From Laura Lillien Wallins – A conversation between Ruth Hopfer and Sarah Davis.

  In response to a request from the “East Coast” cousins, Ruth Hopfer, granddaughter of Schlaime Simiatitsky, interviewed her aunt, Sarah Davis, Schlaime’s daughter, about the history of Schlaime’s family.  Schlaime was the oldest son of our common ancestors, Shaina Chesha and Dovid Hersh Simiatitsky.  The interview took place in a few sessions, in 1982, in Portland, Oregon.

I received a copy of the tape from Ruth about three years ago.  In the recording, Ruth begins in a slow, deliberate, and somewhat stilted voice, which disappears almost immediately, as the conversation with Sarah becomes a spontaneous, exuberant celebration of two women who clearly are delighted to be speaking together.  They start and finish each others’ thoughts and sentences, and repeat each others’ words, in sympathetic affirmation.  Here and there, Arnold, Ruth’s husband, makes a comment.  Although he is too far from the microphone to be heard clearly, Ruth’s and Sarah’s responses reveal what he has said.  Their genteel phrases and the distinctive cadences of their speech are definitively characteristic of the voices of many of the women in our family, despite the West Coast accents!  To hear them speak makes me feel like I am surrounded by the gentle relatives I was surrounded with as a child, even though I never met Sarah and have spoken to Ruth only rarely.

            Transcribing this tape was a labor of love, but it took a long time.  Sarah’s and Ruth’s words chase each other and superimpose. My transcription includes every word I was able to distinguish, as accurately as possible, although I am certain there are some mistakes.  I’ve tried to convey the back-and-forth of the discussion; but this is real life—not every question is answered, discussions go off in tangential directions, and some thoughts are left unresolved. (I’ve included a few explanatory or corrective words in brackets; these are my only edits.) Still, a wealth of information is revealed about Schlaime’s family (one child born in Orla, our home town in Eastern Europe; two born in Palestine, of whom one was premature and died; and one born in Pueblo, Colorado); about Schlaime’s travels, and his kindness and generosity; and about life in Palestine in the early part of the last century, just to name a few topics.  The tape ends with an astonishing, brief vignette, when Ruth interviews an elderly woman in Portland who remembers meeting Dovid Hersch as a child in Orla.

            Take some time, and read about a world that’s very different from ours.  I hope we will be able to add audio clips to this website, so you will be able to hear Ruth’s and Sarah’s voices.  



RUTH: This is Saturday, June 19, 1982. This is Ruth Hopfer speaking. I’m sitting here with my Auntie Sarah Davis, who is the daughter of Schlaime Sims, my grandfather Solomon Sims. I made myself a promise, and to Dorothy Koch, when I was in New York last week that I would get a tape recording of the history and the life of my grandfather as accurately as possible before I moved to California. We’re leaving Monday, and here it is just a couple of days before, and I’m out here with Auntie Sarah and I’m going to put her on and let her chat with me; I’ll ask her questions and we’ll get along as best we can. I want to ask Auntie Sarah specifically when they left Russia, what took place with the family. You remember the year, Auntie Sarah, when they left?
SARAH: Well, Esther was born in… She was born there, then. We were five years apart--I was born in 1905, Max, 1900, so she must have been born in 1895. Right, and she was born shortly after they got to Israel, so from the town of Orla in Russia they went to Israel and then Esther was born then and then she [Zelda, Sarah’s mother] was pregnant with Max five years later—
RUTH: Yes, my mother [Esther] was born then…
SARAH: And then he went to…
RUTH: As far as Auntie Sarah thinks, they had spent approximately twelve years in Israel, and that Grandma [Zelda] had had another child that was born prematurely and died, then my mother; then she was pregnant with Max and at that time after working in the swamps to clean up the malaria, he [Schlaime] got malaria and had to leave on doctor’s orders. OK, from there he went where, Auntie Sarah?
SARAH<>: To England, to London, and there were relatives from my mother’s side, I think, then, and he stayed there a little while, but the climate was very bad, he was used to that warm climate of Palestine at the time, and then went on to New York, where I imagine some of the family was there.
RUTH: So in other words, Grandma stayed in Palestine with the two children all alone—
SARAH: She was pregnant and had the child alone cause Dad had to work and get enough money to send her a ticket.
RUTH: Was Auntie Olds still in Palestine at that time? Was she already in New York?
SARAH: The Olds came later because they came to Colorado.
RUTH: First, before going back to New York? Well, I don’t know how long they--because I remember Mama saying when she landed in New York, she said in Yiddish, “Are you my Auntie Henya?”
SARAH: No, that was in Pueblo.
RUTH: Oh, in Pueblo,
SARAH: She was selling newspapers, she was about 10 years old, and she was selling newspapers at the depot, and she recognized them, so you see, she know them from Palestine.
RUTH: So from Grandma’s side there were relatives in Palestine.
SARAH: Perhaps so.
RUTH: Yeah, and probably knew Grandpa there.
