Contact Donate
Menu
all Oral History
April 12, 2011

Walter Levy

Walter J. Levy was born in 1922 and raised in Koenigsberg, Germany. In a family photograph from December 1935, he described how his family had moved from a large apartment in a desirable neighborhood to a smaller one in a less desirable area as his father found it increasingly difficult to make a living amid the growing hardships of the 1930s. In that photo he appears at age thirteen and a half with his father, mother, and younger sister, who was four years his junior. His paternal grandfather, who died around 1928, had owned a German smoking cabinet that passed down through the family.

Walter and his wife, Helmuth, raised four daughters: Deborah (Devora), Barbara (Batya), who passed away in 1995, Julie (Ruth), and Sharon. The family's Hebrew names were memorialized in a mural created by a Boston artist in the late 1960s, each name tied to a biblical figure. Walter's cousin Ruth perished in the Holocaust, and his daughter Julie was named in her memory. The family settled in Dallas, where Walter remained active in Jewish communal life and was a member of Congregation Shearith Israel, where he celebrated a second bar mitzvah in 2005.

By profession Walter was a social worker, and he earned some of the highest honors in his field. In 1995 he received lifetime achievement awards from both the Dallas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers and the state of Texas, along with recognition from the mayor of Dallas. He was later elevated to the status of pioneer in social work by the NASW Foundation, honored particularly for his work with the elderly and aging. A dedicated collector of Israeli stamps, he combined this passion with his second bar mitzvah research project, writing articles about his daughters' biblical namesakes that were published in the journal of the Society of Israel Philatelists. His undergraduate alma mater also honored him with a Humanitarian Award.

Read Full Transcript