Rachel Yaker
Rachel Yaker never knew her grandparents, who perished in Europe during the Holocaust. Her mother was born in Krakow, Poland, one of six children, and survived the war along with her sister Esther by hiding with farmers their father had known through his horse trading. As young girls, they hid in attics and worked in the fields for four years. Her father was born in Galicia, Poland, and was taken to do forced labor cutting trees in Russia during the war. Rachel's parents met in a displaced persons camp in Germany, where they married. Her brother was born in Germany in 1947, and the family later moved to Israel, where Rachel was born in 1952. In 1960, sponsored by her aunt Esther, the family came to Brooklyn, New York.
Rachel grew up in a four-story walk-up in Brooklyn, where her parents worked long hours. Her mother worked at the Barton's chocolate factory and her father as a butcher on the Lower East Side before opening his own clothing shop. At sixteen the family moved to Canarsie, where Rachel attended high school before studying business and marketing at Baruch College. She married in 1976, and her daughter Jessica was born in the Bronx in 1977 while her husband, a physician, completed his residency. In July 1978 the family moved to Dallas, where her husband opened his own practice and Rachel helped with the secretarial and business side while raising their children. Her son was born in Plano in 1980.
Adjusting to Dallas was a culture shock after New York, from the July heat to missing familiar foods, but Rachel built friendships through Mother's Day Out and among physician families. Her children attended the J, Chabad camps, Akiba, and Solomon Schechter, and the family worshiped at Shearith Israel. Her parents joined them in Dallas around 1980, and her father happily kept selling clothing on weekends at Traders Village in Grapevine. Both of Rachel's children stayed in Dallas and entered the medical field, and both married Jewish spouses, carrying on the holidays and traditions instilled by their grandparents. Deeply proud of her husband and children, Rachel credits her Holocaust survivor parents for her strong values and her enduring connection to Jewish tradition and to Israel.
Full Transcript
okay good afternoon my name is joe reingold and i will be interviewing rachel yeager today it is sunday uh november 15 2020. good afternoon rachel thank you for doing this tell us a little bit about your family your background whatever you might know about your grandparents and your parents like where they were from where they lived and what what kind of lives they were leading well unfortunately i never got to enjoy for for them to enjoy my grandparents on either side because um they were in europe during the um the holocaust so they were in germany they were in poland my mother was born in krakow krakow um she had uh they were a total of six kids and when the nazis came during the beginning of the
war they were the only one that survived the parents were um everyone was killed except my mother and her sister and they went and hid in the forest and they walked in the forest until they found these um farmers two different farmers that took them in because they knew uh my grandfather because he was selling horses and so those farmers knew my their dad and so each girl went into a different household and they were just down the street and my mother was the youngest she was about eight and her sister esther about 12 and they survived by hiding in the attic and during the
day they worked in the fields cleaning cooking taking care of the animals whatever they needed to be to have to be done and they survived like this for four years and um after the war they went to detention camp and that's where uh my aunt met her husband and my father they were all in these detention camps so uh my mother is still alive she's 91 my aunt has passed and um my father has passed about eight years already maybe 10 years already but my mom's still a survivor and um i have a brother and so going back to my dad my dad was also
he was born in galicia in poland and when the uh the um the the nazis came and all that he was recruited to go uh instead of the army they took him to um forced work so he worked in the forest in russia in the winter summer cutting trees that was his job his father was a butcher and he had a stepmother so there must have been about five kids because um we don't go to i have some pictures but you know they they didn't talk too much something about holocaust survivors they don't want to talk that much um so when they went to the
my father met my mother they got married there my brother was born in germany in 1947 and after that they uh they all my father his sister's two sisters and my mom right they went we went to israel i was born in israel in 1952 my mother sister esther she moved with her husband to brooklyn because her husband's aunt um brought him to the states she sponsored him to come to america and then they had two daughters but my brother and i my was born in israel 1962 and in 1960 uh my aunt esther sponsored us to come to america to brooklyn new york so
i grew up in brooklyn with my brother um we lived in a a four-story walk-up my parents were both working together uh my mother worked in the bartons chocolate factory and my father worked as a butcher on the lower east side and then um i don't know the year exactly but then my father decided to go on his own and um he opened up a clothing shop um in brooklyn and both of them worked night and day seven days a week buying merchandise and um making a living we had nothing so they were the ones that were bringing in um my mother working in bartons