SARAH: That’s because my uncle had a bible--Uncle Alter, my mother’s brother had a bible that has Max’s birth recorded in it.
RUTH: And my mother, too, and I know my mother was about five or six when she came from Palestine then.
SARAH: Well, she must have been, because Max was a little over a year, maybe a year and a half or so.
RUTH: So Mama was close to six--she was five years older. My mother--because I remember her many times talking about--and she remembered coming, so that means Grandma spent a year or two years in Palestine without Grandpa. Oy vey! A hardship, it was.
SARAH: It was a hardship, but he had to earn money and all. That’s what they did, they didn’t have welfare like they do now.
RUTH: Because Arnold did the same thing when he came from Germany and was trying to save—
SARAH: They all did—
RUTH: --to send tickets for his brother and parents. Everybody worked and then sent for another person in the family. So then, from New York you lived on the Lower East Side then, I think, didn’t you?
SARAH: I wasn’t born yet!
RUTH: Oh, gosh, because my mother keeps talking about--living down there--I remember her on Hester Street—
SARAH: I was born in Pueblo, Colorado.
RUTH: These are all streets she used to mention.
SARAH: But we did go back and go to New York when I was about five, so my father decided—Let’s see, Esther was 10 years older than I, yes, she was about 16 then, we went to New York. That’s when he was looking for—
RUTH: Oy vey! That rabbi!
SARAH: She was going to marry a rabbi. Yes, that was the time.
RUTH: So from New York you went to Pueblo.
SARAH: Yes. No, not me, Daddy went.
RUTH: That’s right. Sarah wasn’t born yet. So my grandfather, my mother, and my Uncle Max, went to Pueblo, Colorado, because of the mines, because there was work—and they had a dry goods store. I mean actually they didn’t work in the mines, cause a lot of the immigrants were heading in that direction. I asked somebody once, I asked, “Why did everybody go to Pueblo, Colorado?”
SARAH: Well, my mother had relatives there, now some of them, whether the Bucksteins or the Rybacks were there before, I don’t know…
RUTH: But you know the Jewish people, the Oldses came later. Didn’t usually go West so fast…so there had to be somebody who started it.
RUTH: They weren’t the miners, particularly, but they had a growing community just like San Francisco grew.
SARAH: That’s right, with the Gold Rush--a lot of industry.
RUTH: Yes, they needed industry.
RUTH: And then what happened? You were born in Pueblo then?
SARAH: Yes.
RUTH: So YOU were born in Pueblo.
SARAH: Yes, on Christmas, December 25th, 1905.
RUTH: And then, because, are you the one--Did they have a general store in Pueblo? Is this where they had the--they lived behind the store—
SARAH: Well, no that was in La Junta. We moved to La Junta, a small town, which was maybe on the train about 5 hours or so.
RUTH: Oh, that’s quite a ways--really out of the—
SARAH: We used to take—it used to be a wonderful trip for me, Dad would take me sometimes, and Mother would take me… In fact I had my chicken pox at my Aunt Ryback.
RUTH: Auntie…
SARAH: You know Esther Solomon, her mother?
RUTH: Yes, that’s good, because it’s going to record the Rybacks. I forgot…
SARAH: They put me up on the third floor! I stayed there for three weeks!
RUTH: We were out to dinner with the Sapirsteins the other day, and we were talking about the Rybacks, they’re related, and she says, “How…?” and all of a sudden, I couldn’t…
SARAH: First cousins--Morris Ryback—
RUTH: I said, I know it’s through Grandma Esther Solomon and Auntie Olds—
SARAH: They’re all first cousins—
RUTH: And Uncle Olds, Alter, he was the only brother.
RUTH: She was an Oloshevsky and she became a Simiatitsky.
SARAH: Yah, that’s right.
RUTH: So the Oloshevskys were the ones who were related to the Rybacks, actually. .
SARAH: My mother. My mother and Mrs. Ryback were sisters, and Mrs. Buckstein were sisters, three sisters, and Uncle Alter, the brother.
RUTH: Ok, that’s good for me to have down here now, because the name was Oloshevsky and they changed it to Olds and they all came to Portland. After we got here, they all came here.
SARAH: Right…
RUTH: I just wanted to know what type of business did they have in La Junta.
SARAH: About five Jewish families…
RUTH: Did you hear that? There were five Jewish families in La Junta where they had a used clothing-- New and used clothing.
SARAH: New and used clothing.
RUTH: A small town out of Pueblo in Colorado.
SARAH: In fact, my son visited Pueblo and La Junta, he wanted to see the two towns that I had lived in, when he was at Fort Carson, he was there, in the ‘50s. RUTH: So you were born in Pueblo and stayed there until you were at least five. You said when you were five you took a trip back to New York.
SARAH: And that’s when my father--I may have been six. Because I went to school.
RUTH: But did he move out of Pueblo, I mean La Junta, at that time, and went to New York looking for a husband for my mom?
SARAH: Yes.
RUTH: So at that time you were about five years in La Junta?--No, more like eight or 10 years total in La Junta.
