Looking Back in The 1940's In Portland's Anti-Semitism

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

                                                  

OHS photo. Minor White photo. Portland. 1940. Intersection of SW Front and SW Madison looking west.

In the 1940s, Portland’s Jewish community—largely centered in the South Portland neighborhood—navigated a landscape marked by both overt discrimination and social exclusion. While there were no widespread violent riots, local antisemitism mirrored national trends: Jewish residents faced restrictive neighborhood housing covenants, employment discrimination, and exclusion from elite social and country clubs.  What times these were;  anyone not a White Protestant would be facing discrimination, not only us Jews. 

The United States officially declared war in WWII in two primary stages following the attack on Pearl Harbor:   December 8, 1941: Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan.  December 11, 1941: Congress declared war on Germany and Italy after those nations declared war on the U.S. with Franklin D. Roosevelt dying on us on April 12, 1945.  We cried and cried in school.  He was president for so long we thought he was our supreme father.  

Neveh Zedek on SW 6th and Hall was an early Russian-Jewish congregation founded in Portland in 1895.The original Neveh Zedek was established to serve Eastern European and Russian Jewish immigrants who were fleeing persecution, acting as an important counterpoint to Portland's earlier, more German-centric congregations. It was my paternal grandparents' shul, and then ours, too. 

 In 1940, Neveh Zedek (now known as Congregation Neveh Shalom) was led by Rabbi Meyer Rubin. The synagogue frequently lacked a permanent rabbi during this era and relied heavily on its longtime Cantor, Abraham Rosencrantz, who also acted as an interim rabbi, led religious services, and directed the congregation's Talmud Torah.  I attended starting as a 5 year old in 1939 onto 1949 when I became a teacher there going through confirmation at 12 or 13 in 1946-1947. 

Polina Olson, historian: Olsen tells us the story of the Neighborhood House, a place that South Portland European immigrants went to to learn how to be Americanized in the early 20th Century. Created by the National Council of Jewish Women in 1897, the Neighborhood House modestly began as a sewing school. When the house was built in 1910, it grew to be a place for the community with athletics, a Hebrew School, classes for immigrants, and clubs. It was still usable by 1940.  

During the 1940s, Portland's Jewish immigration shifted focus to European refugees escaping Nazi-occupied territories and the Holocaust. These newcomers, alongside returning WWII veterans, bolstered traditional institutions but struggled to find housing, leading them to settle in South Portland before eventually fanning out to eastside and southwest neighborhoods.

During the 1940s, Portland’s Black population surged from roughly 2,000 to over 20,000. Thousands migrated to the Pacific Northwest to work in the wartime shipbuilding industry. Confined by strict housing discrimination and redlining, most of the new arrivals were forced to settle in the Vanport housing project or the Albina district. Vanport was actually built in 1942, but the rapid wartime migration meant thousands of Black workers were living in Portland and the surrounding area during the 1940s. Because of strict redlining, these residents were heavily concentrated into specific temporary housing areas and the Albina neighborhood.

  Portland’s Black community primarily jitterbugged and danced in the historic Albina district, a thriving hub for jazz and rhythm in North and Northeast Portland during the 1940s through the 1960s.

During the 1940s, jitterbugging and swing dancing exploded in popularity across Portland, with crowds of servicemen and locals frequently packing grand regional ballrooms. The most popular local hotspots of the era were the Golden Canopy Ballroom at Jantzen Beach Amusement Park on Hayden Island and the Uptown (Palais Royale) Ballroom on 2115 West Burnside St. 

Social and Institutional Exclusion: Prestigious local institutions, such as the Waverley Country Club, Arlington Country Club and University Club maintained strict policies excluding Jewish and Black members. Blacks were excluded in the other country clubs such as Alderwood,  and Portland Golf Club,  in Portland as well. Because of this widespread discrimination, Black golfers and community members founded their own organizations, such as the Leisure Hour Golf Club in 1944. They were largely restricted to playing at public courses, primarily Eastmoreland Golf Course, which was one of the few places welcoming to Black players Similar unwritten quotas and restrictions were common in banking, medical fields, and corporate hiring.      

                                           

Temporary Imprisonment: Before being sent to desolate concentration camps like Minidoka in Idaho, around 4,000 Japanese Americans were detained in the Portland Assembly Center (which is the site of the present-day Expo Center).  Before becoming the large event venue it is today, the Portland Expo Center was a livestock exhibition facility, constructed in 1921 for the Pacific International Livestock Association. It had held cattle and smelled of manure.  The Japanese had to move into THAT!.  In 1942, during World War II, the site was transformed into the Portland Assembly Center (or Portland Temporary Detention Center). The U.S. government used the livestock buildings as a forced detention camp to incarcerate nearly 3,700 Japanese Americans from Oregon and southwest Washington before sending them to permanent, long-term incarceration camps.        

In the 1940s, Ladd's Addition was a settled, middle-class "streetcar suburb" experiencing the WWII-era boom. Once restricted, the area was formally opened to Chinese residents by 1939, though federally backed redlining maps from the era unfairly classified the neighborhood as a "declining" area due to "infiltration of undesirable racial elements". This is where we lived.         

Housing Discrimination: Redlining and restrictive covenants were heavily utilized across Portland. Real estate deeds in developing neighborhoods explicitly barred the sale or rental of properties to Jewish individuals.

Far-Right Movements: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, a localized, vocal subset of white supremacist and interwar fascist groups were active in Oregon. These groups peddled antisemitic propaganda and conspiracy theories, laying the ideological groundwork for radical right-wing groups that would occasionally surface in subsequent decades. 

Silver Legion of America (Silver Shirts): Active in the Pacific Northwest, this pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic paramilitary organization led by William Dudley Pelley maintained a visible chapter in Oregon. The group operated openly in the 1930s before being heavily suppressed by the federal government at the onset of WWII. 

German-American Bund: Portland hosted a local chapter of this pro-Nazi organization, embraced by the Third Reich as the hub of the American Nazi movement. The local branch regularly met in the city and was known to circulate virulently anti-Semitic newspapers, such as the Nachrichten.

Former Klan Splinter Groups: Following the collapse of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, former Grand Dragon Fred Gifford formed the National Crusaders, while other displaced leaders established the National Brotherhood. These factions splintered further but remained focused on white supremacy and anti-Semitism well into the decade.

Portland Assembly Center: The 1940s brought forced incarceration for Japanese Americans. The Portland Expo Center, used first as  a livestock exhibition hall, was transformed into the Portland Assembly Center, where roughly 3,700 people were imprisoned in prison-like conditions, ultimately resulting in the loss of their property and businesses.

Community Response: Facing these pressures, and deeply shaken by the Holocaust, local Jewish civic leaders engaged in protests and rallied for international relief. Many recent immigrants or refugees from Europe who arrived in Portland during this period found it necessary to keep their religious identities hidden to avoid prejudice from neighbors and in schools.