The Columbus Jewish Historical Society

Interviewer:  This interview for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society is being recorded on January 5^th, 2022, as part of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society’s Oral History Project.  The interview is being recorded at (Esther’s home) in Columbus, Ohio. My name is Marvin Vinar and I am interviewing Esther Schwartz.

Interviewer:  What is your full name?

Esther:  Esther Victoria Goldish Schwartz.

Interviewer:  And do you have a Jewish name?

Esther:  Esther Vichna.  Esther Vichna.

Interviewer:  Esther Vichna bas…

Esther:  Goldish Schwartz.

Esther:   I’m named for two grandmothers…

Interviewer:  Okay.

Esther:   Esther Goldish, Esther Yavetz Goldish, and Vichna Lebow, Vichna Denilowitz Lebow. They were both, they’re both from Riga, Riga, Latvia.

Interviewer:  Wow. How do you spell that…

Esther:  Vichna?

Interviewer:  No, Denilowitz..

Esther:  Esther Vichna Lebow.

 Interviewer:  That’s spelled?

Esther:   L-e-b-o-w.

Interviewer:  Okay, and the other grandmother…

Esther:  …was Esther Yavetz Goldish. Y-a-v-e t-z.  That was her maiden name. Yavetz.  I have pictures of them.

Interviewer:  How far back can you trace your family?

Esther:   I didn’t hear?

Interviewer:  How far back can you trace your family?

Esther:  Oh.  Not very far. My, Lebows, I have a history of them back to 1780 or something.  The first one’s name was Hirsch, that is traceable, H-i-r-s-c-h. Hirsch Lebowitz and he goes back to like 1780. A cousin of mine in Riga, Latvia, is a genealogist.  His name is Alexander Feigmanis.

Interviewer:  How do you spell that?

Esther:  Oh, Alexander…

Interviewer:  No, the Feigmanis.

Esther:  Feigmanis, F-e-i-g-m-a-n-i-s.  He is a professional genealogist.  I have a paper with a picture of the family tree that he made, but anyway, he traced our family back to, I think, 1780, or something, Lebowitz.

Interviewer:  And he…

Esther:  They came originally from Metz, M-e-t-z, France and they followed their rebbe, whoever their rebbe was, I assume it was a Chasidishe rebbe, from Metz, France.

Interviewer:  And this cousin, he lives in Riga now, the cousin that you mentioned, he still lives there?

Esther:  Yes.  Lebowitz.

Interviewer:  Okay, very good. Do you know any legends or stories of the past that were told to you or…

Esther:  No.

Interviewer:  …or been retold?  Nothing?

 Esther:  No. My parents, neither one of them spoke about their childhood much or their history or anything.  They were all, I think, personally, they were so thrilled to live in America that they wanted to forget the past. I do know that my mother was scared to death of dogs. She’d cross the street if she saw one two blocks away and my theory is, that it was an inheritance in the blood of the Europeans because she told me once that if they saw a policeman, they ran into the house.  They’d leave the street playing and run in the house if they saw a policeman. They came on horseback, the Cossacks, in Russia, and they came on horseback with a dog and a stick and I think it’s built into the system of those people to be scared of dogs, because of that.  I don’t know that I’m right, it’s just that it seems logical to me.  We were always scared to death of dogs and we’d cross the street if we saw one on the street two blocks away, we’d cross the street, so, when I was, you know, growing up, I figured out that that’s part of our inheritance to be afraid of dogs and a lot of Jewish people don’t have dogs or wouldn’t have dogs.  They do today because America’s different, but dogs is not on our list of desirables.  It’s not high on our list.

Interviewer:  What was your mother’s name and your father’s full names?

 Esther:  Do I know them?

Interviewer:  The full names of your…

Esther:  Yeah. My father was Yehuda Leib, Yehuda Leibi.  Louis was his English name. Goldish – G-o-l-d-i-s-h and he was born in 1878, I think, in Vilna, let’s see, Latvia, no, Vilna, Lithuania.

Interviewer:  And your mother’s name?

Esther:  My mother’s name was Shayna Lebow and she was born in Riga, Latvia.

Interviewer:  And when was she born about?

Esther:  Well, 18…1895, maybe, ‘cause when they came to America in 1902, she was eight years old, 1903, I don’t know. I’ve heard two years.  She was eight when she immigrated here with her father who was a rabbi.  His name was Isaac Lebow and he was a twin and I don’t know anything about the twin. I do know a little story.  I didn’t hear it from my mother but I heard it from another relative who was a survivor, that the Lebows owned a store, a very beautiful store on, I forget the name of the street, in Riga, and the Nazis came at World War II and went in to the store and said, “We want you to make binoculars for us and cameras,” because that’s what they did in the store.  They made things, and they said, the Lebows said, “No, we won’t do that for Nazis” and they shot ‘em all right on the spot. Yeah, so, but they didn’t know that way in the back room was a cousin who was working making binoculars or something, a telescope or something.  He was quietly working in the back doing his thing.  They didn’t know he was there, so he didn’t get shot with the rest of them.  Abraham, and I don’t remember who all it was.  Anyway, he survived the War and came to, his brother brought him to America, to Wheeling West Virginia and he told terrible stories. Anyway, but all my relatives were shot by the Nazis.  Those are the only ones that I know of ‘cause we didn’t live in Germany, but the Germans came into Russia and shot them, so,  I lost a lot of great-aunts and uncles.

