Fred Reisberg
Fred Reisberg was born in 1912 in a small village in Poland, near the town of Yanov and the larger city of Trembowla, in a region bordering Ukraine. His family were among only a handful of Jewish families in a community of mostly Christian farmers, and Fred worked behind the plow and broke rocks on the roads to help make a living. He was unable to finish high school because he was needed at home. One of five brothers, he watched his eldest brother Morris and an uncle emigrate to the United States in 1922. Another brother, Joseph, made his way to France, where he built a life as an ironsmith, survived capture during the war, and raised a family whose descendants later visited Fred in Dallas.
Facing rising antisemitism and hostility, Fred long wished to leave Poland. In 1938, after Morris sent him papers, he departed under a powerful sense of urgency, describing a moment that felt like an angel telling him to leave that very day. On the train to the port of Gdynia he met Hedy, a young woman also fleeing Europe, and resolved to marry her. She traveled to Toronto with her family while Fred arrived in Dallas with nine dollars in his pocket and went to work for his brother Morris in a retail store on Elm Street. In January 1941 he volunteered for the Army, serving in an ordnance company of the 36th Infantry Division and spending nearly five years in service. He and Hedy married in August 1943, and he was later wounded overseas, recovering in hospitals in Belgium and Paris before returning home.
After the war Fred settled in Dallas with Hedy and their growing family of three daughters, Judy, Linda, and Marsha. He worked in his brother's store, then ran a liquor store on Elm Street, and eventually found his calling in real estate, building homes and continuing to work well into his later years. Feeling a deep obligation to give back for his good fortune, Fred devoted himself to community service. He served for many years with B'nai B'rith and led the Hebrew Free Loan Association as treasurer for 23 years, growing its funds so it could help hundreds of people in need without charging interest. He helped organize a Parkinson's society after Hedy's illness, donated Torahs to congregations, gave land for churches in South Dallas and a room in memory of his mother, and received the Louis Brandeis award from the Zionist Organization of America. He credited much of his success and generosity to his beloved wife, Hedy.
Full Transcript
i'm hearing today for the dallas jewish historical society and ellen lasser is going to take an oral history of fred riceberg it's february 18 2001 and we're at his home on 65 15 preston shire good morning good morning how are you fred i'm fine i'm going to ask you some questions about your life today and about all the contributions you've made to the jewish community here in dallas but i'd like to start kind of at the beginning so uh tell me about where you were born and when you were born and what it was like growing up i was born in 1912. in a village in poland now a village in poland is not like holland park village a village is they used to call a dwarf in jewish which is 99 farmers christian people there was about five or six families using that very vagina we considered ourselves farmers to which i did do some farming farming what kind of farming oh going behind the plow you know uh-huh the horses we plow a little cloudy grounded horses and how old were you when you were doing that kind of work well i went i went to school for a little while unfortunately i could not even finish high school because
they needed me at home to help out there so but i did go to high school for a few years so then i got home when i didn't i did all kind work i worked in the farm i broke the rocks on the street i needed to for the government just to make a living what was the name of the village and where is that near it's a little town very very close about to and a half kilometers which is uh not quite two miles here was yanov now next to trimbola which is a larger city went to high school now the reason i say
that because there's several janos and poland there was about five different gianos next to bigger city side but this is close you always you wrote a letter he said diana next to trump so how many brothers and sisters did you have four brothers and out of those now your older oldest brother is morris is that correct and he just had the bug to come to the united states didn't he well uh we had an uncle in here maya riceberg that ran away way in the late 1800s ran away because he did one serve in the army so he sent papers to bring morris away 1922
and his brother wolf riceberg so they came together in 1922. okay so wolf was your brother also no one was my uncle your uncle okay and then morris came and then what what made you decide to come over it's a long story i was i didn't like poland uh hated uh and the semis because where we lived there was ukraine and they're just as bad but it was under poland you know like a suburb of poland or whatever you know because poland was divided so many times during years you know between germany and russia and austria so i always wanted to leave poland if i couldn't go to the united states i plan to go to
germany i just didn't like what they liked poland so morris when he came here in 22 i think about 1937 or 36 he sent me some papers and you can you could come in under the quota for this part of town a city a country provided you have somebody to will provide for you so you will not be a burden to the to the state side and so i left in 38 and you came to queer i came as well i stopped stopped in new york for a few days assuming my mother had my mother had a sister in new york cleveland and her mother
