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6-Post Holocaust Experiences

Can you describe your connection with Judaism and the Jewish community today?

The San Francisco community when I arrived here in 1954 did not have much in store for survivors. It was a very self centered, basically German Jewish community. In fact we used to make fun of them and say they really were Protestant Jews, because even when you went to Temple Emanu-El at that time it was weird to see the services being rendered their in a Jewish temple which look more like a Protestant church than a Jewish temple except for the Torah and the bima. Even the room looked more like of a theater, in fact it reminded me a great deal of the Opera House and than later on I found out that the same architects had built it. Its not until the '70's—the late '70's—when some idiot rented a place on Taraval and made it into a storefront adulation place for Hitler and the Nazis. They had swastika flags.

And Passover was about to be hit and the fact of the matter was that the place was owned by a Jew who had rented it to these people and they had given him false pretences and after they had opened up the store he didn't know how to get out of it. And a Mr. Wies had torn down the storefront, and removed the swastikas—he lived in that area he and his son—and they were arrested by the police and taken to the police station and put in jail. I think that's when your grandfather [speaking to specific student] the first time became involved with Jewish life in San Francisco because he saw to it through his connections that these people were released from jail immediately. That's when the JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council] became involved in all this. A meeting was held at the Jewish library of all survivors – whom they knew to be survivors—and they were invited to that meeting, and so was I.

It was at that meeting that I was told that I was going to be in charge of the... Actually it wasn't that evening, but that evening they discussed what they could do to alert people to what had happened in the camps and they were talking about starting a library or a place in which books could be put together that were written about the camps, a monument could be erected in the city. They had about three or four different things that they could start doing. At the end of the meeting the guy in charge of the JCRC came and talked to me and said, "I want you to head up the library thing." I said, "Why me?" "Because you are the only one here who speaks English very well, understands and you're also a professional man, you're an architect, and I want you to be in charge of this." So I said "OK." Then also Lonny Darvin, who's husband was a very prominent lawyer at the time—your father knows him well or knew him well, or your grandfather knew him well—she was put in charge with me in getting this thing started. That's where the first time I think that the Jewish community of San Francisco became involved with the lives of survivors.

Did you ask that question of Bill Lowenberg too? [discussion] Ask him the same question again. I know that people were put in charge of him when he came and went to the Jewish community. I did never go to the Jewish community for help because I was married to Pat and Pat was not Jewish. He had sought help and he was put into real estate. Bill originally came from German, West Germany, very west right near the Dutch border. This is what he told me. His father had been in the cattle trading business and he had traded cattle with Dutch farmers, etc. One night—and I think that is in his book but I am not positive—somehow they got across the Dutch border with all their cattle and settled in Holland. And he swore up and down that he was Dutch. I would always laugh at him. I said, "You're as German as they come. You have learned a little bit of Dutch, but.." He used to go to Jewish schools, that's in the book. But ask him this question about his involvement with Jewish community life in San Francisco and how they treated him.

Remember during lunchtime I told you guys—or you Jason—that I remodeled the schools at Temple Emanu-El in the early 60's? At that time, the architect in charge of all the work done at Temple Emanu-El was the office of Hertzka and Knowles. You're grandfather will know that. And the guy in charge of the building committee of Temple Emanu-El was a fellow by the name of Charles Krieger of Krieger Oldsmobile. I had done some private work for him, he had gotten to know me somehow. During the building meeting it came up that they had to revamp the school in the building. He suggested my name and some other people mentioned Hertzka and Knowles, "They'd done all our work." And Clarence Krieger said, "No way, there's a young man in town who's an architect who went to the camps, he needs a break, he needs help. I want him to do the job. And if you guys don't want him to do the job that's fine with me, I have no problems, but I will resign as the Chairman of the committee." And they bought me and I did the job. Your grandfather may know this. The contractor was Greenwald and Greenberg. That's when I became for the first time involved with, "Jewish life" in San Francisco. I had done some work at that time for Walter Shorenstein. Name rings a bell? Whose grandson? Shorenstein is going to school with you all? With his son Doug, the father is Doug? Got to be because he only had one son. He had two daughters. One is in charge of the theaters and the other one died at a very young age and the school is named after her at Harvard. "The Somebody Shorenstein School of Literature or Journalism?" [The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy]

Is this the same time frame that you start talking to your wife about your story? How does that all fit into this time period? Seems like a lot is going on in the 70's.

