Ethel Holiner
Ethel Holiner's family story began when her grandfather left Poland, arriving in New York by ship in 1922 after, as he told it, a dream in which God directed him to come to the United States. He worked for seven years before bringing over his wife and five daughters, then moved to Dallas because he preferred it to the big city of New York. Her mother was from Poland and her father from a part of Russia that later became Poland. Her grandfather ran a small grocery store on Forest Avenue, and her father operated a druggist store in the popular Deep Ellum area. Ethel was born in Dallas in 1934, with a brother born seven years later.
Ethel grew up in the South Dallas Jewish community on a street called Peabody, attending Colonial Hill School and Forest High School, from which she graduated in 1951. She went to Hebrew school four days a week near her grandfather's store and belonged to the Orthodox synagogue on Forest Avenue. Her family was active in Jewish life, and the Hebrew Free Loan was said to have started in her grandfather's grocery store. She recalled a childhood of outdoor games and the neighborhood movie theater. After high school she attended the University of Oklahoma for one year, where she met her husband, Harlan, whom she married in Dallas in 1952.
Ethel and Harlan lived in many cities before settling permanently in Dallas. She worked for a radiologist, then spent about thirty years at Montgomery Ward, later working at a preschool and volunteering at the JCC gift shop and with children there. She takes great pride in her volunteer service, having served as president of the Jewish War Veterans Ladies Auxiliary and as a vice president of Hadassah, and helping raise thousands of dollars through raffles benefiting the Veterans Hospital and Israel. She and Harlan raised three children and have six grandchildren. Her greatest source of pride, she said, is her long marriage and her close, accomplished family.
She witnessed major changes in Dallas over her lifetime, from the era of the Magnolia building's flying red horse and segregation to a much larger and more spread-out Jewish community with many synagogues and kosher options.
Full Transcript
today is Monday July the 18 19 11 my name is Clint Reisner the interviewer and the interviewee is Ethel Hollander chores Schwartz place of interviewed jewish community center Ethel we're very happy to have it become part of dallas jewish history and i'm going to ask you some questions and you can elaborate on these questions in any order but i'm going to start first with your family tell me about your family parents when and where were you born and how did you are they happen to settle in Dallas and what did your parents do for a living my grandfather came over landed in New York on
the ship in 1922 and he left he came over from Poland and he left a wife and five daughters and he said that he had a dream and in the dream God told him to come to the United States and so he did come over and he worked for seven years before he could he brought over his wife and the five daughters and he was in New York and that he had a relative in Dallas and he came to Dallas and he really liked Dallas better because he was more from the country in New York with such a big city and my mother was also
was from Poland and my father was from Russia which became Poland and they lived over here my grandfather had a little grocery store on Forest Avenue which is now called Martin Luther Boulevard and and my father had a store on deep elm which is very popular during that time they called a deep elm and they had two children my brother and me there's seven years difference between and my brothers a youngest one and i was born in dallas texas at Florence Nightingale which is was beta which is now known as baylor hospital while year was nineteen thirty-four was the year and my brother was born
seven years later I kept pestering my mother you got to have another onion either brother or sister on that Oh what what did you say your parents did for a living they had a store in deep ellum my dad had a druggist stork on deep ellum and my grandfather had this grocery store on Forest Avenue which was terrific because after school I could go over there and he had all kinds of magazines he had a pinball machine he had candy had drinks and of course I could have whatever I wanted and take home as many comic books as I wanted wish I'd save some of
those comic books and the I went to Hebrew school four days a week after I got out of school and the it was called a good assalam Tama Toa and what was nice was it was within walking distance from just around the corner for my grandfather store so it was easy to go there and we belong to a synagogue called a good as often and that is no longer in existence when it was also on Forest Avenue very good uh let's collaborate for a few minutes about your childhood now you tell me where you lived as a child but what was your neighborhood alike and
what did you do for amusement I believe you've probably lived in the forest avenue area right right at that time we lived on a street called Peabody and the Jewish community there were so many Jewish people were all in one section it's really not like it is today where you have preston hollow Richardson Allen the juicer all over but most of the majority of Jews don all of them but the majority of Jews lived in South Dallas and we were I went to colonial hill school it was named Colonia hill because there was a hill you could walk over to get to the school if
you were walking and then I went to forest high school which is now still in existence but it's called madison high and we the children went we had other some of them went to Temple than in other ways but we were Orthodox and my grandfather is I said he had this grocery store and when they went to start the Hebrew free loan which is in existence today they started in my grandfather's grocery store and he was very active in that um what did you do for amusement in this neighborhood what kind of amusement activities were involved well then the parents didn't worry so much about
