The Generation After Oral History Project

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Marquette University Libraries Department of Special Collections and University Archives

Interviewee: Paula Peltz

Interviewer: Unknown Interviewer & Michael Phayer

Date of Interview: 1983‐19‐03

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: ‐‐interview today, March the 19th, with Mrs. Peltz. Mrs. Peltz now lives in Miami, Florida but she formerly lived here in Milwaukee for 16 years. This interview is taking place in Milwaukee as I said on March the 19th. So Mrs. Peltz I just wanted to explain a few things, how we’re going to do this, we’re going to ask you some ordinary questions about your life before you came over here and just let the interview kind of go along as, wherever you want to take it. Is that alright?

Peltz: It’s ok.

Phayer: Are you comfortable?

Peltz: I am comfortable.

Phayer: Are you, do you wish you were in Florida? Instead of here doing this?

Peltz: Yes, I wish so because it’s too cold here.

Phayer: You’re too cold. Well, I don’t think we have any more sweaters for you.

Peltz: I am comfortable in 2. [laughs]

Phayer: How long have you been here now?

Peltz: 10 days.

Phayer: 10 days. And when was the last time you were in Milwaukee?

Peltz: [Unintelligible] the 8th [unintelligible].

Unknown Interviewer: ‐‐ January.

Peltz: The 8th of January.

Phayer: 8th of January?

Peltz: Last year.

Phayer: Last year?

Peltz: Yes. And they had a bigger storm than now.

Phayer: Oh yeah, that was, I remember that. That was really a bad one. No, I was in California then, and came back and it was a big storm. Awful.

Peltz: It was impossible to stay. I had to go back right away.

Phayer: Well I think we’re ready to start.

[audio cuts out]

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Now Mrs. Peltz I understand you came from Poland. Could you tell us what area of Poland you came from and where you were born?

Peltz: Oh, I was born in Germany but I came to Poland when I was 3 years old.

Phayer: Oh you were born in Germany?

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: And then you came to Poland when you were 3. Why was the reason for that?

Peltz: Oh there were very hard times in Germany and my, my parents had relatives in Poland so they came. They originally were from Poland, many years ago.

Phayer: Yeah, so approximately what time was this?

Peltz: Oh I came in 1918 to Poland.

Phayer: 1918? You, your family returned from Germany to Poland, so this was immediately after World‐‐

Peltz: ‐‐after World War I.

Phayer: Immediately after World War I. And you decided to go back to Poland rather than‐‐

Peltz: I didn’t.

Phayer: No [laugh].

Peltz: I was too young to decide.

Phayer: ‐‐rather than to Germany, they decided that—And you were born then in Germany?

Peltz: In Germany.

Phayer: About, during World War I?

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: I see. And, because I know that there were a number of Jewish Poles who became displaced persons right after the war, they went to Germany but later they were not given citizenship. But your family decided to go right back‐‐

Peltz: [Unintelligible]

Phayer: In Poland. And where did you go then?

Peltz: Oh we lived in Radom for many years.

Phayer: And where is that?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: This is between Warsaw and Krakow. It’s 105 kilometers from Warsaw.

Phayer: I see. South of Warsaw.

Peltz: South, south, southeast of Warsaw.

Phayer: And how large a city was that?

Peltz: We don’t take into consideration our metropolitan cities but at that time it was a large city.

Phayer: It was a large city at that time.

Peltz: A large city, yes.

Phayer: What would you guess?

Peltz: Oh, it must have been 140,000 people and it was considered a large city.

Phayer: Oh sure, that would be a large city.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: So, you lived there then for about how many years?

Peltz: Oh, I lived there until I was 16 years old.

Phayer: Until you were 16 years old. Good. So you really grew up there.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: And so then you had moved back there because, back to Poland, because you had other family there.

Peltz: Yes. We had relatives there and‐‐

Phayer: Who—In that same city?

Peltz: We were comfortable in our home, yes, this was after the war, everything was destroyed. I’m a war baby, I’m still a war baby.

Phayer: But that city was not destroyed during the way.

Peltz: The city before, it wasn’t destroyed, but it was, it was a, there was no food there. They were the time of ersatz, it started.

Phayer: Yeah, sure.

Peltz: In Poland it’s a little bit different.

Phayer: So you lived there with your‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Parents.

Phayer: ‐‐your parents. Who all lived in your house?

Peltz: We were comfortable. My father had a lumber mill.

Phayer: He had a lumber mill?

Peltz: Yes. He was from Poland, in the foresters so, we were very comfortable.

Phayer: And, so you lived there, with your‐‐

Peltz: And mother.

Phayer: With your father and your mother

Peltz: And then came other children.

Phayer: How many other children?

Peltz: 4 more. We had 5.

Phayer: So you were the oldest?

Peltz: I’m the oldest.

Phayer: You’re the oldest.

Peltz: Yes and then I have, had 2 brothers, a sister and a brother.

Phayer: 2 brothers, a sister, and another brother. And what were all their names?

Peltz: Their names are, I shouldn’t say in Polish because in Polish we had different names.

Phayer: Whatever you want. What did you call them when you were growing up?

Peltz: Allah [transcribed phonetically], Perrets [transcribed phonetically], Rebekah and My‐yorek [transcribed phonetically]. Yes, it’s Polish.

Phayer: So you were the oldest of the children.

Peltz: The oldest of the brood.

Phayer: And what were the age differences?

Peltz: 2 years, a year and a half, 2 years.

Phayer: So you were all pretty much the same age, so you would grow up playing with them.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: We are not the same age anymore because 2 brothers are alive, a sister and brother are [unintelligible].

Phayer: But as you were growing up there you were‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: ‐‐close enough in age, you could‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: ‐‐play and‐‐

Peltz: Yes. It wasn’t like that in Europe, the boys had to go to a, they went to a special parochial school.

Phayer: The boys did not have to?

Peltz: The boys went.

Phayer: Oh the boys went.

Peltz: I didn’t. I went to public school.

Phayer: Well before that, when you were just little little children‐‐

Peltz: Little children.

Phayer: ‐‐what’s the earliest thing you remember about growing up before you went to school?

Peltz: I remember our lumberyard and the trees with fruit and the people working there and often just it was, I have very good memories.

Phayer: Did you go down and play in the lumberyard?

Peltz: Yes, yes. My mother was there and my father and I didn’t want to stay with the maid at home, they always put me with her, just to play and to be around them, yes. We were very family‐oriented. [Unintelligible] as babysitters. No, the maid was to clean and to cook but not to take care of the children.

Phayer: So you would go down with your brothers and sisters and you would play‐‐

Peltz: Yes. Small brothers and sisters no. I didn’t go to school until I was 6 years old because I read and wrote already by that time so they had to take me in school but it was 7 years old when we start school, but my brothers, the 2 of them, they went to the yeshiva. This meant they went to a parochial school when they were 3 years old.

Phayer: Oh really?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Oh yes, my father took them there and they would stay there all day long till they got back and then we picked them up. They had to learn‐‐

Phayer: From 3 years old?

Peltz: Yes. A boy had to develop his mind.

Phayer: And, and that was just for the boys, the girls‐‐

Peltz: No, not the girls but when a girl was smart, she was [unintelligible]. Picking up everything from the boys, yes.

Phayer: Why was that?

Peltz: Oh it was, this was, this was, it was, I don’t know. It’s a family tradition. It was like that. But I knew everything that they knew.

Phayer: You had picked it up.

Peltz: Yes. And‐‐

Phayer: And how much younger was the first one, first born?

Peltz: 2 years. And the other one 2 years. So it was a difference of 4 years. But I picked up everything. They didn’t pick up but I did. I used to dance [unintelligible].

Phayer: What was your mother and your father like? Do you remember being very close to your father?

Peltz: Yes. My father was special. I’m not going to idolize him but my father was very, very intelligent. He played violin, he played the violin, he painted, he was like Michelangelo, he painted the whole synagogue.

Phayer: Really?

Peltz: Yeah. Not the whole but the one wall, everything with the 12 pipes, and 10, and the Commandments and everything and the lions. I remember. It was gorgeous, for years, maybe 2 years he painted it when he had time‐‐

Phayer: So besides being a businessman he could do things like‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Now, how did he pick up these artistic skills?

Peltz: I must have been in the family, I don’t know. I really, it wasn’t a time to ask. I was too, too young to ask unlike now I would, 20 years ago I would too but I didn’t have [unintelligible] to ask. My parents were gone. So it was really a different life.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: But he would, he painted in the synagogue the walls and scenes from the Old Testament.

Peltz: Yes. One wall, this is the main wall, the east wall, where you had the arc. And [unintelligible] Sat‐ Saturday, not Friday. Friday was very, too religious for temple, Saturday night [unintelligible], my mother was singing, we had company, it’s all very—Nothing special like, nothing was served like cookies or tea, everybody as after dinner, you know, came together. I’ve never seen my father play cards or‐‐

Phayer: No?

Peltz: No. It always‐‐ If he had time, he read.

Phayer: Wow.

Peltz: He had a large library.

Phayer: And what would he, what would he read? Or when he played the violin what would he play?

Peltz: He played melodies that I couldn’t understand but I loved them, it must have been classical melodies that go from generation to generation to not only Yiddish but some others.

Phayer: Some others.

Peltz: Yes. I still remember‐‐

Phayer: Polish or‐‐

Peltz: No. Not too much Polish, like Brahms, like, classical yes, but light. Yes, yes. He didn’t play from a— He didn’t have notes.

Phayer: No.

Peltz: No.

Phayer: Really?

Peltz: I never remember my father had notes. I remember my father playing deliciously well because we always, it was a different [unintelligible].

Phayer: Oh my gosh.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: What would he read, when he read?

Peltz: He read, I remember that he read, from Hebrew, it was Agamemnon. He read it to us in Polish, we should understand.

Phayer: So you would‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: By the way, he was, yes, he was translating, he was reading it in Hebrew and he was translating in Polish. Sometimes he needed his‐‐

Phayer: So he read Hebrew‐‐

Peltz: Yes. And German.

Phayer: And German

Peltz: And Polish.

Phayer: And Polish. And Yiddish.

Peltz: I think Russian too. I don’t know. I’ve never heard a word of Russian but I’ve seen Russian books in our—like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, so he must have read them. My mother was a very pleasant woman. Not [unintelligible] at that time it wasn’t the way a woman—But very smart and very, very apropos. Ladylike, you know.

Phayer: And when you misbehaved, who corrected you, your father or your mother?

Peltz: Both of them.

Phayer: Both of them.

Peltz: Both of them. Usually the misbehaving was the maids and they came home.

Phayer: They would—tell on you.

Peltz: Yes. So I remember my father saying Payvel, gedenk, wenn es aufwachsen den gibt Maedel [Yiddish]. This means, Remember, you have to grow up a good girl.

Phayer: I can almost understand Yiddish, from German. So both of them would correct you and you don’t remember you father being more stern than your mother‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes. My father was more stern than my mother. Yes, he was. With mother we can still go around, we can get along better than with father. Father was strict yes. If something happened, then he said, you are not going somewhere or—And it was us, he said, yeah. It was respect, love and respect. Yes, and what else is missing, he, respect for the older people. We were taught from the beginning that our grandmother is like, she is the matriarch in the family, she didn’t live with us, she lived separately, but we looked up to her, we adored her and we asked her what she would do, she always talked toward us things that we didn’t learn at home, like she had, had maybe a little farm and it was a horse there so she always send a boy, we should ride the horse and other things. Oh we looked forward to going to grandma. It was the way of life, grandma was the best, and then father and mother. Grandma, yes. Cause my grandfather died earlier but she was the [unintelligible].

Phayer: It’s interesting. I’d like to ask you about that too but, so you remember your father as being stern and strict but still‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Lovable.

Phayer: ‐‐lovable and warm.

Peltz: Yes, yes, warm. Very warm. Oh yes. And how he, when my friends, relatives came in he was always making everyone so comfortable.

Phayer: So you would, you had, then you were very close with your grandmother‐‐

Peltz: Yes. And with my parents.

Phayer: ‐‐and with your parents. And you would go to your grandmother’s and visit.

Peltz: Yes. When I had vacation.

Phayer: When you had vacation.

