Oral History interview with Rita Sitwell. Her family is from Vilna Poland. Her grandmother was a baker and would make all the traditional baked goods for the holidays. Rita talks about growing up in Vilna under communism and antisemitism in the USSR. They move to Israel in 1970, when Rita was 25. She talks about finding freedom in Israel and later Canada. Her family moved to Montreal. Rita worked as a hairdresser, she tried to work with Jewish people so she could switch to Yiddish when she didn’t know the English words. Her mother loved Montreal because it was better for her health than Israel. They all moved to Vancouver in 1974. Her and John got married in 2000 and she moved to Victoria with him.
Oral History interview with John Sitwell. John’s family is from Poland. His grandfather’s house in Poland was a large estate with a registration date of 1136. His family owned a sugar mill and sold bagged sugar. John and Rita went back to Poland and toured around the area his family lived. His parents survived the holocaust and then escaped Uzbekistan. They were on some of the first boats to Israel. In Israel, his grandfather owned a granary. They lived in Israel until John was 8, when they immigrated to Canada. They lived in Regina when they got here. John became a school councillor and moved out to the west coast. His parents followed him after they retired.
Oral history interview with Irving Goldenberg, born in 1930, in preparation for the 2015 Scribe on Jewish clothiers. Irving speaks primarily on Zionism in Canada and Vancouver.
Oral history interview with Boris Chenkis in preparation for the 2015 Scribe on Jewish clothiers. Boris’ parents were born in Chernovke, Ukraine. Boris was born in Belarus in 1952. His family moved to Canada in 1959, when he was 7 years old. His Father was an x-ray technician and got a job in Nanaimo. His mother was a cook. They loved in Nanaimo until 1967 when they moved to Vancouver so his mother could open a clothing store. He talks about going to camp Miriam and Habonim. He went to Israel during his gap year on a Habonim program then went to UBC. In 1984, he opened After Five, a clothing store, with his wife. He talks about running the store and fashion.
Oral interview with Nancy Halpern. Interviewed by Samantha Stokell for SLAIS Oral History class.
Nancy's father's family moved to Vancouver in 1906, when her father Norman Brown was less than six months old. She has stories of her own life in the Vancouver Jewish community and those of her grandparents and parents. She was involved in drama and theatre in the Vancouver and Spokane, WA areas, and worked as a librarian in Vancouver. She was also involved in creating the West Vancouver Jewish Community Association.
Nancy mentions her cousin's daughter, Barbara Liskov (née Huberman) from the States, a professor at MIT who was the first woman to graduate in Computer Science in the U.S., and who is a winner of the Turing Award.
Oral interview with Ralph Levy. Interviewed by Molly Kumar for SLAIS Oral History class. Ralph Levy was born in February, 1934 in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the youngest of four. He describes the language Ladino, which he speaks fluently. He lived in England as a child, where he witnessed the Blitzkrieg and attended post secondary there in Lester. He served in the British Military and was stationed in Egypt for two years. He met his wife in Lester and they were wed in 1957. After closing his marketplace business in England, he lived in the south of France till a storm struck. In 1968, he immigrated to Canada. He initially settled in Melfort, Saskatchewan, then went to Calgary, Fort McMurray and then moved to Victoria where he resided for thirty years before retiring in Vancouver.
Oral Interview with Sarah Adams. Interviewed by Alissa Cartwright for University of Victoria Public History class project. Interview is about the desecration of the Emanu-El cemetary in Victoria in 2011; explores how the community reacted to this event and the role of historians in preserving historic sites such as this.