No, Pat—before I married Pat I told her all about my background, just as I am telling you here. She knew about my story, she didn't have to wait until after we were married. She heard it all before I got married. When I decided to start self-studying because I had no money to go back to school—we got married in '56 and by '60 I had my license, I had my license basically through self-studying—she and I decided we could open up an office. We had so much work at night to do on weekends and at nighttime—small jobs. I decided after I got my license in 1960 we would open up an office, and we did make the announcement on the 4th of July, 1960. We were at a dinner party and that's where I announced.

It so happened that it was the dinner party where the psychiatrist who had seen me at Fort Ort and helped me to get discharged from the Army Language School. About a year had gone by and I went to Hebrew Free Loan—at that time they were located on Divisadero—and I requested a loan of two and a-half thousand dollars which at that time was a lot of money. I'm talking about now the early 60's. We had done very well by now. We had three children, we lived on Jackson Street right across from Town School for Boys. Pat and I had been able to save up some money and we bought some stock with it. I went to Hebrew Free Loan and they said they had never given any money to an architect. They said they "would never give any money to lawyers because once you give money to lawyers you never see it again because they find all kinds of excuses not having to pay it back." And they weren't sure about architects because they had very little experience with architects in San Francisco who were Jewish. They gave it to me but I had to get five people each to sign up for $500 which I was able to do.

By 1961 or '62, I had moved from Mission Street to Sutter Street because a friend of mine who owned a clothing store, Jay Briggs, had bought a building on Sutter Street and came to see me and said, "I want you to move to my building." And so I took a space in there. In 1963 or so, I think I met Clarence Krieger and that's how I started at Temple Emanu-El. Goldenberg was his name, was the contractor, and he had done work for Shorenstein, and that's how I met Walter Shorenstein when he was still working for Milton Meyer. He had a house on—I think on 33rd Avenue—and he bought a house on El Camino Del Mar and I did remodeling in his house, kitchen remodeling and some other stuff. That's how I met Doug and I met the two girls. So if his grandson is going to your school, that's got to be Doug's son. His mother's name is Lydia is it? Well it's about time you find out! Because she is on the Board of Directors at the Holocaust Center.

We've gone through all our questions. Is there anything you want to talk about?

But you want dessert now, right?
You're all done? You have one more question?

Is there anything you want to talk about?

I think I did. I just gave you things that I've never discussed with you before, like when you asked that question about Jewish life and how I became slowly involved in it. But I didn't become really involved in it until the Holocaust Center.

Do you have more faith in the religion now? Are you more religious now after what you've been through or less or the same?

I don't believe in any organized religion. Whether it's Jewish or non-Jewish, Catholic, Shiite, Sunni, or whatever. If it's organized, I don't want to have any part of it. I believe but I don't believe religiously.

Can you discuss your work translating other survivors' stories? What are some of the reasons you do it?

Because I think it's important and I think it's important because it is not being done sufficiently. I believe that English is a language that wraps around the world and therefore there is the greatest number of people who will speak it and read it and would then begin to understand what what we had to suffer through.

Why is that so important that this information is out there?

In my life—or perhaps in man's history—this is one of the great events of our lives. We lived it! My ancestors went through the same—or a similar experience not at brutal at this, I don't think, although in it's own way it had a lot of repercussions—my ancestors lived through the Inquisition. You live through this and it has a very great affect on your lives. So why do I translate these things? Because if I don't do I don't think there are other people who are willing to do it and not get paid. I'm doing this all for free, I'm not asking money for that, I ask to have my expenses reimbursed because I don't think they should come out of my pocket because a good translation like this of a book of 300 pages or more is going to cost at least $20,000 if not more. That's a lot of money. I do this all for free because it's important that people whose stories have not been told do get told, and get told in the language that I know best which is English.

Thank you very much.