Peltz: Yes. I stayed there for 2 weeks because my mother said it’s too much for her, she was an older woman and it’s too much, too many young children. There were other people, you know, they were in the family of my mother’s, my mother’s sisters, 3 sisters, and they had children too‐‐

Phayer: They lived there too.

Peltz: Yes. They came back.

Phayer: Well you had a lot of relatives there.

Peltz: A lot of relatives and [unintelliglbe]. Yes.

Phayer: So you would go and stay with your grandmother for 2 weeks or so.

Peltz: Yes. I was looking forward to it every year and we usually went for dacha, you know what a dacha means‐‐

Phayer: No.

Peltz: In the summertime we went but we didn’t have to buy like others hotels or something, we always kept some forest somewhere so we went to that place where my father had business. So we went every year, we went to the country, but different places. I saw almost all Poland because of that. Yes, from one side, from the west to the east, yes.

Phayer: So that would be like a vacation.

Peltz: This was always the vacation.

Phayer: How did you get there?

Peltz: Oh we went there by bus.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: By bus.

Peltz: Yes. There were buses. We didn’t have a car, it wasn’t the time of cars. Cars were when I was, in Rilna [transcribed phonetically] [unintelligible] there were cars.

Phayer: So you remember, you have fond memories of going to visit your grandmother and staying, and then would the other, would your cousins, would they come too?

Peltz: Yes. Yes, but not too many because my parents wouldn’t like all of, like, the birds, no. Everyone had 2 weeks.

Phayer: Oh I see so‐‐

Peltz: I went the first one because I wanted to—I had to go with my parents for vacation. Yes.

Phayer: But did she live right there too in the same city?

Peltz: 18 kilometers from Radom. Yeah, it was Przytyk, that famous Przytyk that revolted against anti‐ Semitism in 1936 or 1935 that they got up and they said it’s enough, and they fought back. Before the war. It was the only city in whole of Poland. It was a little—it was a city but not a village, you know, like a little town.

Phayer: Yeah. So did you have a lot of—do you remember like getting together at times, at festival times or family reunions or‐‐

Peltz: Oh yes.

Phayer: ‐‐or playing with your cousins—Did you have a favorite cousin or‐‐

Peltz: I had quite a few favorite cousins. But the most favored was, were the cousins that they had book binding, you know?

Phayer: Yeah.

Peltz: They used, there I could take books every day, in the library I could take out only 4 books a week, there I could go every day they had new books. That was [unintelligible] it was everything, so I had, I could go there, read the books before they were in binding, because a library didn’t give out books, didn’t lend you books not binding, they were hard copies and you looked at the book like it would be just like a prayer book, you, it was, it was very dear to you, you didn’t eat when you read and it was really something to look up to.

Phayer: When you think back about when you would have a family reunion or when you’d play with your cousins or your brothers and sisters, what was the most fun thing to do when you were all together?

Peltz: Discuss what we read.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Really?

Peltz: Yes. Since we were maybe 6, 7 years old, everyone said something different and we bragging about, not about toys, about books. Yes. And if you got, if you had your birthday you got a book. Always a book and you looked forward to your birthday because of that. This was the best. Or some people maybe when, maybe they needed it they got clothes, you know. Me, I didn’t look forward to clothes. I had it always so for me a book was the top, the best, the best gift.

Phayer: How are we on time?

Unknown Interviewer: We just did, [unintelligible] to 30 minutes. 25 to 30 minutes. You mean on the tape.

Phayer: No, I was just wondering if you were reading out the time.

Unknown Interviewer: Yeah, 30 minutes. Should I stop it?

Phayer: No. I didn’t hear you read the 5 minutes.

Unknown Interviewer: Oh yeah. I forgot, I was marking it down. Okay, I’ll do that from now on.

Phayer: Ok let’s think a little bit now about, you were talking about the books you read and everything, about going to school and all that, did you eventually then you began to go to school when you were about 6 years old.

Peltz: Yes, but I read and wrote, I knew the alphabet when I was 4 years old.

Phayer: When you were 4 years old.

Peltz: Oh yes. I think a child can learn when—my brothers read Hebrew at 3 years old. 3 years, yes.

Phayer: And you knew the alphabet. You were speaking Yiddish?

Peltz: I was speaking Yiddish. I learned Yiddish at home. But at school and in books, I read Polish books and I knew the alphabet and I knew how to, just like‐‐

Phayer: So you knew the Polish and the Yiddish alphabet‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: ‐‐by the time you were going to school at 6 years of age.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: And what kind of a school did you go to?

Peltz: Oh then it was a public school.

Phayer: It was a public school.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Public school, yeah. That we went when we had to be 7 years old or you had to read and write when you come in. So I came in, I wasn’t even 6 years old, I came in. They let me go. If you are not disturbing the class and you were prepared for it, you can come. This was the way, yes. And we had one teacher only.

Phayer: One teacher.

Peltz: For 6 hours. One teacher only and it was such a respect. Everyone was wearing the same clothes. We wore pleated blue skirts, navy blue, with light blouses and little aprons, black aprons, this was in public school.

Phayer: Sounds like the private schools in the United States.

Peltz: Yes but this was the public school.

Phayer: This was the public school so everybody was going to that school.

Peltz: Yes. Everybody was going to that school. We came in, we said a prayer, we got up and the teacher came in, everyone was standing up, and then we said the prayer standing up, it was a prayer, it was to the Lord, to give us strength and good grades and bless the teacher and [unintelligible] on the teacher, that’s all.

Phayer: And then the country‐‐

Peltz: I beg your pardon?

Phayer: You had to bless the country? Would they also‐‐

Peltz: No. No no. Then we sat down and we had our hands on the desk. 2 girls or, no it wasn’t, they were only girls, or maybe, it was separate for girls. Separate, boys separate and girls separate, in public schools. Yes, we put out our hands on the desk and the teacher went over the class, from 28 to 30 to children, and she looked at our nails, yes, if we are clean, and then we said sit down, ok. And if anyone was dirty, she send them out, and then went, and they washed, and they came in and she looked again. And we started class. We had 4 classes, we had Polish, mathematic, every class was 45 minutes and 15 minutes period, and then again, a pause 15 minute, pauza it’s Polish, and when it was lunch we had a half an hour instead of 15 minutes and last we started with art classes—I beg your pardon?

Unknown Interviewer: 5 minutes.

Peltz: And embroidery.

Phayer: And embroidery?

Peltz: Embroidery, twice a week, and art every day. Yes. And as we got older, always embroidery, always art, but came in geography, history. History and, what else, geography, history, mathematic, Polish, and until we got to the end of the year maybe 12 years old and then we finished public school.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: So 6 years.

Peltz: Yes. 6, I think it was less than that. I was 6 but I finished at 10, maybe 11. Yes, public, and then if the kid was bright they went to gymnasium. They had to, gymnasium cost money, yes, so if you went to gymnasium you had to pay. If a child was very bright I think that they had scholarships.

Phayer: Well getting back to the first school though, now, you were segregated between the boys and the girls.

Peltz: Oh, we didn’t see boys at all.

Phayer: You didn’t see boys at all.

Peltz: No. This was a girls school.

Phayer: And I presume that you took embroidery and art, besides the other topics, but I presume the boys‐‐

Peltz: The boys had little saws, you know. And this was, this I know because I saw them when they were going to school, they were, yeah.

Phayer: So they did craft carpentry type skills and you did‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes, embroidery, but art everyone.

Phayer: Everyone did art.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Now, these were both Jewish and gentile kids.

Peltz: Yes. This was from the state, this was from the city.

Phayer: So then in the afternoon did you study religion at all?

Peltz: No, never religion, never religion.

Phayer: I thought maybe you would—the Jewish kid would be released and you would go‐‐

Peltz: No. No, no. I had a teacher that come, came to our house.

Phayer: He came to the house?

Peltz: To the house. And started with me an hour.

Phayer: An hour. Every day?

Peltz: Every day. But not in school, no.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Not all of the Jewish families would have been able to afford to have a teacher go to their house like that, right?

Peltz: No. Then they did like that, they, 3, 4 families got together and they and they had 1 teacher and people from different apartments went to 1.

Phayer: Yeah. And then they shared the expense then.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Would you say that just about all of the Jewish people did this?

Peltz: Yes. Yes, yes. All of the Jewish people, unless they were very, they very indigent, yes, because there were very poor people.

Phayer: Now, then did you pick up some friends among the gentiles kids at school?

Peltz: I had friends next to us were people, Kovloskee [transcribed phonetically] were their name, and we were very good friends. Yes they were our, they were the same age. I remember even the name now, Ludveek Kovloskee [transcribed phonetically] ‐‐

Phayer: So you would just play with those kids too.

Peltz: Oh yes, when we came home from school and didn’t go to our [unintelligible], it was like a condominium, in the back was a big court and we have all kinds of plays yes, and they were shoes and flowers.

Phayer: So you were used to playing with both Jews and gentile kids. Already before you went to school.

Peltz: Yes yes. Yes I was. We were very good friends.

Phayer: You were good friends.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: So there wasn’t anything particularly different about going to school then where you would be mixed with Jews and gentiles together.

Peltz: No, this wasn’t difficult for me but it was difficult when I had to go home by myself, some boys from, from other condominiums let’s say, it wasn’t a condominium its was rentals, they used to throw stones on us and call us dirty names.

Phayer: Really? Were they older?

Peltz: Especially, I, we lived in a neighborhood, in a new neighborhood Peeyeska‐varoleetsa [transcribed phonetically] so this was something, yes, an everyday occurrence. Yes. So because of that my mother and father wanted me to come from school to the [unintelligible], to sklat, sklat [transcribed phonetically] was the name and I went there, this was maybe a half a block away from the school.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: So, as you’re, as I understand it, you lived in a newer nicer part of town.

Peltz: Yes, I didn’t live in that section where all the Jews lived.

Phayer: Yes.

Peltz: Yes. This I missed.

Phayer: And so, you’re saying that perhaps these, you got along well with the gentile kids in your neighborhood‐‐

Peltz: Yes, they ones that I knew, but some others‐‐

Phayer: Some others, they could have been anti‐Semitic partly for socio‐economic reasons because they were jealous of you living in the nicer part of town.

Peltz: They lived there too.

Phayer: Oh they lived there too.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Were they older?

Peltz: The poorer people were not as bad as the ones that really, they couldn’t stand that, that Jews are getting there or taking up things that they are used to, have by themselves.

Phayer: But what I don’t understand is why these particular kids were anti‐Semitic whereas the other ones that you were neighbors with were not.

Peltz: It was maybe for people that, the parents that knew my parents and we were friendly with them. But the others you knew only because they knew I was Jewish. So they jay‐da‐votchka [transcribed phonetically].

Phayer: Yeah. And they would be living a little bit further away.

Peltz: Not too far, like the next block.

Phayer: Oh yeah.

Peltz: Yes. I was afraid to go home.

Phayer: And how old were you then?

Peltz: I was 7, 8, 9.

Phayer: 7, 8 or 9.

Peltz: And they threw stones on me. Yes. And I ran so fast.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: To get home.

Peltz: Yes. I was never badly hurt but just afraid, very much afraid.

Phayer: Sure. Would your brothers ever get in fights with them? Like kids do?

Peltz: No no, my brothers were all day long in yeshiva. This was a different story. These were people that they took care of them and one took them home and one, you know, my brothers didn’t have the difficulty I had because I was going to a public school, they didn’t go to a public school.

Phayer: They went to the yeshiva.

Peltz: Yeah. They went first to the yeshiva and later my brother, the younger one, was maybe 8 years, 9 years old when he went to public school but after school his rabbi sent out a big boy to pick up the boys and bring them back to the [unintelligible].

Unknown Interviewer: 45 minutes.

Phayer: So unfortunately you didn’t have the protection of your brothers.

Peltz: No no.

Phayer: I think we’d better turn the tape over now. Is it about up?

Unknown Interviewer: Actually no I’ve probably been rushing it.

Phayer: Oh, ok well let me know when we’re about up ok?

Unknown Interviewer: Might as well switch it anyway, as long as we’re stopped.

Phayer: Alright.

[end of tape]

Phayer: Second side to this, side 2 of tape number 1, of the interview of Mrs. Peltz, on March the 19th. Mrs. Peltz, you were just talking about the yeshiva where your brothers went to school. Could you tell me a little bit about their schools as opposed to your school and why they went to that school and you didn’t go to that school.