Interviewer:  Where did your mother come into the country?  What port of entry?

Esther:  You know what?  I don’t know. I don’t know that she knows.  She never talked about it.  I just know that she loved this country so much and she was so thrilled to be here and she had the best attitude of anybody I’ve ever known.  She got up every day, my mom, and was grateful for the day and for what Hashem had given her and where he put her and how she lived.  She was just eternally grateful for every day.

Interviewer:  How ’bout your father?  When did he come?

Esther:  When did he come? You know what?  I don’t know.  He came.  He was bar mitzvah on the boat and if he was born in 1878, that must have been 1891, so that must be when he came and she came in 1903, or 2 or 3.  I’ve heard both.

Interviewer:  Do you know where he came in?

Esther:  No.  I don’t know where either port was. I imagine now that Ellis Island has their records online and open, I could probably find out but I don’t know.  I’ve never tired and I don’t know what port.  It could be Philadelphia, could be Baltimore, could be New York, could be Galveston.  One of her brothers lived in Galveston so, maybe that was it.  I don’t know.

Interviewer:  So, at what age did they meet and how, your parents, how did they meet?

Esther:  How did her brothers…?

Interviewer:   No, your parents, how did they meet?

Esther:  Meet? Oh, my mother had a brother that was in the oil business, oil and pipe, and she was his secretary and she lived with him in Charleston, West Virginia, and one of the people he dealt with was my father who was sixteen years older than she was, and through their correspondence, they got friendly, and eventually got married.  I happen to have some of the letters.

Interviewer:  So, your mother lived in West Virginia and your dad live…

Esther:  Dad lived, well, he lived in Marietta.  He lived in Wynona, Minnesota.  He lived in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He sold Florsheim Shoes at one time.  He sold pots and pans to places I wouldn’t even tell you. He didn’t tell me but I heard about it, and they met through her brother that she lived with who was with the oil and pipe, and my dad delved in that, so, as I said, she was his secretary so she’d be writing to Mr. Goldish and he’d write back and then they maybe phoned when phones became opulent.  I’m not exactly sure but he robbed the cradle, ‘cause he was sixteen years older.

Interviewer:  But you said she worked for someone that worked in oil and pipe but your father, he did all kinds of things but they met through correspondence.  How did that work?

Esther:  Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt you but by the time she met him he was in the oil and wells supply business so that’s how she happened to be writing him because her brother that she lived with in Charleston, was in the oil. He was pretty big in the oil in Tulsa, but he lived in Charleston first and then finally he moved to Tulsa, but my mom had gotten married to my dad.  He moved to Marietta with his brother.  Why?  I don’t know. My kids have asked, “Why did Grandpa go to Marietta?’’  I have no idea. It was all from people there.  They had 50 families at one time, and Dad moved there in, I guess in about 19.. I’d say between 1910 and 15 maybe?   I don’t know if he lived there or what., but I remember they, everyone knew him in Marietta and when he started going with my mother, he used to call her and they had only a couple phone operators in Marietta and one of them was named, I think her name was Esther, and he’d lift up the phone and the operator would say, “Uh, number, please,” and he’d say to her, “Get me my sweetheart,” ‘cause he knew her and she knew to get Charleston, West Virginia, to my uncle’s residence where Mom lived and kept house for him and was his secretary, and I once wrote a couple stories about that to the [main ?] column in the New York Herald Tribune about people.  His name, I had it when I started and it’s escaped me.  He published it in the paper which I have somewhere, some stories.  He thought it was sweet story.  It was longer than that, so he wrote it up and published it on the, it was on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune or something on the left column.

Interviewer:  What year were they married?

Esther:  They were married on 1917, 1917, November 20.

Interviewer:  At what city?

Esther:  In Marietta.

Interviewer:   In Marietta.

Esther:  And they had just built a brand-new armory there and it was the first occasion they had in that brand new armory. I have a couple pictures of it and….

Interviewer:  Where were they married, it was in a synagogue or in…?

Esther:  No, In this armory.

Interviewer:  In the armory.

Esther:  Yes.  They made a chuppa and everything.  My father’s brother’s wife, a lovely person, arranged everything and that was a brand-new large building.  It was a very big wedding and the write- up says, “in the most beautiful event of the season and the biggest wedding ever seen in Marietta,” or something like that. I can give you copies and it was held in this brand-new armory, and I have two, two pictures: one of the wedding gifts and one of the March, the Grand March that they had in this armory and it’s still there, that armory.

Interviewer:  Do you have brothers or sisters?

Esther:  I had, I’ve had four brothers. I’ve had two who survived and they’re both gone now unfortunately.  Neither one of them reached ninety.

Interviewer:  When you say you had two who survived, how do you mean?

