An Interview with Adele Baratz

AN INTERVIEW WITH ADELE BARATZ An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White March 19, 2007 The Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas i ©Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans ii The recorded Interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first- person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews transcribed under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iii This is Claytee White and I'm with Adele Baratz. It is March 19th, 2007, and I'm in her home here in Las Vegas. So how are you today? Fine, thank you. Wonderful. A few minutes ago you were saying something about this nice warm weather that we're having. This is not your cup of tea? Well, it used to be in my youth. But now that I've gotten older, it's a little bit harder for me to take. But when I was growing up here in Las Vegas, it didn't bother me. We didn't even have air-conditioning then. So when did you move here? Nineteen twenty-eight. So may I ask how old you were in 1928 when you moved here? About two. Wow. So you have spent all of your life in Las Vegas. Practically all of it in Las Vegas. Tell me where the family came from originally. Well, originally my parents were both born in Russia, but they came to this country. My mother came when she was about fourteen by herself with a cousin who was fourteen. Oh, my. Oh, my. Because her father at the time worked for the czar and it was very hard for the Jewish people. Even then it was hard. He was afraid because my mother was somewhat of a socialist. So he thought it would be best if she got out of the country. And she had a couple of brothers that were already living in United States. 1 A socialist at fourteen? Yeah. My mother was something else. Well, tell me what is wrong with our school system because our fourteen-year-olds don't read the newspaper. They don't even know we're at war. What happened? I don't know. I don't know. But I do believe that people who have been oppressed to somewhat are more apt to look at things and look at other things than people that have had it too good. I'll tell you something. With the generation today I blame my generation because we didn't have it good when we were young. There was the Depression. I can remember in Las Vegas what I went through when we were young. And so we wanted our children to have it better and this is where the problem has come in. But you think you overly compensated. That's right. That's right. So tell me about growing up in Las Vegas. Well, I came here when I was two. As I said, we did not have any—we didn't even have swamp coolers then. Of course, my folks were quite poor when we came here. They came here when they decided to build the Hoover Dam. Now, my father didn't work on the dam. My father was from New Jersey; my mother was from New York. My father got mad at his family. My father ran away from home and joined the army when he was about fifteen or sixteen. Before that he sold newspaper on the trains. Then he went on the Mexican border with General Pershing to fight Pancho Villa. And then when First World War started, he went with General Pershing with the first expedition force and then he stayed after the war. He was in General Pershing's armor guard after the war. And he was out West. He liked it out here, plus the fact that he was a young kid and they were all young. They didn't have much to do down on the Mexican border. So they 2 used to go to fortune tellers and a fortune teller told my father one day that he would make a lot of money in raw land. So when they came to Las Vegas—because they had originally moved to Huntington Beach, California, but things didn't go well there. So they came here. My father worked for a— well, he was going to real estate, but in those days real estate was very hard because you'd make a deal one day and the next day someone would come along with another deal and so they would forget about this deal. You know what I mean? They wouldn't hold true to their word, so to speak. So he went to work for somebody who ostensibly sold grocery supplies, but it was really bootlegger supplies because this was during Prohibition. My mother cooked and sewed for people because before my mother got married she was a blouse designer. In New York? In New York, yeah. So, okay. Do you know which factory she worked in? No, I have no idea. But I can tell you this. She was a socialist to the core because she was busy when they formed the Garment Workers Union. She was busy. She was busy with you Eugene V. Debs when he ran for president. So once again, her family shipped her off to Canada where she had a sister that lived just till things...so she was there for about a year and then she came back and eventually she met my father. So do you have the story of your parents written someplace? Several people have asked me the story of my parents and I've told several people the story of my parents. There's a book coming out. It's being edited by Dr. Green from— Yes. Now, a million people have told him to interview me, but he won't interview me because I think 3 the only thing he wants is to interview people that have something to do with gambling. I really do. Because I noticed that—I know a lot of people have said, "Why don't you interview Adele Baratz?" But I've never heard from him. They've given him my phone number and everything. He's never interviewed me. But he's editing this book. Because yesterday I was at a program and they had two authors. One, his last name was Jaffe and he talked about the mob that had to do with waste materials and stuff like that and what's happening in the leaching out into the earth. And the other one was—what's his name? He wrote that Sun Sin... Oh, yes, Sun, Sin & Suburbia. I don't know his name, but I see it in the newspaper all the time. Yeah, I have his book. In fact, when I was there I bought his book. I have the book, too. I went up to him and I asked him to autograph it and I told him how long I lived here. And he says, "Well, how come I didn't interview you?" I said, "I don't know." But this Dr. Green he told me is editing the book. The man that wrote it is from Reno and it's the histories of the Jews of Las Vegas is the book. Now, I don't know when it's coming out. He had told me in the spring. But I think he broke his ankle someplace along the way and he was kind of laid up for a while. So anyhow, but I'm in that book. So how did your parents meet? My father was living in New Jersey and my mother had heard this—I don't know whether she was a distant relative or a friend of a friend who had gone to Russia to see her family. I don't know if this was after the war or before. I don't remember. It must have been after the war. So they went looking for her because she lived in Paterson, New Jersey. So they said they don't know where she is, but around the corner—and my grandmother's named Zippy—lives Zippy; 4 you can go ask her because she knows. Well, my mother went there I guess with a friend. My grandmother had four sons. Three or four; I can't remember. I think it was three sons.

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