Peltz: Because my parents were very orthodox people. They first of all wanted the boys to be religious. A girl is different. I was religious too because Saturday I wasn’t allowed to read a Polish book. Only on Saturday. Friday was the end of the Yiddish book, of the Polish book. Saturday I had to read anything but Polish. And they had to prepare themselves to be good Jews.

Phayer: Which, which means what?

Peltz: It means first of all to believe in God. And secondly to be a mensch. Ethics. The whole Jewish tradition was ethics. Yes.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Did they for example, did they learn to read Hebrew?

Peltz: Oh yes, Hebrew‐‐

Phayer: But you didn’t?

Peltz: I had to learn too because I had a teacher who came to my house. I could speak Hebrew, I don’t remember any more, that’s, you know, simple but‐‐

Phayer: But your brothers they‐‐

Peltz: Oh yes, my brother, the older one could have been a rabbi.

Phayer: He could have.

Peltz: Yes. He finished with the golden teeda [transcribed phonetically], this means his, what do you call it, diploma was in gold written because he had, he was a genius. They said in Hebrew, Illui [Hebrew]. Yes, the other one went to public school.

Phayer: Oh he did.

Peltz: Yes. Late. Because the rabbis weren’t so enthusiastic about him. Yes, so he had to go to the public school too and to the yeshiva. Both.

Phayer: Both?

Peltz: Both. He came from public school, he ate, and then he went to the yeshiva.

Phayer: In the afternoon?

Peltz: In the afternoon. Yes.

Phayer: Oh. But your brother went, your other brother went both in the morning and in the afternoon.

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: Well that’s interesting. And so they were kind of‐‐

Peltz: He wasn’t a genius. Only geniuses.

Phayer: They would kind of choose the brightest ones.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: And they would steep them in the Jewish culture.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Well what would they learn at school studying for example?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Oh they learned everything, they have so many, my daughter has to because Rashi, Talmud, Hamish [transcribed phonetically], Gemorrah [transcribed phonetically], these were the old, they were different, yes, all kinds, and it’s so, some of them learn to read like the Torah. Talmud [unintelligible]. I remember still the names, oh yes.

Phayer: And when you say learned, do you mean memorize?

Peltz: They could read, not everything they memorized but I memorized when I was at the table I had to say barucha, this means a prayer, I finished my meal, this I memorized. All baruchas we memorized.

Unknown Interviewer: 5 minutes.

Peltz: What we used every day we memorized. Everything else was like, I can’t explain, you have to be in it.

Phayer: That’s alright, you’re doing well.

Peltz: Thank you.

Phayer: Well what, when they went to the yeshiva though didn’t they have to study mathematics and those subjects too?

Peltz: Yes. Yes they did, everything. Yes, algebra, mathematics, all kinds, geometry. Oh yes. I’ll tell you the truth, when I came to the United States when we lived in Europe, I sent my 2 boys to the yeshiva.

Phayer: You did.

Peltz: Yes. Jacob Joseph Yeshiva. And they did very well for themselves, they are now lawyers and good lawyers.

Phayer: You raised a family of lawyers.

Peltz: They couldn’t be doctors, they were afraid of blood. I’m not joking. My son once came into an emergency room and fainted.

Phayer: Well, getting back to your school, when you had what you call the pauza which I think is the recess‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Would you go out and play‐‐

Peltz: We had a big yard, we played there, yes. Ball and some other plays. I’m too old to remember what we did, but we played outside even when it was cold like today, snow, we had to have for 15 minutes the whole class all the windows open, we couldn’t go into the class. If it was very cold we stayed in a different room and we played but usually we put on our coats and we went outside to play. Pretty [unintelligible] children. Healthy.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: So here you would be, there wouldn’t be any like segregation, you would just, all the kids would play together.

Peltz: Yes. All the kids together.

Phayer: What would you play?

Peltz: I don’t remember but we played ball or we played havanka [transcribed phonetically].

Phayer: What is havanka [transcribed phonetically]?

Peltz: One, it’s hide and seek I suppose. Yes, and all kinds of plays, we were still children. Yes.

Phayer: Sure. Did the, well of course the boys weren’t there but did the boys play soccer or anything?

Peltz: Yes. Oh soccer was, they started to play very young at schools. They‐‐

Phayer: Girls too.

Peltz: No, no, they wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be ladylike. No. To hit the ball.

Phayer: Well as you grew older then, did you have some good friends that were both Jewish and gentiles? Kids?

Peltz: I wouldn’t say so because later I went to the gymnasium, it was a Jewish gymnasium. They didn’t teach Jewish but it was on the Jewish, for Jewish money, you know. Yes it was Przyjaciele Wiedzą, the friends of knowledge, it was the name. And again we had to wear something else. Brown, just like the nuns, all of it, and here white color.

Phayer: Before we talk about that, I want to talk about that, but I wanted to ask you one other thing about the school, the primary school.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Was it heated?

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: It was.

Peltz: It was heated in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer but we didn’t need air conditioning. It was never, it was vird shohnah, vird shohnah [transcribed phonetically] means the windows were open, all around were trees. It was nice. I still‐‐

Phayer: So you went to school almost all the year around.

Peltz: Yes. No, we didn’t go to school for 3 months.

Phayer: For 3 months?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Yes. We‐‐

Unknown Interviewer: 10 minutes.

Peltz: We finished school in June and we started September. Because of that all summer long we were on vacation. And it wasn’t like that there that you can go summer to school because no teachers were teaching summer time. I don’t know how it’s now.

Phayer: Yeah now they do, I don’t know about Poland.

Peltz: And one teacher was teaching, if you got a teacher from the beginning to the end of one se—not one semester, a year, there weren’t semesters, semester is a half a year and then a half, maybe 3 because then, anyway, 6 weeks, 6 weeks, a whole, from the beginning to the end you had one teacher that took care of you and she knew you by heart. She knew everything about you and she knew how to handle you.

Phayer: And then when you got back the next year, you had the same teacher?

Peltz: No, no. Different teacher.

Phayer: But they knew you too.

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: Were your teachers Jewish partly or always gentile?

Peltz: No, there were some Jewish teachers but not too many.

Phayer: Not too many. More gentiles than‐‐

Peltz: More gentiles yes. Because there were more gentile children too.

Phayer: Did they teach you to be patriotic towards Poland?

Peltz: Yes. When we played we had plays, we had these bows from, from different trees, we then, before that we always sang bozha [transcribed phonetically]. Yes, it was‐‐

Phayer: Can you sing it?

Peltz: [humming tune]. This is the mel‐‐

Phayer: Is that the anthem?

Peltz: Yes. This is the melody, but I don’t remember the words.

Phayer: And so you felt then that you were loyal to Poland and‐‐

Peltz: Oh yes, Polish citizens.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: And you loved the country?

Peltz: Oh, we learned history from the beginning [unintelligible], why shouldn’t we love the country? We lived there. Yes, we loved the country. Yes, we hated the bad kings and we loved the good ones, and we wanted them, even before we studied we wanted to know if our king won or it was the Swedish one Gustav. Yes, I still remember, oh yes.

Phayer: And then when you would go on the trips in the summertime with your father would you go see like, would there be a castle sometimes ‐‐

Peltz: We were in o‐‐, I knew 3 castles, Lidzbark Warmiński, daraghuhville [transcribed phonetically], the daraghuhville that is so famous with Jetand‐the‐massus [transcribed phonetically]‐‐

Phayer: Oh yeah.

Peltz: I knew him personally. Yes when he was a young—because we cut, we cut the trees, we cut forest, in their forest, yes, so once I’ve met him and I was a very young girl and he said Co ty tutaj robisz? [Polish] This means, what are you doing here? And I said I am Mr. leikmans [transcribed phonetically] daughter. And he said, would you like a ride? Because he was going to where they cut and he had a lando 1 [Polish] and I went into that lando and he brought me to the cutting.

Phayer: What did he have?

Peltz: A lando. A little, 2 wheels. What is it called, they are going now, they, they have races with them. What is it?

Phayer: Oh sure, yeah.

Peltz: 2 wheels only, very‐‐

Unknown Interviewer: Carriage.

Peltz: No, it isn’t a carriage, a lando.

Phayer: Where they have the races‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: I can’t, I’m not sure‐‐

Peltz: I can, I can do it.

Phayer: I can’t think of that word now but I know what you mean. Harness racing they call it.

Peltz: Yes, but they are 2 big wheels and very little‐‐

1 A horse‐drawn carriage. Landau [English]

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Yeah. And they go very fast.

Peltz: Yes, very fast. Yes. So I really knew all these castles. 3 castles I mean. We cut near Pulawy and we cut near Warsaw and Grojéc and we cut near the Russian border almost, it was, I don’t remember their names but they were Vradyavil [transcribed phonetically] and Yarazolinskee [transcribed phonetically]. There were quite a few princes at that time. Yes, nobody, they didn’t work. They had a good life. They were hunting.

Phayer: They had the good life is right.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Well you graduated from the‐‐

Peltz: Public school. I went to that gymnasium.

Phayer: The gymnasium‐‐

Peltz: Yes, gymnasium was 4 years.

Phayer: Yes. Now‐‐

Peltz: I finished gymnasium very early because I skipped in one so I finished when I was not even 16 years old.

Unknown Interviewer: 15 minutes.

Phayer: But now this is a‐‐

Peltz: This is‐‐

Phayer: ‐‐private in the sense that your parents have to pay for it.

Peltz: Pay. Yes, yes.

Phayer: But how bout‐‐

Peltz: Very very good. Best teachers.

Phayer: But what I was curious about is whether it is affiliated with the state or with the church. With the synagogue.

Peltz: No, no, not with the synagogue, not with a church.

Phayer: Just the private.

Peltz: Just the private school. Yes. [Polish]

Phayer: But since it was private not everyone could afford to go.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: There were children that they were very smart and they had a scholarship.

Phayer: So how many people were at that school? How many children? You‐‐

Peltz: It was a big school.

Phayer: You would’ve gotten there when you were about 12.

Peltz: Yes. Maybe earlier, [unintelligible], I skipped one, at the beginning of the semester, [unintelligible].

Phayer: And could you tell me something about the studies there?

Peltz: Yes, we studied, we had everything, we had Latin, we had languages, we had languages we started languages in public school. I took German because it was easy for me.

Phayer: Oh. Because of the Yiddish.

Peltz: No, not Yiddish, my parents spoke German and I had so many German books, we had all the classics, we had Nietzsche‐‐

Phayer: You did.

Peltz: Yes, everything in our house so‐‐

Phayer: So you could read Polish, German and Yiddish.

Peltz: And Yiddish, yeah.

Phayer: And Hebrew?

Peltz: And Hebrew, yeah. So we had everything there, we had chemistry and psychology I think, maybe not, I don’t remember, biology and geography and history and geometry and algebra [unintelligible].

Phayer: So once again you were mixed with Jewish and gentiles‐‐

Peltz: No, no gentiles.

Phayer: Oh no gentiles.

Peltz: No gentiles. This was a‐‐

Phayer: A Jewish private school.

Peltz: Jewish private school that they didn’t teach Jewish.

Phayer: They didn’t teach‐‐

Peltz: Jewish

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: ‐‐Jewish‐‐

Peltz: Nothing Jewish.

Phayer: That taught in Polish?

Peltz: Polish, everything was‐‐

Phayer: Everything was in Polish.

Peltz: Oh yes.

Phayer: And they‐‐

Peltz: All the best kids were there.

Phayer: Did they teach you about the Jewish religion?

Peltz: No.

Phayer: No?

Peltz: No. No religion at all.

Phayer: Did you still have the man come to your house to teach you then?

Peltz: Then it was a little bit harder, I, no, I didn’t have. The man’s name was Plotskee [transcribed phonetically].

Phayer: Plotskee?

Peltz: No.

Phayer: Why do you laugh when you say that?

Peltz: Because you want to remember something and you can’t and once something opens you know a name.

Phayer: I thought that you remembered something funny about him or‐‐

Peltz: No, no.

Phayer: Was he just as respected as any other teacher?

Peltz: It’s up to the children because in our house everyone was respected. In some other houses they made fun of him.

Phayer: They did.

