Joram Wolanow
Joram Wolanow's family roots reach back to Belarus and Minsk before settling in Poland around 1885. His mother led a scout group and legally migrated to Israel in 1932, while his father, having endured antisemitism in Warsaw, left in 1938, traveling to Venice and reaching Israel through the British blockade. The couple met in Tel Aviv and married in 1940. Joram was born in 1944, one of three children. Much of his mother's family perished in the Holocaust, and only his father's sister survived in Warsaw, hidden by a Polish soldier; her later move to Detroit helped open the path for the family's immigration to the United States.
The Wolanow family came to America gradually, with Joram's father arriving in 1956 and the rest of the family following. They settled first in Brooklyn, then bought a home in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens. Joram was among the first in his family to attend college, studying physics at Queens College and later earning a master's in engineering and management. He also trained in piano at Juilliard. His engineering career spanned telecommunications, microwave and satellite communications, cryogenics, and thermodynamics, earned him a patent, and took him traveling around the world, including memorable trips as far as India, ending with work at Siemens.
In 1989 Joram moved to Dallas to open a dry cleaning business with his brother Abner. After his first marriage ended in divorce, he met Carol through personal ads in the Texas Jewish Post and married her in 1998. Together they raised two grandchildren, Helen and Zachary, for many years, which he counts as his proudest experience. The Wolanows became active across the Dallas Jewish community, supporting and serving organizations including Akiba Academy, Hillel, the Hebrew Free Loan Association, Hadassah, Dallas Kosher, and others. Joram served as president of his congregation, plays piano for weekly Shabbat services at a senior residence, and has studied for years with his role model, Rabbi Yakov Tannenbaum.
Full Transcript
good morning my name is joe reingold and i am interviewing euron walino this morning it is wednesday july 31st 2019. hello there hi tell us about a little bit about what you know about your grandparents and your parents their lives where they lived how long ago did they come here uh my parents came from poland where they actually lived the ancestors etc lived since approximately 1885 well before that they were in belarus in minsk okay my father and his family lived in warsaw and my mother and her family lived in a small town maybe about 60 70 miles away from from in a town called van gogh in 1932 my mother was a leader of a group of kids that were scouts and in 1932 the
entire group my mother and another uh person migrated to israel and they did it legally because you know there was a british blockade right because it wasn't that intensive in those days but they had legal uh papers and they settled in israel my father on the other hand who lived in warsaw experienced a great deal of anti-semitism and he got tired of all of that of being beaten up in the streets and called the jew etc etc things were not very pretty then in 1938 he decided he's just going to leave of course his parents were against that but he went ahead and he hitchhiked
to venice in italy where he boarded a ship that actually went through the british blockade illegally and the way he told me the story is they came close to shore jumped into the water literally swam ashore and were hidden in a safe house by a group led at that time by tupeldor and the following day he was shipped to the dead sea and where he worked for approximately a year in 1938 1939 after that he moved to tel aviv where the family introduced him to my mother and that was 1940. okay the war in europe was raging of course the news of what was going on did not was not available at that time but they uh settled in israel my brother who was the uh oldest of the three children was born in 1945 i was born in 1940 no i'm sorry he was born in 1941.
i was born in 1944 and my sister was born six years later my sister by the way after she got married in the united states picked up went on a honeymoon in europe and settled in jerusalem so that is essentially my story from my mother's family practically everyone perished in the holocaust and my father in in warsaw only his sister survived because she was hidden by a polish soldier during the entire war he married her after the war and they moved to detroit michigan and by the way that was the the germ germination of how my father and my family came to the united states
because in those days you needed an affidavit for someone who would support you they didn't want people coming in and becoming burdens of society so that was essentially the history of my family my sister by the way who lives in jerusalem spent quite a few years and built up an incredible family tree that in fact goes back to the 1800s and it has hundreds and hundreds of our family members in that big family tree and she's still at it that's great yep wonderful and your brother my brother uh well the the entire family came into the united states little by little you know that's their
own joke how did they come my father came to the united states in 1956 okay all by himself he established himself in new york he came he had a visa and it was okay for him to do it legally my brother came a year later as a student my sister my mother and i came six months later and we all settled in brooklyn initially we worked very hard for two years and were able to save enough money to buy a home in queens in the jamaica neighborhood and we all worked at it even my sister that was a story on its own and uh uh
i was married in 1969 to a barber fine and we moved to long island so that was sort of my immediate history okay did you have any children with barbara i had two children one boy and one girl the girl is the oldest she at the moment lives in new york with my ex-wife barbara as well as my son they both have psychological issues my daughter her name is beth had two children here in dallas and we carol and i my wife and i have been raising those two grandchildren for the last 17 years so they live with us they essentially became our kids so
you know that's did you um after high school what were your plans what did you do i okay i was practically the first one to go to college in my family both my mother and father because of the situation in poland had very very little education my father was in the leather good business he was making luggage that was his expertise which he then did in israel as well my mother was always a homemaker so education was very important in our family my mother and father realized how important it was i went to college at queen's college which is part of the university city of