with her sister she got her the job and my father didn't like work again didn't like working as a butcher he hated going to fulton street and doing that and so he got his own clothing store by then um my mother could drive and so that's how she took him she was committed to driving him and bringing him back and unfortunately the stores where they were at were in sterling and crown heights and that was not a good time at that time but this was 1960 in the 60s and then um we moved uh out of the uh the tenement that we were living in
and we moved to canarsie and um what else what else can i tell you i was 16 years old when we moved to canarsie and that was where i went to high school and then i went to college i went to baruch college for business marketing and uh business and then um what else what did you do when you graduated college what did you do when i graduated college i um i got married basically i i got my i met my husband right away you know i i got married and we moved to dallas in 1978 i got married in 76 my daughter jessica was
born in 77 my husband is a physician so he was doing his residency in the bronx my daughter was born in the bronx and um she a week before she was born they we had the blackouts in new york and so that was a an experience in itself but in 1978 uh july 14 1978 we moved to dallas my husband opened up his own practice and uh i helped him out doing secretarial stuff and business which was what i did and then um my daughter was born in 1777 and my when i moved here my son was born in 1980 in plano general um what
else can i say joe i ask you uh what do you think what was life like in dallas when you first moved here can you describe it to us sure so we moved here in 1978 and um my daughter was a year old exactly a year old and it was hard because my husband opened up his own practice and she was just a baby and i had to help him at the office when when i came to dallas it was 114 degrees in july that was the beginning of like where did you bring me why are we in dallas it's so hot um but you
know i helped him out and then um uh i worked with him taking care of the kids and schooling and carpooling and then my son was born so he jessica was two and a half and again mother's day out it was difficult because i had nobody here my brother was living here at the time so that was family and that was the help but i was basically you know on my own i met some nice girlfriends and families other physicians and their wives so it was it was really nice because i met that i met some of my friends at mother's day out when i
dropped off my my kids and uh but it was dallas was quiet i was it was a culture shock for us because i was missing all my foods that i had grown up in new york so when my family from new york came they always brought me bagels and locks and all the stuff that i missed having but um it was a shock for us coming from a big city like new york and not having food and activities and customs and jewishness like we had growing up in new york but we've come a long way i mean i remember beltline used to be a two-way
street now you know if you ask someone you know how was dallas and and you say can you believe that that beltline was a two-way street and we didn't have the tollway and all the stores and conveniences i mean it's like it's like a dream did your did your husband consider any other cities before you decided on moving here yes so what was before his residency was residency was finishing up and so we had tried to go to los angeles and in florida phoenix and dallas was the last stop so we decided that dallas was new fresh my brother was living here at the time
and uh very little competition there weren't that many plastic surgeons here so it was it was kind of nice and i met some nice people that my husband had known in south america and so we became friends and it was an easy transition for me because i had somebody and my brother was here as well so um that's what made it easy for us did you join civic or did he join any professional organizations and did you join any jewish organizations here yes i i joined the jay because i took my daughter to the j and uh mother's day out at temple shalom and so
i've always been with with sheriff israel in the beginning as well that's where we went to synagogue and um what else so that was in the beginning when we first came so the kids went to uh the jay and they went to chabad for camp and stuff like that so they were they were busy yeah they went to jewish schools my daughter went to akiba for a while and so did my son and then um they went to solomon schechter my son went to salomon shechter until uh until third grade and then i put him in public school okay yes now i'm assuming you still
have do you have any family in israel at all or is everybody pretty much in new york cousins i don't have anyone in new york anymore except the cousin and she lives in upstate new york but my parents moved uh in 19 uh let me see in 1980 they moved before my son was born so they came here and and they um they uh they my father went uh he we got him a a place to work at at the uh traders village in grapevine and so he used to work with my mom and on the weekends they used to sell uh schmutz so this
because my father was so used to working and selling clothes ladies clothes and men's clothes so this was ideal for him he could retire and he could work on the weekend selling again clothes which was his passion he was a good salesman and my mom was there for him without my mom my father wouldn't be anywhere did they have an even transition here you think that they had an easy time moving here you know what the funniest thing is and and it's interesting it was kind of lonely for them in the beginning because they didn't know anyone but there was one day i was at