the children being out like they do today and I would play baseball and we play hide-and-seek in all this these outdoor games and I was one of the first one shows over the best the ball games because I used to like sports a lot and we there was a movie theater right near my grandfather's store called forest forest avenue movie theater and that was fun and it was nice it was cool so people would like to go to the theater to cool off and when I was younger we had my one of my close friends who is still my close friend Shirley rebeck rothberg her
father used to be the show ahead and Kanter but he died young but she had a sandbox and I used to love to go over there we play in the sandbox so we did a lot of outdoor things uh regarding that neighborhood very interesting do you know when it started as a Jewish neighborhood and when it terminated or so to speak no i'm not sure but what happened was you were born in 34 34 it was always it was was it already in existence at that time oh yeah okay well yeah southdowns was good it must have been like in the late 40s somebody sold
a house to a black puss I mean the beginning of that neighborhood is that you don't okay I'll get her up here but okay all right so you had a lot of muse Minh activities in your neighborhood okay let's talk about your experiences in school you said you went to colonial elementary school mm-hmm which middle school did you go to they they didn't hear middle school at that time you work in the last four you went to grade school in the last four years she went to high school there was nothing in between oh so with colonial for style uniform standing what year you graduated
from course 51 1951 many Jews in your class yes they're quite a few sentences okay what was your interest in grade school and high school primarily our favorite subjects senior academic and all like that my favorite subject was Jim and English I liked English and I was in the thespian group and we did also the newspaper and what was the fest in group was a literary clue well he's dramatics I'm tomatoes of drama okay what did you do after high school I went to the University of Oklahoma oh you and I was there for one year I met my husband and my husband had been
in the service and he had that gia I had the bill that he could go to college after being in there and so I was 18 when I got married and he was in the service at that time in the army and he had been in the Navy so he did both the Army and the Navy that was the universal common Norman Norman carry and you attend to do to one year what did you study at first year well it's mainly the basic English and to get started because okay let's talk about your Jewish affiliations during your childhood you've already commented on that if you
want to to what to what extent with your families partition participation is well in carmine my mother and grandmother belong to an organization called is rocky which now is a meet women but at that time it was for this rocky and they were with in the synagogue and all that when you're younger you don't really I'm here because he was school in Hebrew school and I don't we didn't warn in organizations then now it's definitely over at that time the younger children would but your family was active in synagogue acontece okay let's talk about how did your family celebrate jewish holidays richa sharma rosh hashanah
yom kippur basa well they celebrated at my parents house my grandparents lived with my parents and my grandmother was an excellent cook the best cook she said she when she was in Poland at 10 years old she was already cooking for Bar Mitzvahs she was that good and um they would would have Passover we'd have to put two long tables up and we had family over and we used to have a wonderful time saver femicide people it's interesting oh I'd say 24 something like that 20 funny and he celebrated all the Jewish holiday in Purim and payson young people get repairs belong to Jewish organizations
um other than the mizrachi what was misguided what understand they help their noise asian that really helps Israel and they're still there today we saw they have a place where they help children that need help they still do that today they're very active for Israel but during those years it was Palestine in rusty and help me and children and your perineum Judea is active in young judaea when I massacre so your parents were very active in Jewish organizations as well what they were the family have a lot of interaction or some interaction with the Jewish community and large in that area of dallas well they
would whenever there were any things going on at the synagogue and all they would what about the to tal community was a discrimination or alienation how did what there was some but I'm i was fortunate i didn't really have a whole lot like people of anti-semitism I didn't really see that not even in school because there were a lot of Jewish people stole a nipple I really never had that problem this is very lucky so with the Gentile community at large that wasn't a problem now believe you told me you attended Sunday School and you attended a Hebrew school let's talk about that for a
few minutes like I couldn't run him from Achilles awesome Tom hey Tommy Torah and what age I think that's probably about 14 and and I went as far as I could go and I also i would have loved to have gone to a hebrew high school and they were talking about maybe having a hebrew high school at that time but they just couldn't raise enough money the work wasn't enough people interested that could come up with the money to do that so now we have it but it took quite a while for them to be able to start one here okay oh we've talked about
