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Leven, Sylvia and Stanley

 Digital Record
Identifier: leven, sylvia and stanley_2001

Dates

  • Creation: undated

Biographical / Historical

Sylva Leven was interviewed by Barbara Klau at Leven's home in Bloomfield on 24 December 2014.

General Note

Folder 1 contains: 2 photcopies of 7.5x10 black and white photo "Sept. 1951 -- Judges for Queen of Tobacco Harvest"; 2 photocopies of newspaper article about Gerber's invention and sale of Variable Scale; 2 photocopies of newspaper clipping "Jewish Congress postponed"; 2 photocopies of newspaper clipping "Scholarship won by Jacob Neusner"; 4 photocopies of newspaper photograph "new gate for cemetery"; 2 photocopies of post card picture; 2 photocopies of article from Endowment Fund of Greater Hartford Jewish Federation, "Beloved Parents are memorialized"; Correspondence from Marsha Lotstein to Sylvia Leven

Folder 2 contains: Oral history transcript; handwritten notes; printed notes for oral history interview; release form.

General Note

Interview subjects include: immigration; family life in Hartford; funeral homes; selling tickets for unknown purpose; father's work in a jewlery store; elections to Hartford City Council; Tomas Dewey; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; early death; medical malpractice; Efforts to get jews out of Europe in the 1930s; the holocaust; ansti-semitism in West Hartford in the 1940s; Alfred Plant school; Sedgewick Middle School; Uncle Samuel's efforts to join the army for World War 1; Sam and Charlie's getting into law school; Uncle Oscar being drafted into World War II at age 39; marriage; intermarriage; college; work in a radio station; graduate school; West Hartford dining; dating; Stanley's work for Military Intelligence; catching a German spy; German prisoners of war; Jospeh Gerber; travel in England, Germany, and Soviet Russia; Soviet Jewry; movie theaters in Hartford; Involvement with Council of Jewish Women, B'nai B'rith, American Jewish Congress; creation of Temple Beth El and departure to Beth Israel; Son getting screened as possible terrorist at airport.

Repository Details

Part of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford Repository

Contact:
333 Bloomfield Avenue
West Hartford CT 06117 USA
860-727-6171