Peltz: Yes, yes, I remember. They were pulling his beard or doing something.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: That’s pretty bad.

Peltz: Yes, yes. They wouldn’t do it in our house.

Phayer: No.

Peltz: No. And‐‐

Phayer: So did you like going to the gymnasium?

Peltz: Very much indeed. I loved school, all my life I loved school. I love to learn. Every day I learn something. [Unintelligible]

Phayer: What was your best subject?

Peltz: Best subject literature. I could be lost in books.

Phayer: What kind of literature would they be teaching?

Peltz: They taught literature, comparative and all the other literatures, oh yes. Not, not oriental literature, not from China or Japan, no. The first time I started to learn about oriental literature was at the university. At the university here, not there, no.

Phayer: But you learned German literature, English literature‐‐

Peltz: Oh yes.

Phayer: Polish literature?

Peltz: Polish literature.

Phayer: Russian literature?

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: That was your best subject. What was your worst subject? Or did you have a worst one?

Peltz: Yes, I had a worst one. I had, I was very bad in chemistry. And I didn’t like, I had 2 subjects that I couldn’t stand. I didn’t like algebra. Yes. I liked geometry, I didn’t like algebra. [Polish] You say x and y, in our it’s iks and igrek [transcribed phonetically].

Phayer: It’s like German.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Well now you’re getting, you were getting, well you were a teenager, you were 15, 16 years old, were you beginning to have any social life yet?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Social life was going with parents to a theater and somebody came like, like Mor Schwartz or Reinhardt‐‐

Unknown Interviewer: 20 minutes

Peltz: ‐‐or somebody else and a social life like here, going out to dances or something, I never knew about it. I didn’t miss it, we didn’t know. Because once the school made a viatroyg [transcribed phonetically], this means like a ball, then they invited from out of school and boys from this school and that school and we danced‐‐

Phayer: Once a year?

Peltz: Once a year. Twice a year. Twice, let me, let me correct myself. At Christmastime, we had a vacation, we had 2 weeks vacation Christmas, yes, because we had Polish teachers and Yiddish so we had 2 weeks vacation Christmastime, before we left we had [unintelligible], every class, so it was, we decorated the classes and we danced and it was so many years‐‐

Phayer: So the boys would come from their school?

Peltz: Yes. Yes, yes. And they bowed and they invite you to dance‐‐

Phayer: Is that right?

Peltz: ‐‐and they [unintelligible] by themselves and it was‐‐

Phayer: You would decorate the classroom or‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: And then what would you have‐‐

Peltz: We had music‐‐

Phayer: ‐‐a radio‐‐

Peltz: No. We had music. We had some fiddlers. Yes.

Phayer: A little string group.

Peltz: Band. Some band, yes.

Phayer: What kind of music did they play?

Peltz: Only violins, no, nothing in Brahms, nothing‐‐

Phayer: Waltzes?

Peltz: ‐‐violins and cellos and they played waltzes and mazurkas and polkas and hokas [transcribed phonetically] and kozachok and everything else‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Can you play, can you play, oh what’s the Polish dance?

Peltz: Polka.

Phayer: Polka, can you play polka on the violin?

Peltz: I can’t play‐‐

Phayer: No I mean, I’m‐‐

Peltz: Oh yes, they played. And an accordion‐‐

Phayer: And an accordion.

Peltz: ‐‐and a violin, oh yes.

Phayer: So you did all those dances?

Peltz: Oh yes. We danced, we had a good time.

Phayer: So you must have learned it at home too to learn how to do those dances.

Peltz: Yes, my father danced beautifully. I remember him, I remember when I was maybe 2 years old he put me on a big table and taught me steps and then when they went to a wedding they were showing off a daughter in a beautiful pink dress with all kinds of bows and I was dancing with my patterned shoes, polka on the table.

Phayer: So your father really taught you how to dance. He liked to dance himself.

Peltz: Yes, with the children. Oh yes, we did everything together.

Phayer: And when there would be a wedding or something, everyone would dance.

Peltz: I danced with my father and with my mother, yes. I danced.

Phayer: And they danced, you didn’t just do Jewish dances but all these different dances.

Peltz: Not only Jewish dances, no. All kinds of dances yes, even I remember later seeing in the films they danced the‐‐

Phayer: Hora?

Peltz: No, just English dances. This is a French dance, minuet, in English it’s something else, the English waltz.

Phayer: Oh the English waltz.

Peltz: Waltz and genskin [transcribed phonetically] Polish.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Oh, so you did that too.

Peltz: Yes, we danced all kinds of dances.

Phayer: So did you look forward to that school dance every year?

Peltz: I don’t remember. I must have. I presume, if it was fun I looked forward to. It isn’t indelible, you know, it isn’t something that you remember.

Phayer: So you graduated from the gymnasium when you were about 16.

Peltz: Yeah, about 16. And my father was not only very religious but he said we don’t have any future in Poland, the Jews, the way it was, that we have to have our own land and then we’ll be Menschen so he was a Zionist, he was a Zionist, he went‐‐

Phayer: Really.

Peltz: Yes and he wanted me, I belonged to a Zionist group‐‐

Phayer: You did.

Peltz: Yes.

Unknown Interviewer: 25 minutes.

Phayer: Since about what time?

Peltz: It was in the library. In the library it was, one they gave us one room, I was maybe 14 years old, when I was still in gymnasium.

Phayer: You became a Zionist then.

Peltz: Yes, this wasn’t a Zionist, a Zionist was an older person, this was the children, like the pioneer, the little‐‐

Phayer: Sure.

Peltz: He wanted us, he wanted very badly to go to Israel, but at that time it was the white paper it, with England wouldn’t let the Jews in, so it was very hard, especially with a family of 7.

Phayer: They gave you a room in the public library for you to meet in?

Peltz: This library wasn’t a public library, this library was from Jewish organizations put together at the library. Everybody could come and take out books but it wasn’t a public library, it was a Jewish library, the Jews took care, Jews are people of the book.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: That’s interesting, I think I would like to ask you some questions about the kind of world that your father and your family and everybody was in. You thought that, I’ve forgotten the name of your city‐‐

Peltz: Radom.

Phayer: Radom, you thought that Radom was in the vicinity of 125 to 150 thousand people‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: About how many Jews‐‐

Peltz: 30,000

Phayer: About 30,000.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: It was a large Jewish population.

Peltz: Yes, a large Jewish population.

Phayer: And how many synagogues were there?

Peltz: I remember maybe 3.

Phayer: 3.

Peltz: Yeah.

Phayer: And you said that your father was orthodox.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: What were those synagogues?

Peltz: We didn’t have synagogues where we lived, the synagogues were located in the Jewish sections.

Phayer: But you went to one of them?

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: To one of them.

Peltz: Yes. Later, when I was older, we had a landlord that wanted, wanted to be remembered that he did good things even if he wasn’t too orthodox and he wasn’t too learned but he had a good heart, and he opened, he gave somebody, somebody left 3 big rooms, like here, and he said if Jews want to they can open a synagogue here so this was, my father painted that wall and made that, it was an honor, an honor for him that he gave it to the community, to the community in this section because he had ever

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries only young Jews and they had to go far away and Saturday was really inconvenient because it was, you know like here, Fox Point, is somewhere downtown and we couldn’t use transportation, we didn’t ride Saturday, we don’t ride on the bus or something so we had to walk, so this man made it, the synagogue and my father made the walk.

Phayer: Am I understanding‐‐

Peltz: In our vicinity.

Phayer: In your vicinity.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: I see. So then you began to go to that synagogue.

Peltz: Yes, but girls went to the synagogue only when they were high holidays, every Saturday I could go or not go, my father didn’t say I should go, as long as I did something at home, I could [unintelligible].

Unknown Interviewer: 30 minutes.

Phayer: I was wondering, do you remember what the affiliation of each of the synagogues were. They weren’t all orthodox were they?

Peltz: At that time it wasn’t such a thing as not orthodox. They could have been conservative, you know, a little bit less, not less religious but less let’s say, they didn’t have beards, they shaved. This was the conservatism that they had the same, it has to be kosher, it has to be everything just like that and there were no other affiliations, no other no, if one was a Jew, he was a Jew, if he believed in God and he believed in the Ten Commandments.

Phayer: Were there Hasidic‐‐

Peltz: They were Hasidic. My father wasn’t a Hasid. Hasidic were the people that sing and pray God because they are so happy that they can dance. My father wasn’t like that, no.

Phayer: But some of the others were?

Peltz: They were, and they all sit—Hasidic yes. I had a uncle, my mother’s sister’s husband, he was such a Hasid, he was always going around with the, with these locks, my father, not my father.

Phayer: But he was your father’s uncle?

Peltz: No, he was my uncle, he was my mother’s sister’s husband. They were very Hasidic.

Phayer: They were.

Peltz: They were Hasidic, real, yes, they were. They saw only the life in the synagogue and at home, synagogue and at home, we saw life around us, we saw the whole world. My father wasn’t Hasid, he was only orthodox. He would believe and he didn’t want anything to go unkosher.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Well that’s interesting. Would you say that the people in the ghetto, am I right to think that they wouldn’t have been as wealthy or well‐to‐do as your family?

Peltz: Oh yes, they were well‐to‐do people there that, yes, they had big stores, like jewelers and they lived there and they were very Hasidic.

Phayer: So it doesn’t make any difference what class you were as far as whether or not you were Hasidic or not?

Peltz: No, there were rich Hasidic or poor Hasidic but they were more poor than rich.

Phayer: That’s what I thought, more poor than rich.

Peltz: Yes, more poor than rich in Hasidic, yes.

Phayer: Well, did this create any division within the Jewish, there’s 30,000 Jewish in Radom now, were there any divisions because maybe, you know, you didn’t like the Hasidic tradition very much, did this cause any friction ever?

Peltz: No, if they wanted to decide because, if a whole Jewish community was in one Rabbinat, this means that one took care of the whole community, and then they were, there must have been problems because I remember that they came to my father and they begged him not to vote for this or that because it would not be good, they had to vote for this, for Kestenberg, I remember the name, for Kestenberg, and Kestenberg was a Jew who came back from Germany, who was learned in other languages and he was, he knew a lot.

Unknown Interviewer: 35 minutes.

Peltz: He wasn’t just a Hasid. Yes.

Phayer: And he was the one who voted in as what?

Peltz: [Unintelligible] said we shouldn’t vote for him because he isn’t too religious. You see? He didn’t have [unintelligible] he didn’t have [unintelligible] but he was the head of the whole Jewish community. The Jews if they had problems, they went to him, he was like a judge. Jews didn’t go to court at that time, they went to their rabbi, and what the rabbi said, it is done, even if he felt it isn’t right, he listened.

Phayer: So this man would be like, I’m not sure if I understand, was he like the chief rabbi?

Peltz: Yes, the chief rabbi of the whole community. There were others, there were Hasidim, there were [unintelligible] Hasidim, there were [unintelligible] Hasidim, there were other Hasidim, there were Hasidim, and it was one community.

Phayer: And then non‐Hasidim.

Peltz: Yes, oh yes, there were people that belonged to the Bund [transcribed phonetically], socialists, yes.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: But now, when you went to the synagogue, and I presume you went to one of the synagogues in the ghetto before the man donated that new synagogue in your old neighborhood‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes, it was gorgeous.

Phayer: The old one?

Peltz: The old one. I liked to go and to look, the marvelous stained windows and everything was so gorgeous, I loved, I loved it, yes I always loved it, since the beginning‐‐

Phayer: Was it made out of stone?

Peltz: Yes, no, it was built with bricks but it was on top of the bricks, as you see on the old buildings, you know‐‐

Phayer: Timber?

Peltz: It was all brick and mortar.

Phayer: Yeah, mortar. And then stained glass windows. And was it painted inside?

Peltz: Yes, it was, it was like a rotunda, the whole, not only the tops, the top was for us like a mosque has, you know, but without the—[unintelligible].

Phayer: But when you were a little girl‐‐

Peltz: I liked it yes.

Phayer: I’m still trying to get this sorted out in my mind, when you went to this synagogue, not everyone who went there was Hasidic.

Peltz: No.

Phayer: But some were?

Peltz: Yes, most of them were.

Phayer: Most of them were.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: So you would worship together.

Peltz: Yes, but the women were separate and the men. Even at the new synagogue the men were separate. We couldn’t have like they had, I remember having curtains.

