Jack Bell
Jack Bell was born Isaac Belostotski in 1944 in a small town on the German-Polish border. He believes both of his parents survived the war as partisans hiding in the forests of Poland, though like many survivors they rarely spoke of what they endured. His mother was one of about eight or nine siblings, and only she and an older sister survived; his father lost most of his siblings as well, their names preserved on memorial plaques at the Dallas Holocaust Center. After the war the family lived in a Munich suburb, where Jack's two younger brothers, David and Harold, were born, while his father, a tailor, waited for paperwork to immigrate to the United States through the Hebrew immigrant aid society.
The family arrived in Dallas on June 19, 1949, met first in New York by a cousin named Carl, and were helped to settle by Jewish Family Service. Jack's parents were shocked by the Texas heat. His father worked for a custom tailoring firm and later opened his own tuxedo rental shops, Oaklawn Tuxedo Rental and Mr. Tuxedo in Snider Plaza, which he and Jack's mother ran with help from their sons on weekends. The family, which spoke Yiddish at home and Polish when the parents wanted privacy, moved from South Dallas to Preston Hollow in the late 1950s. Jack attended Benjamin Franklin and Hillcrest High School, later graduating from the University of North Texas and earning an advanced degree from the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at SMU.
Jack married Louise, a Hillcrest classmate of his brothers, and the couple raised two daughters, Kathy and Perry, both of whom now live near Austin. He worked 25 years at Republic National Bank, where he was the only Jewish employee, before moving into investment banking as a financial advisor for more than 22 years. Deeply involved in Jewish community life, he served on the boards of Golden Acres, Jewish Family Service, and the local Cystic Fibrosis chapter, and as president of Temple Emanu-El Brotherhood and of the Dallas Holocaust Center, where he helped merge the organization with the second generation of Holocaust survivors. He later changed his name to Jack Belostotski Bell as an acknowledgment of his roots.
Jack was raised at Shearith Israel, where he and his brothers were bar mitzvahed, and later joined Temple Emanu-El after marrying Louise.
Full Transcript
good afternoon Jeff uh Jack Bell is with us today at The JCC it's March 13th 13th and we're happy to have you um Jack we're going to talk about your your history starting with when you were born where you were born hopefully knowing something about your grandparents certainly your parents and we'll keep on going uh I know that your name was it yes and would you tell us about that where were you born I was born in Poland 1944 in a little town called new which was on the German Polish border the only reason I know that it was a new start cuz my mom
was there and I thought I needed to be closer to my mom when I was born uh background on my parents I can't verify this or swear to it 100% but I think both parents were in uh various partisan groups that hit out in the forests in Poland very similar to the movie called defined uh like I said I have no way to prove this but based on the stories that I've heard over the years from relatives I think that is correct uh my parents like so many other Holocaust Survivors never really spoke to us about what they went through so all this stuff I've
had the piece together and I'm sticking with the story I was born Isaac botski uh after the war we uh uh lived in a suburb of Munich called ffel Brook firstfield Brook is the subur where the Munich Airport is located and also the home of the Berlin of the Munich Massacre the Olympic Massacre years ago uh uh we lived in in uh ffel Brook for four or five years my two younger brothers were born there uh dad was awaiting uh paperwork to be able to migrate to the United States the organization that was instrumental in getting us here was high Hebrew immigration Assurance Society and
what they did is they matched up a potential employee with a potential employer uh the commitment on the employer side was simply to provide a job so my dad was a tailor we landed in Ellis Island uh dad had a cousin that lived in uh New York Met us at the uh uh Med Us in lower Manhattan came over from through Ellis Island uh I remember that he gave gave my brothers and I some toys and chachkies the next thing I know that I'm on a train to Dallas Texas so we landed in Dallas uh June 19th 1949 and to people that grew up in
Poland and Eastern Europe uh the Texas heat was a u a shock to my parents' system uh my dad worked for a company which is still around called Model tailor uh they were one of the few Custom Tailoring shops uh west of the Mississippi uh the company is still around I'm not sure what business they're in but while my dad worked there uh he moonlit at a tuxedo runal shop and kind of learned the trade of running a tuxedo shop uh while he worked for Skeffington's fast forward approximately 1956 or seven uh he went out his own opened up a tuxedo shop on Oak Lawn
