GREGORIO BRILOVICH ORAL HISTORY

GREGORIO BRILOVICH:I was born in Riga, Latvia, on September 16, 1921. That makes me an old man. (laughter) Okay? And my mother, in Riga, where she was born, her mother was alive, and she had seven brothers and sisters altogether. They all came to the United States, except my mother. She stayed there with her mother -- 1:00my grandmother. And her brothers and sisters here in the United States made a good living. You know, they progressed and they worked. And they sent her money to come to the United States. But she got married -- there. And when they wanted to come to the United States, the United States has closed the door -- no more immigration. So what did they do? They didn't want to stay in Latvia, so they decided to go -- to live -- go to South America.

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GB:We -- all of us -- went to Uruguay. And my father started peddling milk. They had the old metal cans of milk, the old type, and he got a car, an old Ford, and 2:00he was driving from house to house, selling these things.

CHRISTA WHITNEY:Like Tevye. Just like Tevye, the dairy--

GB:Kind of like Tevye, yeah. (laughter) Exactly. And he progressed. And my mother, from Latvia, knew how to make cheese. I remember the house full of little cloth bags, and she was making cheese there. She would sell it. And again, they progressed, they progressed. They (UNCLEAR) a cheese factory, butter factory, and a milk store.

CW:In Uruguay.

GB:In Uruguay. In Montevideo. Well, came the time when the government in Uruguay took over the milk industry. They took it away -- their factory, the store, everything. So what did they do? They decided to go to Chile. So we left for 3:00Chile. That was in about 1930, Depression years. We got to Chile. That was tough. My father had spent all the money on hotels in Argentina while we were going to Chile, in Mendoza, so we came to Chile with very little. So he rented a house and went to the synagogue. And we told them -- well, I didn't, but my mother told them that they didn't have anything, they had just arrived, they didn't have money. So I remember, I was going with my mother at the synagogue and they would give us a bag of potatoes some days and we would carry them home. (laughs) That's the way we started. And my mother was working, my father was 4:00working, and we built up. We built up.

CW:Did they do milk again in Chile?

GB:No. No. My father was --

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GB:-- father then bought another house, an old house, remodeled it, sold it, and that's the way they started. Well, I had a brother and a sister. The brother was born in Uruguay, the sister in Latvia also -- she was one year old when we left Latvia.

CW:And how old were you when you left?

GB:Four.

CW:Four.

GB:Four. So in Chile, I grew up, very rebel guy.

CW:Yeah? What language did you speak at home?

GB:At home, my parents spoke Yiddish, where I learned Yiddish. When they didn't want us to understand, they spoke either Russian or Latvian. So I went to school 5:00there. And four years -- I graduated at the -- a technical university in Santiago.

CW:Did you go to public school? Did you go to any --

GB:Yeah. The elementary school was public; the high school was public.

CW:Um-hm.

F1:Did you go to heder [traditional religious school]?

CW:Heder?

GB:Huh?

CW:Heder? Did you go to Jewish heder?

GB:Oh, yeah. To the same synagogue, they had a heder every Sunday, and I remember the teacher (laughs) pulling the ears (laughter) on the peyes [sidelocks]. (laughter) And -- yes, I did.

CW:So you had peyes growing up?

GB:Yeah.

HANKUS NETSKY:Wow! (laughs)

CW:How many people were in the heder class with you?

GB:Oh, about twenty. Yeah. And the teacher went around every one of -- made us read and write and all that.

CW:Yeah. So you learned Hebrew as well?

GB:No, but we learned how to read Hebrew. And when we were getting to age, he was teaching us to do the bar mitzvah. That was interesting then. I know how the bar mitzvahs are made nowadays. Then, my mother baked a lekekh [honey cake], my father took a couple of bottles of cognac, and that was it. (laughter) That was my bar mitzvah.

CW:Mazel tov! (laughter)

GB:Oh!

F1:What about the historia donde te caíste [Spanish: the story where you fell]?

GB:Huh?