Phayer: Were there any Hasidic Jews that went to the new synagogue?

Peltz: Yes.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: There were.

Peltz: Yes. If they lived here. But not too many. You didn’t see in our neighborhood people with long beards and with big hats and with locks.

Phayer: And the long dress, the kaftans, they didn’t wear that?

Peltz: No no, my father didn’t wear, because he came from Germany and there it was more European.

Phayer: And did you observe still the same high holidays exactly the same‐‐

Peltz: Everything. Yes, we didn’t even cook Saturday. We cooked Friday and we didn’t make fire Saturday, we didn’t turn on the electricity Saturday, we waited till it will be the time to put on the electricity‐‐

Unknown Interviewer: 40 minutes.

Peltz: ‐‐and the fire was made Friday, and coals in the mid‐summer and winter, and Saturday you could put on your meals, it should get warm, not do anything. This was not [unintelligible] on the Sabbath, a shtop [transcribed phonetically] in Shabbat.

Phayer: You weren’t supposed to do that. So you were quite strict about that.

Peltz: Yes, yes. We were brought up in atmosphere of dos and don’ts, yes. And we‐‐

Phayer: Would you say that you were more or less religious than your brothers or your sister or were they less religious than you or were you all the same?

Peltz: Would you like to hear a story?

Phayer: Very much.

Peltz: Ok, so, my brother, the younger one didn’t want to go to the yeshivas, I told you, and he put on the, what is it called? What is it?

Unknown Interviewer: Propha‐‐

Peltz: Prophalact‐‐

Unknown Interviewer: What are they called?

Phayer: Oh sure, I know what it’s called, a phylactery.

Peltz: And he put it on just to please my mother, so he put it on and he winked at me and he took it off right away and my mother said I didn’t see you even pray, she was very much annoyed with it, he said, oh I did it very fast. He went to the war, he was on the Russian took him to the Finnish, with the Finns, and he came home from the visions, they called him [unintelligible], this means he came from a whole division, somebody shot him in the hand or something, he went to the bandaid, when he came back

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries nobody was around, everybody was killed, the Russians were killed off by the Finns, so he saw miracles and it didn’t happen once or twice. This one that went to the yeshiva and a rabbi, married later a gentile [unintelligible] but he was supposed to be a rabbi but she saved his life.

Phayer: That one was supposed to be a rabbi?

Peltz: Yeah.

Unknown Interviewer: No. The one that was kicked out and was a genius and everything and was picked out to stay in rabbinical school, he‐‐

Peltz: He married a gentile. The other one that didn’t want to have anything to do with the yeshiva, he is now in New York, a Hasid. The same way as we lived, he lives, nobody answers the telephone on Saturday, they don’t put on, the light burns from Friday till Saturday night, the Shabbat cook, this means everything, she knows, it just [unintelligible] in our house and I come there, I sometimes cry, I feel so, we are home.

Phayer: It always happens that way. The one that you think is going to do one thing does another and‐‐

Peltz: Yes, and his son went to the yeshiva, he’s a lawyer now but he went to the yeshiva, and his daughter went to the yeshiva, to the very, very strict, orthodox, and she’s now a teacher but she went to yeshiva, a girl, in New York. Can you imagine? And I am in between. Sometimes I feel religious but I am not.

Phayer: You were the in between.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: How’s that tape doing?

Unknown Interviewer: I think we better finish, that’s it.

Phayer: Okie doke.

[T1, S2 audio ends 44:41]

[T1, S2 audio ends 44:43]

Phayer: ‐‐of the interview if Mrs. Peltz, taking place here in Milwaukee on March the 19th. Maybe we could pick up on this story that you were telling us about as we were changing that tape. You were explaining that you had another boy that didn’t, that went to the yeshiva that stayed at your house, and this is kind of a good turn, you were doing them a favor, a good deed you said.

Peltz: We didn’t know the parents, he was an orphan.

Phayer: An orphan?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: And he was in the yeshiva and people who could afford picked out people that they came over to the yeshiva and he needed to stay somewhere, and this was called a mitzvah, yes, this was a good deed that you did, and your children learned form it compassion. Yes.

Phayer: And so he lived with you during the time that he went to the yeshiva.

Peltz: He went to the yeshiva and he lived, we had a office, so he slept there, but he came every day for dinner.

Phayer: And then he’d sleep in the office.

Peltz: Yes, he went back there to sleep.

Phayer: And tell me then again about the meal that you would prepare for this other woman.

Peltz: Oh yes, my mother felt that every woman who has, has to, has to share. Has to share. If you have enough, you have to share with somebody who doesn’t. And this woman was bringing, she was delivering everyday bread to our place and she was very poor, what could she make from a few loaves of bread and some rolls she delivered to some people, not too many because she was old and very tiny, but she had a very sick daughter with tuberculosis at home so my mother used to Friday night, not Friday night, Friday afternoon, she used to take a half a chicken, some fish, and she didn’t send with the maid, because this, the maid, it wouldn’t be nice, the maid would shame her, that she is a beggar, I had to take it every Friday, I had to take it, and I remember something else, when we went for vacation, mother knew that nobody would do it and she would not have the meal for her daughter so mother used to [unintelligible] extra and she said, remember don’t buy anything but this is for your daughter. Yes, they were very poor people, some of them were so poor, but with dignity, yes, they were poor but they didn’t want anybody to know that they are beggars, they were not beggars, they were just bad luck people.

Phayer: Was there any class consciousness?

Peltz: Yes, because the rich ones, even the religious ones, didn’t let their sons or daughters marry with the son of a shoemaker or a tailor, yes, because they were not, they were not learned. If the people were poor and learned, then you could mix, yes, but not, they were plain, just workers, that they didn’t learn. Learning was everything.

Phayer: Learning was almost as important as‐‐

Peltz: As eating.

Phayer: ‐‐as what your trade or your business was.

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: I wanted to ask you another question about religion before we talk about secular matters. Of course you celebrated all of the high holidays, could you tell me something, do you remember doing that? How you did that and everything?

Peltz: Oh yes, but I remember Passover was very, this was a nice remembrance because everything had to be just so and the maids were always so busy, we were always in the way because they had to make it to [unintelligible] and kosher was more than clean, kosher was immaculate, kosher was something that you can’t buy for money, you have to do it, and then the other holidays [unintelligible], I liked these holidays. First of all it was new year, you had a new leaf, a new leaf of life, it was called that way, no matter what you did wrong something, you are forgiven after that, you are living anew, you are living again with a new leaf of life, you turn over a leaf, and it was Simchat Torah, this was the nicest, this was the end of the holidays, we were celebrating our, the Torah, the Ten Commandments, and it was so much fun, girls and boys in the synagogue and dancing and enjoying, they were, these gorgeous smells at home when you came in for holidays, it was nice all year round but for holidays it smelled differently. For me, when I came back from [unintelligible] and I opened the door in the house, I thought always it smells like the holidays for the new years. It was, it remind me so much of the good things, and there weren’t any more such good things later. And I still feel it. I wish my children would have what I had. But it was here different, we lived differently, and we had to work Saturday‐‐

Phayer: Do you feel that you had more fun during the high holidays than maybe your children did‐‐

Peltz: Yes, and something else, that we had more for our soul than physical. Yeah, it was something that stays all your life with you, you can’t buy that, you can’t get it from, you have a few moments when you go the theater and you enjoy the play but it’s only for a minute and it’s not the whole thing‐‐

Phayer: This is something that you really miss from the culture of the old country that we don’t have here in this country.

Peltz: No, not at all. I have to say not at all. Children are brought up with a different tradition. [Unintelligible] but that they have to be a mensch. A mensch is something, these are ethics, you relate, because I feel that children and adults understand me now, others don’t even know what I’m talking about sometimes.

Phayer: I wanted to ask you something that I should have asked earlier, you said that how the household got so busy around the high holidays and everything had to be just right and everything, well what would your mother do? Would she supervise the maids? Or was she working with them? Or what was her role in that?

Unknown interviewer: 10 minutes.

Peltz: She would never allow the maid to bake anything for us. She would bake every single thing, and all kinds of things that, one liked with cinnamon, the other with morelas, this means with apricots. She did all that and, you know, the maid did only things like peel potatoes, she made the noodles, she made

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries everything that is possible, she worked. She didn’t go to the office then, she didn’t do anything but stay at home and supervise, because the maids could do so much‐‐

Phayer: Oh I see otherwise she actually went to the office

Peltz: Oh yes, because my father used to go to different forests, he was a very busy man, we didn’t have have a telephone at home but in his office we had, and they were calling this one were the builders and everything, we had a lumber yard and it was very busy, and it wasn’t‐‐

Phayer: Well she was helping to run the business then.

Peltz: Yes, she did.

Phayer: Was that unusual at all or no?

Peltz: Women were in business in the ghetto, even there, and the men were sitting and praying to God all day long. And the women were in the business. So was my grandma. My grandfather didn’t eat anything all day long except bread, salt, milk and potatoes. He didn’t want to have anything to do with anything in this life because he waited for the next life, that he will go and see God and meet with the angels and everything. Saturday, before Saturday, he took a bath and in the middle of the lake, frozen, summer and winter, [unintelligible], just like that, and he came back and he ate a big meal, this was the Sabbath, the Sabbath was the queen and he enjoyed the Sabbath, and every day he lived only to pray. And my grandmother was in the business.

Phayer: There’s some difference then between the way your grandfather lived, who was very pious then‐‐

Peltz: I never talked with my grandfather. He never talked with me. He was so surrounded by malokhim, this means angels, he never talked with me. Never. I never, I said hello and that’s all. I was really afraid of him because he was different.

Phayer: There’s a big difference—Now he was typical of his generation, there’s a big difference between him and your father.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Your father was religious‐‐

Peltz: Yes, my father next to him was apikoyres. What does this mean?

Phayer: Atheist or something?

Peltz: Yes. You see? Yes. He was out of this world, he didn’t belong to this world. My grandmother was the one‐‐

Phayer: And yet your grandfather wasn’t Hasidic.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: I don’t know what he was. I looked at my grandfather like he would die and come back and I couldn’t make out what he was. He was an enigma to me.

Phayer: Did your father respect him‐‐

Peltz: Very much indeed, yes. But they didn’t talk too much.

Phayer: That’s interesting. Is there anything else about the high holidays you can remember that you’d like to say before we move on to another topic?

Peltz: The high holidays leave with you a sense of belonging. You feel that you don’t belong only to a family, you belong to a community. You know that you have to do it and you enjoy and you like your children to be the same way. See, this is the high holiday, it’s tradition.

Phayer: That’s very interesting. But there’s something that maybe you could say a little bit more about. Going to the high holidays gives you the sense of tradition and community and yet there are class differences.

Peltz: Yes there were.

Phayer: How did the two come together?

Peltz: The shoemaker and the tailor, I suppose it was envy but still [unintelligible]. Oh and something else, we had Sukkot before Simchat Torah. Yeah, it’s Sukkot? Yes. And then my father invited the congregation, not only my father but, 8 days, you build a little hut on your property, it wasn’t our property because where we lived we rented but it was on the property, but you ask the whole congregation to come down for kiddush, this means for cake and for schnapps, yes, every day, 8 days. So every day different people come in. So my father used to pick not only the ones that were learned, he took the tailor and then [unintelligible], he was very smart, he wanted them to be together. Every day they, it was maybe 80 people, a 100 people, so every day, the 10 or 12 people or 8 people came in and then the others went to different ones that they could afford, and this was for kiddush. And some people stayed for the meal too, it was a minnik [transcribed phonetically]. What is a minnik [transcribed phonetically] in English? Tradition, that you go to the synagogue and you see a face, a strange face, you go over and ask them from where he is, and then you brought him home for the Sabbath meal, this was a noyever [transcribed phonetically], you brought home a noyever [transcribed phonetically]. Yes. There were some people that were not especially poor. They were Saturday there and they couldn’t, it was no communication so they stayed [unintelligible] so you brought home a noyever. You brought home a person, and this was a good deed. Oh I knew many [unintelligible], my father brought home a [unintelligible]. This was very interesting. Some people were very interesting, from other cities. This was a tradition to, not everybody did it, they didn’t, maybe circumstances didn’t allow it but most of the time Jews were taking home okhum [transcribed phonetically]. It wasn’t like a man should call or [unintelligible] to a restaurant on Saturday, he couldn’t buy for money, because he wouldn’t spend money Saturday, he was orthodox.

