<Begin Segment 9>

BF: So did, so did the Jewish community feel any discrimination? Was there any need to sort of come together just because there was exclusion from other areas?

AS: Right. Well, I remember hearing about, that Jews were discriminated against, and, but I don't ever remember experiencing any of that. So until we were -- in the summertime, many of the Jewish families would go to Soap Lake, Washington, Eastern Washington, it's a lake with all these minerals, it was considered like a health spa, but it was very similar. But, so one summer when I went there with my mother, and apparently an aunt with her two boys must have been there, because I remember we were walking down this little, just a one little street town, and I was with my younger brother and one of my cousins, maybe another boy, and some boys on the other side of the street started throwing rocks at us, and calling out, "Jews, Jews," in an ugly way. And I couldn't believe it. I'd heard about these things, but I'd never experienced them in Seattle. So that was the, that was the first time I experienced this ugliness.

The next time I experienced it, it wasn't anything being done to me, it was said to me. And still can't believe it, but anyway, my husband -- I was already married, but I think we'd just been married less than a year. And he was working as an engineer at Boeing, and somebody from Wichita was here to, I don't know, something to, on business dealing with Boeing, and so he invited -- and he was here with his wife, so he invited, he said he would take us out to dinner. There was another Jewish couple with us, so there were two Jewish couples, ourselves and another, and this non-Jewish man and his wife. And so the wife started saying, "Oh, it's so awful in Wichita. We have all these" -- of course, she called 'em Negroes -- "we've got all these Negroes." And coming into, Boeings had a plant in Wichita, maybe they still do. And she said, "Just horrible." I said, "I think it's wonderful. Finally have an opportunity for decent jobs. This is really a wonderful thing that's happening." And she just said, "Well, at least they're not as bad as Jews." She didn't know we were Jewish. Oh, I tell you, that just left me speechless.

BF: That must have been a pretty awkward moment for that table.

AS: Oh, it was. I just, my head started to hurt, and here, they're paying for our dinners. [Laughs] Anyway, so that, those are the things I've experienced. As far as other -- but I know that people were discriminated, I mean, older people that wanted to go to colleges, the big colleges. Not at the University of Washington, I've never heard of anyone having any discrimination there. But in Seattle, there were neighborhoods that we couldn't live in, so I did know that, there were restrictions, certain neighborhoods. And...

BF: Was it something your... I remember talking to other ethnic groups, and I think my parents, too, have said it's something you grew up knowing.

AS: Yeah, right. You grew up knowing.

BF: There are certain areas you didn't go to.

AS: Yeah. Couldn't afford to live in those neighborhoods anyway. [Laughs]

BF: So class as well as ethnicity.

AS: Yeah, so I was aware of that, I was aware that many people didn't like Jews, actually hated them. I was aware that -- well, I, the history of the pogroms and other things that had happened in Europe where the Jews were slaughtered. And, of course, it wasn't until later, the Holocaust years, by that time I was in high school, so I knew horrible things were happening there, as much as we could learn at that time. And, but I knew that discrimination -- oh, banks never had a Jewish person working in them, certain businesses did not hire Jews, and I heard that Penny's never hired Jews, and so we never shopped at Penny's. Got over -- I think, I know that that has changed, but except one of our, my older brother's friends was able to get a job at Penny's, but you couldn't tell from his name that he was Jewish and he didn't -- they say there's a "Jewish look," well, some people have it and some people don't. He did not have it, so he was able to work there. But there was discrimination in where they could work and jobs, but as far as education here, that seemed pretty open.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.