between Lemon Avenue in Maple called oaklon tuxedo rent he and Mom ran that until Dad bought out one of his competitors in snau Plaza uh called Mr Tuxedo uh Dad ran Mr Tuxedo mom ran oaklan tuxedo rental uh the brothers would help out on the weekends everything went uh fine it put us through school uh until mom got robbed uh she got robbed on a Wednesday went to the store on Friday to uh let out the TCH tuxedos that had been ready for the weekend came back in on Monday to uh receive the Tuxedos and on Tuesday the store was closed so she and Dad
worked together at uh Mr Tuxedo which has been in SN Plaza probably since the U uh early to mid 50s um like I said uh David and Harold and I worked at the stores uh weekends and holidays and things like that uh it provided obviously a good uh uh income for Dad all three of us went to college I started back up a minute U uh we moved from South Dallas to Preston Hollow in late 57 uh I attended hris high school as did my brother others as did my wife Louise although I didn't know her at the time uh from high school I went
to the University of Texas completely unprepared for college life and Academia etc etc but it was one hell of a party for three semesters flunked out went to Tyler Junior College to get out of Dallas so I wouldn't be a uh an embarrassment to the family from Tyler Junior College I kicked around uh ultimately graduating from uh what is now the University of North Texas uh graduated in I guess Midsummer graduated on a Saturday or Friday Louise and I got married the following day uh two weeks prior to graduation uh I started working at what was called Republic National Bank was uh employed there for
25 years until the bank went bankrupt and I was downsized which was the best thing that could happen to me from the banking industry I went into the investment banking industry and have been a uh financial advisor slash stock broker for a little over 22 years uh Louise and I have two daughters both of them are in Austin the oldest one is married the youngest one isn't but we're hopeful that somebody will pull the plug and and ask her to be somebody's wife uh other than that life is good I think you make it good let's go back that's fabulous what you told me um
let's go back if you were uh born in when if you say when you say your parents Hidden Forest what type of have you found out what it was like in Germany for them they couldn't have been in the forest all that time in Germany I have no clue as to what my my dad did I think he dealt in motorcycles I have a vague recollection of uh of having a line of motorcycles outside of the apartment that uh uh that we lived in man was between the ages of zero and 4 and a half or 5 years old what is interesting is that when
we left Germany or when we were in Germany we were housed by fline horn and as a remembrance uh she gave us her family bible which was a which was a new testament and it was a gorgeous piece of work it had leather it was leather bound it had Gold Leaf uh edging the plates were fantastic uh after M and dad died it didn't fit into any one of our decorating schemes so I had the Bible refurbished and we donated it to uh a perch School of Theology at SMU what is what was interesting is that my dad used the Bible as a notepad so
if you opened up the front page of the Bible there were notations of phone numbers for his buddies and things like that fast forward approximately two years ago Louise and I went to a lecture at Perkins and I decided Well I see if the Bible is here so I asked the curator if they've heard of The botski Bible and sure enough they looked it up it was in the vault so they escorted us to a uh viewing room and the Cur came in with the white cotton gloves showed us this Bible and apparently it's worth a lot of money because it was kept in a
vault and U uh the notations my dad had made uh were still there so kind of ironic that uh we found the U uh we found the uh the Bible pristine condition and um it was it was fantastic uh good segue into the name as mentioned earlier I was born Isaac botski uh when we came to Dallas we were housed at a basically boarding house on Second Avenue near Fair Park uh the manager or the owner of that apartment building was named Jack and I figured out Jack was a lot cooler than Isaac so when we became citizens my name was as as my parents
our name was legally changed from bosski to Bell so I was Jack Bell fast forward and I don't remember the date but the miniseries Roots I'm sure that everybody will remember Roots uh I then had my name legally changed again from Jack Bell to Jack Basi Bell and U I'm referred to as Basi by my close friends and uh uh things like that so uh it's a little it's it's a little ackn acknowledgment to uh to our past to your roots to my roots uh and I wish I knew more about it so you have no idea if they ever were how they were treated
in I have no idea and U I have over the years whenever I've traveled and when we had telephone books I've always made it point to look at a telephone book to see the name belasi never found anything I have gone on the internet and Googled bosski and come to find out that it's a very popular name in Poland and there's actually a a belaski park in Lodge but I haven't been able to do any more research beyond the fact that there's a park there uh occasionally uh I'll run across a name that kind of looks like belasi and I'll make some phone calls and
