Interview with Sara Landau, July 18, 1977

Sylvia G.:July 18, 1977. Interview on the history of the Louisville Jewish Community. Interviewer, Sylvia Goldstein. Interviewee, Ms. Sara Landau, 1441 South 4th Street.

Sylvia G.:Ms. Landau, you were not born in Louisville were you?

Sara Landau:No, I was not. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when my mother was visiting a sister, and I arrived prematurely. However, both of my sisters were born in Louisville.

Sylvia G.:And then you all moved to ...

Sara Landau:Much later. Let me talk about Louisville first while it's on my mind. The first address that I remember, the first home, if you like, that I remember, and the number has stuck to my mind all these years is 536 East Market 1:00Street. I remember it because I remember the school we went to, which I see now and then when I ride up East Market Street.

Sara Landau:My father had a little store in the front, a sort of one room factory behind it in which two or three women made knee pants. And behind that was evidently a living room or a dining room, kitchen, and a garden. And, I remember the garden particularly because my mother had 10 green thumbs.

Sara Landau:I remember a grocery at the corner of Hancock, 536 must be between Jackson and Hancock, that's how it is in my mind.

Sylvia G.:I think that's right.

Sara Landau:There was a grocery store owned by a family named Goldsmith, and 2:00Mrs. Goldsmith and my mother were very good friends. I am not sure about a little girl in that family. I know that later someone in the Goldsmith family, and my father entered into a partnership that did not last long.

Sara Landau:I remember and elderly couple who ran a butcher shop-

Sylvia G.:I'm going to have to interrupt you, I'm sorry. ...

Sara Landau:There were three people in that butcher shop, a Mr. And Mrs. Rothstein. I think it's Nathan Rothstein, of that I'm not sure. And Mrs. Rothstein's brother, whose name I do not remember.

Sara Landau:But, Mr. And Mrs. Rothstein assured us that, "We were their 3:00grandparents." Because we had complained that other children had grandparents, and we did not. The parents of both my father and mother died in Europe.

Sara Landau:I remember between our place and Hancock there was a repair place, not a blacksmith shop because he didn't shoe horses. They did repair wagons owned by a Mr. Weber. My father later told me that the reason he registered republican was because Mr. Weber sought to it that he registered republican when he first registered to vote.

Sara Landau:At the moment this is about all I remember of East Market Street. 4:00Shortly before Mathilda was born, we had moved West to 924 West Market Street. At that place, my father had a shoe store. Again, we did not live there long, because shortly after we were there, Mathilda was born and when she was about two weeks old, my mother had a very serious accident and for this reason my father moved us South.

Sara Landau:At West Market Street, I remember very distinctly two families on the same block east of us, there was another shoe store I think owned by the 5:00Greenstein's and they had a son named Joe whom I saw later on when I used to visit Louisville, and more recently renewed acquaintances with some of his family, particularly his daughter Joan Lynch.

Sara Landau:Another family on the 800 block was named Gordon, and they were very, very good friends. Jenny Gordon, and my aunt Annie were chums. Rose Gordon and I were chums. Rose had several brothers, Harry, whom we call [Nunny 00:05:57], Charlie, and Ike. I do not recall others.

Sara Landau:Jenny Gordon married Harry [inaudible 00:06:08], and [Ermagene Swaito 00:06:11] is I think the daughter of [Vac Union 00:06:18]. So much for Louisville in my earlier years, I can't at this moment remember much more. For the short time that we lived in the west part, we went to school, could it have been 8th and Walnut, 6th and Walnut, but a teacher stands out Ms. Emma [Gromont 00:06:46]. But, most of my recollections as would be natural, I think for a teenager growing up, or growing into teenage and then growing up in rural Louisiana.

Sylvia G.:I'm going to cut that off for just a minute. ...

Sara Landau:The schools in Louisiana of course were at a lower level than schools in Louisville, so that we were recognized as advanced students if you want to call a student. And were put up into higher grades. I graduated from high school, then in something between the 10th and the 11th grade. General living was a little bit more formal there too than here. I can recall that we went to dances chaperoned, but went. I can remember helping to lead a cotillion at the age of 15.