Phayer: Was this also a way of getting to know people?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: In a way, we got to know people that they told us about different cities and, you know, and their business and their families, it was interesting, it was, Saturday we were not allowed to read books so we had okhum [transcribed phonetically], we watch them. After this day [unintelligible].

Unknown interviewer: 20 minutes.

Phayer: That’s interesting. Your father then was, he was a businessman and how many people did he employ?

Peltz: He employed all gentile, 8 or 10 people.

Phayer: They were all gentiles.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Any reason for that?

Peltz: The Jews didn’t, couldn’t do that. I didn’t know, they never did that.

Phayer: The sawing of the logs?

Peltz: [Unintelligible]. This was the time before the machines, there were these machines that cut everything but this was the time, and klepkee [transcribed phonetically], this was the ones that go to build ships, klepkee [transcribed phonetically]. [Unintelligible] 2 of them, and 2 of them were—yes, 8 or 10 people. And for years we had the same thing and then we employed the one, the maid didn’t wash, one day a week, [unintelligible], gentile woman [unintelligible], first she was my nurse, for years, when I was little or maybe from 3 to 5 years and then she was washing all different houses, so Monday and Tuesdays she was in our house because the maid didn’t wash, the maid had other things to do, it was a big family, nobody was home, my mother wasn’t home, somebody had to do something.

Phayer: So the lumber business was a good business that allowed you to live comfortably and to hire the maid to clean it and woman to wash and so on.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: So you would be, you would have been middle class, did you think of yourself as being middle‐ class?

Peltz: No. I never thought about myself, about us being better or worse than others because it was a time, I don’t know, I had friends that all belonged to the same place so it wasn’t any different‐‐

Phayer: About as far as the way you dressed and everything. You had nicer clothes‐‐

Peltz: My parents weren’t showoffs. They would rather do a good deed than spend money for things but they are—yes, my father made all the toys, we couldn’t go to a store, it wasn’t such a thing. My father very different like that, he was always doing something, he was never idle.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: And you had mentioned a little while ago that your father was a Zionist.

Peltz: Yes, and he wanted me instead to go to Israel and because of that I went to a high institute of vishovska‐grod‐neeja‐radneeja [transcribed phonetically]. This means high institute of [unintelligible]. Yes. To go to Israel in vilma [transcribed phonetically].

Phayer: In vilma [transcribed phonetically].

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: I want to ask you about that later but, so your father was a strong Zionist, did he belong to a Zionist party‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: ‐‐politically?

Peltz: Yes, they were Mizrachis, this is a Zionist that is religious. Yes, Mizrachi‐‐

Unknown interviewer: It means east.

Phayer: And, so he was a member of this party.

Peltz: Yes. Paid dues and then to meetings.

Phayer: And went to meetings, an acting member‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: And then he also then vote for a particular party in the Polish parliament that was, in other words would he vote for a Zionist representative‐‐

Peltz: He didn’t have Zionist representative, he had Jewish representatives but not Zionist representatives because I married to a family that had quite a few senators, 2 senators and one representative, and they were very religious but it wasn’t, it was that they were very intelligent and they were very, very learned, they had quite a few degrees and they were very learned people, and they got to be senators. It was from a different part of the country. We didn’t have in our part anybody.

Phayer: Anybody in Parliament.

Peltz: No. This was from, Poland was, before it was divided in 3, the Germans, the Germans took a part, it was like in Poznan in the other side, it was Poland and Russia too, it was Warsaw and then there were south side of Poland and this was Austria under Ferdinand. So this was Galicia. So it was Galicia, Warsaw, [unintelligible] under German and Russia, these 3, many times they divide.

Phayer: So your father was a very active Zionist and, were there a lot of Zionists in‐‐

Peltz: Yes, there were a lot. In Radom.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Radim? Radom. There were quite a few.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: It was not unusual to be a Zionist.

Peltz: Not unusual to be a Zionist. And we, he had a newspaper, it was by Mizrachi, and it was the Moment, it was a Haynt2, Moment3 and Nasz Przegląd 4. This was all Jewish newspapers, the Nasz Przegląd was in Polish but also Zionistically‐inclined and the Moment was for the more religious people and the Haynt was more for everybody.

Phayer: And was the Moment in Polish or Yiddish?

Peltz: Yiddish, Yiddish. I read the Moment as long as I wasn’t bored.

Phayer: It was like your favorite paper to read?

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: Did that carry all news or just Zionist news?

Peltz: No, all news.

Phayer: All news.

Peltz: All news‐‐

Phayer: Did it come out every day or once a week?

Peltz: Every day, every day. It was even an afternoon paper.

Phayer: Now, am I right in thinking that the Hasidic people were also Zionists?

Peltz: They waited for moshiyekh, for whom? Messiah. They said they don’t like to have anything to do with Zionist. Zionist is something that is against the religion they said.

Phayer: They did?

Peltz: Yeah.

Unknown interviewer: That’s true to this day.

Phayer: So they, they weren’t Zionists.

Peltz: No, and they, their children had to go to Zionist, like meetings or something. Parents shouldn’t‐‐

2 Haynt (‘Today’) – a daily Yiddish language newspaper published in Warsaw, Poland, 1908‐1939 3 Der moment (Yid. ‘The moment’) – a daily Yiddish language newspaper published in Warsaw, Poland, 1910‐1939 4 Nasz Przegląd (‘Our Review’) – a daily Polish language newspaper published in Warsaw, Poland 1923‐1939

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: See that surprises me because‐‐

Unknown interviewer: I think you’re equating all very religious Jews with Hasidim, that’s not the case.

Phayer: No, I realize that, I’m not making that equation, it’s just that the strongly orthodox tend, tend now not to be Zionist, but there was a relation between the Hasidic tradition and Zionist.

Peltz: Yes, because the way of life, it should be merry, it should be, we shouldn’t give into the darkness what we lived in, we should have hope, we should have imagination, we should sing, this all is connected with Hasidim too. Yeah. But Hasidim is Hasidim, I mean very religious people. They didn’t want their children to be Zionists because they waited for Messiah.

Unknown interviewer: Did they want to go to Is‐, Palestine?

Peltz: No, not the older, the younger one, the older children they are against, this was something very special, the children were against their parents because the parents waited for Messiah.

Phayer: So there was the very noticeable generation gap‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes. A generation gap. Yes. Some people, some young boys ran away from home to Israel, they went through Galicia, and through Austria and through, they got to be‐‐

Phayer: These would have been your, your generation.

Peltz: Yes, I would have gone to Israel, yes.

Phayer: But your father was pro‐Israel‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: These other people were‐‐

Peltz: They weren’t against Israel. You misunderstand me.

Phayer: No.

Peltz: They didn’t want Israel as such because they said that in Israel is no religion, that they work 7 days a week, that they eat, I don’t know, not kosher. Because they couldn’t afford to be kosher or something, they ate what they had. It’s not a matter of not wanting to be kosher, it was a matter of having so little, yes, and doing what they had to.

Unknown interviewer: So they were familiar with what life was like in Palestine at that time.

Peltz: Yes. Rabbis went to look and to see.

Phayer: But these, the younger ones, they were kind of rebellious and they‐‐

Peltz: Rebellious that the parents want to stay in the ghetto and be under the Polish‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Unknown interviewer: 30 minutes.

Peltz: How can I, it’s no words of telling you about this.

Phayer: But they did feel rebellious and perhaps they felt that they would never get ahead in Poland.

Peltz: It’s not ahead, it’s never get out of Poland. Every single Jew wanted to get out of Poland, even the most, if they led the most lucrative life they wanted to get out of Poland because they felt that they were unwanted, they felt that they were just like stranger, they worked so much for the country, they were more than oppressed. No, Jews didn’t have rights in Poland, not at all.

Phayer: But the younger generation, they were determined, at least some of them, to just leave.

Peltz: Yes, to leave. And they left. Some of them from our city went to Paris, and they never came back. And some of them, they went to Germany, they didn’t know what would happen. And they were scientists and I had a few that they were, one got to be a very famous doctor. They couldn’t get this in Poland, it wasn’t proper in Poland, they couldn’t get into University, they had whatever 5 percent. It was impossible.

Phayer: But you never got particularly rebellious because your father was a very strong Zionist anyway.

Peltz: Yes, I listened to my father when he wanted me to go and finish for [unintelligible]. I felt that it’s the right thing to do. Even [unintelligible] at that time didn’t go to school‐‐

Phayer: After gymnasium.

Peltz: No, the school was only for boys. We were maybe 4 girls in the whole school.

Phayer: In, when you got to‐‐

Peltz: [Unintelligible]

Phayer: Well, maybe we’ll talk something about that then. You, this must have been a big step in your life, to go off to go to a completely strange city and‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: ‐‐how far away was Vilna5 from Radow?

Peltz: A day and a half traveling by train.

Phayer: A day and a half.

Peltz: Yes.

5 Present‐day Vilnius, Lithuania

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: And Vilna, wasn’t that the city that was called the Jerusalem of Poland? Wasn’t it a very, very strongly‐‐

Peltz: Yes, very strongly Hasidic, not Hasidic, in Vilna they were not Hasids, they were Vilna [unintelligible], yes? You should know, it’s history.

Phayer: I should know?

Unknown interviewer: You should know.

Peltz: They had a big, in Vilna was a big ghetto.

Phayer: Vilna was a large city.

Peltz: Large city. Vilna was a few hundred thousand people.

Phayer: This must have been, when you were about 17 years old?

Peltz: No, I was not 16 yet.

Phayer: Not 16. It must have been very exciting. Did you know anyone there?

Peltz: No, no. I just corresponded with the, I came in, I was living in the dormitory.

Phayer: You were living in the dormitory.

Peltz: Dormitory, and I got friends, they are Zionists, one had a pharmacy, I remember the name Lubah [transcribed phonetically], they are in Israel.

Unknown interviewer: 35 minutes.

Peltz: And, I really liked it, very much indeed.

Phayer: This was an agricultural school.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: And now this wouldn’t have just been girls, this would have been‐‐

Peltz: No, girls and boys, only 4 girls.

Phayer: Only 4 girls, how many boys?

Peltz: I don’t remember, classes were the same classes and everything. Especially girls didn’t come to chemistry classes at all.

Phayer: Oh you didn’t?

Peltz: I did, I did.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Oh you did.

Peltz: I was very poor in the beginning but I got to know a professor who taught me a lot, a lot.

Phayer: Chemistry. So you stayed there in that agricultural school for how many years?

Peltz: 3 years.

Phayer: 3 years. And‐‐

Peltz: And I finished and I was accepted in Warsaw to a special school, it was a different school, to practice. We didn’t live in Radow at that time, we had, we had moved to [Zamość ?], [Zamość ?], Zavadah [transcribed phonetically]‐‐

Phayer: But did you enjoy your 3 years in Vilna?

Peltz: Very much. Yes.

Phayer: A fun time of your life?

Peltz: A fun time of my life, I never had so much fun.

Phayer: Can you tell me why you had so much fun?

Peltz: This was the time when a girl is already a young lady and I had a boyfriend and I skied there‐‐

Phayer: Oh you did.

Peltz: Yes, I learned how to ski and I made so many friends, and it was different than home. And I wasn’t under supervision and I was free.

Phayer: Well, did your boyfriend come from Vilna?

Peltz: No no, he came from Rypin, he came from Prusy6. Yes, and he was there till he was supposed to. He was killed the first day when the Germans took over Poland and they bombed Plotz [transcribed phonetically], Poznań, and he was a pilot and he was killed there, in the airplane, his mother called me up and told me.

Phayer: Wow.

Peltz: I had, I had‐‐

Phayer: Was he going to the agricultural school?

Peltz: Yes, yes, we had the same classes.

6 Prussia

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: So then you were going to school but then there was a lot of time to socialize, to go skiing‐‐

Peltz: Skiing but not too much to socialize because after school everybody had a działka7, everybody had a piece of ground that had to be worked on. Oh yes, it was work, but it was work and fun. Sometimes Paula didn’t do anything but somebody else did it for her.