my grandmother and three brothers the whole family lived down there and she always wanted to come to the united states but that was very stubborn man i don't know but i think after him i guess so he didn't want to leave lousy flowers in poland so they stayed and did your other two brothers stay no my brother joseph you know there was smuggling in people from from from poland to united states for x amount of money just like they come in from from mexico so he was one of those those people that he wanted to go to the united states too and they stopped he
was on a ship and sherbet friends you know and they stopped down there that the people was a transport sound like 600 people in the same going to the united states so the french government told them if you feel like you won't go home you want them to go back home but if you want to remain in france we welcome you to stay friends so he he decided to stay in france but he was around 17 years old very little education so he didn't have anybody he didn't know the language so he was sleeping in the in the homeless he was sleeping in there and
but he had a talent he liked to work with what we call iron smith he liked to work with that he met a girl he got married when he was about 17 and a half or 18 years old so that he went to work for himself right and so make beds make roll away bats and children beds one by himself worked himself out real good good enough to make a good living for himself plus buy some real estate in paris france and he had he had four boys no no no girls he had two boys before he went to the french in the french army
it was the world war ii and two boys when he came back he was captured and imagine that line you know what i'm talking about magic like and it was it was sent to yugoslavia as a prisoner a war by the germans working on uh on the farm too there was lots of people around the working especially ukraine because we spoke to ukraine down there and he never never made any any kind gesture that he understand what they were talking about because he didn't want to say that these you know he's a frenchman he's nothing else but the frenchman and they never knew he's a
jew so he was lucky at it and he came back and came back and he had two more kids on that's great and that family that's in france recently visited you didn't okay that's my my brother's son's children just a few weeks ago so let's skip over and now you've come to the united states and you're in dallas texas now tell me about the love of your life how did you meet her well that's a good thing that's how i like that in 1938 when hitler was already taken over austria and we heard that he's going to speak on the second day of rosh hashanah
well we went to the show diana because we didn't have in in the village we didn't have no non-jewish shirley just like i said about two and a half kilometers and instead of going to show we went out a bunch of kids you know went out to listen to him speak bark like a dog and uh we found out that he's gonna march in on czechoslovakia and the same same time poland decided to march also jeff slovakia in claiming a city was right on the board on the czechoslovakia claimed this city belongs to them and poland claimed this as a polish city and while i
was listening it was around the entirety i had an angel that came he just like tapped me under under my shoulder and said fred you got to leave today the second day of his show so i went into to the show mom was down there and i said mom i believe today she almost fell out of the chair all right and they said well i need you you've got so much work to do or you can leave all because i had already all the papers but i didn't plan to leave till about the february or until we get everything down from field and they've got
the grain and so on i went into that not doing the same thing and he looked at me like i'm crazy i left i went home my brother around that one club we had some horses you know and i had a guy who worked for us and i told him give me a couple of horses on my wagon and i went to see my brother he was married in a little town about 12 kilometers to tell goodbye to tell them goodbye and four o'clock i was on the train and although i'm not that religious in another believe a miracle but it was a miracle it
was absolutely like somebody touched my shoulder and said you got to leave today well i went to warsaw got my visa approved and from warsaw uh we went by train i say we went i went by train to a port of embarkation which the name was gdenia but and on the way on the way to denia i looked i looked in the in the cabin in the train down there's a girl standing and uh looking out looking out the wind the window and crying it's pretty hard so what over i said what are you crying about well said i left the sister down there left
two brothers that had a boyfriend and so help me you know i looked at her and talked to a few minutes and said i'm going to marry this girl well she went to toronto canada after me to canada with her mother she was with her mother and her stepfather because his stepfather had her kids living in canada and i went to uh to dallas so we we wrote the teacher of hitama called a couple times i couldn't call it too long because i didn't have much money i came with nine dollars on my pocket alright so so i couldn't i couldn't do much but i
