Depressions--1929

Mrs. Antonini discusses her family's life during the Great Depression.

Benovitz discusses her grandparents, Lithuanian immigrants, and her grandfather's work as a peddler; her father's dry goods business and the family's life in Carrollton, Mississippi, where they lived for twenty years before returning to Louisville in 1923; her husband's business in New Albany, which operated from 1941 until 1966; the Depression of the 1930s, World War II, and recent changes in the local Jewish community.

Alex Berman talks about Jewish young people joining professions, the effect of the Great Depression on small businesses, investing in real estate in the early 20th century, his generation choosing to enter the professions rather than going into business, working as a lawyer defending bootleggers for a brief period, his opinion about the Masons not doing enough to resist nazism, his reflections on a recent reports of swastikas posted in Louisville and the Constitutional right to free speech. He also reflects on the changes in the Jewish community over time, his involvement in the Junior Order of United American Mechanics.

Berman discusses how and why his parents came to the United States from Poland; his father's work as a peddler and in other businesses; the early Orthodox Jewish community in Louisville; the effects of the Depression on this father's business; his decision to attend the University of Louisville School of Law, from which he graduated in 1928; his early law practice; and activities in Keneseth Israel congregation. Berman concludes with reflections on changes in the local Jewish community during his memory.

The narrator discusses his recollections of the Depression.

The narrator discusses her life in Kentucky during the Depression.

Broaddus discusses the genealogy of the Hancock family; her memories of the 1918 influenza epidemic; the first World War; the introduction of the Model T Ford and silent movies; the Lindbergh flight; and the Depression.

FDR and the New Deal. Brown, who was a United States Congressman in 1933, discusses his personal recollections of FDR and the New Deal.

A Boston native, Gertrude Karp Feldbaum moved to New Albany and then to Louisville in 1909. Her family was from Grodna, Russia. She married in Boston in 1908. She and her husband were Louisville grocery owners until 1924. She remembers Jewish life and geographical distribution; Jewish merchants; synagogues; cemetery; Herman Straus Department store; the Depression years; the Young Men's Hebrew Association and Blanche Mitchell; dances; building the Jewish Community Center; the "Snack Bar"; swim teams; beauty contests; center clubs; Jerry Abramson; AZA (Aleph Zadik Aleph) Conventions.

The narrators discuss their life on a farm in Washington County, Kentucky from the depression to the present.