SARAH: Between La Junta, Pueblo, and La Junta, I remember mostly La Junta. I do somewhat remember Pueblo because we used to go there for visits all the time. But—we went to New York and we were there--I don’t know--a year. I don’t know how long we were there. We went to Schenectady. Someone from the family, I think the Puttermans, were there. So they’d pull me out of school. I’d go two months here, two months there.
RUTH: So after that. So that was all of Colorado, then Pueblo and La Junta, that period, then you went to New York.
SARAH: Then back to Colorado after Dad decided he’d go back; things didn’t seem to work out for him, I guess, in New York.
RUTH: All right, but this is the time my mother has told me a hundred times over, that they picked this horrible old rabbi, maybe he wasn’t so old but to my mother, who was only 16, he looked like a terribly old man, and my grandfather had already picked him out, and she was in hysterics, he was supposed to be her husband, and Uncle Morris…
SARAH: Uncle Morris, I think helped--Helped to disrupt everything.
RUTH: My mother always shows me the little gold bracelet which I still have that Uncle Morris gave to her, and every time she’d look at this bracelet, she’d say to me, “Oy, I’m so thankful for my Uncle Morris, he talked” (my grandfather) “into letting me alone, that I wasn’t ready to get married,” and to let her wait a while. And thank goodness for Uncle Morris Schmidt that my mother didn’t marry this horrible old rabbi!
[Break in the tape, then it resumes]
SARAH: Then we went back to Colorado, but we didn’t stay there very long; Dad heard about California, so we moved to Los Angeles. Dad went first, we lived in Los Angeles for ten years, that’s where Esther married, Jay Cohen, which was later Krasell, your dad, and that’s where I finished--I went to grammar school— RUTH: Now what did Grandpa do in Los Angeles? Because they had a store—
SARAH: He did different types of things. He had a dry goods store, he had a grocery, he tried different things. If one didn’t work out, he changed to another. But we had--when we came to Los Angeles, we came a few months after him. He’d always go first. He already bought--- it was a business property. It had a flat upstairs, a store downstairs, a three room little apartment in the back of the store, and that’s where we lived, was in the three-room little place in the back of the store because he needed the rent!
RUTH: Was my mother married, at that point yet?
SARAH: No, it was after.
RUTH: In Los Angeles, she met my dad.
SARAH: Well, she met him in, she knew him from Pueblo.
RUTH: That’s right. She met him at a wedding or something.
SARAH: Well, a cousin, Sarah Mitchell, got married, and we all went to the wedding, and she met him there.
RUTH: Oh, no kidding, that’s where she met him. OK, that’s interesting, I need to keep my connection to Sarah Mitchell, who was a Buckstein.
SARAH: It was a strange thing.
RUTH: Yes, she was a Buckstein. These are all relatives of my Grandmother’s.
SARAH: I have a picture here taken at the wedding. We all went to Pueblo to the wedding. Mother said, Let’s take a family picture, where every body is dressed and everything,--and that was the first family picture we had.
RUTH: No kidding.
SARAH: --and it’s right here on the table.
RUTH: Oh, isn’t that something? So, then, my mother got married, and did she also live in this three-room apartment?
SARAH: Yes!
RUTH: Oy vey.
SARAH: When they first got married, we had the wedding outside in the yard, and cousin Esther Solomon got married in the yard there, too. But then my father built a house. It had a very large back yard.
RUTH: This was in Boyle Heights.
SARAH: Boyle Heights, yes, a Jewish neighborhood—
RUTH: It was the style—
SARAH: And people did that, they started building. If they had real large yards, it still left a piece of yard. He built a four-room bungalow and then Esther and Jake moved into that. That’s where Esther’s first child was born. He died when he was about ten months old.
RUTH: My mother’s first child—
SARAH: Then Elsie was born and then you—
RUTH: Elsie was born in 1918 and I in 1920, in Los Angeles.
SARAH: And then the other two, Harold and Norma, were born in Portland. And the reason we came to Portland, after living there for 10--it was a little over 10 years, was that your father, Ruthie’s father, insisted it was such a beautiful place, it would be a nice place to open a clothing manufacturing—
RUTH: He was actually the first—
SARAH: But he had no money. Jake didn’t have any money, and Dad had accumulated, he did quite well, the last business he was in was furniture.
RUTH: In Los Angeles.
SARAH: In Los Angeles. It was new and used furniture. In that same little store. But he got quite a reputation. People came from all over town.
RUTH: I never remember hearing this.
SARAH: He was closed all day Saturday. He was never in a business that wasn’t closed on Saturday. Outside of the Beaver Cloak and Suit Manufacturing Company. Always closed on Saturday, Friday night and Saturday.
Arnold, Ruth’s husband, asks about the Army during World War I.
SARAH: No, he wasn’t in the Army, well, age—or business—
RUTH: Partly because he was helping support my grandfather, well, he didn’t have to support Grandpa, but I—
SARAH: He worked the manufacturing business. My father made enough in that furniture store so that we could come up here, and then we sold our home, the house, after all it went up in value.