F1:La historia donde te caíste.

GB:Oh, (UNCLEAR). She's telling me --

F1: That's a good story.

GB:-- at the synagogue, one time -- we were pretty rebels, as I told you, and we walked -- there was a ladder and we walked into the attic. And we were walking in the attic and the ceiling gave way and, bam! We went down -- we didn't fall -- we held on on a beam. (laughter) And then they -- somebody came and rescued us.

HN:Oh my God! (laughter)

GB:With a good punishment. (laughs)

CW:So how old was that building? It must have been old if it was falling apart.

GB:The Bikur -- the name of that synagogue was the Bikur Jolim. And I don't know how old it was, but was pretty old. (laughter)

HN:A biker-khoylim -- like, a burial society?

GB:Huh? No, no. It was the synagogue. Bikur Jolim. Bikur Jolim because they helped the poor people and all that. Yes. So I grew up there. And we were going to the synagogue every Saturday. And there were a good Jewish population in Santiago. And it was a tight group of people, so everybody knew everybody. And 8:00then with years, there were a lot of Jewish wealthy people there, and they built a big Jewish stadium. Beautiful, beautiful. And everybody went there. There was a synagogue in the stadium. They had the sports field, tennis, swimming pool, horse riding.

CW:Wow.

GB:Very, very nice. So there was a good interaction among those Jewish people -- and their kids, especially.

CW:Did you all live in the same area?

GB:In Santiago, yes. In Santiago. Santiago is a big city. And so I grew up there, went to this university, graduated in 1955. And I obtained the acceptance 9:00to Berkeley.

CW:Wow. (laughs)

HN:Wow!

CW:So I came to Berkeley to study, arrived to the United States --

F1:How did you come?

GB:Five dollars.

F1:But how did you come? How did you get to the United States?

GB:Oh, well, when I wanted to come here, that -- thank you -- when I wanted to come to the United States, my father, who had other plans for me, said, "You want to go to the United States? Go. But no money." (laughter) So what do I do? I went to the South American shipping company and I told them I want to come to the United States, but I didn't have money. So they said, You want to work for board? Sure. So I worked and came to the United States.

CW:What was it like? How long did it take you?

GB:Forty days.

CW:Wow.

HN:Wow.

GB:It was a freighter, not a passenger ship. And it was during the war years. So 10:00we stopped at different places -- loaded nitrate in Chile, guano in Peru, other things. It took forty days. We went through the Panama Canal, and they put big wires around the ship because of the -- they wanted to demagnetize (laughter) -- because there were still mines around.

F1:Oh, land mines.

GB:You know? From the Germans. So they demagnetized the ship. This is interesting. We got to the United States, I didn't know where it was, what it was, nobody to ask me to get off the ship.

CW:Who had been on the ship with you? I mean, did you -- were there other workers there?

GB:Yeah. Yeah. They had a contingent of Navy soldiers to take care -- they had a little cannon -- a couple of cannons there, and they worked. And I became very good friends with them. Yeah. So I asked the guy, "Is immigration coming?" He 11:00said, "No, no. You want to come to the United States? Get on the ship." Nobody said anything, I just walked off to Pensacola, Florida. And all -- I looked at the beach, and there were all these girls in bikinis then. (laughter)

HN:It looked good.

GB:So I went, "This looks good." (laughter) So I wanted to come to California, of course. And I had an uncle in San Francisco. So to get there, that was a big job, because the military had preferences. So I had to wait at the bus stations until there was an opening; I got on and traveled maybe a couple of hours, and then had to get off and wait again, and so on, until I made it to San Francisco.

CW:How'd you get your ticket? With your five dollars? (laughs)

GB:No. I had for San Francisco seventy-five dollars.

CW:Oh, okay. So you had --

GB:Yeah. I had some, yeah.

CW:Yeah. Where --

GB:Well, how did I get that? Every summer, I worked in different industry. And when I was going to come, I told the boss, the owner of a company where I had worked for the last three years, and he gave me a present of a hundred dollars. That was it.

