store and when he came through he always stayed with his parents, who had moved to Portland some time prior to that in the 1870s. He would stay at home with them when he was here. One of his sisters was a good friend of my aunt’s and she brought him to the house to meet mother and my two aunts and Dad and Mother fell in love. Dad closed the store in Gervais. He moved down to Portland and opened a wholesale shoe business with his brother, Maurice, and he and my mother were married in 1903 by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of Temple Beth Israel.

Blumenthal: In the Temple, I suppose or in the home?
TRACHTENBERG: They were married in my grandmother’s home on Southwest Tenth Street between Jefferson and Columbia. It was quite a wedding, although my grandfather was dead at the time.

Blumenthal: Did your grandfather know his prospective son-in-law?
TRACHTENBERG: I am not sure if Dad ever met him or not. I really don’t know.

Blumenthal: Well that’s an era that will never be repeated. Long gone.
TRACHTENBERG: It certainly is.

Blumenthal: I am going to really move ahead now. Laddie, could you tell me something about your husband, Issac Trachtenberg, how you met, when you married, where you married?
TRACHTENBERG: Well I was attending Oregon State College at the time I first met Irv, as I call him. It is his nickname. His real name is Isaac. At the time he had come out from Virginia to attend Oregon State on a scholarship. His father had purchased an orange grove in Palestine with four other gentlemen. Their dream was to return to Palestine and to operate the orange grove, so Irv came out here to further his studies in agriculture. When he came to Oregon State, he had written requesting a room with a Jewish roommate. Irv comes from a very Orthodox family. Who should his roommate turn out to be, but Ted Koshland. Well Ted and I had been lifelong friends. We had grown up together. Our parents and grandparents were friends. So Ted phones me and says he has a Jewish fellow here from Virginia who wants to meet a Jewish girl, can they come over? This was all at Oregon State. And I said, “Of course, Ted. I would love it. It would be fun.” He said, “We’ll go out somewhere and have something to eat.” Which we did. I met Irv. This was September of 1930. We became very, very close friends and Irv would come up to Portland on weekends, would be at the house with us, knew both of my parents very well as well as my sister. Irv, during the summers, went down to California and took courses in citric-culture, so that he would be better prepared to help his father in the orange grove. He graduated from Oregon State in 1932. He wanted me to marry him and go over back to Palestine with him, his parents and his two sisters. I still had two years in college to finish and frankly did not want to get married yet. I was not ready to settle down. I had introduced him to a friend of mine, a Jewish girl here in Portland. And the following year, in 1933, she went over to Palestine and married Irv. There were two children of this marriage. Irv returned with Marge and the two children in 1939, just prior to the outbreak of World War Two in Europe and came back to Portland. Well, I would see them from time to time and keep up with them. However, Irv enlisted in the Army and went oversees. Marge died in 1945. Irv was in France at the time. He was stationed in Rheims with Eisenhower’s headquarters company. He came back as soon as he could, which was in August of 1945. I immediately phoned and went over to be with him and do what I could to help him with the children. And in January of 1946 we were married in the home of my sister and brother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Leon Goldsmith.

Blumenthal: I know that you have children, would you want to give me their ages and names?
TRACHTENBERG: I adopted Irv’s two children. I loved them dearly and still do, very dearly, as much as I do the two children of our marriage. Our oldest child is Jean, then comes John, then the two children of our marriage, Joseph and David. Joseph was named after my father and that’s the way it is.

Blumenthal: In raising your own children, Laddie, to what extent have you emphasized their Jewish heritage? Do they have a religious background?
TRACHTENBERG: Strange as it may seem, I have a very ultra-Reformed religious background. Irv came from a very Orthodox religious background. His mother kept kosher until the day she died. However, I never kept kosher, as I mentioned earlier. None of my family did for several generations. However, Irv and I have found that the strongest we have to a successful marriage has been our religion. In fact, prior to our marriage, in September of 1945, Irv not only joined the Temple because that is where I went, where I had been confirmed, but I spoke to Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, who was looking for teachers for the religious school. I had promised when I had met him in the summer (he had just returned from his years in the service with U.S. Navy) that I would teach a Sunday school class for him because he was desperate for teachers. This was because of the long family friendship and a very close one. I spoke to him about having Irv as a teacher and I explained how Irv had taught comparative religion when he was at Oregon State College and he knew his background. He had met him. 