your working career and adult activities in your college in high school what kind of work did you do in dallas ethel if you worked well when I graduated I went to work for sandra harris and they would would have liked for me to stay she's they don't make you a tompa bi or whatever you want but i wanted to go to college so i just worked there during the summer and went to college and Harlan my husband was sent overseas we hadn't been married but about a year and he was a sent overseas for years I worked for a radiologist dr. Miller and he was downtown and then after we've been married I work for Montgomery Ward 4 30 years here in Dallas and then after that I worked at the preschool here some and got paid for that in and now I do volunteer work at the JCC gift shop and I also help with the children the grandmother to the children here one day a week let's reflect on some of the projects that have been most memorable to you during your lifetime well i think i'm very proud of I belong to the Jewish War veterans Ladies Auxiliary and three years I have worked on a raffle gathering
prizes and coordinating and everything and they write a raised thousands of dollars that went mainly to the Veterans Hospital and we use some of it for to help Israel in different projects that we have done so I'm very very proud of that am I work in that and I also belong to haddad was I was president of the Jewish War veterans Ladies Auxiliary for two years and I was a vice president of hadassah on the programming committee vice president programming then I've also been secretary and vice president of the Jewish War veterans Ladies Auxiliary very busy other than Jewish organizations have you ever been involved
in any civic organizations like charity or whatever I give to charity but not okay we've been talking about your family I I would like to recall or go over that again now how did you meet your husband Harlan and tell us that well we were at oh you and neither one I was not in a sorority and he was not in a fraternity but I was dating someone and he said we have an invite to go to a party given by by the fraternity there and so my husband was invited and he came with the date and I came with my date and Harlan was
my husband saw me and he came over and asked you know the man i was with if he could dance with me and he said I want this is the girl I'm going to marry well he hadn't asked me if I wanted to marry him so anyway Harlan dance with me and he said oh you're not really going to marry him are you and I said no because i knew and so he said what can i call you and I said I'm sure so he called it I checked up on him on his background to I want to make sure he was Jewish and that
everything was doing I heard good reports on him so he did call me and that's how we met and where was harm from it this is from oklahoma city ok the homeowners so where and when were you married this is great we were married in dallas texas and a good Asafa by rabbi Rabinowitz rabbi a braless was retired then rabbi MUFON robot eponymous was the rabbi at agganis often and and the rabbi and here's a hike up Tom and what year was that well we we got married in 1952 and after marriage where did you live in Dallas we moved around a lot we lived
in ports in Fort Smith first for Portsmouth then we moved to Oklahoma City then we knew to Wichita Kansas then we moved to Houston Texas then we moved to doubt enough to Dallas then used in Texas and in fact to Dallas and we made so many moves i said when i get back i'm not moving anymore when we get back to Dallas so we've been here ever since and how many children did you have we have three children and causes up those we're very proud of all three of our children very proud are the oldest one is Joel Joel hollander and he is the medical
director of greenock psychiatric hospital and he has a private practice in medical city on the a4 with about 45 people working under him and he's very well known it very good and especially people that don't know what kind of medication to be on we have doctors all over if they don't know what to prescribe they sent him over to Joel and he's very good at finding what will help them and the next one Joe isn't psychologist psychiatrist he's a psychiatrist dr. joel is aside for today's would come in some countries where he went to Southwest Medical School and what he did was he graduated from WT white high school and he went into the University of Texas and so he decided he would try to place out so he placed out one year so he went in as a sophomore he said I probably can place out another year but it's going to make me so yeah but anyway he could place out his first and he went two years and they had early admittance to to become a doctor and so they interviewed him and his he made a
four-point average all the way through college plus his personality is terrific so they said they accepted him early said he only had two years of college before he went into medical school and he did his his medical school at southwest medical school here in Dallas wonderful and he's still with green oaks he's with green up psychiatric hospital and medical city great what about you other children well my other Chum the second one is Joan wiser and she went to WT white high school and then she went to North Texas and she has become a teacher and she works at dealey school which is over on
edge where and royal and she's very good very well-liked has become Teacher of the Year there before and it's a montessori school but it's in the Dallas and what is her name again Joan wiser and she belongs to temple emanuel and Joel and his bank wanted temperamental and the third song and my third child is sherry Clifton and she is administrator of the death of the urban school for to death and she lives now in al and she has two children and my other dog each each of my children have two children so we have six grandchildren great and she's very well liked also what
a talented family my mother wonderful okay and you have six grandchildren yes okay comment on your grandchildren are you proud of them the enjoyment yeah well my grandson is 20 years old now and he's at the University of Texas on a tennis scholarship and he is doing beautifully with that his sister is went to Greenhill school and she's on the high high honor roll it's done awards for that she was hunka nominated for homecoming queen she didn't she didn't quite make it but almost did which is quite an honor to be nominated and she's planning to go to Tulane University and as my son's two
