Gregorio Brilovich
subject: Latvia
subject: Immigration
subject: South America
subject: Uruguay
subject: Peddling milk and cheese
subject: Chile
subject: Synagogue
subject: Santiago
subject: Yiddish
subject: Bar MItzvah
subject: Berkeley
subject: Freighter
subject: Engineer
subject: California
subject: Assembly line
subject: Cuba
subject: Yiddish newspapers
subject: Engagement
subject: Marriage
subject: Payis
subject: Religious education
subject: Selling bread
subject: Riga
subject: Yiddish Book Center
subject: Wexler Oral History Project
subject: Family history
subject: Childhood
subject: Yiddish language
subject: Other languages
subject: Hebrew
subject: Career and professional life
subject: Scholarship
subject: Academia
subject: Education
subject: Jewish education
subject: Religion and ritual
subject: Shul
subject: Temple
subject: Eastern Europe
subject: Russia
subject: America
subject: United States
description: Gregorio Brilovich, a retired engineer who grew up in Uruguay and Chile, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on April 14, 2010 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Born in Latvia in 1921, Gregorio left with his parents at the age of four. Unable to immigrate to the US, they ended up in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1930. The family eventually owned dairy factories and a store, which they lost when the government took over the dairy industry. Because of the loss of their business, the family moved to Santiago, Chile. Starting life over in Chile was difficult. Both parents worked to eke out a living, and received some help, including getting potatoes from the synagogue. His parents spoke Yiddish, Russian, or Latvian at home. He and his siblings learned Spanish and attended public elementary and high schools. He attended kheyder (traditional Jewish religious school) every Sunday with about twenty other boys and learned to read and write Hebrew and prepared for his Bar Mitzvah. He recalls the teacher pulling the students‚Äô peyes (earlocks). For his Bar Mitzvah, his mother made honey cakes and his father brought a few bottles of cognac. He acknowledges that it was nothing like the ones today. Gregorio describes Santiago as a good, tightly knit Jewish community and himself as a young rebel. He remembers being punished with friends for hiding in the synagogue attic and was caught when the attic floor collapsed. After technical university he was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley in 1945, but his father would not give him money to attend. Instead, he worked for forty days aboard a freighter to get to the United States, arriving in Pensacola, Florida. A $100 gift from an employer in Santiago paid for his bus across the United States to San Francisco, California to enroll in school in September. Because the military had priority for bus seats, it was a long, slow trip cross-country. He ate hamburgers that cost five cents throughout his journey, arr…
source: Digital Commonwealth
date: 4/14/10
type: moving image