Oral history interview with Annie Oxler Krancer, Julia Oxler Jacobs Maling, Wendy Krancer Twing, and Eva Levy Oxler, 2000.

ArchivalResource

Rosenblum, Sandra Lee Kahn,. Oral history interview with Annie Oxler Krancer, Julia Oxler Jacobs Maling, Wendy Krancer Twing, and Eva Levy Oxler, 2000.

Oral history interview with Annie Oxler Krancer, Julia Oxler Jacobs Maling, Wendy Krancer Twing, and Eva Levy Oxler, 2000.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/50702709

In this interview, sisters Annie Oxler Krancer and Julia Oxler Jacobs Maling discuss their family history; additional comments are made by their sister-in-law, Eva Levy Oxler and Annie Oxler Krancer's daughter, Wendy Krancer Twing. The parents of Rosa Lee, Ethel Erline, Herbert, Julia and Annie Oxler were (unnamed in the interview) William and Belle Goldberg Oxler (originally Auchsler). William came to Charleston, South Carolina, around 1910 from Austria, possibly due to his relationship with the Sonenshine family. Belle came to Charleston in 1914 from Poland, via New York City, to be near her sister Molly Goldberg Segal. William ran a general store but with business failing, he moved the family to Kingstree, SC, in the early 1920s. The family moved back to Charleston, ca. 1932. Contemporary city directories list William's business as the Dixie Shoe Factory, although the daughters Julia and Annie call in the New York Shoe Repair. Julia and Annie discuss their fragmentary memories of Kingstree where there were not many Jewish families. In Charleston, they grew up near St. Philip Street where most families were Jewish. Their father was an atheist, and their mother observed to honor her Orthodox sister Molly. They attended Beth Israel synagogue. Annie was confirmed; Julia was not. Although not religious, both sisters and their siblings were very Jewish identified. In school they had non-Jewish friends, but only socialized with Jewish children at home. They speak of the St. Philip Street/ Jewish neighborhood as a "cocoon," where it was a "foregone" conclusion that they would only date and marry Jews. The sisters speak of their married lives out of town and that of their siblings; their brother Herbert married Eva Levy of Columbia, SC, also present in the interview. The sisters speak of never experiencing anti-Semitism, discuss relations between African Americans and Jews and refer to the antics of the Sonenshine boys, who called themselves the St. Philip Street Bumdroppers and played many pranks. Annie's daughter, Wendy, who grew up in suburban Pennsylvania speaks briefly on what she might have missed growing up in a tightly knit Jewish community as her mother, aunts and uncle did.

Sound recording : 1 sound cassette : analog.Video recording : 1 videocassette.Transcript : 46 p. ; 28 cm.

College of Charleston, Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library