Sara Landau:We were early put on the train for New Orleans, mother and dad saw 8:00us off at seven in the morning on a Saturday. We would go to DH Homes or some other such place, and shop for mother if she had something she wanted to do, have lunch, and go to a matinee. We got into the habit early of going to the theater and also the opera, the French Opera came into New Orleans during the Lenten, I think during the Lenten season. This I can't be sure of because it contradicts Catholic Louisiana. But, during some season when they were not in New York so that the so-called French Opera was an early start in our education.

Sara Landau:In order to stay in school, I would take such subjects as business bookkeeping, short-hand and typing, domestic science, where I recall making a 9:00hat, and a dress to match, things of that sort.

Sara Landau:When we came back to Louisville, Mathilda, the youngest was nearly ready for high school.

Speaker 3:[inaudible]

Sara Landau:We came back to Louisville in '14, 1914 and almost immediately war broke out in Europe and I remember my father saying, "Don't worry child, it'll be over in three months." Little did he know that his older daughter would be going over in 1917.

Sara Landau:Shortly after we moved into our home at 1445 4th Street. At that time, this block on 4th street was what I call a Yiddish Medinah. The [inaudible 00:10:00] lived next door to us, the Swaito's lived just south of them. The 10:00Jacobson's lived a block or two north of us.

Sylvia G.:Excuse me just a minutes Sara, you mean this house where you live now?

Sara Landau:And the Linker's lived on [inaudible 00:10:18] close to us. All these people became the very closest friends of my parents.

Sylvia G.:I just want ... You weren't clear that you were in the same house you're in right now, why don't you bring that in.

Sara Landau:No. I have to confess that I lost a house at 1445 4th Street in The Depression after my father died. His business was a partnerships, partnerships are involved with your personal possessions, and as a partnership with his death, things had to be dissolved. So, the banks owned our home and this apartment building, which I now own and live in.

Sara Landau:Coming back to our early days in Louisville then. Mathilda started 11:00high school, and I started, not at the University of Louisville then, but getting some of the subjects, which I lacked in Louisiana training. I went to Bowling Green, Kentucky and took courses one summer. I went to Bloomington, Indiana and did all of my so-called sophomore English. I earned my way at Bloomington by teaching in the high school and to this day I hear from some of those people in the high school.

Sara Landau:Again, with my capacity for making friends, I did so in Bloomington, and some of those friendships have continued not through the parents, but through the children and through their children.

Sara Landau:Returning from overseas, I entered the University of Louisville and got my bachelor's degree and my master's degree there. I earned the first of the Speed Travel Fellowships, went to the University of Pennsylvania and stayed a year and a half. Illness sent me back home for the second semester of the second year. I continued teaching at the University of Louisville, working my way up from an assistant to William Belknap to his successor, to taking full-time courses and teaching full-time courses in economics. I spent my summers at such schools as Colombia, I had had good training at Pennsylvania, Virginia, it 13:00became a hobby of mine to go to summer school in different schools to get the points of view of the teachers of economics in those schools.

Sara Landau:I finished at the University of Louisville with a rank of Associate Professor. I was also for some years, Dean of Women, or what we called Advisor to Women. There was no Dean of Women then. ... When in the 1929 era, the University had certain difficulties, I resigned along with the dean, Dean Anderson, who was fired. The first year of the controversy '29/'30, 25 out of 41 14:00members of the faculty in the Liberal Arts division either resigned or were dismissed.

Sara Landau:From there, I did more graduate work at the University of Chicago, taught at Roosevelt College, now Roosevelt University. And came back to Louisville permanently in the 1950s when I found the teaching classes of over 100 each, not only became burdensome, but that I didn't know who was in my class or why. Again, some of these students remain as friends to this day. I have lived in Louisville since. In the beginning was very active with the Council of 15:00Jewish Women. I omitted the fact that one short period while I was studying and teaching at the University of Louisville, I acted as Girls Secretary for the YMHA. The then Girls Secretary married and left, and Colonel [Levy 00:15:27] asked me to carry on, which I was glad to do.

Sara Landau:During that period, I was fortunate in representing the HA and particularly counsel with the National Council of Jewish Women in New York working under Cecilia Razovsky, then considered and expert on immigrant women. This was the period of the quotas. We would meet the boats, if we knew ahead of time that a woman was to be assigned to us, and if we could locate families in 16:00Manhattan, the Bronx, or Brooklyn, we visited those families, alerted them and met the boat. If the immigrant was to go inland, we met her, she was assigned to us, we saw that she was comfortable, we stayed with her until we put her on the train in care of travelers aide and received assurance that she had arrived and been met by relatives.