did i did manage to uh go a couple times to see her and then and i was working for my brother morris he had a snow on what kind of store did he have he had a reddit red beware he used to call the dragon storm and where was it yeah on elm street yeah and then you start talking about the war it's going to be a war you know in 1941 in january i volunteered for the army it was only about two years and the reason i did that and i kind of want to admire said you will be called you know yeshua but
when you're doing it now you can pick your branch of service which is not so dangerous you know so i volunteered and was assigned to 36 infantry division something not so dangerous but that was lucky because you see that it was a 111 ordnance company which was taking care of the trucks and the guns for the for the division so i wasn't that working in the uh hundred lab enormous company um i got let's see so paddy's in and canada yeah so about in 1941 like i said i went to world there and but septem about october on the wemble was discharged because i was
really over 26 and they wouldn't take people over 26 when they put me in the reserve then in december the 7th you know we had the pearl harbor i had immediately a call so and and on the so when i i went back into my company i stayed with my company and took my i had already my basic before stayed there for a long time and we knew worse and all things like that went to school listen beyond and it was funny all right one time the captain calls me in and says we have an order to you for you to go to a spy
school to be dropped behind the lines where we were born shepherd he said but it's a volunteer job right you don't you don't you don't have to go if you don't want us it's yeah but then he said but if you wanted to you can go to office candidate school so i thought about it and said okay i'll go thousands can't disclose that i didn't have too much i because i didn't i didn't have much education there and i had less than here it was what they called 12 weeks wonder and when you get through with it you were you become a second lieutenant and
there was terms in those 12 weeks when you wash out the vietnamese the forest one was four weeks i didn't wash out second one was seven weeks other than washing the third one the ten weeks and i washed out it like that i had two more weeks to go through i had already a uniform made for me so i watched out and then that didn't go back to my company uh i was there was a junkie right there who sent me from one company to another company we need it near and there so when did you and haddy get married uh there's another story we
were clearly we were stationed somewhere close to new york i don't remember what and captain calls me in two hours another captain another company he said you got the furlong seven days further he says captain sir i didn't ask for further but you have one so i knew already what was going on so i got to play a train you know and uh went to canada and talked to hedy honey i think i think i'm bishop bishop in overseas all right because the cop gave me uh it gave the whole company uh seven days to go he said i don't think we ought to get
mad because we were talking about my father's getting married i don't think we should get married i've gone to war and uh i don't know how to come back i might come up back without arm or lake well she insisted i was very glad of course but so she said yeah okay let's get married well it was a time that you could not get mad with jewish religion something something is a time between the holidays or something like that you couldn't get married so you go to a reform rabbi and he said yeah so he got married in 1943 august the 6th and we had
a big big wedding it was about oh at least eight people are right and four days later i went back no wonder was he he's for almost two and a half years i was too i was spent almost five years in the army about two and a half years before before we got married and almost two and a half years after me got married after four days so when you came back you brought your bride to dallas after the army uh after the army i was hurt in the army so i um as a little little i was in a hospital in belgium and then
i was transferred in the hospital to paris france and the war was already over over there and by luck my brother was released from from prison or whatever from farm down there so we met in paris in the hospital and then i uh stayed there in the hospital a few days and i shipped and hospital train to bring the shellwork and from there we took a hospital ship and from there we went to new york and took a train to 47 houston san antonio i was discharged but i think i think it was that you know we were in a hospital on the street on
the train and then we here know that the united states dropped adam bob on on the on the japan nobody knew what the adam bomb was all right you know but that way i stated i stayed in um in san antonio for a few weeks i was ready to leave all right i signed all kind papers and said i'm fine i'm not hurt and i'm down there just to get away from it for me and happened that the uh plane was going to new york from from san antonio uh army army place right from that of the plane he took how to hear that's that's