So Irv also became a Sunday School teacher, and from that day on we both have been closely allied to the Temple and its activities. For 5 years served as principal of the Religious School at Beth Israel. I taught, and when he became the principal, I took over as his private secretary and gave up teaching, so that I could handle the office for him and help him there. Then I returned to teaching when he retired as the principal of the school. To this day, Irv has a very deep interest in the Temple and serves the religious services committee. I have had deep involvement in the Temple. I’ve done everything that there is, that one can do in the Sisterhood, including being the president from 1962 until 1964. I have served four years as a trustee of the Temple. Today, I am still extremely active in the Sisterhood. We have always had a strong bond. As a result we have celebrated every Jewish holiday in our home from the time we were married. Our children have always participated and always come home, if it is possible, to celebrate all the Jewish holidays with us. And if you go into their homes you will find various Jewish ceremonial objects around their homes. They also carry on the tradition. And they carry on the tradition of Beth Israel, of which they are all members.

Blumenthal: Laddie, From the time you were growing up until the time now, what changes have you seen in the Portland Jewish Community?
TRACHTENBERG: I have seen many changes in the Portland Jewish Community over the years. When I was a youngster and a teenager, Judaism as far as the Reformed group of Beth Israel was concerned, was pretty much of a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, until Rabbi Henry Berkowitz came here. He was so interested in all of us teenagers, it was utterly unbelievable. He would have parties for us. He would sit down on the floor with us, and we would sing songs. We would talk. We would discuss problems of the Jews, local problems of the Jews. That was actually the turning point for me in my Jewishness. I had attended St Helen’s Hall for many years and then for the last two years of high school I went to the old Allen Preparatory School. I met no Jewish people. There were none there. They didn’t go to those schools. Maybe there was one or two and that was about it. So that I was raised mainly with gentiles. I had some Jewish friends, of course, from Sunday School, but that was my only contact. It was on a once a week basis, so, you see, I can look back and see today there are many changes in the Jewish community. For many years we felt that the Reformed Jews, especially the group that came over in Germanic immigration to this country in the 1850s, to about 1875, were a very snobbish, stand-offish group. They all felt, unfortunately, as it had turned out, that they were far superior to the later migration your eastern European Jews. However, the Sephardic Jews of Portland thought that they were far better then the German Jews or the Eastern European Jews. Today, I can see that there is a common ground on which all groups can work and can work amicably and for the good of the Jewish community as of the Portland community. This could not have been 50 years ago. 

Blumenthal: But don’t you think that the Hitler regime did quite a bit to tie them all together?
TRACHTENBERG: There is no question about it, because here it wasn’t whether you were a German, or a Pole or a Russian, it was case that you were a Jew. This was the important thing and everyone worked together to help the people from Hitler’s Germany and countries which he trod over so unmercifully. I remember I sat on the original committee for the Refugee group. I can’t even remember what it was called, I think it was the National Refugee Service at that time. 

Blumenthal: Was that HIAS?
TRACHTENBERG: No, no, this was a local group with head offices in New York, and we would serve as interpreters. We would work with these people. I know there were many of them whom I stood up with as their witness when they became citizens of the United States. We would do everything possible to help them integrate. However, there were some of the group that came over from Germany who were really not accepting of us or our services. In fact, some of them were extremely patronizing. Unless you were related to some of the group you had problems sometimes getting along. I happened to have been related to three of the families who came here, who were all cousins. It was through them that I became so vitally interested in helping and I stood up with all of them when they became citizens. I am proud to say I could. In fact I stood up with another Mrs. Julius Loewenberg, who came over with her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Carr. She was an old lady. She could understand English, but she had difficulty in expressing herself. I went with her. She was close to 90 then, when she took her examination for American citizenship. And I must say that I have never been treated more royally (and she never was) that by the examiner who let me serve as her interpreter for her and after he asked her three or four questions, he merely said, “You are an American citizen.” It was a very beautiful touching experience.