Esther:  Well, I meant, ‘cause my mother, they lost two children in one year.  In 1933 they lost a baby the day of the bris, and in November, they lost a fourteen-year-old, all of a sudden to a cerebral hemorrhage, but I did have four brothers though but I had two growing up.

Interviewer:  No sisters?

Esther:  One who lived in Tulsa and the other lived in California, my brother, Elihu, and unusual name, but my mother had a brother named Elihu.

 Interviewer:  Say that again?

 Esther:  Elihu, E-l-i-h-u.  It’s one of the prophets I think, like Eliyahu, Hanavi?  It’s the Eliyahu part – Elihu, and he was three years older than I was, and he was a genius.  He was a smart, he was so smart.

Interviewer:  What did he do?

Esther:  Well, one thing he did, three years of college, he got through in three years and four years at California Institute of Technology.  He got through in seven years, the whole Ph.D., which is pretty rare.  He was the head of chemistry at Union Oil.  Ever hear of Union Oil? At one time it was Pure Oil.  Did you ever hear of Pure Oil? You remember they had a station. I remember they had a station up at Kellner and Broad, ‘cause when my brother would come, he took pictures of it, ‘cause it was an old antique, their logo and the sign was still up at Kellner and Broad and he’d take pictures, but that’s what he did.  He was Head Chemist for Union Oil in Los Angeles.

Interviewer:  How about your other brother?

Esther:  And my brother Sam lived in Tulsa Oklahoma, and he worked for my uncle.  Oh, first he went and he worked for McDonnell Douglas Airplanes and I have pictures of him with some of the big planes, and then after the War, I guess it was, he went to work for my Uncle Simon who was in the oil business and I don’t know, he used to do oil deals or something.  I’m not sure, and before he moved to Tulsa, he worked in Louisville, Kentucky, for the Ken-Rad Plant which was tubes for radios and different things.  Ken-rad, K-e-n – R-a-d,  and then he went to Tulsa, worked for my uncle and he met my sister-in-law Shirley Aaronson,  A-a-r-o-n-s-o-n, and they got married and had five kids, I think it was, yeah, and one lives in Israel, Ronnie, and the boys, one lives in Texas and one lives in New Jersey, or Brooklyn, now Brooklyn, and one lives in – that’s Mesch, [sp?] you probably met Mesch, no? and he’s a comedian, and David lives in Texas and Ronnie lives in, the girl lives in Israel  and there’s one other, who is it? Oh, Danny, my nephew Dan Goldish.  He lives in Boston. Yeah, so my brother in Tulsa left [?] and my brother in California, left [?] and he’s gone, he’s wife’s gone, and they have two kids and you know one of them – Dr. Matt Goldish is one of them, and he has a sister Judy who works for Boeing Aircraft and still working there, and so, and then my brother from Tulsa, his kids are here and there, like I said – Mesch, David, Ronnie, Danny who worked for Raytheon and then he worked for an Israeli company who went big-time and he had gotten stock,  paid in stock and very little money and he made a lot of money when that company hit it big, an Israeli company, so, he lives up in Boston.

Interviewer:  So, your other brother that you spoke about from Tulsa, did he, where did he, did he go to college also?

Esther:  Yes, he went to Carnegie Tech, in Pittsburgh, and he was an engineer.

Interviewer:  An engineer.

Esther:  Mechanical Engineer, like Ashi, Asher, my grandson Asher.

Interviewer:  Ok, let’s talk about you a little bit.

Esther:  Well.

Interviewer:  So, okay, now where were you born?

Esther:  I was born in Marietta, Ohio, on top of a big hill, at the Marietta Memorial Hospital, on October 20^th, 1931.  I remember that day very well. I’m here!

Interviewer:  Marietta.  What kind of a community was that in terms of Jewish community?

Esther:  Well, I’m not supposed to know you but you may know Marietta.  It was a fabulous community and I always say, “I wouldn’t trade growing up there for anybody’s anywhere.”  I don’t go New York, Beverly Hills, Lakewood, or anything, it was bucolic.  It was really the most wonderful place to grow up and I get an agreement from that from my friend Leela Gay Baron Jakobi who now lives in Los Angeles.  We talk about Marietta all the time.  At the time, it was during World War II and I don’t know.  I can’t begin to tell you all the stuff but if you ever have a day or two to spare, I could give you a lot of stories, but she was born a year ahead of me and we grew up there.  Marietta was just like one big family.  We could walk anywhere at any time of the day or night.  There was nothing to worry, the time was great.  It was a war, yes, but people were honest.  I don’t even think there was a key to our house. We never, our door was never locked.  In fact, it was open a lot.  I remember a big flood but a row boat came in.  We opened the French doors.  You’ve seen our house, opened the French front doors and a rowboat came in, in the flood that was in our first floor and plucked us off the steps to the second floor that were in the front, and it just, I’ve got, I could write an encyclopedia of memories of just the floods let alone all the rest of the good stuff.  It was a great time.  Yes, it was war time but people were nice and everybody knew us.  I could go downtown and I could go in any store downtown and get anything I wanted for myself or my mom or something and everybody knew me and knew my mom and knew my dad, knew my brothers, and you’d charge something.  You didn’t have a card.  You just said, “Put it on Mrs. Goldish’s account,” and nobody questioned it, and the stores and the storekeepers were all high-quality people.  They were so nice and so honest and so obliging in every way.  It was just a different time and a different place.