children and John my daughter's children she has two children and one is William wiser and he is autistic but he's high functioning he's not Asperger's and he is very intelligent especially a lot of things and he's going to a private school this year he had been going to public schools all through the years and then his brother is sandy who is brilliant and he can tell you all the streets in the city and he's just just very very bright and he goes to dealey and then that's Jones and marks and then my other two children are in and one is Robert and he is he
is very good he'd probably go into becoming an electrical engineer he's friggin math and science and sneaking high grades and this is his first year to get a job so it's working and then his sister is Miss personality she just she is really sucked that she's well-liked by everyone just has a wonderful personality and it's very smart too Ethel you know a lot about Dallas and those connections in history how has the city change for you you've seen a lot of changes here right right well for one thing the tallest building when I was growing up you could look downtown and see the Magnolia building
with the flying red horse and now the skyscrapers just practically cover the flying red horse and we used to have the state fair of texas which we still have and what was so bad that was that they would not let the black people of go to the fair there was one day out of the home here that they could go that was june team and that was the only day that they could go to the state fair other than that that can go and then in the in the schools when I was growing up they had 20 water fountains and up above it it would
have colored and white and so the colored people can only drink out of 11 of the fountains and then on the bus when you get on the bus there was a sign that said colored and the colored people have go to the back which of course has really changed for the better now and the is a sim to do one thing is that the Jewish people are all over and and it's I think it's harder for them to really know there's so many synagogues down in temples you really have a good choice but of course the population has grown too we have a lot more
Jewish people and it has gotten there is more orthodox here orthodox ism because it could be it was a time when the kosher restaurants would try to make the go over here and it just didn't have enough people to support it and now you have several of the restaurants here kosher restaurants which is good and kosher meat markets more pushing me what's there was we did have a kosher meat market when I was growing up was froms and it was really very very good and then we had right ones and different ones and now you can get it in some of the kosher food in
like Tom thumb's the the grocery stores so you've seen a lot of changes here oh yeah and the Jewish community back in the 30s on would assume the Sun wat more concentrated together all of them living I was very pretty young as compared today is very diversified my life what I was blowing up I'm sure um you've explained very clearly what the Jewish community was like at that time and you also blabbering on how it has changed I want to ask you some concluding questions in your lifetime who are our who were who are your role models and in life I'm sure you've had a
role model that you was inspired by or respected John to talk about that talk about it from well I think my role models were my mother and my grandmother there with me because they were they were so honest and they just need to tell you the right things to do I just was very proud of both of them I used to help my mother we would go to stores or something me that she was from Poland I would do a lot of the answering and telling what they should do and everything common sense both of them had so much common sense with which a lot
of people have the book knowledge that they don't they don't know what to do what it comes your mother was from Poland yes did she speak Yiddish yes we spoke I had my grandma I told my brother speak Yiddish to me so I can learn as them so I did learn cuz i talked about that i want to hear about that soon there was cute shoes short to the about four foot nine early and she used to wear spiked heels I mean he'll says hi and she would walk around in them in she was the cutest thing and just a very mod I mean for
someone from Poland she was just really just knew things was up to date and everything she's really great and my aunt my mother's sister lived in back of us right and you could go out of the alley it goes straight to each other sounds so it was really nice did you learn Yiddish quite a bit it's not a bit the language spoken at home among them was it is then right well they spoke english english look they spoke a lot I ish ok that's great what a rich history you talked about a lot of your family today and I would like to ask you at
this point reflect for a minute is there anything you would like to add to this interview that you feel is really significant are one of the most significant events in your well I think what a really most proud of and is that I've been married it'll be 59 years November the 23rd and I'm very proud of that and I feel like I've accomplished a lot by and I am Harlan we still love each other very much which is rather could you can be married I don't know how many years and not like each other and we're so proud and we have a wonderful family and
we are together so much or do we do things together and I guess it's too because we we babysat when the children were little we took care of all of them it so I think it really means a lot and that's my greatest accomplishment i think is my husband and family i'm very proud of all of them well thank you for this great interview and this concludes our going to do today and well thank you thank you very much