you know come up dry so uh that's great we have no we have no clue as to what happened uh prior to my parents we never knew any of our grandparents uh mom was one of I think eight or nine siblings uh she and an older sister were the only ones to uh to survive uh my dad apparently had four or five siblings and the only way we knew their name was at the Holocaust Center of which my dad was the founder here in Dallas here in Dallas the only the only reason we knew their name is that uh mom and dad bought Memorial plaques
for each of their siblings and their parents beyond that I'm absolutely Clueless but that's wonderful that at least they have them on the plaques of the Holocaust Center so they're it is there I'm curious what language was it German Yiddish what did your parents speak we call it malaluan malaluan so it's Yiddish it was yish uh not German not German when the parents didn't want us to understand something it was polish uh never learned never cared to learn any any polish never cared to learn any any uh German I still hold a grudge uh and you know it's simp it's a simple as that but
was yish spoken in your home there as you were growing up in oh absolutely D yeah absolutely yeah and um you know we're all very conversing in yish you it worked for us and we used yish uh kind of cod at the store uh when we didn't want the customer know what we were talking about behind the customer's back so uh came in handy uh not having used it since my parents died 25 years ago of course I've gotten kind of rusty in it who tell us who met you at the train station who who met us yes it was Cousin Carl who was still
alive he lives in uh uh he lives in La he was a hairdresser and uh my dad U stayed in touch with Carl and a couple of second cousins U until they died or my parents died but it wasn't you know just wasn't a very big family what is interesting is that early on my dad would get phone calls or letters or some sort of communication that so and so uh was found alive living in Australia or Argentina or Israel or something like that but uh uh that was you know that was it uh the the entire family table stand around or sit around the
uh the kitchen table so it was you know uh other than other than being uh immigrants uh our growing up in Dallas was was as normal as any other uh as any other kids uh except we didn't get into trouble and the reason we didn't get into trouble was there was always this potential of always this the of you don't embarrass your family so we were for the most part goody Tes growing up it's kind of a Jewish mod yeah and an immigrants yeah absolutely it was a different it was a different culture and stuff like that and I think it's kind of one of
the reasons my uh my academic career at University Texas was uh so shoty is the fact that I got down there I didn't have any adult supervision and I went crazy it happens today plenty of those young kids still happens today freshman well what about uh what was it like when you were growing up here did you belong to a synagogue we grew up at Sher Israel uh I can remember early on when Sher Israel was located in uh South Dallas and we lived on for Avenue which is now MLK uh I can remember walking to synagogue uh for high holy days my parents were
not the most religious people in the world I mean we observed all the holidays uh there wasn't any trafe in the house but it wasn't strictly kosher either uh you know we we became Americanized I guess uh we all three of us were bar MIT and Sher Israel when Louise and I got married at Temple uh the decision was an easy one number one she doesn't she didn't understand Hebrew and she didn't like the 4-Hour services on the high holy days and I wasn't crazy about sitting for 4 hours at a whack so uh we we joined Temple and over the years both my brothers
joined Temple the uh uh and kind of thinking about uh this interview one of the things that that I uh I lacked growing up was a mentor uh I didn't have older brothers or cousins or aunts or uncles that uh knew the quote the American way so I had to figure out this stuff on my own some of it I figured out some of that I'm still bewildered over but uh you know the bottom line is that so I was clueless but I was still alive when I was here well you also made quite an impact on the Jewish Community as well will get to
uh tell me this um you lived on Forest Avenue then you moved to Preston Hollow yeah yeah so you went to the Preston Hollow Elementary School no actually uh when I moved or when we moved I went straight into Benjamin Franklin oh in the ninth grade my brothers went to D oh did your family have any interactions with the Gentile Comm Community as you were growing up uh except for the fact that it was a gentile community that ran tuxedos uh there wasn't any U I don't think there was any interaction yeah you know we went to we went to uh Benjamin Franklin the Hebrew