Interviewer:  What was the population of Marietta about?

Esther:  It was about the same as it is now, I think about 14,000 and there were before I came along, there were about 50, about 50Jewish families, I understand, during the Twenties, and by the time I came and grew up, I’d say it was 20 to 25, and by the time I left, it was down to the Berens, the Goldishes, let’s see who else was there.  The Barons and the Goldishes were the last ones, but we had Muskats, we had Katzes, we had, oh, I got stories about everybody but I’m not telling them today.

Interviewer:  Was there a synagogue there?

Esther:  Yes. We had a synagogue, believe it or not, at 522 Fourth Street.

Interviewer:  What kind of synagogue was it?

Esther:  It was a house that had been converted and on the left was a big room with a sefer Torah and the seats, and if you walked down there was a room where the women sat, and there was a door between the two because this had been a house, and they cracked the door about, what would you say, eight, ten inches so the women could see and hear the services, but they couldn’t see the women.

Interviewer:  So, it was an Orthodox synagogue.

Esther:  Oh, yes. Yes.

Interviewer:  Did you have a full-time rabbi?

Esther:  Yes. We always had one.  I remember Rabbi Wine, was when I was little. Rabbi Dagowitz, Rabbi Wine, and Rabbi…who was the last rabbi?  Wise, Weiss, I think it was, but there was always a rabbi there, and I have my parents’ wedding picture and there were a while bunch of rabbis there including a cousin named Zelesnick.  He wore a big top hat.  I can show you the picture, a big silk opera hat, and he was an ancestor to David O. Selznick of the famous Gone With the Wind.  He’s on my family tree.  Yeah.  Zelesnick was the name.  He changed it to Selznick.

Interviewer:  So, were the Jews that lived there, were they Orthodox?

Esther:  All of them.

Interviewer:  Everybody was Orthodox.

Esther:  Everybody was Orthodox.

Interviewer:  What did you do in terms of getting kosher food and things like that?

Esther:  Well, we got it but before I discuss that I’m going to tell you a secret about Marietta Jewish population. Everyone who lived there was a Litvak.  If somebody came who was a Galiziener, they were very cold to them, and ran ‘em out on a rail.  No Galizieners, only Litvaks there.  Where did they get meat? Oh, Rabbi Baker, remember him from Columbus?  He came down, I think every other week, to shloch/shoch chickens or beef for them and so, they had the meat that way and everything else was made from scratch.

Interviewer:  So, you had a kosher butcher in town?

Esther:  Not a kosher butcher but there was someone who had a kosher area and took care of Rabbi Baker or whoever the rabbi was that prepared the meat, but my brother and I, in fact, the whole, we weren’t big meat eaters, and my brother and I hardly ate anything meat except a hot dog or, I don’t even remember eating a hamb… I didn’t like meat, I never liked meat and the reason I didn’t like meat is ‘cause when I was about four or five, I was eating a drumstick and there was a thread in it and I pulled it out and said to my mother, “Oo, what’s this?” and without thinking she said, “Oh. That’s nothing, it’s just a little vein.”  Well, even at five, I knew what a vein was. I put it down and I’ve never liked meat since. I’ve eaten meat but I haven’t had meat in twenty or thirty years maybe, but, I did eat meat later but only if it was ground like in stuffed cabbage or meatballs or something, and I haven’t had a piece of meat in the house, cooked, that I cooked for anybody or that I’ve eaten in decades. I’m all dairy all the time.  I run a diner so if you want diner food, you come here.  If you want a steak meal you’ll have to go somewhere else.

Interviewer:  What did you do about Passover food?

Esther:  Oh, we got, I still remember, we had a five-pound loaf of Philadelphia cream cheese and it came in a square wood box where the lid slid out, you know, had a place where the, it slid in and out, and we’d get a five-pound package.  I don’t know.  Oh, Cincinnati had a company called The Wise, W-i-s-e, that distributed kosher food and Passover food and they were related to the Muskat family in Marietta, and they had it all imported, so, Passover, I don’t remember any kind of problem.  Someone came up to Columbus and got the milk.  Oh.  No, that’s the best story.  I used to go with my father out to the farm to get the milk directly from the cow.  Yeah, my dad had special buckets that he kept in a special place and he had those milk jugs, you know, with those round lids.  You know, what a farmer’s milk jug looks like and he had those Passover milk jugs and pails kept in a special place and I used to go – I forgot about this – I used to go out to the farm with him and he’d give the farmer a bucket of water and soap and rags to wash his hands and then he’d watch the famer milk the cows and they’d put it in buckets and then into those tall milk cans and they’d fill two or three of those cans and they were heavy.  I don’t know how my dad carried ‘em and put ‘em in the trunk, and so, we’d spend the afternoon at the farm and then we’d go back to my house and my mother would have layers of cheesecloth and they’d start pouring.  My dad could lift those big milk cans and pour it through the cheesecloth into smaller cans and then they’d pour it through more cheesecloth into smaller and people came to my house and collected milk.  They’d bring their own bottles and jugs or cans or whatever.  I’m not sure.  As a child you just take everything for granted.  I just remember watching the process, but I always went with my dad to the farm because the farmer, when he’d be milking the cow, there were a lot of kitties around.  He’d sometimes divert the spray this way and there was always a cat with open mouth to catch it. It was amazing how good they were at that.

