Oral history interview with Sam Siegel, 1996.

ArchivalResource

Siegel, Sam, 1915-. Oral history interview with Sam Siegel, 1996.

Oral history interview with Sam Siegel, 1996.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51063418

In this interview, Sam Siegel speaks frankly of his life in Anderson and Walterboro, South Carolina. His father, Max Siegel (originally Shule) left Russia when he was about 19; in New York, he married Bess Silverman whom he had known in Russia. In 1908, they moved to Anderson, S.C. Max Siegel was a peddler and became successful buying cattle and selling meat to Clemson College and the town of Anderson. He became very wealthy and helped the city during the Depression; he bought the local country club and sold it back to the owners when they could afford it for the price he purchased it, despite the fact they did not allow Jews as members. Similarly, when he loaned the town funds to help it remain solvent, he had to back out of the deal when citizens complained of the city "mortgaged to a Jew." Anderson, according to the interviewee, was an anti-Semitic and "mean, cruel town;" it was, he says, run by Klansmen who were police and other office holders. They tolerated Jews, but truly harassed and lynched African Americans. Both Jews and Gentiles, Sam Siegel states, were very cruel to blacks and tried to keep them in their "place." He disagreed with such treatment, even by his father, and was very liberal. His older brother Reuben was a town hero, and a Clemson football player; he boxed there and in Anderson under the name of "Jew Boy." Later he played on an All American Jewish team in New York. Sam Siegel attended University of Georgia and the University of South Carolina; he eloped with Leona Novit and eventually relocated with her to her hometown of Walterboro, S.C., which he calls liberal and a tourist town. There, he states, he never met anti-Semitism; he could belong to every organization and felt free there, being judged on his own merits. He and his wife had four children; he discusses them and their children, as well as his own siblings, he being one of eight, 4 boys and 4 girls. He also mentions Dutch (Dorothy Gelson) and Mortie (Mordecai) Cohen who lived in Walterboro. Sam Siegel enlisted in WW II, had a leg amputated in the service, and faced anti-Semitism in the US Armed Forces. Very Jewish identified, he nevertheless, sees nothing wrong with intermarriage and sees ethical behavior as more important than religious observance. He also mentions the fact that he and his father helped place Jewish refugees in jobs in small towns in South Carolina before World War II.

Sound recording: 1 sound cassette : analog.Sound recording: 1 sound cassette : digital.Transcript: 41 p. ; 28 cm.

College of Charleston, Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library