High School AKA hrrest uh but uh you know that was that was pretty much it uh uh I don't think my parents had any Gentile friends uh I had some uh in high school uh that uh that I keep in touch with to this day I think David herl probably had some in high school too but uh uh that was you know that was about it well tell me something about the projects or the work that I see a big list what let tell me some of the organizations or some of your accomplishments that you are very proud of uh when I was at the
bank I was the only Jewish guy at the bank which is hard to comprehend because Republic National Bank was uh built by Fred Florence who was the same Fred Florence that donated the land that Temple Emanuel sits on and uh uh my father-in-law Abner Aron off was uh uh one of uh my best Rooter if you will and his brother-in-law Henry schlinger uh who was my favorite mbuka that I inherited uh I think it was Henry that that put out the word that I needed to get involved and I was asked to be on the I think my first board uh was uh uh Golden
Acres I served on Golden Acres board for a couple years uh I've served on a lot of what I call kind of minor things uh Golden Acres was was the first uh my I have a nephew that died of cystic fibrosis and I became a pre well while he was still alive I uh I worked on the Cs fibrosis board and uh became president of cister fibrosis and it was a u very interesting situation being a local president that was basically in a a uh a chapter of a National Organization so there was a completely different learning curve uh the other projects that I've that
I've taken on as president of temp manual Brotherhood and the interesting thing about that ordeal not an ordeal the interesting thing about that project was just managing a lot of different personalities it was like managing a small company and I enjoyed it and I enjoyed uh working for the temple uh and I'm still I'm not still involved I'm back involved because I'm paying a favor to somebody that's now the president U after uh after dad died I was uh asked to be president of the Holocaust Center and my greatest accomplishment there was was merging the Holocaust center with the quote second generation of Holocaust Survivors
and and uh uh groping through the politics of a lot of people's EOS and stuff like that uh as I said my dad was one of seven or nine Holocaust Survivors that came up with the idea of a holocaust Center during a Yung Kipper break at Sher Israel and uh you know they really work tirelessly to uh to make it what it is today uh we're all kind of sitting around waiting to see when and if a u a new building will be will be uh established but I think in I think in due time it probably will uh so you know I've always enjoyed
uh community service of that type it's it's been a diversion from other things that that gotten in the way like work but it's for the most part it's fun uh I don't I'm not actively looking for anything else I just turned 70 years old I've been there I've done that uh and like I said I'm I'm repaying a favor by being involved with the temple Brotherhood right now with is that because of Scott McCartney it's part of Steve LaVine oh Steve when I was when I was President uh I twisted Steve Steve's arm to be my Treasurer and so it's now payback time I see
here you also handled the account of the Republic Bank since you were the only Jew yeah I was well it actually paid off very well for me uh uh I'll tell you quick little story when uh when I first started at the bank uh here comes uh Russ Shana and Yong Kipper and the bank had a policy of no no pay dates for first 6 months so I go to my boss and I say what about our high holy days and this uh SL Gentile was completely uh Blown Away didn't know what I was talking about uh so uh he said I'll check it out
so he checks it out and he said yes you've got the days off fast forward and here it is December I'm at my desk and it's hka and this guy comes to me he says b what are you doing here and I said I have a job don't I he said yeah but it's chanuka or something like that so I I had to explained to uh Fred gray the hierarchy of the various holidays that we celebrate uh the not the fact that got took a day off or anything like that but the uh biggest Plum of being the only Jew at at Republic National Bank
is the fact that our Arch competitor First National had Larry buner as a member of the Columbian Club and Republic Bank couldn't be outdone so I became a member of the Columbian Club and I enjoyed that uh perk for a long time so it seems to me that you were treated very very well as a single Jew yes I was yeah not that I not that I worked the system but it just by Happ stance that I was in the right place at the right time that is really really interesting also you said that u in your paper here you were on the ADL board
what was that like the adoption committee uh the adoption committee I was on the Jewish Family Service Board and Jewish Family Service is the organization that help that helped settle us when we came to Dallas and U uh I still have a warm place in my heart for what JFS does I would was involved on the adoption committee when Martin Litwin was president and kind of enjoyed the uh the challenges of developing policy regarding uh Jewish kids that needed to be adopted and I think one of the first thing not one of the first things I think this was so early early on was our