albertsons and arapahoe and hillcrest and i had my i had met michael schiff's mother and father and i i saw them she was talking with another lady i don't remember her name but she was talking with her in yiddish and so i said oh my gosh this is great i can introduce someone to my parents so i just went over to them and i introduced myself and the rest is history they became fast friends they knew each other they had some things in common and they used to um socialize visit and it was very nice it was a good transition for my parents because they
had someone like them yeah and what about your children where are they now uh okay so my daughter both my children live in dallas um my son works out in plano he's a hair restoration he does hair restoration he does hair transplants and my daughter-in-law is a nurse practitioner and she works with him he does the female side uh ladies that are losing their hair and um and a lot of doing with hormones and but my son does the the hair transplants and my husband is a plastic surgeon in plano and my daughter is a medical assistant and she works with in my husband's office
helping him taking out stitches and both of my kids went into the medical field they liked it they grew up with it all their lives and they they they they're respected respectful and and they knew what it's like to be patient you have to be patient when your husband gets called their father gets called to an emergency and they they have to sit and wait they have to sit and wait in the emergency room till we get home so i always carry food and diapers because i never knew where i was going to be i would i never knew yeah so they they know what
it's like to be patient and respectful and caring for patients that's how they are they grew up with a lot of patience and patience how has in your opinion dallas changed for you personally since when you got here until now huge huge huge there is so much to do in dallas if you if you want to at that time i i used to i used to belong to a bowling league when i came i i was at the j um i'm at the j now in melton class i have a lot of girls that friends that take the class with me and availability is there
to to your liking you can do whatever you wanted to jay um we have a lot of opportunities you could do whatever you want in dallas now so it's really awesome museums anything you want to and that's a big change so um that's that's what i see in dallas see it's you know um not young anymore but i've seen a lot in the last um 42 years 43 years that i've been here it's it seems like it was yesterday that we came and there's a lot a lot of a lot of things that have really made this city a city i'm not missing anything yeah
i'm not missing anything actually i think a lot of the food restaurants and stuff like that can't compare i go someplace else and i say dallas is better i i like that that's good to know um tell me rachel in your lifetime can you think of somebody who has been a role model for you in my lifetime well i i think i can think of two people two people um uh religion has always been a tradition for me i'm not very religious but i like tradition i've always kept the faith uh in my own way i grew up with holocaust survivor parents and we had
a lot of values you know a lot of values you know we're very we respected our parents um so i can think of gold in my ear because she came to israel alone she she was independent she spent a lot of examples to israel a lot of respect i still am israeli and you know always and another person that i respect is believe it or not is martha stewart i wish i could do everything that she does and i can't martha's do it because i love the way she cooks and she's so organized and she's polish believe it and i wish i can do all
the things that she does in my old age because of covet i've become a more cooking person i cook more than i ever did in before coped i i i i've found that i can cook a lot of things so those are the things those are the people that strike me as you know i would like to do more of but you know the those are the two people that i would think okay stop me yes and the next thing is very personal what are you the most proud of if you had to pick something the most proud of is that my husband and my
children i'm very proud of my husband that he's been able to sustain us and give us my the good life that we have i'm very lucky um my children are amazing i'm lucky they both live in dallas i don't have grandkids yet i have granddogs and so i'm proud of my son that he became the doctor that he is and um and that he married a nice girl and my daughter is a nice girl she works in the office and she she's she's here for me and my husband and um those are my family i have to say my kids and my husband what traditions
do you think your children will carry on um traditions interesting um you know both of them all my kids have married jewish so i'm proud of that so all the holidays they grew up with because of my parents and my husband's mother instilled a lot of the um keeping jewish keeping traditions keeping the holidays my daughter is very into the religions she she does she she you know she respects everything about the religion she's more jewish than i am um and both of them you know all the holidays and the food um so i'm happy about that i have no complaints good so rachel is
there anything else you'd like to add before we end the interview anything else i'd like to add um i guess that's i gave you i gave you it all i think so if you think of anything else that's that's basically it it's always interesting to hear from people especially uh since you grew up so many years in new york you know what life was like but moving here because my family had the same that same experience but yeah it's it's different here and dallas has grown a lot and you've seen it all you've seen it seen it all and and people when people come to
dallas and they come now and i tell them what we went through and they say um wow really they just don't believe that that's that's all the stuff that happened yeah that's true yeah well i certainly appreciate you giving us your time