that's the story i guess now after you brought hattie here then were you still working for your brother then did you just yeah i started working with my brother again but at the time you couldn't get harvey our apartment because everything was just he didn't build for several years so a cousin of mine paul fine i stayed with him for about two weeks between my my my wife and myself uh being a sergeant that was getting a little bit more more money overseas only not only because society but also you get to a certain length of time you get a little bit more and you
think we're getting 20 percent for overseas duty and had it was working and we saved up around six thousand dollars that included because i had a store already in here before i went to the army and morris sold it because he had a store too he had the cause he was called into the army so he kept that money for me and we all together we got six thousand dollars there come okay a house available in south dallas they need twenty five hundred dollars down payment so okay i took the other the six thousand dollars twenty five hundred dollars down payment and uh started working
for mars morris paid me good under 25 a week it was great already and then but i was not i was not a type guy to work for somebody never never liked to work playing but there was there was a liquor store available like next block also on elm street but you had to pay pay key money to get it right and then pay for his stock so by the time i paid the key money was about also a little over two thousand dollars and for the inventory was over a thousand dollars i didn't have 500 leftovers not enough money to to buy liquor i
had a guy down there working you know and i said let me know what's going on down there you see at that time you were getting allotments for good liquor but you had to buy some junk something cordials or something like that so he mostly had cordials are without down there and he came saturday and he said fred he sounded he's got a few cases of good liquor he's selling the real quick eye you know so i tell mars in the middle of the day and saturday he i'm going over around there i'm going to take over this store right now you know because before
before he sells that's fine i didn't know about liquor as much as i don't know what's on the moon and uh my sister-in-law was was very angry with me leaving them in the middle of the middle of the saturday no business and i started doing business there right right then the afternoon saturday took the keys paid them off then i ain't got no money to buy stock so my brother signed me a sign for me a thousand dollars and my cousin she signed for a couple thousand dollars in another bank and i was in business already yeah then we got we had already during that
time we had already judy so had he took judy she was about probably about a couple of years a year and a half or something went to see her mother in canada and they could start getting plenty full engines not couldn't make too much of it so i opened the punch so help me i didn't know from pasha again a thing going nothing absolutely nothing my dad came around to bomb a shotgun i had the friend of my cousin i grabbed the shotgun and run over that next block he said he wants ten dollars and said i don't know what is worth it that's worth
ten dollars i run back and give him the ten thousand so all i learned on my own you know and uh and were you friends with oscar utah yeah oh well at that time there was 40 bar ships in the city of dallas and 99 percent were jewish right right on alam street there was one after another one i don't know today we don't today we have only one or two jewish partnerships and it was christian gentiles well i didn't i didn't like too well uh palm business somehow i didn't and liquor was no good so i started in real estate i worked in real
estate myself and i had a partner you know we started building some houses he again i didn't know nothing about building houses or reading the plan all right but uh i contribute all this to my wife she was my lucky star without her i probably wouldn't be worth anything so uh and then give up they pass up and they cannot do it and i stayed with the uh with real estate i'm still i'm still working my life now i'm working for my grandchildren not for my daughter so let me ask you um when you came to dallas with hattie what was the jewish community like
then did you belong did you belong to a synagogue then right away which yeah it was about 12 a year to belong to the salon and when did you start getting i know you've done a lot of volunteer work you want to tell us a little bit about some of the things you've done in volunteering well i have to give i have to give give something back you know for my good fortune for my good luck uh i work in several organizations first my pet was rene brett i went through the chairs and brave red was president and was treasurer for about uh 12 years
i'm still in it i'm i'm i'm president now again for some reason i don't know and we had some good times in the day bread we had some dentist dances and all things like that make money then i joined the hebrew philosopher tell us about that i was in the hebrew free loan i also went to chairs for president and i was treasurer for 23 years and it was very very hard to get people to join we had members but not workers and we had 450 members so i workers at the time the the the jews were three dollars three dollars a year and by
doing that as a treasurer every year you have to send them a statement one supplies every year when he pays you three dollars you have to send a membership card all that for the all this for the three afterwards uh we thought that we're going to have to depend on just nothing so we had about 80 000 so it says um we better put put some money in the federation forty thousand dollars just in case we just been because there used to be a organization forgot the name of it supported the people that cannot cannot pay for doctor bills or something like that but and