new york i graduated with a physics degree and then went on to have a master's degree in engineering and management and then i went on to my career so that was my education okay that was a plan what was your career i was involved in many engineering projects or you know essentially for the next 25 27 years and i had a ball doing that i was involved in telecommunications in microwave engineering in satellite communications in cryogenics in thermodynamics i i had my hands in so many different disciplines and i just had a lot of fun in fact i even had one patent wow great that's
great i worked for several private small companies that were on the leading and cutting edge of engineering lasers um microwave communications with satellites and my last uh business adventures if you will with it was with siemens she's a german company where i was an engineer and then i went into salesmanship of telecommunication equipment one very very interesting thing that benefited me during my professional careers is that i got to travel all over the world many many many times living out of suitcases not everybody likes that but not very infected on one occasion i traveled from new york to india excuse me which takes quite a
bit of time about 20-something hours when i landed i discovered that the person that was going to meet me evidently left to paris and i literally within five hours on an airplane going back again ah so i had a lot of adventures so you did that for many years you were still in new york most of this time all of the time i went to new york so how did you get here very interesting my brother who uh was involved was working in a company in new york that's manufactured and sold industrial and commercial washing machines okay uh guy gained a great deal of experience
in this business he was in sales and he saw dallas back in 1979 1980 which i understand was one of the hottest summers he tells me he learned that dallas was an up-and-coming city and there was very little representation in that industry so he and the partner the partner moved to dallas and over the years he developed the business and he still is here doing the same thing and back in 1989 he called me up and says why don't you move here why don't you pick up and go you're always working for someone else you know and so on why don't you come let's go
into business together we'll we'll we'll build we'll make a dry cleaning plant so i said dry cleaning i mean the only thing i know about dry cleaning is the jeffers you know on television and uh so i did that i moved to dallas in 1989 i stayed with my brother for quite a few months we built a dry cleaning store not too far away from here on munford okay and i learned the business and then for several years we expanded the business i had very little sleep doing doing that and one one consequence of moving to dallas uh is that my first wife barbara and
the kids were going to follow me approximately a year later after i established the business and got up on my feet and regretfully she changed her mind she decided to stay there uh and seven years after that uh we were divorced you know even though she fought tooth and nail against it and i became a free agent and what did you do you plunged into the social scene the very next day that the divorce papers came in the mail i opened up the texas jewish post okay and in those days there was one page was dedicated to personals i remember you remember that you know
yeah and i wrote five letters to five personals that appeal to be interesting that's how i met carol wow success it was success that's great and we dated for two years we got married in 1998 at the ferret israel by rabbi yitzcohn okay and three years three or four years later we acquired two babies which were my grandchildren helen as a girl was two years old at the time so i got to learn how to change diapers all over again carol didn't want to touch them and zachary who was four okay came and lived with us why there was an issue with parental care child
protective services got involved and awarded us uh custody of the children and we have raised them since then it would have a lot of strength it was wonderful but the interesting thing is that when people learn about this experience of ours with grandchildren they say wow it must have been very difficult but i absolutely disagree as well as my wife carol it actually opened up so many doors and windows for activities pta you know akiba academy also you know schools etc and of course we're still at it you know helen who is now 18 is going into his second year at smu wow and zachary
has a job he's 20 years old now wonderful it was and they're still are they still living with you they're still living with us yes all right so what things what organizations have you joined as a or as a couple here in dallas okay we joined and belonged to quite a few organizations um in fact more so in the last six years five six years since carol retired and i'm sort of semi-retired for example carol it was on the board of akiba academy representing grandparents by the way she's on the board of hillel she's on the boat she was on the boat and still very
active in the hebrew free loan association she's on the board of charade te fila i was the president of deferred israel for several years about 10 years ago we both of us belong to hadassah we are on the board of nazareth organization and i hope i didn't miss anything i'm sure there are others that we're involved in and we and we're active in all of them and we love it we love it it gave us an incredible exposure to the entire jewish community of dallas we know so many people and we befriended so many wonderful people as a result of being involved in all those
are you involved in any civic or mostly jewish um mostly jewish okay jewish yes i'm just curious how how has dallas changed what do you see from when you got here until now 30 years ago the major change is that the jewish community expanded exponentially synagogues proliferated in those days oratora didn't exist uh uh character fila didn't exist yet that was before they became independent and there were very very few synagogues now the this selection is so broad and wide that it is just remarkable it it's changed besides years ago 30 years ago where we live now you know in the hillcrest royal area was