RUTH: See, I never quite remembered what happened to Beaver Cloak and Suit, so what happened--My father was the mechanic.
SARAH: The designer, and Dad had the money.
RUTH: Grandpa had the money.
SARAH: And my brother went in with them. Uncle Max was the salesman.
RUTH: That’s right, I remember now. So those three actually started Beaver Cloak and Suit. When did the Olds family stick their foot into it?
SARAH: That was way later, when your Grandpa decided, after I was married…
RUTH: He wanted to go to Palestine.
SARAH: He said, “My children are all taken care of, I want to go back to Palestine.”
RUTH: So he sold his interest to Grandma’s nephews. Actually, Alter Olds, Grandma’s brother, bought out my Grandpa Solomon. This is interesting.
SARAH: Because Lou Olds did the work. Lou didn’t have any money.
RUTH: Uncle Olds was the silent partner and Lou Olds took over Grandpa’s part of the work. He became, actually, the salesman, wasn’t he, at first?
SARAH: Well, he was in the factory, too--Lou was in the factory.
RUTH: Production.
SARAH: Learned to cut and do everything.
RUTH: Right, now this was the forerunner of a garment industry in Portland.
SARAH: In Portland.
RUTH: That flourished for many years. Actually New York and Portland were the garment centers in the United States and from Beaver Cloak and Suit, which my father and grandfather started, then other manufacturers came into the picture, and I remember, when I was out of high school there must have been six or eight coat manufacturers, ladies’ coat manufacturers, then White Stag came into the picture, Jantzen came in, the Northwest was a very big garment industry until Los Angeles started to grow, and bit by bit, the competition became very great and Portland dwindled and Los Angeles grew. So the competition between New York and Los Angeles—
SARAH: And another thing, Max decided to move. Max, after he was married, and they decided finally to move back to California. They wanted to—
RUTH: Oh, I’d forgotten about that. So that’s when Max left.
SARAH: Because I don’t think Max got along—He didn’t get along with the Oldses too well—with Lou—
RUTH: Neither did my father, actually. But we’re trying to trace our family. So, Uncle Max was in the business until the Olds came in, and then after a while, then he decided—
SARAH: He sold his shares to the Olds. The Oldses took over.
RUTH: They came in legitimately.
ARNOLD: …Name…
SARAH: That’s when we changed our name. We kept the Simiatitsky the whole time until we went into the business, and Max said, “It’s so difficult for people to...”
RUTH: Know how to spell.
SARAH: Know how to spell it. He said, “Why can’t we cut off--Why can’t we just keep the ‘SIM,’ the first part, and make it Sims?” and they did it legally, they went to an attorney and had the family name legally changed.
RUTH: Now to me, I think it’s the nicest shortening of the Simiatitsky name, because it brings in--Now I remember, very well, a Rabbi who was here from England, to live with his daughter who was married to a rabbi’s son,--I used to meet him at the synagogue, a very old man, Rabbi Klangman’s daughter-in-law[‘s father]. Her father was big rabbi in London, and he used to come over here, and we were talking, and he said, “Where did your family come from?” and I said from Russia, and I didn’t know what city, and he said, “What was your grandfather’s name?” and I said “Simiatitsky,” and he said, “That was a very famous name in a part of Russia,” and he said, “It’s in the history books, if you will look, you will see that name.” And another thing, is too, that people here in Portland knew--I’m just amazed, the different places that I went to, that know my grandfather—
SARAH: Your great-grandfather—
RUTH: Dovid Hirsch. And I must record this on tape.
SARAH: …knew him--the Olshins, and oh, that Mr. Green--Mr. Greenstein—
RUTH: Right.
SARAH: And a number of people that came--they knew--they said, “Oh, for they were very prominent people.”
RUTH: Now I have to mention in this tape for everybody to hear from our family in New Jersey, because in the Robbison Jewish Old People’s Home here in Portland, there is a woman named Esther Popik. About four or five years ago, she came up to me, she always says, “Hey, Redhead, hey, Redhead,” I used to visit there often. And she says, “Redhead, I knew your grandfather, Dovid Hersh.” And I looked at her, and I said, “You’re mistaken, My grandfather is Solomon Sims, Schlaime.” And she says, “Nope, it was Dovid Hirsch.” I said, “You must be mistaken, it can’t be, my [great-]grandfather’s been dead for so many years.” She says, “Lookit, I came from Orla, and I was a little girl, I was six years old, and I had the hiccups so bad, and for days, and they wouldn’t stop. And she said---Didn’t I ever tell you this?
SARAH: No—
RUTH: Oh my gosh! You have to go talk to her because she’s still alive.
SARAH: I know, I’ve seen her, I go there once in a while and visit people.