Interviewer:  How did you meet your husband?

Esther:  Oh, Dave? Well, when I got old enough to drive, I used to come up to Columbus, because Ida and Abe Friedman, Abe Friedman married Ida Cooler from Marietta.  That’s a story in itself, and they moved up on South Ohio Avenue, and she said, “Esther, come up to Columbus and go out with Abe’s nephew, Norman Douglass, with two “ss” on the end.  Do you know?  I don’t know, so, I was like eight, nineteen or twenty.  Anyway, I came up and I went out with Norman and it bombed, but I met a whole bunch of other guys, you know, and I’d come up every week and have dates, dates, dates all weekend and they used to have parties.  They used to have parties.  They used to have a mixed dance after Yom Kippur. I mean, a dance, with boys and girls!  You don’t do that anymore. Nope. No boys for you, but I used to come up all the time. I went out with Schottensteins.  I went out with, what was their other, I can’t remember ‘cause I’m trying too hard, but I went out with everybody. I went out with everyone here.  I’m trying to remember the name, a produce name from a produce company.  Anyway, every weekend I came up and stayed with Abe and Ida and went out and had dates Saturday nights and Sunday, and every time I’d come, we didn’t even know there was a Schwartz Bakery.  Some Marietta guy who ran a garment shop knew something about Schwartz Bakery and he opened a little store at our corner, Mr.  Katz and carried these, my mother came home one day with sweet rolls.  They were so good and she kept ordering more and more from this Marietta man who’d opened a little deli on our corner.  I can’t remember all the details about it, but anyway.  We found out it’s from a bakery in Columbus we’d never heard of, so when I was old enough to drive and have dates in Columbus, my mother’d say, “Go to that Schwartz Bakery and bring some of those good sweet rolls,” and lo and behold! They had rye bread and pumpernickel bread and sissel bread and all this stuff.   I used to pick it up and bring it home Sunday night and anyway, one thing led to another.  Every time I went in the bakery, the girls who worked there, Esther Bingham and Sophie Yohn, you didn’t know any of? Would go in the back and tell Dave, [in a whisper] “That girl from Marietta’s her.  Go out and wait on her,” and he did and that’s how we met.

Interviewer:  So, your husband is David Schwartz.

Esther:  David Schwartz, NMI – no middle initial.

Interviewer:  Okay, and did he own the bakery at that time?

Esther:  His parents,

Interviewer:  His parents owned the bakery.

 Esther:  William and Ruth. Her maiden name was Strauss and she was from Washington Square, New York, and he was from Mobile, Alabama, by way of Chicago.  I don’t know exactly how they met but the story about why they have a bakery in, why they moved to Columbus was that his grandfather was on his way from Mobile, Alabama to Chicago to open a bakery.  The train stopped in Columbus and he was out for an hour or two and he said, “This looks like a great place.  I’m going to stay here.”  Yeah, that’s the family story, about why they came to Columbus from Mobile, Alabama.

Interviewer:  So, what year did you marry David.

Esther:  Oh, I married David in ‘53 but this happened, this bakery was established, I think, in 1920, somewhere around then that they decided they were going to open it in Marietta instead of Chicago.

Interviewer:  Now where was your wedding at?

Esther:  My wedding was, my wedding was in Cincinnati, and the reason being that I didn’t, I don’t know, I didn’t want to put a wedding on my dad and my parents.  We couldn’t do it in Marietta.  There was only a few families left there.  We’ve had had to do it here.  The Schwartzes knew everybody in Columbus.  It would have been a huge wedding and I’m not in to that.  Dave didn’t care either so we went to Rabbi Gold..stein or something in Cincinnati and we got married and came back and told them and it sort of was a bombshell but they got used to it.

Interviewer:  Was it in a synagogue?

Esther:  Yeah, yeah, in the rabbi’s study.

Interviewer:  Oh, in the rabbi’s study.

Esther:  And I’m disturbed I can’t remember his name.  I have to go and look.  Anyway, I never wanted, I hear the girls on the TV say, “I’ve dreamed of a big wedding since I’m twelve years old and this is my dream dress and I want to walk down the aisle and I gotta’ look perfect,” and  I never had a dream like that.  I just wanted to be with Dave. That’s all.

Interviewer:  Do you remember the name of the synagogue where the…?