Phayer: You got somebody else to‐‐

Peltz: I got good grades believe me.

Phayer: So you actually had to, you like experimentally gardened‐‐

Peltz: Yes, everything, everything, yes. First year it was sadownictwa, warzywnictwa, ogrodnictwa, kveeartztvah [transcribed phonetically], pszczelarstwo. This means we had orchards, we had vegetables, we had rolnictwo means farming, we had flowers, and bees, pszczelarstwo. Yeah, we had these under glass. It was delightful to watch.

Unknown interviewer: 40 minutes

Phayer: And this now, were all of these students Jewish?

Peltz: All of them they were Jewish, we had a few non‐Jewish but the main reason for the school, the existence of the school, was to send out qualified people to Israel.

Phayer: Oh it was?

Peltz: Yes, Wyższa Ogrodniczy Rolniczy, the high institute of learning agrama [transcribed phonetically], it means, agriculture.

Phayer: So this, this was almost like a Zionist school, I mean, the purpose of it was‐‐

Peltz: Yes, but the money came from Zio‐‐, yes, yes, it was a very nice school. And they had to be all people that finished gymnasium, this means they had mature, they had‐‐

Phayer: Sure, they had graduated the gymnasium.

Peltz: Gymnasium was like high school, but more.

Phayer: Yeah. But more, yeah. Much more. But then, would you sit around and talk with the other students about some day we would go to Israel?

Peltz: Yes. When we were off, like Saturday and Sunday we had off, Sunday was a day for silence, yes. We were indoctrinated.

Phayer: You almost indoctrinated yourselves I guess then. Talking about it. Did you dream about it?

7 Plot of land

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Oh yes, I wanted to‐‐

Phayer: And did you read about it‐‐

Peltz: Yes, yes. And we learned, we talked and we learned, we learned and we talked, and it was kulka [transcribed phonetically], we didn’t have large audiences, we had 10, 5 people discussion. Oh there were people that they didn’t want to go to Israel, there people that wanted to go to Birobidjan8 because they were Bundists [transcribed phonetically], they weren’t Zionists‐‐

Unknown interviewer: Where did they want to go?

Peltz: Birobidjan, a Soviet, Russia gave land to the Jews but they never, they promi‐‐, a promised land, Birobidjan. Didn’t you hear about it? Yes.

Phayer: And so there were‐‐

Peltz: And they took, they wanted the Jews to be agranoms, agra‐‐, they wanted Jews not to be, not to be merchants, not to be tailors, not to be shoemakers but to be just plain agricultural people.

Phayer: Farmers.

Peltz: Farmers.

Phayer: Right. Well, that’s‐‐

Unknown interviewer: Ok, I think we should turn it over.

Peltz: Birobidjan, in Russia. So, we had discussions, sometimes have discussions‐‐

Phayer: We’ll turn the tape over now.

[end of T2, S1, audio ends at 41:59]

Phayer: Side two of tape two of the interview with Mrs. Peltz. Mrs. Peltz, I think we were talking about, oh I remember, we were discussing the special place the Russians had to try to attract farmers to Russia and so I‐‐

Peltz: This was in Russia.

Phayer: Yes.

Peltz: But they had here people, that they were Communists, there were others, not only Jews, and Jews.

8 Or Birobidzhan – a Jewish Autonomous Region in Russian Siberia

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: Sure, I mean, that’s what I was going to ask whether or not in the school where you were there were Bundists there.

Peltz: Bundists.

Phayer: And they were the ones that were attracted to Russia‐‐

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: ‐‐to go after they‐‐

Peltz: Yes, not to, not to Israel.

Phayer: Did you get into arguments with them?

Peltz: Oh yes, many times. Yes. The argument was, why do we have to bow to different gods. Why don’t we stay as we are and be free and do what we want to do with our own land. Yes.

Phayer: In Israel?

Peltz: Yes, because it would be the same, it would be like in Russia, it would be the same. First of all it’s Communism and Communism is a no‐no. I don’t relate to that at all.

Phayer: No, but the Bundists, they were‐‐

Peltz: Bundists were the leftists, yes.

Phayer: Sure. But were they still‐‐

Peltz: They were for the worker first of all. They wanted the tailor and the shoemaker and the other to have rights as did others. Yes.

Phayer: Were they just as religious as you?

Peltz: No, not religious at all. No, they did, not at all. They were atheists. Yes.

Phayer: Even the ones that went to your school?

Peltz: Yes, yes.

Phayer: So this was something different for you to be coming into contact with these people. You didn’t meet people like that.

Peltz: Yes. And because of that it was interesting. You can’t be a whole mensch if you don’t know views about other people and how others think. It’s not only you are not the best, you are only one of the few that understand.

Phayer: So, would you say, you know we talked earlier about that generation gap, would you say that these Bundists were also part of that more rebellious younger generation? And were‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Yes, and they came from a different, from people, working class people. Yes, not as smart, some of them came from religious people. But some of them came from [telephone rings], yes.

Phayer: Now, I don’t quite understand [telephone ringing] why they would be allowed in the Zionist school since they would be‐‐

Peltz: Zionist school was a school, this was Zionist money, it wasn’t a Zionist school. They didn’t have lessons to teach you Zionism. No, you were free, yes, but it was under the Zionist protection, this means they gave the money to bring up young people like that, yes.

Phayer: I understand that. So, you were getting to be a young woman then. Were some of your friends getting married yet? Was this‐‐

Peltz: No, quite a few of our girls had boyfriends but none of them, no, it wasn’t the style like that to get married in the school. Now, here I see, and I’ve seen before that people got married when they were in school, not in Europe, no. The main thing when you went to school is to learn and to get your degree. Yes, this was the main reason to stay in school. This was secondary that we had a good time, especially I because I was always under rigor, you know, like chain, and here I was on my own, so it was‐‐

Phayer: You enjoyed that freedom.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Did you go to the synagogue during this time?

Peltz: Sometimes when I was together with the one of my girlfriends that is in Israel now, her parents went, we went with them separately, but mostly we got very busy. It was a hectic schedule, we had to study always. It was so hectic and still we had this land to work on. Yes, I had a Saturday, a Sunday, Saturday I didn’t work, but Sunday, and then there were meetings and all other things. It was never a dull moment.

Phayer: Did you like working out on the land?

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Oh you did?

Peltz: Yes. I still do.

Phayer: I was getting the impression that you didn’t like part so much.

Peltz: Yes, very much.

Phayer: You did like it. Well then [telephone ringing] after three years and you Warsaw, right?

Peltz: I went to Warsaw because this was such a completion, this was practice, like you would take a master’s. If I would have practice for a year, I could get a master’s.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: I see.

Peltz: Yes, but the war broke out.

Phayer: So that’s when the war broke out.

Peltz: Yes, yes. And I went home. I went home‐‐

Phayer: How much time was there that you were in Warsaw before the war broke out?

Peltz: More than a year.

Phayer: So you were there for a whole year?

Peltz: Yes, I came home for vacation and the war broke out the first of September.

Phayer: And you were in Warsaw for about a year.

Peltz: And the second war with the Germans, the Russians broke out in friendly territory in June, I think so.

Phayer: So, how did you like Warsaw?

Peltz: Oh I knew Warsaw by heart. I had relatives in Warsaw, when I lived in Radom, my mother used to let me go to with my father to Grójec and it was only a few kilometers to Warsaw so I took the train, I went to my relatives.

Phayer: It was nothing new to you then.

Peltz: No, Warsaw was just like any other city.

Phayer: But it was the biggest city.

Peltz: The biggest city, this was a small Paris, believe me. The dress and the theatres and everything. I wanted to be an actress once. I went to the best actress in Warsaw, Modrzejewska9, and I went, I saw a play, I don’t remember what, and then I went behind the stage and I said to her, this was maybe twelve, maybe thirteen, maybe fourteen, I don’t remember when it was, and I said, I’d like to be an actress, and she said, [speaking Polish] first study because an actress isn’t such a good life, you have to be first a person, all around person till you get to be an actor. [speaking Polish]. Don’t live, you know, just study. I was an actress later. We had many plays in our sitting room. Shakespeare in Polish and Slovotsky [transcribed phonetically] and everything, and I had always, I was a free bird. I was Desdemona.

Phayer: Desdemona?

Peltz: Yes. I don’t remember how many plays [unintelligible]. I remember walking on the stage.

9 Polish actress Helena Modjeska

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Phayer: When you did that in Vilna, did you do that in Polish?

Peltz: In Polish.

Phayer: In Polish?

Peltz: In Polish. Always in Polish.

Phayer: Always in Polish. Was the school taught in Polish?

Peltz: In Polish.

Phayer: The gymnasium was too then.

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: Even the grade school was?

Peltz: Yes. Everything was in Polish. You live in the land you should speak the language.

Phayer: Yeah. One of the things that’s difficult, come back to a different topic, difficult to reconcile, is the love that you have for the country.

Peltz: Yes because I grew up in it, it’s something that, it was, I felt it, it was like it would be mine. It wasn’t [unintelligible].

Phayer: But at a certain age then, you realize that it never will be‐‐

Peltz: That I am not wanted, that I am a stranger to it. When I grew up, I realized it. Yes. Before I couldn’t understand why they throw, they are throwing stones on me, I couldn’t understand that. Yes. Because we were children, all of the same. Yes, we spoke the same language and my parents weren’t so religious that they told me not to speak Polish, I spoke Polish better than Yiddish. Yes, because I always, I spoke to them Polish, they answered me Yiddish because they didn’t want me to forget. But then I came in from school, I spoke Polish to the maid, I spoke Polish to my mother, I spoke Polish to my father.

Phayer: But at a certain age‐‐

Peltz: Yes, I realized that I am not wanted there. That I am a stranger. That I am looked upon like I wouldn’t belong there.

Phayer: But you said that just about everybody then, you know, we were talking about the new younger generation, but that just about everybody wanted to go to Israel, but weren’t there a lot that were content to stay in Poland?

Peltz: Not any Jewish people that I knew. I told you, some people didn’t want to go to Israel because they felt it’s a very hard life, like a knew a family Raditskee [transcribed phonetically], their daughter wanted to France and she became a very known painter under a different name, I think she’s still there. And some people went to Germany and became scientists and became others and then, and

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries industrialists and, everyone accomplished something, they were taught this way, maybe because of that they hated us so much. You see, we had always, we wanted, we wanted more than we had, and we wanted, we were achievers, the Polish people, if they go to school, they go to school. Some went, some got higher education but they didn’t have the drive that Jewish people had. Yes. Maybe this was the main reason. The Jewish people were the jewelers, the Jewish people were the builders, the Jewish people were the ones that had big factories and had good businesses and were famous doctors, and what I know in Radom, of all the doctors, I can tell you only three or four that were non‐Jewish, they were gentile, and the rest of them [unintelligible] or Rosenberg and all the others, they were Jewish doctors. They resented that in a way. Maybe I would too if I would be in their shoes, I don’t know. I can understand the resentment but I can’t understand the hate and the [unintelligible]. Hitler knew what he was doing when he brought everything and Majdanek and all the other, and Auschwitz to Poland, because in Poland it was the right territory for it.

Phayer: We were talking a little while ago about the differences in the generation, the generation gap, so noticeable. I was just wondering whether or not you thought that there was a greater generation gap in the Jewish community than in the corresponding gentile.

Peltz: Yes, it was a much greater, because they didn’t have the freedom that the Polish people had so they wanted things that they didn’t have, and being a religious community, they felt that they are hindered is the word‐‐

Phayer: Hindered?

Peltz: Yes, the Jewish people felt‐‐

Phayer: So you’re saying that the gentile, younger gentile kids just went along as usual.

Peltz: Yes because they had, they could go to gymnasium, they didn’t have to pay, it was reeahlya [transcribed phonetically] gymnasium, two gymnasiums, for boys and for girls, I forgot the girls but for boys it was was reeahlya [transcribed phonetically]. And they could go everywhere without being, they, it wasn’t a quota, they could go and learn if they wanted.

Phayer: But Radom was a fairly large city and Vilna was a larger city and of course Warsaw was the largest of them all. Did you notice very many Jews moving in from the shtetl into these larger cities to seek employment?

Unknown interviewer: 15 minutes.