discussions regarding adoption by gay couples and this goes back 20 plus years so they were ahead of their times they were definitely ahead of their times when you were in uh High School what were some of the activities that you really liked I was clueless in high school I was a geek I was part of the uh marching band uh I ran around with other Geeks uh the one good thing that that came out of University of Texas uh was that I was now a cool guy in the fraternity and uh uh it it uh it was a confidence Builder uh High School uh High
School I was uh belong to Young Judea when everybody else on the planet belonged to uh AA uh going back to the uh the thing I said a few minutes ago I didn't have anybody to tell me you know do this instead of that I just had to learn the hard way and um I can remember an episode when I was in grade school coming home and having trouble with a math problem and my parents couldn't help me and uh I could see that it was really uh stressful for them not being able to help me and they were able to find a uh another
immigrant who had a daughter that was a few years older than I am that that tried to help that help me so uh uh you know but for the most part everything's been good how did your parents adjust to America when they came sounds like that's a good question uh there was a real strong uh support system with other survivors uh my my parents especially my dad uh was very social uh he was involved with I think they call it the Dallas uh newcomers club uh he was involved early on with Dallas Hebrew free loans uh and you know like between the survivors uh and
the uh and Sher Israel uh they were pretty active um you know they supported each other they supported each other they have U uh that have F had friends for until they died lifelong friends name some of the people uh the well some of the people would be uh Martin and Don Leon Leon and Greta zetley Irma and Izzy flud Reich Jack and an Stein uh I'll think of some others but uh it was pretty pretty close nit group uh did did your parents ever belong to the Arbiter since you said they were yist it was kind of the Socialist no I don't think so
well keep in mind that they work 6 days a week so their uh their night out their social calendar was basically Sunday nights yeah tell us how you met Louise I was dating Louise's best friend and coincidentally Louise and my brothers were in the same class at uh at hilr High School uh Louise and I have been married a little over 46 years so she's still on a trial basis and vice versa be careful yeah so so what was the name of who you were dating I was dating Emily Hurst uh Mickey hurst's SI younger sister okay so finish how you met her that way
I mean did you I met her when I was when um I guess when I was uh at North Texas uh I worked at a men shop in one of the first men shops in North Park called The Canterbury shop and uh Louise and Emily and Nikki Hurst and two or three of about five or six girls that just ran around together uh one of the girls was Sandra Lynn whose brother-in-law was was the owner of the canbury shop so C North Park was a novelty in the in the 60s and it a great place to hang out so um actually i' fixed Louise up
uh on a date with one of my best friends for New Year's Eve while I was dating her friend and it just you know she she overwhelmed me with her beauty she is darling how long were you D dating before you married probably about 2 years uh during our courtship I went into the service went to boot camp and uh came out of came out of ban back to Dallas finished up my my degree uh we talked about my my St academic life uh What uh find interesting having flucked out of Texas uh I was uh went to Southwestern Graduate School of banking at SMU
got a u uh Advanced degree from that from SMU uh then spent two years on their faculty so once I learn how to discipline and study uh became relatively easy so what was your position in the uh service I was well I had actually two I was in the reserves uh I initially was a uh canvas and web repair man I could sew tents and I could sew all the canvas harnessing uh it had nothing to do with the fact that my dad was a tailor it was pure coincidence that I was assigned uh that position uh the the reservice in those days were a
bunch of goof offs uh we found a way not to go to Vietnam pure and simple the reservist today for guys that are in Afghanistan and things like that have kind of elevated the uh uh the I don't know what the right word is the being a reservice I mean these guys are getting blown up and shot like everybody else uh so the reservice commitment was 6 years so after I came back from boot camp and got really bored with uh doing nothing at C at meetings I volunteered and that's bad thing to do in the Army I volunteered for the NCO Academy non-commissioned officer