Sara Landau:This to me was one of the more important things in my development and in my relationship with foreign newcomers, newcomers from abroad.

Sara Landau:Later on, I taught English to many of the later newcomers from 17:00Italy, a number of families whom I remember well from Germany as they began to come in and from Eastern Europe when they began to come in. At one time I had as many as 17 of these people in my home on a Sunday, we sang American songs and learned a good bit of English.

Sara Landau:Later on, I tutored some of them for their citizenship, and I remember particularly a Mrs. [Baylon 00:17:40], the mother of current Baylon's in the tin business.

Sara Landau:This is a little disorganized, but my mind as you can tell is jumping. I go back to my first contact with the foreign born, Mrs. [Clobber 18:0000:18:02], of us at that time, the chairman of the work with the Council of Jewish Women, and it was under her direction that I first met some of these people.

Sara Landau:Later on, I was chairman myself of International Relations at the Council under [Lantin 00:18:28] Thurman and during that period is when I think we had our larger number of newcomers. However, the two women who probably influenced me both during my membership of the council were Blanche Ottenheimer and Beck [Juter 00:18:49], whom everybody called Aunt Beck. I owe to Mrs. Juter particularly my persistence in going to the University of Louisville and working my way through there to get my degrees.

Sara Landau:You're going to have to cut me off because ...

Sara Landau:I want to go back to my reference Mr. Rothstein whom we call Grandpa Rothstein. He was the first person I knew who was personally and sincerely, terrifically interested in Palestine. He was the first person from Louisville I ever heard of who went back to Palestine. I have in my possession today a souvenir that he brought to my mother. A carved ivory needle case, it has a peephole in it and when you look through that there is a mosque.

Sara Landau:In referring to the difficulties at the University of Louisville, there was a very small touch of anti-Semitism connected with it. One of two of 20:00the Jewish girls came to me, remember I was advisor to women, and told me that the rumor was about that the president was going to get rid of the Jewish members of the faculty. This shocked me so, that I went to Bishop Woodcock, who was the patron of a small group of both faculty and senior students and graduate students of a little discussion group. And, Bishop Woodcock was shocked at any such idea, and I won't comment on the remark that he made at the time, other than to say that Jewish converts are still to Christianity, are still Jews.

Sara Landau:However, when the showdown came the following April, one of the first people to lose her job was Ida Lavin in the social science department. 21:00Shortly after that, but not because of anti-Semitism I'm sure, Professor Louis Gottschalk, both resigned and was fired at the same time. Professor Gottschalk objected to the dismissal of one of the men in the history department. He went to the newspapers, and because of the publicity, which came out in big headlines, the president fired him. As one knows, later presidents of the University honored Professor Gottschalk, first by giving him a Minerva, which is one of the awards, an honorary degree, and the current president Dr. Miller has 22:00named one of the buildings for Professor Gottschalk.

Sara Landau:My own resignation came automatically, in the hearings, before the board of trustees, there was a letter indicating that I was to be dismissed. My hunch is that Mr. [Seligman 00:22:25] on the board of trustees stopped it, not so much on me personally as on the dismissal of Jewish members. However, Mr. Seligman in my interview with him accepted an automatic resignation on my part if Dean Anderson, who was an excellent dean and particularly an excellent dean during trouble-less times was dismissed.

Sara Landau:Professor Anderson was dismissed the following year, and my resignation became automatic. It was then that I went to the University of Chicago as a teaching fellow.

Sara Landau:Our first recollection of the synagogue was at Floyd and Chestnut, where you walk down a few little steps to enter a very modest building. I'm not positive about the name of the rabbi then, I do know I have run into it recently, and I might remember it. However, when the congregation moved to Brooke and College shortly after we were there, Rabbi Giddleman and his bride came. And from that day, until the congregation moved to it's present quarters and all during Rabbi Giddleman's life, he not only was a beloved rabbi, a 24:00wonderful teacher, but a wonderful friend. He came to see my mother regularly, particularly during the latter years of her life.

Sara Landau:Mrs. Giddleman always reminded me that my mother once sent her a large box of candy with a note, "Remember, I love you too." This has been a very recent loss in our friendships, but full of good memories.

Sylvia G.:Miss there, would you tell me about your all's life a little bit more in Louisiana?

