JUDAISM IN PORTLAND

From A Name to A Number:
A Holocaust Survivor's Autobiography
by Alter Wiener

Alter Wiener’s father was brutally murdered on September 11, 1939 by the German invaders of Poland. Alter was then a boy of 13. At the age of 15 he was deported to Blechhammer, a Forced Labor Camp for Jews, in Germany. He survived five camps. Upon liberation, by the Russian Army on May 9, 1945, Alter weighted 80 lbs as reflected on the book’s cover.

Mr. Wiener is one of the very few Holocaust survivors still living in Portland, Oregon. He had moved to Oregon several years ago and since then he has shared his life story with 300 audiences in universities, colleges, middle and high schools, churches, synagogues, prisons, clubs, etc. He has also been interviewed by radio and TV stations as well as the press.

Mr. Wiener’s autobiography is a testimony to an unfolding tragedy taking place in WWII. It has a message what prejudice may lead to and how tolerance is imperative.

This book is not just Mr. Wiener’s life story, but it reveals many responses to his story. Hopefully, it will enable many readers to truly understand such levels of horror and a chance to empathize with the unique plight of the Holocaust victims.

Mr. Wiener spoke at Lewis & Clark College in April 2004 for Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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Two New Books About Portland's Jewish Community...

 

      In the early 1900s, thousands of Eastern European Jews and Italians settled in a Portland, Oregon community known as South Portland. For several years Polina Olsen has given walking tours of the old neighborhood and conducted tape-recorded interviews with people who grew up there. Her two books of collected and edited interviews allow the immigrants to tell their story in their own words.  

      In The Immigrants' Children: Jewish and Italian Memories of Old South Portland, people describe how their parents and grandparents left or often fled Europe and their day-to-day life once they settled. They recall synagogues within walking distance, the neighborhood Roma (Gypsies), Yiddish movies, and ethnic markets. People reminisce about junk peddlers, shopkeepers, wine making during Prohibition, and political organizations such as ICOR, the Soviet attempt to create a Jewish homeland in Siberia.

      Although a 1960's urban renewal project destroyed much of the neighborhood, some sections remain relatively intact. A Walking Tour of Historic Jewish Portland leads you to sites once important to the community. Each stop includes a photograph, description and memories of people who grew up in the neighborhood.

      It's the personal stories that really set this wee guide apart. I've walked through this part of South Portland many times (even, once, on school field trip with an Oregon Historical Society-led walking tour), but reading Reinhardt's description of the ball games on her street, or Greenstein's fond memories of the public library made the community here seem alive and vibrant to me, even though the old neighborhood is gone and its destruction is among the saddest and most shameful of our city's stories.

      Emily-Jane Dawson, reference librarian, Multnomah County Library

 

      "It's the best way to understand history.   It's living history."

      Oregon Jewish Museum

      "The skeleton of Old South Portland's Jewish community has some life in it yet."

      The Oregonian

      "Reminiscences in the book reveal facts that otherwise might be lost."

      Jewish Review