so I went through that Academy and U then was asked to be on the faculty of Academy and ultimately became the uh uh the head of it for the Dallas Fort Worth area until my until it was time to get out of the service and resign my commission if you will tell me about your daughters where they went to school and what they involvement was or wasn't in the Jewish Community uh both girls Kathy and pet uh uh went through private school in Dallas Kathy uh went to and graduated from Haw day uh pette graduated from uh Episcopal School of Dallas uh their uh uh
their Jewish invol involement was uh bbo uh which uh which was which was great uh both of them went to University of Texas both of them were 85s at the University of Texas um they both had a good time but they somehow knew things that I didn't do know like study habits uh Kathy after graduation was a elementary school teacher at Zoom wal here in Dallas and uh she was one of six Caucasian teachers in the school and she was she basically was burned out by the lack of support from the principal and things like that uh so she quit teaching uh went to um
Atlanta one of her girlfriends lived Atlanta uh Kathy found a job in Atlanta uh met her current husband in Atlanta uh then they moved to Austin about four five years ago uh she is the office manager for a uh software company in Austin uh best job description is she's kind of the mother hen uh she loves her job they love her etc etc etc pette who just turned 40 uh graduated from Texas worked in the advertising World here in Dallas decided that she wanted to live in New York went to New York enjoyed New York uh for about 10 years uh decided she had enough
of the uh the uh 10t snow drifts and Subzero temperature uh left New York the day before hurricane Sandy hit uh moved to Austin and uh she works for a uh an advertising media type company I don't understand all the ins and out of and lives probably 20 to 30 minutes away from Kathy so uh uh they're uh they're close which we're happy uh they come to Dallas periodically we go to Austin Austin is a perfect place for them because it's far enough away that they can't come here every weekend and it's close enough where when they do want to come here then they can
and they will have to bring their jewelry laundry every week they have done that too yes I mean every week yeah we don't want that but you they do they for some for some reason the washing machines don't work as well in Austin as they do here in Dallas but bottom line is they're they're good kids tell me uh when think about what the changes of Dallas from when you were growing up to now that are so important I think it's been I think the Dallas has been explosive as far as the uh uh the growth it's uh uh it is to me and this
is the only place I've ever lived outside of college in the Army uh but it is amazing how how well Dallas has has been led by group of guys that maybe numbered 10 or 12 or 15 uh and we've got some we got one big black mark on our on our history but uh it's been a great place to uh uh to be business uh yeah you know nothing that that that that uh is out there that's not on the road to working fantastic it' be interesting to see what the mayor does as far as uh getting uh South Dallas and Oak Cliff up and
running but their areas of Oak Cliff they're F fantastic yeah if I was 20 30 years younger I told we we probably be living in Kesler Park beautiful area what was the Jewish Community like as versus today how would you compare Jewish Community when I was growing up was you knew everybody in town uh if you didn't belong put it this way uh regardless of which synagogue you belonged to and there only three of them at the time you knew everybody in town uh I think in the in the 60s the total Jewish population was maybe 20 or 25,000 I would guess that the Jewish
population is now probably pretty close to a quarter of million in Dallas Fort Worth and the Metroplex uh I'm blown away at the fact that there's probably in the Metroplex there's probably two dozen synagogues it's it's mind bogg me I know they're out there I haven't been to many of them uh I tend to stay inside of LBJ because I'm one of those Dallas snobs who doesn't go further uh there's no need to go north of LBJ there's no need whatsoever so in concluding maybe you've hit it but who would be Your Role Models I know you told me you didn't have any at the
time but somebody must have been ahead of you of all the MB that I inherited when I'm married into the uh uh uh aronov family uh Henry schinger comes to the very top I thought he was just a Class Act uh smart intelligent uh just a wonderful wonderful person uh like everybody else you know we all miss him I mean he was just he was just a good good guy what are you most proud of today today well you know it sounds TR my kids the fact that that uh uh they don't do drugs that I know of uh there might be an occasional joint
out there uh but uh you my kids fact that uh Louis has put up with me for 45 plus years uh I think that U I've done okay as far as professional financially bottom line is life is good and one more question um is there rather is there anything else you'd like to add I think that's pretty much the life of Jack bosi Bell thanks so much Jack it was wonderful and you life is good you've made it good and thanks for all your help what else is there to complain about you know sounds good to me thanks so much so this is for us