RUTH: She said, “My mother took me to see Dovid Hersh because he was the town doctor and he did something for me and he got rid of my hiccups. I remember them--they were small people. I remember your grandmother with a babutchka on, she was a little small woman.” And she went on to tell me about Orla and Dovid Hersch. Then to add to this interesting story, we had an Israeli couple come here for sabbatical, and I said, “Where are your parents from?” and the she said, “My mother came from Orla,” and I said, “My grandfather came from Orla,” and I told her about Esther Popik at the Robeson Home. She said, “I’ve got to meet her. We go to the Robison Home, and talked, and my Israeli acquaintance was related to Esther Popik. And they had relatives--this one was the baker, and this one was the tailor, and they were related.
SARAH: It’s such a small world sometimes.
RUTH: But Orla of all things. So, she didn’t remember Dovid Hersh particularly, her mother came from Israel and visited here a while and we were talking about--I don’t believe that she remembered Dovid Hersch. But Esther Popik, who is still alive, remembers him, which is quite something.
SARAH: She must be in her nineties, she’s way up in years.
RUTH: And she’s still alert, alert as can be.
SARAH: She told me a long time ago, when your mother was at the Home, once in a while, she told me that she came from the same town and she knew my grandfather.
RUTH: Right, and…
SARAH<>: She told me that many years ago.
RUTH: It’s just an amazing thing.
[Break]
RUTH: Now, I want to go through a few dates with Auntie Sarah. November 20, 1972, my mother died. When did Uncle Max…?
SARAH: You want your father’s date?
RUTH: This lineage. When Max died.
SARAH: November 25, 1957.
RUTH: Uncle Max died. These are the ones that—
SARAH: They’re all in November. Your father Jacob Krasell, November 27.
RUTH: The yahrtzeits are within days apart. Anyway, one of the things I want to talk about is the skills of Grandpa. Because he was—
SARAH: Oh—
RUTH: Besides being a scholar, which he certainly was, he had--his hands were golden. I mean, my family were artistic, some of us have the skills of my father’s side, but Grandpa was such a—
SARAH: Well, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. Anything. He just--he could--We bought our home in Portland. When we lived in a rented place at first, then we bought a house. He remodeled and did--and made arches, did work that--It’s just unbelievable! He painted and papered, and took out sliding doors, and made arches and…there wasn’t anything the man couldn’t do. He could sew--like when we had the men’s clothing—
RUTH: Did alterations—
SARAH: Did all the alterations--Did everything.
RUTH: Well, this is to me remarkable.
SARAH: One time, Mama and I went to Los Angeles to visit Max. They’d had their first child, and we wanted to see the baby, and when we came back, and my father had a complete dinner: he had roast chicken, he baked bread—a complete dinner waiting for us, I just couldn’t get over it. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. We had in our drug store, he built cabinets and made things for—
RUTH: For Jack’s drug store.
SARAH: For the drug store. That were there when we closed the drug store. I mean it was just amazing.
RUTH: He did everything.
SARAH: There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do.
RUTH: 1933--Now, see, wait a minute, when did he go? 1926, he went to Palestine.
SARAH: Let’s see, 1927, I think, cause Jean was a year and a half old. Jean was born in ‘26 and she was a year and a half old.
RUTH: OK, so 1927 they went to Palestine, he bought the house and it was a small apartment, it had about six—
SARAH: What it had was six apartments, so he made, out of one apartment downstairs he made a shop.
RUTH: But in 1933 it was still an apartment. When I went back he came to the United States—
SARAH: He came back, Jean was about five years old.
RUTH: They stayed a few years, then.
SARAH: Yes, they stayed a few years.
RUTH: Because their house, their apartment was rented and they came here.
SARAH: They came, well, Mother came first, for two years, then Dad came, he was here a year. They stayed with me.
RUTH: They went to Palestine in about… 1927. It was under the British Mandate.
SARAH: Under Britain. He lived to see the new state in ’48.
RUTH: That I remember, I was always so thankful that he got to see that.
SARAH: He passed away in 1951.
RUTH: So he went under the British mandate, bought the apartment house, then came back to the United States and spent a few years here.
SARAH: They were there—Jean was a year and a half, they were there about four years before they came back to visit, they thought they’d come back and see the grandchildren and see everybody.
ARNOLD: He did a lot of traveling…
SARAH:Oh, he traveled! Every time they told him someplace was good, he was off there.
RUTH: In 1933, he took me with him, and the reason was he took me really because Grandpa (my father, my kids called him Grandpa), my father was an ardent Zionist and he intended to immigrate to Israel about a year later. But this was right at the tail end of the Depression, or still in the middle of it, and he couldn’t get enough money, so, and I got very homesick, and so rather than wait, anticipating they would come, I know Uncle Max loaned them the money, loaned Grandpa the money for my ticket, because I never heard the end of that one from Uncle Max forever and ever. I don’t think anybody ever paid him back, I almost wanted to pay him back once to keep him quiet! So in 1933, when I was there, the year that I spent there when we got there the apartment was vacant, and there was just an open porch and he was starting to build a bedroom already, and I saw his skill. He took the bathroom and he tiled it. He tiled—we had a little kitchen, which was the cooking room, and then the dining room, where we ate, where the refrigerator was—icebox, there wasn’t a refrigerator—but that was in a separate room, so he tiled the whole kitchen and the whole bathroom, and the porch, we had already begun to tile it in and was going to put windows in. He was going to make a room for Grandpa, for my father, when he came, so there would be room for the family to live, and this was the time when he – he was so good, he was always so good. SARAH: He was always giving everything away, he was so busy taking care of so many people.