Peltz: Yes, it was like that too because they loved the shtetl, they loved the small place, [unintelligible], I told you, the Jew isn’t satisfied because he had that urge to achieve something, so he thought in that little shtetl he has a little business, maybe he’ll go to the big shtetl, he’ll be luckier, you know. And the little shtetl was a time when, in my time, when the Polish people, the Poles, never had businesses before in my father’s generation. In my generation, they started to come to the, they can accomplish something to, and they opened businesses and they even had strongmen to stay next to the Jewish businesses with signs ‘don’t go to the Jews’, ‘nie kupuj od Żyda’, don’t buy in the Jewish store, you can

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries get it in our place at the same price, so the Jew had to go down with the prices, and at that point he didn’t make a living. Oh yes, many signs, ‘nie kupuj od Żyda’, don’t buy from the Jew.

Phayer: Were there any boys or girls from the shtetl in the agricultural school in Vilna?

Peltz: This was a new school, they opened it maybe five years before I went there, so these were people that they came from shtetl because they wanted to go to Israel, and as I told you there were others too, but it was a big school‐‐

Phayer: So there were some from the shtetl there?

Peltz: Yes, but they wanted to go to Israel. None other but to go to Israel, because they couldn’t go and just buy land and they’d be a farmer. They wouldn’t dare, they would be afraid.

Phayer: So that might be an indication that that generation gap existed also in the shtetl.

Peltz: Yes, yes yes. It certainly did. A lot of people, older people, were complaining that the children went the wrong way, just like here, [unintelligible], they went, they got [unintelligible], they went to a different city and they are now not kosher.

Phayer: You mentioned that many of the Polish gentile people would put signs you know in their window, buy, don’t buy Jewish. Do you remember any pogroms?

Peltz: This was the pogrom that I told you before in Przytyk10. It was where my grandmother lived, Eighteen, eighteen kilometers. It was in all the newspapers in the whole world. It was something that Jews never did, they stood up for their rights, and they gave them real trouble back, and they started the pogrom. Yes, Jews went with knives, with, with whatever they had, at home. You know, axe. They had rifles, they had, but it didn’t help them. They start the pogrom at the, it was a, all week they tore the park place, a part of Przytyk, it looked, later I went to my grandmother’s [unintelligible]. She took care of others too, she had gentile people that they came and they told her it’s going to be pogrom, so they went into the basement and they didn’t go, the gentile people that they worked for them were outside, they didn’t let them in. They didn’t do anything to my grandmother but they did to the whole city. It was, you know, like you see old movies, the feathers from the pillows were flying and children were crying and people were hurt and people were killed, I mean it was a real pogrom, not like the kozakh [transcribed phonetically] pogrom not like the neemnitzskee [transcribed phonetically] pogrom, not like the zapata [transcribed phonetically] pogrom, what was it? Before neemnitzskee [transcribed phonetically], there was another.

Unknown interviewer: 20 minutes.

Phayer: Well but there weren’t any pogroms in your particular city?

Peltz: This was the pogrom. This was the pogrom of the century. This was the pogrom that was in all the newspapers, in Przytyk. Before, it’s not my time. There were pogroms in 1905, in Odessa, 1904, in

10 The Przytyk pogrom took place in 1936.

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries neemnitzskee [transcribed phonetically], all the others, this I don’t remember, I don’t know about, I wasn’t born yet.

Phayer: Well, were there, perhaps I’m not asking it right, were there other‐‐

Peltz: Incidents?

Phayer: ‐‐incidents.

Peltz: Yes, a lot of them. They used to, Polish soldiers used to take a few Jews on the train and tear the beards out and take their money and beat them up and leave them there. They didn’t kill them but they, oh a lot of them. Incidents, yeah. This was the only pogrom but there were incidents all the time, the minute they saw one that had locks and something, and it was Sunday, they took care of them, don’t worry, yes, they were never safe. A Jew with locks and with a big hat and long clothes never went into a neighborhood where I lived, no. We didn’t see [unintelligible], people like that. Never. They didn’t go, and if they went, they had, and they were, in my school they were standing in the solid‐‐, solid‐‐, solidarność, that, in Poland it is now something, soleedarazeetnah [transcribed phonetically].

Unknown interviewer: Solidarity.

Peltz: Solidarity. We were solidarid. I think, it is right, something like that?

Unknown interviewer: Unionism?

Peltz: Yes, we were standing and writing [unintelligible] at the University of Vilna. They didn’t let the Jews sit together, all of them but they should sit in the left side, so the Jews get up and they were standing, they protest. And all the other schools, all the Jews from other schools did the same. We were standing for quite, I don’t remember how many weeks‐‐

Unknown interviewer: ‐‐used to sit and [unintelligible] stood.

Peltz: And writing. This was the solidarność. Oh yes. And there were, and it was a smaller quarter, in a smaller quarter. So Jews couldn’t get into good university, like in Warsaw, Jagielloński University in Krakow. They couldn’t get to a big university but for quota, the quota was five percent and later it was down maybe to two percent, and you had to, you had to know somebody who knows somebody, you know, it must have been [unintelligible]. It was awful. A Jewish soldier, if he was, in Poland everyone who had a degree, a matura, this means he wasn’t, he didn’t finish only a public school, he finished a high school, a high school got a matura, he was supposed to be an officer in the Polish, because not too many, this wasn’t the way, they were not too many educated people, certain people but, but no, so the Jews were more educated so they would have Jewish officers, so they did away with that, they didn’t take Jewish officers at all, they didn’t. My husband was a college graduate so he had Polish officer and the Russian came in, they made him an officer, they took him to the army because he was an officer, he never was an officer, he never had a rifle in his hands.

Unknown interviewer: The first one?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: Yes.

Phayer: You met him, when?

Peltz: Oh, I met him at home. I have a boyfriend that died when the Germans‐‐

Phayer: Yes.

Peltz: ‐‐yes. But this one was, I met him in lumber, in a different city.

Phayer: When?

Peltz: Maybe 1919, I knew him before too, he was always telling me, you have so many boyfriends but you will be my wife. I laughed. Yes, I knew him. In Lemberg11 we married, in Lemberg in 1941.

Phayer: But you knew him‐‐

Peltz: Yes, from before. I knew his mother, I knew his sister‐‐

Phayer: Since about when?

Peltz: Oh, he was, his, I met him because his uncle was the director of our, we had a different place later in Zawada, colo‐zamadgek [transcribed phonetically], near Zamość‐‐

Unknown interviewer: 25 minutes.

Peltz: ‐‐it was a lumber, a very big one with these machines, [unintelligible] machines from Germany, we had only twenty‐five percent, they were [unintelligible]. So my father was the, his uncle was the director of the whole [unintelligible]. So I met him.

Phayer: How old were you then?

Peltz: Oh, I was maybe twen‐‐, no, I was maybe eighteen.

Phayer: Eighteen?

Peltz: Yes, but I married in ’41.

Phayer: Well you, you said that he used to say that you had all these boyfriends but you would‐‐

Peltz: But you’ll marry me.

Phayer: You’ll marry him?

Peltz: Yes, because I love you so much. Yeah‐‐

Phayer: Now‐‐

11 German name for Lwów (Polish), Lviv in present‐day Ukraine

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: And it was like that.

Phayer: Now, did the, your family, did they ever say ok you ought to marry him or did they ever encourage you one way or the other?

Peltz: No, no, I wasn’t home. I just came home for vacation.

Phayer: Oh. They didn’t try to talk you into‐‐

Peltz: Yes, my mother sometimes would say, look for the family, look for who it is, was really— [unintelligible]. Somewhat different from Galicia.

Phayer: Did you ever date anybody that was gentile?

Peltz: No. No, I didn’t date anybody. I was going out to a movie or something. I was‐‐

Phayer: Yeah. I meant did you ever have a boyfriend that was a gentile.

Peltz: Yes, here. Not here. [Unintelligible].

Phayer: Well, so you eventually decided there that you would marry.

Peltz: No, it was spur of the moment, you know. My mother sent me a letter, I was working at the university in Lwów, and she sent me a letter she would like to have a little bit of [unintelligible] joy, joy, she would be contented if I would marry and she knows that somebody takes care of me and Shimik [transcribed phonetically] [unintelligible] is around why don’t you, and Shimik [transcribed phonetically] came in, at that time but I was leaving and I said, come on let’s get married, he said are you joking, and I said no, and we went and we got married. Yeah, it was a time of war in Lemberg, in Lwów.

Unknown interviewer: [Unintelligible]

Peltz: It’s the same but in Lwów was in Polish and Lemberg was in German [unintelligible]. [Unintelligible].

Phayer: I was in a way wishing that the wedding and everything could’ve taken place before then because now we’re already getting into a time when your lives were being constricted and affected by the Germans, because I would have liked to have heard what it was like, what kind of celebration you had at the wedding and everything.

Peltz: [Unintelligible] stand and looked at me with these big steel eyes and I felt that I [unintelligible].

Phayer: Did you wish that you could have had like a more‐‐

Peltz: Yes, traditional wedding. Yes, I really wish this. Even at that time I was so out of the religious atmosphere and everything. It was metamorphose of Poland.

Phayer: I think I’ve just about exhausted my curiosity here. Is there anything else you would like to say before we sign off?

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: I’d like to say that the young people here, there’s still time to weigh the advantages that they have and the bad things that they are doing. To me it’s bad because first of all I would like to see a little bit more respect and love. They talk about love, but this isn’t love, caring, respect and acknowledge people as they are then, but they way, I am flabbergasted sometimes, I don’t know what to think, I think it’s the end of everything, but maybe all the generations thought the same.

Phayer: Well yeah, I was going to say, this generation gap we spoke of, they were obviously becoming more secularized.

Peltz: Yes. Yes, I was.

Phayer: You were, but still you retained the respect.

Peltz: Yes, I don’t want to let go of the good things, the ones that I cherish.

Unknown interviewer: Do you think there’s a difference in what American Jews respect‐‐

Peltz: Yes, first of all I hate it, they don’t, they don’t listen to you, they don’t know that you exist, but when you present the check, they look up and admire you. It’s the truth. Gista‐vista [transcribed phonetically], it shouldn’t be like that. It’s the person that counts. And here.

Phayer: So in that sense, you‐‐

Peltz: That sense I resent everything that is [unintelligible], maybe because I don’t have [unintelligible]. Could be. It’s a psychological thing, but no, I feel that‐‐

Phayer: I think you’re judging yourself too harshly there. You feel in other words that there was something very valuable‐‐

Peltz: Very valuable.

Phayer: ‐‐in that culture‐‐

Peltz: ‐‐in the tradition, in the taking somebody from the synagogue home for a meal, to give someone the opportunity to learn, and they do it now, with exchange students, but it’s an exchange, it’s never that you take somebody who has, is a genius and can’t afford to go to school and you send, yes, it’s again the scholarship groups and I am talking this way and that because I am not satisfied with the way I live. You know, I sort of, I don’t know, something is missing. Maybe religion is missing. I don’t know. I’m not religious now.

Phayer: You’re not.

Peltz: No, I’m not. I’m not an atheist. I believe in‐‐

Phayer: But you miss that‐‐

Generation After Oral History Project: Paula Peltz Interview Marquette University Libraries

Peltz: I miss it. Maybe because I was brought up with it or because it’s so much a part of me, even if it was destroyed by the war it still has a funk12.

Phayer: If you could go to a synagogue, here, that would be just like in the old country, would you go there?

Peltz: I go, I go, I go to Miami to the very orthodox. I don’t belong there, but I have to go.

Phayer: Because it’s‐‐

Peltz: And I feel that, I feel that the atmosphere appeals to me but it’s something that all the other children miss out. Yes. It’s something to do with the soul, not with me, it’s something inside. I’m going to write a book, I write [unintelligible] because I have to think about the language, I’m not a native.

Phayer: Yeah. Well, I guess we’ll conclude the interview again. Thank you very much Mrs. Peltz.

Peltz: I’m glad. You’re very welcome. I’m so glad that I have met you. You are a nice human being.

Phayer: Thank you.

Peltz: A mensch.

Phayer: This concludes the interview with Mrs. Peltz, down in Milwaukee on March the 19th 1983.

Peltz: [Unintelligible]

[audio stops 00:36:19]

[audio tape ends 00:36:20]

12 Yiddish for ‘spark’