Esther:  No, I can’t.  I’d have to go look.  I don’t remember the synagogue.  I can’t remember the rabbi.  I think it was Gold something, I’d have to go look. It might have been Goldstein or Gold-something.  I’ve got the dress that I wore. I remember it but I can’t remember exactly rabbi’s name.  I have to go look it up on my get, not a get, on my ketuba.

Interviewer:  Tell me about your family. You have children? Your family, your children.

Esther:  My children. I’ve got four kids. Michael, Nancy, Yaacov, who was Kenny up until he became a rabbi and then even after that, people, he was in the phone book as Kenny, ‘til Pruva [sp?] made him change it, and William, a girl and three boys.

Interviewer:  And where do they live and what do they do?

Esther:  Well, Nancy, you know lives down the street from me.   She’s married to Bruce, Dr. Bruce Kay, and my oldest son Michael lives in Denver, married to Barbara, has four kids and he worked for Boeing, not Boeing, he worked for Martin-Marietta out there, Aircraft, engineer, and Nancy’s down the street and Yaacov’s a rabbi in Baltimore, Maryland, and William’s a banker in Teaneck, New Jersey. So, everybody’s taken care of.

Interviewer:  You went to college?

Esther:  Yes.

Interviewer:  Where did you go?

Esther:  You got enough time?  I went to a different college every year.  I started at Cornell and then I went to Columbia, and then I went to UCLA, and then I came back home and graduated from Marietta College.

Interviewer:  And what was your degree in?

Esther:  What was what?

Interviewer:  Your degree.

Esther:  Oh, MRS.

Interviewer:  MRS.

Esther:  I have a degree, a major in law and a minor in music, yeah, but I’m proudest of my Mrs.  That was the hardest to get.

Interviewer:  And your children, I, they went to different universities and yeshivas?

Esther:  Yeah, my kids all went to college and they’re all self-sustaining. Thank goodness. They’re all married and have nice families, and I’ve had a wonderful life.  I’ve been very privileged.  I’ve not only seen the turn of the century from the 1900s to the 2000s, but I’ve seen the turn of the Millenia from the Nineteens to the Twenties.  How many people get to see the turn of the Millenia? Yeah, and I’ve had a wonderful life – Baruch Hashem, and no complaints.

Interviewer:   Did you work outside the house?

Esther:  Yes.  In fact, I worked for forty-five years.  I bet you didn’t know it.  I worked for Consumer Report, the magazine.  I was a shopper and a reporter for them.

Interviewer:  And what did that entail?

Esther:  That entailed going out and looking at merchandise and reporting it back to them and buying merchandise and shipping it to them and you might get a kick out of it, that one time they wanted different batches, cans of pork and beans and I didn’t want to buy them here, ‘cause I didn’t want you going home and telling Barbara, “I just saw Esther buying 48 cans of pork and beans at Kroger’s,” and so, I went way far about ten miles away to the grocery stores ‘cause I had to send them different lots on the cans, you know, different dates and numbers, of pork and beans, and I’ve sent them everything from lawnmowers to gold necklaces in the 45 years I worked for them and I did a lot of food items and bottled water and lawnmowers and toilet paper and I can’t begin to tell you.  You name it. I sent it, paper towels, laundry detergent.

Interviewer:  What synagogue or synagogues have you belonged to in the city?

Esther:  In Columbus?  We belonged to all of ‘em when I got married  because they were the bakery and they supplied ‘em all.

Interviewer:  What were they?

Esther:  Agudas Achim, Tifereth Israel, Ahavas Sholom which was on South Ohio, originally, and what’s the other, Beth Jacob before Rabbi Stavsky came, and that was on Donaldson Street, I think.  I don’t know where that is but I remember them talking about it, and whatever, whatever, there was, we belonged, because of the bakery.  Everybody had to buy at Schwartz Bakery and then somebody named Struga Mordo that worked for Dave, opened his own bakery.  You remember that? On South James Road, next to Super Duper.  Was that the name of the store there?  Yeah, on the next door.  He worked for Dave and then opened his own bakery.  He was Greek, a Greek Jewish survivor, but anyway, Dave always said he didn’t want me working at the bakery, so, I never did, but his mother did, but I was busy with the kids, had four kids, little kids, four kids in seven years.

Interviewer: Were you members of any Jewish organizations or involved with the Jewish community?

Esther:  All of them, everything, ‘cause of the bakery. We belonged to everything.  I was Hadassah, Council of Jewish Women, all the sisterhoods.  There were some others, I really can’t remember, and I was in the bowling league, and I was in, what else?  I don’t know.  It was a different time, different people.

Interviewer:  Were there a lot of activities in those organizations…

Esther:  Yeah.

Interviewer:  that you were involved with?

Esther:  We’d have lunches.  In fact, I even had lunch one time at Lazarus, on the fifth floor in their Chintz Room, and Dave supplied the bread, and I think we had tuna salad, but the rabbi’s wife, I had two rabbi’s wives there.  It was okay because nothing was meaty.  Everything was sort of pareve and Dave’s bread, and I had like 25 or 30 women up there and it was okay.  You couldn’t do it today.  Oh, my gosh.  It would be, you’d be excommunicated if you tried to go in a restaurant today, but anyway.