RUTH: Oh, unbelievable.
SARAH: Unbelievable. Twenty-five rabbis, he used to find bread for them.
RUTH: Oh, gosh.
SARAH: When I got there, it was terrible, I had quite a job to get everything straightened out.
RUTH: It was ridiculous. There wasn’t a night, I have to think, thank g-d somebody did it. This was 1933, when Hitler was coming into power, and young German boys with their knapsacks on their back, and they would be walking up and down the streets with no place to go, so he’d approach them, he’d say, “Where’re you going to sleep tonight?” and they’d say, “Well, we don’t know.” He’d say, “Come on to my house.” Sometimes we had two or three boys sleeping on this porch, in sleeping bags. He took care of
ARNOLD: It rubbed off on her, she does the same thing!
SARAH: They went with a little money, you know...
RUTH: Right.
SARAH: …and some property, you know, but when Mama saw they were down to about $10,000, she made him… You know, was trying to get him to cut down on giving, giving everything.
RUTH: It was just terrible.
SARAH: He would bring families together.
RUTH: Sarah, I remember every night we’d sit together at dinner time, there’d be people outside in a line waiting to come and borrow or beg money. The thing was, when he’d loan it to them, he never got a note, he never got a record, and people didn’t pay him back, and this was a sad thing.
SARAH: That was a sad thing, because he could have had perpetual helping?
RUTH: If they had…
SARAH: In fact, a relative, a Prijanski, I can’t think of his first name, he was living there, he had a small bank and he liked that idea, and he thought he would get together with my father and make a perpetual aid, Jewish aid, and maybe charge a one percent, or a little something to kind of… or maybe not, but they had to sign notes, they ha to pay, because Dad was running it without…
RUTH: This was so sad.
SARAH: So he tried, but he couldn’t –Because Dad was just rabid, he just had to keep giving.
RUTH: And the funny thing is, my father was so much like him. He could have been his son instead of his son-in-law. And of course, I think our whole family has been a giving family.
SARAH: Very.
RUTH: Because I see—I see the family in New York and in New Jersey. Every time I’ve ever been there, everyone there has been so good to us. It’s just a family trait that is wonderful. [Pause in the tape.]
SARAH: The thing is, Ruthie’s planning on leaving, and I think everybody ought to know what a wonderful person Ruth is, because Portland’s going to miss her. Arnold and Ruth both have done so much for the synagogue, for every Jewish organization in town. For people, they have helped so many people. It’s just unbelievable the things they have done. Helped individuals—whether Jewish or Gentile. Some of them have been Gentiles. But the things that Ruthie has done. Very rare—it’s very rare that people do things of the caliber she has done.
RUTH: Thank you.
SARAH: Helped elderly, helped young, so many and I think a lot of that, I feel, was inherited from Grandpa Sims.
RUTH: Oh, without a doubt, as long as I live. I will never forget the goodness that just radiated from him. Because I remember here… The Robbison Jewish Home, Mrs. Robbison was one of Grandpa’s [Schlaime’s] old friends and I remember that…used to send letters, money to Palestine for her to the Diskin [Orphans’] Home or something, and oh, Grandpa. We didn’t know all the things Grandpa was doing here in Portland.
SARAH: They had this, when they decided to go, the whole city of Portland, the commission, and the synagogues got together and they had the most beautiful testimonial dinner.
RUTH: Yes, I remember.
SARAH: They just gave him so much coved [Hebrew for honor, respect], I guess you’d call it.
RUTH: I remember talking to Rabbi Fain’s son, David, when they were here years ago, he said, “You’re Schlaime Sim’s granddaughter,” He was so impressed. Oh, he said, that man did so much in the community.
SARAH: And after all these years, people still talk.
RUTH: The older people, right.
SARAH: Yes, and there are younger people who remember Max, too, he was an awfully good person, and they even remember Max.
ARNOLD: In German, one says…
RUTH and SARAH: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
SARAH: Not everybody inherited quite the traits that Ruthie…
ARNOLD: …beautiful plaque in the synagogue…
SARAH: A plaque?
RUTH: Oh, yes, Arnold and I—They had the annual meeting and we were given the President’s award for outstanding volunteer work in the synagogue.
SARAH: Arnold and you both have—Arnold has built so many things in the synagogue, the bimah, where the Rabbi and the Cantor stand, they honored Ruth one night, and it was the most beautiful, beautiful evening I think they—I’d never seen them honor two people like they honored—
RUTH: It was beautiful.
SARAH: They had an Oneg Shabbat afterward. I’m just so proud of them, I’ve always felt that way—they’re my favorites.