they disbanded and they took divided the money between themselves whatever they have left over and i said no no we're not going to divide our money on it you're going to put it put it in the federation and about what about what is it honey nine years eight or nine years nine years uh we had meetings and we said well we give the rest of it to the federation let them worry about it and some another i had somebody else with me since no no we're not gonna do that so i came up on an idea i'll call some people young people because i called
my daughters you know they couldn't refuse me i don't know what they wanted to but they could not defuse me i i called alan luderman which is a hard worker now he didn't refuse me called my my cousins uh bruce and marvin so we got a little skeleton now i've got probably about eight nine people or something like that [Music] i'm not familiar with the hebrew freelance association the organization that we lend money to dire people that they need without any interest we don't charge no interest and a person comes around because they have to sign and i know it doesn't come down and said
i need some medicine and i haven't got the money so we lend them some money you know what's because of the time before i wasn't watering myself when i started i was twenty-five dollars that's not before we up now to about two thousand twenty-five hundred dollars and so we help hundreds and hundreds of people they are jewish all jewish christians we ended one time like 450 members and we also had some dimmers to raise a little bit the money to have a little bit more money i said we can lend out more more money on it after the 23 years ago there those youngsters took
over my daughters are the treasurers and they have i'm not doing anything going but the office is in my place you know for the last nine years finally they they will move out pretty soon and i'll tell you why it's a as a lady was born in dallas for as i know and she got married to a medalist she took on that took on the was it married this year yeah it was a matter of this she took on the medley's religion because he was they were both geologists they made lots of money but 81 she called me and she asked me the same question
what what is the hebrew philo doing and i thought they know you land that money free nobody's making everything's volunteer work nobody makes any money nothing like that and she said she's debating her with herself you know what she if she wants to donate some leave some money to where to the hebrew field own she said her father was a borrower in dallas in the hebrew philomone and gave me the telephone number she called me a second time maybe a year later i never called her back because the reason i didn't call her back is because i was a was ashamed to ask myself are
you still alive why about three or four years ago three years ago but three years ago when dudaman was already president he's got a notice from the bank from an attorney from they lived in the mexico what city down for work oh no no no no no but what is the cousin in a city in mexico a husband died and the attorney said she passed on and she left some good money to where today if you want so we got we got one check we got 600 000 and the next chat we got 123 000 so about 723 we may still get another twenty thirty
dollars so we right now we're staying good you know we got back but almost a million dollars to lend people the worker now i don't work much at all the worker now try to help other people to get more money maybe scholarships or something i see up here on the manual there's a very special award that you want you tell us about yeah yeah well i received that award it was two awards at the same time one florence this is they picked somebody that i don't know why they picked me you know to pick somebody that's doing a little bit uh good for the city
in the community okay so this is the the uh justice lewis brandeis award and it was given to you by the zoa right zionist organization of america why you decided to give a torah to fear at israel that's my third torah oh okay i give one torah in denver i'll give a second daughter and of shalom but fortunately i don't know what it is i got a four-door coming you know it's a fourth tour and who are you giving that one to i don't know yet no uh again i'll say i was lucky i had a beautiful wife and lovely wife better than anything a
person can ask good kids i love my kids i think they love me too i don't know i'm not sure but so you got to do something all right in my opinion all right not big i haven't got i'm not that rich i'd but do a little bit diet uh so that's that's the tour we're going to have uh dedication was supposed to been may they were spawning they started too late you know they couldn't make they tried to make uh make some money out of that you know so it's going to be in hanukkah yeah and a sunday i don't know the first sunday
the second the last sunday the 9th of the 16th that's great so i enjoy that they read out of my torah over here so i look at it it's theirs but i'm looking at it and um how long have you been a member of the jewish community center oh gosh quite quite a long time since the beginning not not too much from the beginning no you know i was i was a workaholic i worked like more than one person can i worked like i knew because hattie helped me when i had this stall you know i had to help me very much but then i