Sara Landau:We lived in two towns, one very shortly, Crowley, but the major town that had good schools was Lafayette. In Lafayette, there were exactly nine Jewish families besides our own. Two of German extraction, and all the rest are 25:00French, except my father who was naturally of Russian/Polish Orthodox.

Sara Landau:There was a little temple, but for the High Holy days, particularly Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I can recall my father with his talus overhead conducting the services in Hebrew. Recently, I ran into a picture of Rabbi Saul [Mandow's 00:25:42] father with a talus exactly like that one of my father. And looking back, I can realize how odd this seemed particularly to the French Jews in Lafayette, all of whom were reformed.

Sara Landau:In later years, the only thing I remember about our service is you look around Nathanson singing every Rosh Hashanah, rose leaves falling one by one.

Sylvia G.:We didn't pick it up earlier

Sara Landau:I simply must assume that my father came to this country to get away from military service. I know he had to slip out of Poland into Germany, they did that by bribing people. It was only after he reached cousins in Philadelphia that he was able to send for my mother, their first child was born in Europe, a little boy who didn't survive. Their second child was born in this country and did not survive, also a boy.

Sara Landau:There is very little that I know about the background. My mother's 27:00brother was one of the 5% permitted to go to the University, he was a lawyer. And, later on my parents sent for his children, there were four girls and two boys. So that we knew only of the [inaudible 00:27:27] of this country and very little about the background. ...

Sylvia G.:[inaudible 00:27:38].

Sara Landau:In the two years that I was secretary, girls' secretary at the YMHA, which had a women's division, I succeeded a woman named [Coon 00:27:54] and I preceded [Renata May 00:27:57], mine was an emergency appointment of the girls' 28:00secretary having married and moved away.

Sara Landau:My chief function was to provide a number of clubs for the girl members who were coming in and of course since my fort was almost entirely discussion groups, I had senior and junior discussion groups. There were many activities for younger children, but most of them are with a gym, as were some of the older ones. But, all of that work with the girls in the YMHA, there are still very many recollections and there are some people back in Louisville who were girls then, who are of course women now, who remember it very well and who keep up their friendship with me as a result of that.

Sara Landau:I'm going to name one, because she has come out to Louisville to live and that's [Minnie Pasomanic 00:29:01], who reminds me very often about the 29:00girls' discussion groups at the YMHA, the women's division.

Sylvia G.:It's the only thing I can think of at the moment. ...

Sara Landau:I had a recent visitor from Pennsylvania, a former Louisville girl. In fact, one of the youngest teachers of French at the University of Louisville. Early in World War I, this must've been in 1917 when the soldiers went to Fort Knox. The then Dean Patterson of the University asked Amy Helen [Rosenfelder 00:29:44] to go out to Fort Knox and teach some of those men French.

Sara Landau:It so happened that Miss Rosenfelder also organized a small group of students who were studying French into a French Club at the University of 30:00Louisville, and I was a member of that club.

Sara Landau:So, both as a neighbor, Amy Helen Rosenfelder, and as a French teacher, I have kept up this friendship. She comes to Louisville four times a year to see her sister, Mrs. [Joseph Ral 00:30:20]. On this trip we reminisced a great deal about people we used to know, and one of her references was a story that her father always told about a very well known man named, and this is the name we all used, Old Man Dembitz. Now, I knew Mr. Dembitz, but I knew three of his daughters. Miss Emily, who taught piano-

Sylvia G.:Oh well [inaudible 00:31:00] name the names. Yeah.

Sara Landau:Miss Emily did piano lesson, and the married sister, Mrs., I forgot her last name, but she lives in Philadelphia and I saw her on one of my trips.

Sara Landau:But, the stories about Old Man Dembitz, are very interesting. One or two, I remember very well, as Ms. Rosenfelder told me the other evening. One was that he would forget and would do a childish stunt of walking down the street one foot on the curb, one foot on the street, so that this was an uneven gait, and he was absentminded and didn't notice it.

Sara Landau:The second story was told to her by her father, namely he saw Mr. Dembitz leaning against the building, his head in his hand and Mr. Rosenfelder 32:00tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Mr. Dembitz are you ill? Can I help you in any way?" And Mr. Dembitz said, "Go away, I made an awful move in chess last night, and I'm trying to think of how I could've done better."

