Joan Wohl interviewed by Caitlin Haskett, July 8, 2019

The following interview with Joan Wohl was conducted by Caitlin Haskett on

behalf of Bryn Mawr College as part of the project, "Mid Century Jewish Martyrs,

a Collection of Oral Histories." It took place on July 8,

2019 at Joan's home, [redacted]

So,

to begin with can you tell me a little bit about your childhood and your family

growing up?

I was born in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania in the West Oak Lane

neighborhood. I went to elementary school, all public schools,

and then went to junior high school,

and then I went to the Philadelphia High School for Girls,

which is the all academic school in Philadelphia,

which has sent a number of students

of Girls High to Bryn Mawr. I grew up in a very wonderful family.

My father was a teacher and a lawyer,

and Jewish educator. He was a

Jewish educator because the principal of the Jeshurun Religious

School for 50 years, from '21 to ... 30 years, I guess.

Then, he also was one of the founders of Camp Ramah

in the Poconos and one of the founders of the Solomon Schechter Day School in

Philadelphia. Though, I did not go to a Jewish Day School.

I stayed in public schools. My father was also an educator. He was the

head of the mathematics department at Northeast High School in Philadelphia,

which was at 8th and Leheigh in those days.

I grew up in a house. I had an aunt that lived with us. Never married,

was a public school teacher, so education was very important.

I was one of two daughters. My sister, Nona, is six years older.

She also went to the same schools I did, elementary, junior high,

graduated Girls High and she also went to Bryn Mawr College.

When my father was the principal of the mathematics department at Northeast High

School, first he was a teacher and then he became the department head.

The man who was the head of the department of mathematics before

him was W. Wesley Stevenson.

A very wonderful educator whose wife,

Jane Allen Stevenson,

was head of the English department at Philadelphia High School

for girls and was a Bryn Mawr college graduate of the class of 1904.

The Stevenson couple took

to my father and mother because they didn't have any children and they

loved them, and they loved the daughters. So, from an early age,

my sister and I were told that we were going to go to Bryn Mawr College.

Of course, we didn't know what Bryn Mawr College was,

but this is what we were told because of Jane, as we called her.

We knew her at our high school, although by the time I went,

she had already retired from there. When

Dr. Stevenson retired,

my father then took the examination in the

city of Philadelphia to be the principal, the head of the department.

He came out with the highest scores ever and they refused to

appoint him because he was Jewish. Philadelphia at that time,

and I'm guessing this was around 1938-39 ...

I'm not quite sure of the time.

My sister probably knows. I can't remember.

There was no department of head of any kind in the city of

Philadelphia who was Jewish.

The city officials wanted to appoint this next teacher who was there head.

Dr. Stevenson, who was about to retire, said, "No,

I'll stay on another year and Mr. Piwosky will take the exam again."

He took it again the next year, scored the highest,

and they had no choice but to appoint him,

so he was the very first department head in the city.

We were very involved with Jewish causes.

We belonged to a congregation Adath Jeshurun,

which is a conservative congregation. My father was in the religious school.

I grew up, I went all through it.

We did not have bar mitzvah in those days but I had confirmation,

and later on married. My children were named

there, and I've also named my grandchildren there.

I still belong to that congregation.

Okay, so now comes the time when I'm graduating high school.

And I will tell you a story, which I'm free to tell now.

I did not do it because it involved someone who was still alive,

but since this person is no longer alive,

I have felt free to share it with my Bryn Mawr classmates in the last 10 years

about that.

There was a scholarship set up by a former mayor of Philadelphia,

a Mayor Kendrick,

and this scholarship was a memorial scholarship called The Minnie Murdoch

Kendrick Scholarship. It must have been from his mother,

who was a Bryn Mawr graduate and was a Girls High graduate.

This scholarship was for a graduate of the Philadelphia High School for Girls to

go to Bryn Mawr College. A four year,

full tuition scholarship renewable each year, of course,

like most of them that you keep certain grades.

At Girls High, the principal and faculty of course knew about the scholarship.

When I was a junior in high school, the student who held it before me,

and I do not know who it was,

graduated and the faculty had a meeting and decided not to award it to

someone that year.

They wanted to hold it for the next year because Joan Piwosky ...

That was my name ... Joan Piwosky was graduating,

and this scholarship was going to be for Joan Piwosky to go to Bryn Mawr,

which was very good because my family ...