CW:This was in Chile?

GB:That was in Chile, in Santiago.

CW:And which -- what industry was that?

GB:Mill grinding equipment. Flour mill grinding. And I did a lot of improvements in his shop, and he was very thankful.

CW:(laughs) Right. So what do you remember from that journey across -- from Florida to California?

GB:On the bus?

CW:Um-hm.

GB:That I had to wait -- oh, yes! I didn't know English, especially the names of 13:00food or anything like that. By the bus, some lady used to stop with a basket selling hamburgers, five cents each, and that was a great deal. So I ate that throughout the trip. (laughter) In San Francisco, my uncle picked me up, took me to his house. And we were talking the other night -- I had to pay him board and room.

CW:Really?

GB:He didn't believe in people loafing, you know? (laughter) Yeah.

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GB:Homestead Bakery, yeah. And they put me to get the carts into the raising room. They put the dough --

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GB:-- piece of dough. And they put in a raising room with a gas that tore my nose -- inside of my nose. And I had to take it and put it into the oven (UNCLEAR). And about the third day, I was working during lunchtime, and a guy 14:00was fixing a machine, and I asked him what it was, with my poor English, and he explained me. And I look what he was doing and I said, "That won't fix it." So he asked me, "Then how?" I told him, and he fixed it. So he went to talk to his boss, and they put me in maintenance. (laughter) They took me out from the (UNCLEAR) shop --

HN:Oh, so you knew how to fix it.

CW:And you had gotten into the university?

GB:I had been accepted to the university, but I had some time to wait, because I went in June and the classes were starting in September, so I did a lot of work in the meantime, making money.

CW:Who'd you meet when you were in San Francisco? Who were your first friends?

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GB:He had a market, and I worked in his market, cleaning up and stocking cans and things like that. And eventually -- he was a butcher. Eventually, he helped me work with him in the butcher section, so I learned a little bit of that job. And then I started school, and I had to go from San Francisco, take the streetcar to the south ferry, and then there was a train to Berkeley. Every day.

CW:Um-hm. Back and forth.

GB:Back and forth, every day.

CW:What neighborhood in San Francisco were you living?

GB:On the Parnassus area, near the hospital.

CW:Yeah. So were there a lot of Chileans living in that neighborhood? Just --

GB:No.

CW:-- your family?

GB:No, in Berkeley, study, study, study. I worked after that, so I didn't have 16:00any friends. (laughter) I think once was I invited to a party by a girl.

F1:Tell her maybe a little bit about uncle Sam.

GB:Pardon?

F1:Maybe she wants to know a little about uncle Sam, that you stayed with -- his story during the war. Uncle Sam.

HN:Uncle Sam -- she thinks --

F1:That you stayed with --

GB:Uncle Sam -- that was my uncle. (laughter) Uncle Sam. Yeah, he was a short guy, very strong. He had been an acrobat in Latvia.

CW:Wow.

GB:Yeah. And he met an English lady.

F1:And in the war, he --

GB:In the war (laughter) -- in the war, they put him to peel potatoes.

CW:Really? (laughs)

GB:And he blow the trumpet.

CW:Wait, how did that come to be? Where was he in --

GB:Well, when he came here, he came to New York, where all the --

HN:Ah, so he was an American --

GB:-- brothers and sisters were.

HN:-- soldier. Okay.

GB:Yeah. And he was a rebel, too. So they said, You work, or get out. So he just left for San Francisco. And there, he joined the Army.

CW:And this was before the war?

GB:This was before the war, yes. Before the war. During the first war.

CW:Oh, during the first war?

GB:Yes.

CW:Oh, okay. So where was he sent on -- was he peeling potatoes in San Francisco? (laughs)

GB:He was sent to the Philippines.

CW:The Philippines?

GB:Yeah. He was sent to the Philippines.

F1:Wasn't he an acrobat? And didn't he play in the band?

HN:He played in the band. He was a musician.

F1:He was an acrobat --

GB:Yes, he was an acrobat.