Blumenthal: In your growing up days, going to college, working, did you experience any antisemitism, any incident that stands out?
TRACHTENBERG: Let me put it this way. I never gave them a chance as far as a sorority was concerned at Oregon State. I came home for the weekend when the pledging was taking place and completely withdrew from it. I personally had no time whatsoever for sororities or fraternities. I felt, being a social worker as I am, and at that time I must have had the tendencies sprouting somewhere in me, that it was totally undemocratic and something in which I wished to have no part. So I just took off and came to Portland and that was it. In fact, one of the fine national sororities gave me a carte blanche to come over any time I wished to be with the girls and invited me to have dinner with them any night I so chose. Just call and let the cook know that I would be there, and so you see I still claim that if people knew how to live with other people in comfort and friendliness and in peace and did not try to project themselves and push to get into sororities…. You did not feel the bite of antisemitism, or at least, let’s say it was tempered.

Blumenthal: Was your father, mother, yourself and your sister, affected by the 1929 Depression particularly?
TRACHTENBERG: Let me put it this way. My father was retired. All his money was invested, but he never bought anything on margin. Sure, his income was cut tremendously. Everyone’s was. You didn’t get your interest and dividends. There was no such thing as Social Security. Either you had made your pile, sat on it, or you were indigent. There was no in-between in those days of the depression. There really wasn’t. Fortunately, my father did have sufficient income that we could live comfortably. I do remember and my children and my grandchildren look at me amazed and say, “I don’t believe a word of it. How could it happen?” I had an allowance of $5 a month and believe it or not that was all I had. I had a car…

[The recording for the remaining part of the interview has been lost]

TRACHTENBERG: … I was allowed to charge 30 gallons of gas a month. Fortunately, the car didn’t take much gas in those days, so I could go quite a distance. However, we lived comfortably. My mother no longer had help and she turned out to be a fabulous cook. We were amazed, all of us, how marvelous she adapted to a change in her life style. She still carried on with her organizational work at the Council of Jewish Women. She became one of the vice-presidents of Hasassah, but refused to continue to president because my father at the that time had retired and she wanted to be with him and do things they had always wanted to do together, and which they had, to some extent, but not as much. It was a very beautiful life, however, for those of us who were so fortunate as to have some source of income and not have to worry about room, board and roof over our heads. I remember I spent at least four hours, sometimes more, of every day, playing bridge. I became a card sharp. Lewis and I became very close friends and through money, but we had a lovely social life. There were five or six of us in the neighborhood, so that we could always have a card game and this is how we did. We didn’t go to the movies. We stopped going to concerts. We no longer subscribed to the series, as they were known in those days, but we found there were many things we could do and enjoy.

Blumenthal: Laddie, who were your girl friends in the growing up stage? I am sure they still are, those that are still alive. Who did you associate with ?
TRACHTENBERG: Oh, Anne Baum, Anne Nemerov. She was one of my close friends from the time I was a child. Jane Friedlander Morris was another one. Claire Kahn Kaplan, who moved down to Portland (oh, when was it?) during the Depression. I believe they moved down here from Boise, Idaho. Then I used to play cards with a card group, who were all non-Jewish people, girls I had gone to St. Helen’s Hall with. They were my close friends. They were the ones and we would go out with the fellows of an evening, totally a gentile group. But as I say, we had all gone to school together and we had a common bond.

Blumenthal: You had never, I know, lived in the South Portland area as such, but having gone up to the Neighborhood House, you probably were well acquainted with the people who came there?
TRACHTENBERG: Yes, I was. I was acquainted with them and I did go to work there in 1940 as a girl’s worker. Today they would call them a group worker, and after I had been there for six months, I was so intrigued with it and with social work, per se, that I went east to Western Reserve University in Cleveland, which had one of the two finest group works school in the United States at that time, within their Department of Applied Social Science and worked on my Masters Degree there. Then I returned to Portland after Pearl Harbor because there was a great need for me to be back at the Neighborhood House. Prior to my return to Portland, I did go to New York. I went to the Jewish Welfare Board, through a close friend of mine who worked there, Janet Wiseman. She was in charge of the lecture bureau at that time. I was able to get to Mr. Lewis Kraft, who was the Executive Director of the National Jewish Welfare Board. Lewis and I became very close friends and through our friendship I was able to get a USO center for the Neighborhood House, which I came back and headed under my aunt, Miss Ida Loewenberg. I stayed at the Neighborhood House until 1945, the summer of 1945. My aunt had retired the 1st of January of that year, after 35 years as the head of the Neighborhood House. I stayed on for six months as acting Executive Director. I then had an opportunity to go to work for the old Community Chest. Since I was very interested in community leadership and community service, I felt that was the place to get the best experience. I knew Mr. Ralph Reed who was the Executive Director of the Chest at that time, and he gave me a job and I stayed there until I was married.