Interviewer:  Did you hold any offices in any of those organizations?

Esther:  Yeah, yeah. I think so.  Council of Jewish Women, I think, and Hadassah, and my friend Betty Romanoff, did you know Ivan Romanoff? Remember his wife Betty?  She was a dear sweet…her mother was Sellinger.  Her maiden name was Sellinger.  She and I held an office.  It might have been Hadassah or something.  She was president and I was secretary or something like that, but no, I never was interested in those activities, and I didn’t play Mah Jong, and I didn’t play Canasta with the girls.  They loved getting together.  I was busy with my kids and my husband and always had a lot of hobbies.  I always wrote a lot of letters.   I used a typewriter.  That was before – B.C. – Before Computers.

Interviewer:  Did you have any favorite holi…Jewish holidays or what do you remember about the holidays?

Esther:  Yeah, we celebrated on the holidays.  They were more duty than anything, but I mean, I always loved Pesach until I had to make it but, no I always loved Passover and I even enjoyed it and Succos.  On Succos, we always had a sukkah out there, and I’m trying to think what else.   I liked Pesach and Sukkos and not so much Hanukkah because I felt the kids were greedy.  As Dave used to say, “I’m for the needy, not for the greedy.”  Yeah, Pesach I’d say.  A lot of people like Purim but I think I like Peach.  I like making it. I miss making it.

 Interviewer:  What do you remember about Passover?  Did you have your families?

Esther:  Yeah, and making that big meal and the matza, the challenge of making matza a hundred different ways, yeah, and buying dozens of eggs.  You had to buy before-hand.  I always had eight, ten, twelve dozen eggs, so, I always loved Pesach and I liked Succos and a lot of people liked Purim but I wasn’t so into it and I didn’t care much for Yom Kippur either.  That was a hard, still is, a hard holiday. “Tom Kippur.”  That’s how it was published one time in the Dispatch: “Today’s Tom Kippur.”  We always had fun with that.

Interviewer:  Have you had to talk about a philosophy of life?  Do you have any particular philosophy of life or…?

Esther:  Well, I probably do but there isn’t enough time.  I’d say:  Don’t spend time mad or angry because life is short.  You don’t realize it’s short until you’re at the end and you say, ‘Oh, my gosh, where did it go?’ and life is short.  You only get one chance at it and don’t waste it and don’t spend time being mad, and being resentful or trying to get even or anything like that.  Just enjoy every day.  Today’s such a beautiful day.  Look at that. I call that a California Sky – pure blue and the sun out. It’s gorgeous and we should enjoy every day, and I’ve had a wonderful life.  I don’t, I regret a few things along the way that I wasn’t very good at but mostly my life has been terrific and I appreciate it.

Interviewer:  To what extent would you say your religion has played a part in your life and how you’ve lived your life?

Esther:  First of all, I’ve always said that if I were born again, I’d always want to be Jewish.  I love being Jewish and I think the Jewish people are fabulous.  I mean, look, we’ve got the longest history of anybody on the planet, the longest continuous history, all these thousands of years and I am continuing what my great-great-great-great-great-great-great…on and on grandparents did.  I’m doing the same thing.  I’m doing, eating matza on Pesach, I’m keeping kosher and, the only thing is, that unfortunately, I’m sure my grandparents could not afford three sets of dishes – milk, meat and pareve.  I don’t know what they did. I always wonder what did they do on Pesach?  You know the Jews in Europe were dirt poor – Anatevka – so, what did they do?  Maybe they scraped them or washed their wood plates or something.  I don’t know what.  I always wonder how did they do it, ‘cause, look, here we sit with a dishwasher and three sets of dishes, and three sets of glasses and you know, on and on, and going to the store and buying the matza made and buying the matza-ball mix made and all of that, you know?  We have such a great life and everything done for us.  I always look back and say, ‘How did our ancestors do it?’  My ancestors, I told you, were from Metz, France, and if they hadn’t left and followed the rebbe, my family would be gone by the Nazis, because if we’d be living in France, you know what they did, so it’s good they went to Eastern Europe where they did, so, I appreciate it, and I appreciate it every day.  Today’s an exceptionally beautiful day, crispy and nice, and so, anyway, I’m near the end so, I get philosophical.

Interviewer:  Growing up as you were, you know, probably a teenager, a young lady during World War II?

Esther:  Yes.

Interviewer:  How, what was about the War and what was going on in Germany with the Jews, or where, how much, where were you?

Esther:  Not much.  My parents didn’t discuss it or, not in front of us, so, we really, and being twelve, thirteen years old, and into yourself at that age, I don’t know.  We knew something was going on but, they didn’t discuss it in front of us kids, but, I remember my dad sitting on the front porch of our house, which you’ve seen, and he had a, his chair was a big green reed, what do you call it, the outdoor stuff, they were little ro[k]es ?], reed…

Interviewer:  Wicker.