That would allow the family financially to let me live on campus if the tuition

was paid for. Otherwise, I would have been a day student.

It came my senior year, I took the SAT's,

did very well and I get a letter of rejection from Bryn Mawr college

that they turned me down. Everyone was shocked. I was shocked.

My parents were shocked. The faculty, the principal of my high school,

they just couldn't understand it. We did not know

why I was turned down,

and I had to go through graduating when all the list of graduates and where they

were going to college, and mine was unknown.

We spoke to the head of admissions at that time. Her name was Annie

Leigh Broughton, a very wonderful member of the campus community. They

said that I could take the exams again

and reapply, which I said I would do. So, all summer,

I studied. Took the SATs.

Going back to June when we found out that I

was turned down, or I guess it was May.

I don't remember when the letters went out.

All of a sudden,

the principal and the faculty at Philadelphia High School for Girls got a very

interesting phone call from a woman...

A Bryn Mawr graduate who was on the board of trustees. I did not know her name,

I did not want to know it. I do not know it to this day ...

who said the following,

"We understand there is a scholarship at the school for a student to go to Bryn

Mawr, and we know that a Ms. Piwosky was rejected for admission,

but we know that there is another student in that class.

Her name is Caroline Taggert ..." who happened to be a good friend of mine, "...

who's also applying,

and we would like to have that scholarship go to Ms. Taggert."

The principal met with the faculty at the Philadelphia High School for Girls and

they said, "No way. Something's not right here.

These two facts are connected." They said, "No,

we're holding this scholarship for Ms. Piwosky,

and we know that Ms. Taggert got another scholarship." I think an alumni

scholarship of some kind. She was in my class when we graduated.

Always good friends.

Bottom line is I took the exam in August.

I tutored myself in math because that was the weaker of the two.

We had literature and math. Within I almost want to say 24 hours,

but certainly within a week, I was down at the seashore in August ...

school starting in two weeks, three weeks,

my father gets a phone call at his law office. Surprise, surprise.

We are admitting Ms. Piwosky to Bryn Mawr,

and of course, I had the scholarship,

but we really don't know if there's any room on campus.

My father and mother said, "Well, you'll find room, of course." So,

I entered Bryn Mawr happily.

My sister having graduated a few years before,

and another relative who became later my sister-in-law had graduated.

My sister's sister-in-law had graduated.

My sister's sister-in-law had graduated. So,

I came to the campus and I was assigned a room in Pem East

way upstairs. It was called the Alumni Room.

It was underneath the attic where they stored the suitcases and where all the

mice ran around. It had no window to the outside. It had no closets inside,

but there were two beds in there. So, when I got to my room,

this other young girl from Manhattan arrived. Her name, Pat Hirsch Frankel,

who also became a lawyer like I did.

We two young ladies were so happy to be admitted at

that time.

They said to us we know these are not the best accommodations,

and we promise you that if any room opens up in this dorm,

we will offer it to you. In those days,

I don't know about today, I understand all rooms go into some kind of a

thing and you draw numbers or something--

It's more of a lottery system. Yeah.

In those days, seniors, you could keep your room. You could keep it,

so seniors had their own room, etc. A room opened up in a few months later,

and Pat took that on the first floor. Then, in February of my freshman year,

a young lady who was graduating in, I believe, Spanish, they said,

"You're never going to graduate" to her.

"You're going to have to go to the Spanish house." Or, the French house,

whatever it was, "...

and immerse yourself in it or you're never going to graduate."

So, she gave up this gorgeous room at the top of the stairs at Pem East.

Big bay window overlooking the campus.

I could see President Katharine McBride in her office right across from me. So,

that was my entrance into Bryn Mawr. Having been turned down,

not knowing why,

and neither one of us ever learned until after we were out of college about

the Jewish quota. We did not know it was the 10% quota.

Found out later, it was confirmed by everyone.

Bryn Mawr was not alone in this. All schools had this.

I think there was an Asian one, maybe two percent, whatever it was. But,

I did not know. I never heard that word all through college. Never heard it. So,

I entered Bryn Mawr. I was a political science major. Wonderful,

wonderful friends.