Blumenthal: In reflecting Laddie, I would ask you what is the happiest memory you have to date of Portland?
TRACHTENBERG: Of Portland?

Blumenthal: The happiest time in your life.
TRACHTENBERG: Oh, I don’t know. There have been many. Really and truly. When I was growing up…. I remember when my father retired. We used to on beautiful trips. He was retired in time; it didn’t mean much to him then. It was prior to the Depression. We could go pretty much where we wanted. I remember we took some trips to Alaska, a couple of them. We went to New York, Boston. I saw all of New England and the eastern states. We made a trip all through the Canadian Rockies. Those were happy days. They really were. I didn’t have a worry or care in the world. I have had many happy days since I have been married, believe me.

Blumenthal: What about – what stands out as possibly your unhappiest memories?
TRACHTENBERG: I don’t have any. I refuse to accept it. I’ll tell you why. I have had a lot of illness the past ten years. I have broken my hips twice and have had a hair line fracture for a third time around, but I still never let it get me down. I kept on going. As soon as I was able I went back to work. In 1964 when the kids were grown – both the boys were in high school and the other two were away from home and married; this was in 1964 – I called a friend of mine who was head of the social service department at Dammasch State Hospital regarding a patient who was the husband of my husband’s secretary. Irv wanted to know just what the situation was so I called and asked for him. Fortunately I did have the contact through some political work I had been doing prior to my assuming the presidency of the Sisterhood. I had been doing social action work for the National Association of Social Workers for a few years prior to that on purely a volunteer basis. During the time that I served as the vice-president of the Oregon Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, of which I am a charter member. When I was speaking to this lady she invited me out to lunch. She told me she had some openings. Would I come out? Would I consider going back to work? I said, “Good heavens! I haven’t worked for 19 years.” She said, “No, but you have been doing all this political action work. You would be a real asset not only to the department. If I could get you it would be a real feather in the cap of our superintendent to have someone who knew their way around the legislature and knew the legislators.” So I talked it over with her, came home and talked it over with Irv and we both decided that in view of the fact that we had two kids yet to put through college, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. So I went back to work and became a psychiatric social worker through a very, very fine inservice training course that they had at Dammasch at that time.

Blumenthal: How long did you stay with that?
TRACHTENBERG: I stayed at Dammasch until the fall of 1972 when I broke my hip for the second time. I had planned to retire on January 1st, anyway, so I took retirement two months earlier. 

Blumenthal: In winding up this very interesting interview, Laddie, in looking back, how do you feel as a Jew living in Oregon?
TRACHTENBERG: I feel it is the best place in the world to live. I have lived in New York. I have lived in Cleveland. I have lived in San Francisco. And I must say there is a certain pull about the life in Oregon, the greenery, the whole atmosphere of Oregon that I love. I would never, knowingly want to make my home elsewhere and Irv feels the same way.

Blumenthal: It’s a healthy atmosphere.
TRACHTENBERG: It’s not only a healthy atmosphere. Anywhere you live is what you make of it. It’s up to you. I feel that I have had a good life. I feel I’ve made a contribution, which I think everyone must feel. I have gained self-satisfaction, which is rather selfish of me to say. But I have gained self-satisfaction from being an active Jew and working to promote causes, which I feel are necessary and important for a better life, not only for myself, for my family, but for the Jewish and non-Jewish group both who live here.

Blumenthal: Thank you so much Laddie. I certainly enjoyed this interview. I hope you have too.
TRACHTENBERG: I have enjoyed it thoroughly, Mollie. I’m sorry it’s over. I enjoyed doing this with you. It’s been so delightful.

Blumenthal: Well, thank you so much Laddie.