Esther:  Oh…his chair, and him holding a newspaper up and the headline must have been ten inches high, said “ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED.” of the Marietta Times, and I remember asking my dad, “What’s an atomic bomb?” and he said, “Oh, it’s a big bomb.”  That’s an understatement, but anyway, I remember Gold Star Mothers, who lost their, unfortunately lost their sons in the War.  They’d have a flag, a little flag with a gold star and if they were wounded, their sons or husbands, they’d have a silver star in their window and Marietta College had a cadet, a Cadet Training stationed on the campus there at Marietta College, and they used to march up and down the street in battalions, you know, practicing, watching, and they used to sing, up and down.  Oh, one time I saw President FDR in person.  He went right by our house and we were on the front porch watching him in his open car.  In 1938, he came to dedicate a statue in the park in Marietta called “Looking Westward.”  It was the settling of Marietta and the Ohio Territories, and he came and his parade went right by my house so, I saw him in person in his car.  That was a pretty big thrill.  In the ensuing years since 1938, which is what, eighty-some, there have been numerous floods in Marietta and that park on the river, that statue has seen numerous floods on it and it has, it’s crumbling, and it’s brown, the river mud and everything.  I wrote the, it was carved by Gutzon Borglum, who did Mt. Rushmore.  Yeah, in Marietta, and I wrote his granddaughter out in Utah and told her it’s turning brown from the floods and she said it gets into the pores and you can’t do a thing about it, but the statue, I have pictures of it when it was creamy white.  We used to climb on it.  It shows three figures standing by a boat, a Jon Boat, and they’re all looking out in this direction.  It’s called “Looking Westward,” and we used to go and play and sit in that boat.  Nobody cared.  Now it’s all fenced off.  You can’t go, you can’t touch it.  We had so much freedom in our time.  You probably did, too.  There were no limits. I could be out any time of the night, any time of the day, walk anywhere, go any place and nobody worried about a thing.  There were no such things as bad people.

Interviewer:  Looking at your life, Bruce’s, the lives the kids lead today…

Esther:  Yeah….

Interviewer:  …yeah, what are your thoughts about that?

Esther:  Well, my thoughts are that we had freedom and they don’t.  That’s basically it.  You can’t even leave your kid in the back yard in a fence to play without keeping an eye on him, and we didn’t need anything.  We used to play down on a landing that was on the river.  There was, from this 1938 Sesquicentennial Celebration, they had made a concrete landing down by the river where they reenacted the boat coming down from Massachusetts and Rufus Putnam and all this stuff, and we used to go down and play on that landing by the river and nobody worried.  Nobody cared.  I don’t know of anybody ever drowned or anything.  I mean, we didn’t. I didn’t I don’t think, but people today won’t let their kids out of their sight.  You can’t.  You can’t turn your back on a baby for a minute.  Somebody might grab it or snatch it.  I imagine it’s happened.  I mean, you see all time about kids missing.  We never heard of such a thing. [sound] Oh, that scared me.  That’s a weather alert. Let me see what it says: “Special weather statement:” Let me see.  I can’t…I’m trying to see, oh, “gusty winds, 30-40 mile…”  I thought we were going to get a blizzard and I was gonna’ say, doesn’t look like it.

Interviewer:  Okay, just to sort of wind up, do you think we’ve made progress in the country, in the world, looking at, you know, the past, the present.? Have we moved forward?  Are we in a better place now than we were?

Esther:  Do I think the world’s a better place than it was…

Interviewer:  Or the country?

Esther:  …and the country is a better place?  No. No.  I don’t.  I don’t mean to be a pessimist or anything but people used to be different.  People used to be, like I said, I don’t think we even had a key to our house.  No one locked their doors, not at night or anything.  I’d, we’d go away.  I don’t remember locking the doors.  I don’t remember a robbery.  I don’t remember a murder or a rape or anything in Marietta in all the years I grew up.  Maybe I was shielded from it.  I don’t know.  I remember the worst scandal was that a Jewish man, a Jewish man stole money from someplace, a news…where he worked, a newspaper, I think, and we were so humiliated we could hardly show our faces, that a Jewish person had committed a crime.  I mean, we felt the responsibility of every Jewish person in the world on our shoulders, and God forbid, they should do something bad.  We felt it as a failing of our own, and there were a lot of Jewish people doing, like the Rosenbergs.  I mean, we wanted to crawl under a rock from those people who both were executed for turning against this wonderful country.  We hated that, so, but we always felt that every Jews was our responsibility.  Don’t you sort of feel like that?  You know?  You hate to see a Jewish name associated with a crime or something bad like that Jeffrey Epstein now.  He’s in the headlines.  I want to crawl under a rock.  I wish he’d changed his name to Smith or something instead of Epstein, and he’s mixed up with the Royals, and he’s mixed up with everybody here.  It’s horrible, just horrible.  Did you go to Ohio State?  No?

Interviewer:  We’ll talk about that later.

Esther:   Oh, I forgot.  Erase it.

Interviewer:  So, on behalf of the Columbus Jewish Historical Society, I want to thank you for contributing to the Oral History Project.  This concludes the interview.

 

Transcribed by Linda K. Schottenstein – May 31, 2022