RUTH: Thank you. Hey! This is the tough part of leaving Portland. Believe me, leaving you here, Auntie Sarah, I just hope you’ll come down and visit us. Convince her that she’ll be well enough to travel. We’re planning on it. We’re not taking no for an answer!
ARNOLD: (can’t distinguish what he says)
SARAH: No, that’s no problem, it’s the going.
RUTH: I’m just trying to think of reminiscing. Some of the things, Sarah, when you went to Palestine when Grandma died.
SARAH: Oh…
RUTH: Talk about some of the family things, that happened, because they’re all gone now, Auntie Lena, and all those…
SARAH: Oh yes, everybody was so wonderful to me. My mother passed away February 4, 1937, and Dad wrote that somebody from the family has to come, he’d got himself in quite a pickle with all the notes that he’d signed, and everything else, well, my brother said he couldn’t go, and my sister said, oh, well, she wouldn’t know how to start in to do things, and I said, well, I guess I’m the only one left, I don’t know much, but my dad needs help, and I’m going, and if I didn’t have such wonderful, wonderful feelings for the family---Lena met me at the train when I got there. It was all train and boats and ships and what-not when I went. RUTH: And you left three children here with a maid, that summer…
SARAH: And Ruthie, Ruthie stayed the summer, so I had confidence of Ruthie being there in the house, she was going to high school but she was sleeping overnight and helping here. It—I was gone, I thought I would only be gone a month and I was gone four and a half months.
RUTH: I forgot it was that long.
SARAH: Oh, it was awful. It took me months to get things straightened out there. I had to have my visa lengthened, but anyway, the family met me, when I got there, and Dr. Dubovsky. I wanted to turn around and go home, I said, Oh, the ocean: I said, Oh, I just can’t go ahead, I’ve got to go home! And he gave me a sedative, and he said when you get to the boat, you’re going to be fine, you’ll have mail from the family and you’ll be OK, and he said, “You’ve got to go, your Dad needs you, “ and I said, Oh, all right. I was just-- So we called home, and everything was going along all right. So the next day, the Puttermans, and my Aunt Lena and Aunt Bessie, and I think—
RUTH: There were several.
SARAH: I set sail on the Normandy, I took the first ship that was sailing, June 2, 1937—
RUTH: That beautiful ship.
SARAH: Oh! I was in the middle class, tourist, I guess they call it, and we made a mistake. I walked into the first class, and I stood there with my mouth open. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and anyway, I finally got down to where I belonged, but it was beautiful down there too, I just couldn’t get over it. I got along fine, then when I got to, let me see, France, Paris, I had to stay over a couple of days, they had booked me wrong from Portland. There were three of us, someone from Boston, and an Anna Lamport from New York. We had to have our whole rest of the trip rerouted, so I got to see—We had to go through Switzerland, to Italy, so it gave me a chance to see more….
RUTH: Then you took another ship, from Marseille, didn’t you?
SARAH: I was supposed—
RUTH: From Italy.
SARAH: From Brundisi. And I got there the same time that I was supposed to, because I went so much by train. Then, coming back, the family in New York. Oh! I only stayed five days, I believe. They wanted me to stay longer, but everyone was so kind. Dr. Linn spent one day with me, took me to Jones Beach, showed me around, and Dr. Dubovsky took me to the Museum of Natural History and several places, and Mae Warpick took me to the Planetarium, and there were a lot of people, took me to the RCA Building, went through there, and Oh! I just got to see quite a bit, and oh, they were very unhappy with me because I didn’t want to stay any longer, I said, I’ve got to go home. I want to see my children and my husband and everybody, and so they had a big party for me at the Russian Kretchma, and I still have the menu where everybody signed and wrote little things on it and every once in a while I look at that. I just—I – It was wonderful. And I went.. They all took me to the train and I had packages and gifts, they were just piled high and it was… I just couldn’t get over how wonderful everybody was.
RUTH: I felt that same way in 1933 and ’34. In ’33 when I went to Palestine, I remember staying in Sheepshead Bay—what’s that? It’s Manhattan Beach, isn’t it? Where the Puttermans and the Warpicks live?
SARAH: I stayed with them too. I spent one night here, one night there, I stayed at Aunt Sylvia [Linn]’s and stayed with the Warpicks, and I remember we’d take the subway…
RUTH: Was it the Puttermans or was it the Warpicks who had a woman named Clara living with them? Do you remember? Clara?
SARAH: No…
RUTH: I remember…
SARAH: Course I didn’t stay with anyone too much…
RUTH: Maybe I’m wrong…
SARAH: …too long because…
RUTH: Maybe not. Maybe I’m getting them mixed up with the Berger family. My father’s relatives had a woman, Clara. I remember the Puttermans, when I came back, they took me to Coney Island, the Puttermans, the girls…no, when I went—
SARAH: They took me to Coney Island too.
SARAH: But they were just, everybody—
RUTH: Everyone in the family was absolutely great. We have a wonderful family. I’m so glad that through the years, at least in 1933 and 1934, when I went to Palestine, and I found out there was something besides Portland, I had family besides what I had in Portland.