F1:-- in the circus.

GB:Yeah. (laughter) Yeah, he was an acrobat. He used to go all the -- his legs 18:00on a cord, and with his teeth he would hold this gadget that held another person.

CW:Oh, wow!

HN:Oh my God! (laughter)

GB:He was very strong.

CW:Wow! (laughter)

HN:Wow!

GB:So anyway, here I am, after graduating in the United States. And I had a 40E Visa. I couldn't work. But I said, I'm going to interview anyway, because the companies sent out people to interview graduating students. I got three offers: the Wayne Works, Cincinnati (UNCLEAR), and Procter and Gamble. (laughter) Three jobs. I took the smallest one, the Wayne Works, in Richmond, Indiana. And it was a place where they built buses. Buses. So I worked there, and they put me in the design room, and after two weeks, I said, "I'm not going to work in the design 19:00room. I've graduated an engineer, I'm not going to do this." No, they said, We are putting you through a training period. Oh, okay. So they put me through a training period in every department, and I learned how to build buses -- every little detail of it. Several months later, the head of the Export Department came with a ticket. "Here's a ticket to Cuba." Cuba? To do what? To set up an assembly plant. So I went to Cuba and set up an assembly plant.

HN:Whoa!

GB:And to make it short, I traveled all over the world setting up assembly plants for this company.

HN:My God!

GB:I was training the people, setting up the equipment.

HN:What year -- when did this start?

GB:This started in 1957.

HN:Ah-ha, so -- wow, a while ago.

F1:(UNCLEAR). I was born in 1957.

HN:Oh, earlier. So it must have been --

GB:Forty-seven, I'm sorry.

HN:Forty-seven, okay.

GB:Nineteen forty-seven.

HN:Wow!

CW:Who'd you meet in Cuba? Did you meet any of the Jewish people, like in our exhibit?

GB:No, no. No.

CW:No? (laughs)

GB:Because it was work, work, work.

CW:Work? Yeah.

GB:When I was in Cuba, they were already telling me, Well, you have to go to Mexico. So -- no.

CW:So you traveled?

GB:But certainly very interesting country -- in those years. It was during Betancourt, I think it was (pauses) -- well, one of those things. It was a very poor country then. Extremely poor. The workers were begging me -- because we shipped -- from the United States, we shipped them the parts in wooden boxes, and they were begging me for the wood, because they were building shacks where 21:00they lived with it.

CW:Wow.

GB:Yeah. Very poor.

HN:Very interesting. So what is your interest in the Yiddish Book Center? Did you read Yiddish books when you were --

GB:She --

HN:She's interested! (laughs)

GB:She decided to come, and I said, (UNCLEAR) books -- I have started reading the book, you know, about the collection of the books --

F1:"Outwitting History." Um-hm.

HN:Ah!

GB:So I knew a little bit about it. So when she told me to come, I said, "Mm, books." (UNCLEAR) --

HN:Did you know -- did you have Yiddish books in your house ever? No? Yiddish books, were they part of your background?

GB:Yes.

HN:What did they have to do with your family or your background?

GB:Well, my mother read Yiddish, my father read Yiddish. And that's what they were reading. They were learning a little Spanish, but not enough to read books. So they had Yiddish books.

CW:What do you remember reading when you were a kid? Did you read, too -- Yiddish?

GB:No.

CW:No? But they were reading?

GB:Reading Spanish and -- I'm studying, of course. So -- I've --

CW:Sorry -- did you have any newspapers in your home -- Yiddish newspapers?

GB:They were getting Yid-- Jewish newspapers, yes. Yes.

CW:From Santiago or from --

GB:From Santiago. From Santiago. Yeah, we had a big population.

CW:Yeah. Do you remember which paper it was? That's a hard question.

GB:The "Yiddish Tog" or something like that -- the "Jewish Day." Something like that.

HN:That's probably true. The Yiddish "Day" was everywhere. Yeah, it was a big company. All over the world.