Sara Landau:I also remember that Mr. Rosenfelder himself was blind, and the first [inaudible 00:32:30] he saw had to leave school, Mr. Rosenfelder was going blind evidently late in life. And first his son Saul and each of his sons, in turn, had to leave school to help their father. He then went into the insurance building and business and as I recall he also took orders for coal, because in those days we all used coal.

Sara Landau:But, I have one story about Mr. Dembitz, that Miss Emily herself 33:00told me, and I want to repeat here. He had declared that he was going to the Republican Convention and would second the nomination for Abraham Lincoln as president. There were members in Louisville who were so opposed that they threatened horsewhip him if he did it. Mr. Dembitz, went, he did second the nomination, he did return, he was not horsewhipped, and he named his next child Abraham Lincoln Dembitz. That Mr. Dembitz was the father of Louis Dembitz of Washington DC, who was in the Federal Reserve System and Annette Dembitz-Berman, a lawyer in the city of New York, a very, very complete family.

Sara Landau:Mr. Dembitz, in his early years in this country, not only wrote an 34:00[inaudible 00:34:04] for the secretary who wrote one of the first books on Jewish Positions and Practices when he came to Louisville. This is a very important part of that immigration. After the aborted Revolution of 1848. Mr. Dembitz was responsible for young Dembitz ... a young Brandeis going into law, Louis Dembitz Brandeis took the name Dembitz after he was successful in law. ...

Sara Landau:Before Emily passed away, her nephew who had been taken to Palestine 35:00when he was 11 years old, and he is now an Israeli citizen and in the Department of Justice had an appointment in Canada. I invited him to come to Louisville, I had Emily here at the time, Miss [inaudible 00:35:21] had already passed away, and we had a fabulous afternoon, he was the same nephew that she hadn't seen since he was a little boy.

Sara Landau:I on the other hand had met him twice in Israel, but was certainly happy to have him here. One of things we did while he was here was go out to the University to the law school, so that he could see the Brandeis Library and also the crypts where the Justice and his wife are buried.

Sylvia G.:Talk about your relation between the Dembitz and the Brandeis's?

Sara Landau:They were cousins. ... A few nights ago, I saw a picture of Rabbi 36:00Joseph Ral leaving a huge memorial bouquet of Chrysanthemums at the crypt of the Justice and Mrs. Dembitz. ...

Sylvia G.:Is there something else in there that sounds good ... [inaudible 00:36:18].

Sara Landau:I need to correct that, it was the Justice and Mrs. Brandeis. I would like to add that on many occasions I lived in Washington, I stayed in Washington with Sara Dembitz, who was the wife of Abraham Lincoln Dembitz. It is their son who is Louis and was with the Federal Reserve and their daughter Annette Dembitz-Berman, who is an attorney and was a Justice in New York. ...

Sara Landau:As I recall, Miss Emily's numerous stories, which we could not get her to write out for us, is this one. Namely, the wife of the Justice wrote a book called, Pilgrims of '48.

Sara Landau:And in it she tells of the families coming down to the Falls of the Ohio and bringing with them one of the first pianos, which they evidently brought all the way over from Austria.

Sara Landau:In addition to the Dembitz's and the Brandeis' there were the Wehle's and the [inaudible 00:37:55], this I remember distinctly. There was also a relative, I wanted to say a sister to Dr. Alfred, which would make her also a 38:00sister to the Justice. Dr. Florence Brandeis, she was one of the first woman physicians in this part of the country. A very, very abled woman herself, a very sweet, a very kindly woman.

Sara Landau:I do not know who has the copy of Pilgrims of '48, Dr. Florence Brandeis had loaned it to me, I in turn had returned it to Mrs. [Judah 00:38:37] and the last I heard maybe Brandeis had.

Sylvia G.:Where did the Brandeis' live in Washington? ... (silence).

Sylvia G.:July the 18th, 1977, interview on the history of a local Jewish community. Interviewer, Sylvia Goldstein. Interviewee, Ms. Sara Landau. 1441 South 4th Street.

Sylvia G.:Ms. Landau, you were not born in Louisville were you?

Sara Landau:No I was not. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when my mother was visiting my sister, and I arrived prematurely. However, both of my sister were born in Louisville.

Sylvia G.:And then you all moved to-

Sara Landau:Oh, much later, let me talk about Louisville first while it's on my mind.

Sara Landau:The first address that I remember ... (silence).