SARAH: I had always hoped to make some trips, maybe go to Israel again, and get back East, but it’s just unfortunate, the war came. I had brought back a virus or something I picked up, it could have been anywhere, Italy, or Israel, it could have been anywhere, I was eating food and water, all through the places…
RUTH: And you haven’t been the same since, unfortunately.
SARAH: No, I haven’t been the same since. I was all right for about ten years, the war, I worked awfully hard, this virus thing took over. But I’m doing fine, I have to stay within the limits of what I can do. I had to give up a lot of things, I used to golf, and bowl, and—and do all kinds of things; of course, I’ll be 77 in December, and most people say, “I can’t believe, you’re not that old.”
RUTH: She’s sharp as a tack.
SARAH: My niece Norma Rose Sims, Norma Rose Simonsen, calls me her “ageless aunt.”
RUTH: So very true. So, let’s go into your children. You have two children.
SARAH: I have Jean and and Donald.
RUTH: Jean has—
SARAH: Two children, a boy and a girl, Bob—Robert—and Susan. Susan’s Jewish name is Shulamit, which is the female of Schlaime.
RUTH: Oh, I didn’t realize that.
SARAH: Her name—Schlaime—means “peace,” peace and blessing.
RUTH: Shalom…
SARAH: Shulamit Bracha—her middle name is Barbara—Bracha.
RUTH: Blessing.
SARAH: And Bob—Robert—is after---
RUTH: How old is Bobby now?
SARAH: He was 31, June 12, my grandson. He’s married, Robert, both kids are married, but no great-grandchildren.
RUTH: No great-grandchildren yet.
SARAH: Don was married, he’s divorced twice, and he’s a bachelor, my son, so…
RUTH: And David has three children and two are married, one’s living in Florida.
SARAH: They have one grandchild. Yes, their oldest daughter is living in St. Peterburg, Florida, and she has one child.
RUTH: And Denise just married a man who had children from a former marriage. And she’s living in California, Riverside, isn’t it?
[Arnold says something.]
RUTH: Huntington Park.
SARAH: She’s living in Huntington Park. I think she’s working in Riverside, her place of—
RUTH: Right now she’s on a temporary vacation because of the economy. She volunteered to take off from work rather than to..
SARAH: She offered, but they kept her. They needed her. The head of the department—Oh, she loved working.
RUTH: Oh, they kept her? I didn’t realize it.
SARAH: Yes, she’s an exceptionally smart businesswoman. She’s the head of the department. She told them, after all, she’s married, and she could get along without, if there’s someone that neededmore—but they needed her. They couldn’t do without her, she’s working.
RUTH: That’s nice. The grandchildren. Let’s see, the children and grandchildren of Solomon Sims, Schlaime, and then me, of course, I’m Ruth, I have my sister Elsie who’s two years older, my bother Harold, who’s two years younger, and my sister norma, who died, unfortunately.
SARAH: Yes, she was three years younger than—
RUTH: Younger than Harold. Now Arnold and I are going to be moving down to Laguna Hills, and look forward to seeing Norma’s children, they live nearby, and my sister Elsie and Harold are living in the Los Angeles area.
SARAH: Well, she’s going back! She was born down there!
RUTH: Yes, I was born in Los Angeles, but came here when I was less than a year old. So that’s it for now, and if we think of something, we’ll add it on pretty soon.
[Break in the tape]
RUTH: I am sitting here in the Robbison Home, sitting here with Mrs. Esther Popik, and I decided that instead of just talking about her knowing my gret-grandmother and great-grandfather, that I would come here and let her tell it in the tape recording. Esther, how old are you now? Do you remember? You don’t know—
ESTHER: I was a little girl, and I was—I got sick. I got the hiccups. My mother could not afford to get a doctor. So her [Ruth’s] [great-]grandfather was like a doctor. And he came to the house, he did something—in—religious, and it went away. That’s all I can remember.
RUTH: You mentioned that—
ESTHER: His name was Dovid Hersh.
RUTH: Right,
ESTHER: And the grandmother wore a white silk handkerchief. She was a small lady. That’s all I can remember.
RUTH: Now, tell me, what was your maiden name, so in case anybody in the family—
ESTHER: OLSHENITSKY
RUTH: And you came from Orla.
ESTHER: I came from Orla.
RUTH: How old were you when you came to the United States?
ESTHER: I don’t believe I remember.
RUTH: You don’t remember, you were,
ESTHER: My mother brought five children.
RUTH: Uh, huh,
ESTHER: And she bought us all to Portland.
RUTH: And you were a little girl, still.
ESTHER: Sure, we were all two years apart.
RUTH: But this is amazing that you can remember—
ESTHER: Yes, I remember. I can picture him, how he was standing there. He was a little skinny man.
RUTH: Wonderful. I know the family in New York are going to be happy to have this information. Thanks a million!

Back to Home.  Back to Sarah Sims.  Back to Esther Sims.