GB:So then I got tired of that work -- traveling all over the world, living out -- seven, eight months of the year, out of a suitcase. Got tired, and decided to go back to Chile. Went back to Chile. They were very nice -- they paid my trip, 23:00everything -- the company paid my trip. Maybe they were happy to see me go. (laughter)

HN:Very interesting.

GB:So, went to Chile; I got a job with Kennecott. It was an American corporate mining company in the south of the Andes. I was hired there as an -- in charge of the machine shops -- earning dollars, not Chilean pesos.

CW:Wow. That must have been nice. (laughs)

GB:That was fun. And it was -- that was very interesting, with -- it was an American domain. Nobody could get into the place. Everything was fenced in, from the city of Rancagua -- you've probably heard of it because of the earthquake -- up to the mine. So they had little buses on rails -- rail tracks -- which took 24:00about hour and a half to get from Rancagua to the mine town. But the workers had to take a train. It took them eight, nine hours -- the Chilean workers. So only -- I was considered as the American population, because I was earning dollars. And there was a lot of discrimination then. They didn't have access to the club -- the American club. In the theater, they had to sit in the back -- all the front seats were reserved for the Americans.

CW:What time -- this was in the '50s?

GB:Um-hm. Yes. So I worked there. And it was cold in the winter. I was telling 25:00Monica yesterday that they -- when you walked -- oh, this city -- the mining city had nine thousand people -- population of nine thousand people, and it was in a mountain.

HN:Mm, copper mines, yeah.

GB:Okay? There were no streets. The main street was a -- maybe a hundred-yard wide stair going up the hill, and the sewers were on each side of it. That's what it was. And the seats were like this -- around the mountain. And there was a section for the American people, earning in dollars. And then the population lived in apartment buildings and so on -- the Chileans. So I worked there. And 26:00one day, I met my wife-to-be. And the engagement and marriage took only three months. (laughter)

HN:Mm, well, that's traditional. But it was a Jewish --

GB:Yes, Jewish.

HN:-- the traditional Jewish engagement -- three months, yes.

GB:Yes. So we got married. And the life in the mine town was tough. I mean, it was -- consider this: the main bosses were Americans. They had worked in places like Utah, where they have copper mining, and things like that, and they were not very cultured people. Neither were their workers. So they had a lot of parties, and the women used to drink liquor out of their shoes and things like that.

HN:Wow.

GB:Well, when I got married -- before I got married, they built me a beautiful, 27:00beautiful house -- everything imported from the United States, including the toilet paper holders. (laughter) Everything was imported from the United States.

CW:(laughs) Wow. (laughter)

GB:So, went up there, and my wife didn't like it, because the parties were rough -- pretty rough. So I had to quit. I quit, and went down to Santiago, opened a machine shop, didn't know what I was going to do.

HN:Wow.

GB:Opened a machine shop, and a neighbor came. Can you make fences -- steel fences? Sure. I hired some people and we made a fence and we installed it. But most of the architects in Chile are Jewish.

CW:Really?

GB:Or they were Jewish. Most of the building engineers were Jewish. So what I 28:00used to do, I went to where they were building, I waited for the architect to come and introduced myself -- that I had worked in the United States, et cetera -- to give me a chance -- to give me some work. And my key point was, If you don't like it, don't pay me.

HN:That's nice.

CW:That's a good point.

HN:That's a deal. (laughter)

GB:So I got a lot of work. I started building -- I started building up and (UNCLEAR) -- many things with my wife in the United States, because I wanted to come back to San Francisco. And she didn't because she was very attached to her mother. They were like sisters, really. Very attached. And one day she said, "Okay." Monica was already three. And she said, "Okay, let's go to the United States." So, okay. "But I want to go to Oklahoma." (laughter) Why Oklahoma? 29:00Because on our trips, the people in Oklahoma were very, very nice to us. (laughter) Yeah, she was a character. Good sense of humor. (laughs) So --

CW:Not from the musical "Oklahoma"?