was i kept working out and didn't have too much time but i did spend some time you know my my pet i had a few pets it was you know heavy was sick she was she started getting sick when she was around 44 or 45 years old and she had that until she passed on start becoming known you know first people that tried to hide it all right but started so was 10 people of us we organized parkinson's society in and i'm a child a member yeah i worked pretty hard because especially i was chairman of the membership as president chairman of the board so
i'm still supporting it i don't go to meetings still supporting anymore every year there's lots of things what's going on they don't want to be worked and lots of garage sales you know picking up and i had a truck they sent me to to oakland somebody wants to donate some furniture or something like that this fool i know i had to go down and they could pick it up and all things like but it was pleasant to do that i felt that i don't know i felt obligated to do those things i didn't i didn't do it for uh recognition you know i just was
proud to do it when i had and i could i could do it a little little time to spend or spend on the rest of that to work i had to send through my girls to college on it and make weddings so you you know well you know what a wedding would cost but that didn't cost that much alright you know this one here in the back of you was the smartest all right she said that how much you spent on judith's wedding at that time i believe something like six thousand she said okay give me the six thousand dollars you just know they're gonna
have a wedding we're just gonna have a uh dinner and a rabbi and so on so i gave what six thousand dollars you what what did you do you went on a trip i spent every penny i'm sure she went down the trip and before the trip was i was i got a call ready i haven't gotten more money on i said you said you said you were only six thousand dollars he's bringing up 30 years old i should have left her down there you well but but they tell them you did meals on wheels and you you donated land to you know for the
black property like that in south dallas we had uh aboard one time way deep in south dallas it was almost a whole block on both sides was two or three small small houses like it's called shotgun houses you know in black back area and there was a church not far around there the church almost always came apart on it someone already found out i don't know how they did they said they need a place to build a church and i didn't care much for that land there was too much too much trouble i didn't think i could make any money to build anything on the
way down there so we had about i sold two houses and there was about uh eight or ten lots left over about ten lots of these and they built a nice little church down there didn't name it after the afternoon the reichsburg church and everyone i used to buy lots from the government they know what they fought foreclosed they normally throw down their arms fha and there's also a church across the street not awakened a lot down there and they too are it came from you know we need a parking lot you haven't got no parking you could come there about no parking so i
gave them the locker eye so i have a church in the moment well fred we appreciate your reminiscing and telling us about your life for the historical society and i know you're very proud of your three daughters love you very much and we're just very grateful for the immense contribution you've given to the city of i had a falling up with the academy i wanted to to give a name for my mother for her yeah so i talked to the keeper academy and i says what does the room cost for that time ten thousand dollars so i says tell them what they'll do i have
a house in pleasant grove that i paid something like seven eight thousand and i got two or three lots left over above from the federal housing administration you look down you you you appraise it and if you think it's worth ten thousand dollars i'll give it to you you you just have a room and my mom my head is name well they got it i rode it over to them this uh they never put up never put a player behind so i said okay you want to do that but it talks some time at one time we talked with my granddaughter you know judy's judy's
daughter and she's an and she said she's going to take care of so she caught wrote the mother i i had a copy where they they signed the president you know what they're gonna do after two three months they call up they put a plaque down there then the new president came in and he wants to find out what happened and i told the story about it i said it's supposed to be a flag down there i didn't see god he's president i said he says no there's no plague they would lie to you i says okay well there's no glad i don't care but
what did you come for here well they want a donation [Laughter] and after that he called me uh he said yeah they now i'll see that they put a flat one that's great story women got married okay december i mean after 6 1943 and my father and my brother didn't look here tell us who we are tell her who we are oh this is my oldest daughter judy that's my middle one i love them both dearly linda right i got one more on san antonio marsha this is the baby one it was the tomboy all right you know whenever they got in trouble in school
marcia took care of it