It was a very interesting entrance to a new world

for me because suddenly with all of these girls,

most of whom went to private schools and were getting ready for their debuts and

their coming outs at this time,

and I never felt jealous of them. I didn't want to be a part of their world,

and I wasn't a part of their world. It didn't matter to me. So,

being Jewish was very important to me in my life.

I'd always eating kosher food at home and out,

so Bryn Mawr College was the first time that I had to make an adjustment

that I would eat chicken and beef out.

I'd never done it before, and as had been my pattern in life, I never,

ever ate any shellfish or pork products,

but it was at Bryn Mawr that I first learned that I had to do that if I was

going to survive. I

enjoyed my studies at Bryn Mawr.

I was a political science major under Dr. Roger Wells, who was a wonderful,

wonderful teacher. And,

then also I had a minor in economics and wonderful professors

there. My social life was very interesting.

I had some very, very good friends in Pem East. One was

a very good Catholic, and one was a very good Protestant and I was

Jewish. So the three of us, and we were dating. In those days, we dated a lot.

We dated every weekend, went out. Haverford, of course,

was nearby and Pem. So,

when the Catholic girl had a date and he

had a Jewish friend, oh, they called Joan. I went. If they had a Protestant one,

they called Betty. Uh, call Betty. We just all went out together.

That went on for years.

And this is how we met people. Everyone got along very, very well.

I know that in Pem West,

there was a very large clique that had gone to the same private school

apparently. I don't know the name of it.

They were probably cliquey but everything in the world is cliquey somewhere.

It didn't bother me. We all got along very well in Pem East.

I never heard any problems with anybody. We got along together.

We watched Princess Elizabeth get married.

We did all these in the smoker. Of course,

everything was very big at the smoker. Everybody had to smoke. I didn't smoke,

but they made me try. I hate it. I never inhaled. I couldn't stand it,

and the smell in the place, but that's the way it was.

We all had to take a science course, and I really wanted geology.

I loved rocks and the earth.

And I thought that would be wonderful until I saw that the building was way down

the other end of campus and I was picturing in the winter time, the snow,

walking down there, and right next to me was Denbigh that had biology.

What did I know about it? I'll take biology.

I spent a couple of years breathing through my mouth because I never would want

to smell anything with all the formaldehyde,

but that was very much a part of my college career.

But, I loved the time at Bryn Mawr. I have wonderful, wonderful,

wonderful memories of events.

We had our dining hall together with Pem West, and we had servants.

We were served. We had wonderful meals.

We used to joke that somebody had given the college an asparagus endowment

because we seemed to get a lot of asparagus.

Then, we dressed up at Christmas time. We all dressed up,

and they had a big Christmas tree.

It didn't bother us they had a Christmas tree,

but we didn't have any Shabbat services of any kind.

I know it was a Quaker school,

but I do know that they all went to a church on the weekend,

and one of my friends who was Quaker,

I would go with her to Haverford for the nice walk to the meeting house.

But, my Jewish life which was so important to me, I kept ...

Since I lived in Philadelphia, it's under an hour for my parents to come out.

So, they came out and they did my laundry.

I would give them a bag, they'd bring it back,

which is not surprising because the other children all had these cardboard boxes

that went in the post office.

They mailed their laundry home to their homes wherever it was,

and clean came back.

I still went to my synagogue for holidays in Philadelphia.

In the fall of my freshman year is when the

United Nations voted for partition in the Palestine Mandate, and in the spring,

I remember going back on a Friday night to my

synagogue for services when Israel was made a state,

and that was very important to me because my mother had been a

strong Hadassah member.

She had met my father in 1916 at a

... It was called Hatikvah Juniors.

It was a Zionist club in Philadelphia. My Jewish education was very,

very important to me,

and my studies at Bryn Mawr were absolutely wonderful.

My faculty people were wonderful. We had to take orals in two languages.

I had gone into Bryn Mawr with four years of

Latin, three years of French, so I took the French oral no problem.

I didn't want to do the Latin. I didn't feel comfortable doing it,

so I had to take another language, so I took Spanish. At that time,

it was done with Dorothy Nepper, who later became Dorothy Marshall,

the Dean of the College. She was the Spanish teacher. I took a few years,

and then I passed the Spanish one.

Let me tell you about the swimming requirement.

I don't know if they still have it, but we had to pass swimming.

Now, I was raised all my summers at the Jersey shore in the

ocean. I never put my head under water. I didn't know anything about diving.