GB:No, not (laughter) "Oklahoma." And so we came to San Francisco. And we stayed in San Francisco for about three months. I bought a house in San Bruno, and that's the way we started.

CW:So how did you meet your wife?

GB:Okay, interesting point. My brother's wife told me one day when I had to come down from the mine to Santiago -- and I was in charge of the shop, I couldn't do that very frequently, okay? So my brother's wife told me, "I have a friend I 30:00want you to meet. She went to school with me. She was a year older." Okay. So she took me to her house one day. And later, I found out my future wife was looking from the second story of the house.

HN:Oh my God!

GB:And she told her mother, (laughter) "The guy is bald-headed" -- you know, I had a little (UNCLEAR) or part of my back of the head already. And -- well, anyway, we came in, (laughter) became acquainted, we went out for dinner, and that's the way it started. Everything went well. Pretty nice.

CW:So you grew up with peyes. When did you cut them off?

GB:Oh, no! (laughter) When I went to high school, the peyes went down.

CW:Really?

GB:(UNCLEAR).

HN:Oh, in high school? High school in Chile?

GB:In Chile, yeah.

HN:But you had the peyes at the beginning in Chile, yeah?

GB:Yeah. Through elementary school, I had some peyes -- yeah.

HN:But your parents let you cut them off in high school, huh? Yeah?

GB:Pft (throws hand up).

CW:Were they upset about that? Or did they -- no?

GB:My father was, like -- he was a good Jew, kind of religious, but my mother was Orthodox, very religious.

HN:I see. So the father didn't care so much, so the mother couldn't have her way anymore?

GB:He didn't even have peyes, either. (laughs)

HN:Ah! Okay, okay. Okay. But they were -- from khsidishe [Hasidic] background, oder misnagdish [or traditional Orthodox Jews]? You know, from nisht [not] -- not Hasidim, huh? From your family? No?

GB:Orthodox.

HN:Orthodox. Just Orthodox, yeah. Can you tell us -- do you remember anything from the heder, what they taught you? How did they teach in the heder?

GB:Well, the heder, they taught us -- as I said before, to read, to write Yiddish and Hebrew. And to --

HN:To read the siddur?

GB:Yeah. A heder, yeah. A regular heder.

F1:What do you know about bobe [grandmother] and her story of Russia and leaving Russia?

GB:My mother? Well, what I said -- they immigrated from Latvia to Uruguay.

CW:Did they have any stories from Latvia?

GB:They?

CW:Yeah.

GB:Yeah. Yeah. My mother (laughs) -- my mother had some. Latvia was tough, especially under the Russians. Very hard to get food. So in Riga, there was nothing. So then my mother used to bake bread. Bake bread. And with her girlfriend, she was then about only fourteen years old -- bake bread, take the train, go into Russia, and sell it. Or get paid in clothing, which she would take back to Riga and sell it.

CW:So she -- how far is Riga from the border?

GB:About twenty miles -- ten or -- it was under Russia, then, anyway.

CW:Right.

GB:So they went over into Russia, yeah.

CW:And what did your father do?

GB:My father was a horse trader. (laughs)

HN:Oh! (laughs) A horse trader?

GB:Yeah. So he didn't have no -- he really had no profession. So when they went to Uruguay, he had a picture. He looked pretty thin. He had a little box here, didn't speak the language -- a little box -- shoestrings, comb, mirrors -- he was peddling that in the streets. (laughs) That's the way he started.

HN:Yeah. 'Cause he couldn't go there and just say, "Where are the horses," right? (laughter)

GB:So, any other questions?

HN:I think that's probably plenty.

CW:I think that's great. Yeah, thank you so much.

HN:Let's get your full name. This is Herschel, alias Greg, alias Gregorio --

GB:Gregorio.

HN:And the last name is?

GB:Brilovich.

HN:Brilovich?

GB:Brilovich.

HN:And from Berkeley, California? Or Oakland, California?

F1: San Jose.

HN:San Jose, California?

GB:San Jose, California.

[END OF INTERVIEW]