kind of way out of the city area now we are smack in the middle of it as the city has grown in all directions changed a lot yeah well as our organization can attest to the dallas jewish historical society it's grown crazy really but it affords people the opportunity to pick and choose whatever they want there's something for everybody here well now that you mention it uh you know both cal and i and by the way i failed to mention that carl was on the board of dallas kosher which i believe has the office at the federation we support many jewish organizations including the dallas
historical society the holocaust uh museum you know for education and tolerance and i i probably cannot mention you know so many of them that that we're involved in support that's fantastic that's not life and you said you're still working i am still partially working because i own a business but i have a great deal of free time which i enjoy and devote to a lot of different activities you know for example one of the things that i've done for quite a few years is every friday afternoon rabbi walk i and two other teenagers young teenagers we perform the shabbat service at what is now crystal
creek used to be the legacy it used to be the veranda before that and we've been doing it for a good solid i think eight years now eight to nine years uh continuously every friday that's great what is my role i play the piano wonderful that's another part of the education one of the things that uh that really affected my life and gave me an appreciation for classical music is that i i also went to juilliard and you know and my major was piano but then came time to decide if i want to be a classmate or i want to be a physics major and
i chose the latter but you still perform all over i i play i i don't know if i perform but i enjoy playing right if there are listeners and there's a piano yeah i'm there that's great to take with you throughout your life can you think of anyone that you can point to and say they were your role model throughout the years throughout the years you know apart from my wife carol a person that has become a major role model in my life is rabbi yakov tannenbaum who i considered my personal rabbi and my teacher and one of the things that influenced me is for
the nine last nine years as in fact it was published as a major story two or three weeks ago at the tjp for nine years we held classes in our every friday morning at a quarter to eight with several people who coming and we've been learning the deep meanings of the healing psalms and we've been doing it for nine years and at the rate that we're going it'll probably take us another 20 30 years before we're done okay and i admire rabbi tenenbaum tremendously he's a renaissance man with an incredible broad knowledge not just of religion but culture societies literature i admire him he's been
my role model how did you first learn about him or or meet him do you remember um yes years ago i think yeah about nine ten years ago he was teaching every thursday morning i believe the parish of the week or some other jewish subject in the lobby of akiba academy for parents that dropped off their kids at eight o'clock and chose to stay for another hour to learn with him and since that since our kids our grandkids went to akiba i stumbled on it joined it and nine years ago we moved it to our home and we've been doing it ever since that's how
we met can you think of something i know it might be hard to think of it or pinpoint it but something in your life that you are truly the most proud of or very proud of oh i mean i mean this is hands down i don't have to think very hard raising the two grandchildren was not just life changing but an experience that really educated me gave me a lot more appreciation for life and and affected me deeply i mean hands down all right has your family in general expanded nieces nephews anybody married anybody is that who who else is here in dallas anybody else
still good question well my brother lives here okay his name is abner clearly his last name is walonel and his wife's name is carol also carol but there is one slight difference my carol has an e at the end of her name and what was was coincidental that some years back after we were married she went to a doctor and they pulled out the other carol's chart and she has to be very careful now whenever she makes an appointment make sure that it is i and not the other one i have a cousin who lives here and he also came because my brother enticed him
he lived in israel he was born and raised in israel and he's very much involved in my brother's business selling servicing building laundromats selling washing machines servicing hotels laundry establishments so he lives here in dallas my cousin lives here in dallas my daughter by the way beth when i first moved to dallas in 89 she moved she followed me a year later and she lived in dallas for 28 years and two years ago about two years ago she moved back to new york they had some difficulties she and her husband had some difficulties yeah but that is the extent of my family here in dallas
who is still in israel anybody ah big family yeah my sister her name is dietza her last name is velta virtu by the way in english means you know words like ryder okay she lives in jerusalem and both kyle and i have visited her dozens of times in fact we just came back from israel and we have several close cousins we have a very extended family you know like second cousin third cousins and so on of course as they kind of evaporate into the cloud they change names as they get married and so on and my sister is responsible for keeping track of all of
that we also have a family in in england we have family in argentina of holocaust survivors by the way in buenos aires which kyle and i visited earlier this year um and we we have family in spain we have family in portland oregon so we they we're all over the place good places to visit lovely places to visit wonderful yeah yourm is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up moving to dallas 30 years ago was the best decision i've made number one life is so much more pleasant here in the east coast i don't mean to berate the east coast
but if you ask someone someone on the street by the way what time it is they're just gonna look at you and walk away here at least they stop and tell you what time it is life is much more pleasant people are much more hospitable and sociable here we really appreciate being here and i my plan is to continue staying we love it here we just love it here well we appreciate you being here thank you so much my pleasure you