I was scared to death of it. So,

had to be in swimming and the test was you had to stay afloat for 20

minutes. They didn't care what stroke you used. Oh yes,

I did get a doctor's certificate that I had something wrong with my nasal

passages and I did not have to dive. Oh, that was a blessing.

Thank goodness for this. But, the other one for 20 minutes,

and I remember being in there and the teacher having a big stick on the side

saying, "Ms. Piwosky, keep moving." I was floating on my back a lot.

"Keep moving, keep moving." Thank goodness, I did that. Also,

had to be dunked down and stay down for maybe three minutes before you came up.

I managed to do that.

That was one of the hardest things I ever did at Bryn Mawr College.

It was a snap doing the blue books and I loved

all of that training. I loved all that essay work,

which stood me in such good stead when I went to the University of Pennsylvania

Law School because I was already trained in essays and doing blue books.

Everybody else came having done multiple choice exams at their schools.

This one other fellow from Dartmouth College and I, we were used to this.

This is what one does. One thinks. One puts the ideas down and we think.

So, Bryn Mawr was very important. The Deanery existed then.

It was a gorgeous place, and it had some rooms. So,

we would have our dates stay over night there when we had big

dances. My future husband stayed there one time.

I had another date with another fellow the year before, he stayed there. So,

the Deanery was a very exciting place for us. Ms. Eli

was a lady who lived in a house at the corner where ...

It's the one that has no name yet.

The new dorm at the corner there where my last reunion was. She lived there,

and she loved the students.

In my senior year on Christmas Eve ... Or, New Years Eve,

I guess it was ... we went over caroling ... It must have been Christmas.

We all went over caroling. I guess the best carolers were the Jewish students.

We knew how to sing in choruses. It was wonderful. That was our only part

of something off campus. Everything else was contained in the campus.

Step singing was very big. Not just once or twice,

we had all kinds of occasions. They could find any occasion they wanted.

Step signing tonight,

and we would all manage to get out there no matter what the weather was because

we enjoyed that. We got to know everybody.

The enrollment was not as large as I understand it is now.

You really knew everybody. These were very, very wonderful years.

I look back on these Bryn Mawr years as I look back on my Philadelphia High

School for Girls years. I was always an advocate for single sex education.

We need this as an option for people.

It enables young women to find their voices and experiment with ideas and

not worrying about the boys and the men that

are over there, and the teacher not calling on you.

We never had anything like that. We were all women,

and we were treated as ladies. We were treated with great respect.

So, when it came time for graduation,

our class was very cohesive at that time,

and we knew we were all going off into different spheres.

Women were just starting to go out into the workplace.

I was going right to law school.

I got married two weeks after I graduated college. But,

most of our women went to Manhattan. They got jobs at magazines, Elle,

Mademoiselle,

Good Housekeeping.

This is the way women got into the world of making their own living. So,

most of my friends at Bryn Mawr, they were Jewish,

they were Christian. It didn't matter.

I don't think I ever knew a Muslim.

I don't even know if we had a Muslim person there. I don't think so.

That I don't think so. We had really very, very good times.

It was a very tough education. The professors were hard on us, very hard.

We would think we would do wonderfully

and we would get a grade that we thought we

should get more on a blue book,

but they gave us a chance many times to do it over if you want to.

They'd give you a chance to do that.

I had an interesting experience my freshman year.

Since I came from Philadelphia and my mother was involved as a volunteer at the

... at that time the Federation of Jewish Agencies,

which ran the annual campaign for

monies for all the agencies in Philadelphia as well as the overseas. Remember,

this was just a few years after the end of the war.

The DP camps were still going in Europe and people were still

coming into this country slowly who had been in camps or who had

survived being protected by Christian families. I got a letter,

or it must have been a call from someone at the federation in Philadelphia.

They wanted to make contact.

They realized there were a lot of college students in the area.

We had all these schools. Swarthmore, where my late husband went,

and you had Penn and Haverford,

and you had Bryn Mawr, there was Villanova.

There was no Jewish presence there,

so they wanted to know if I would collect for the Allied Jewish Appeal.

That would give me an opportunity to

find these young women,

tell them about the Jewish communities out there in Philadelphia.

They will say they don't have to do it because they don't come from here,

but then we would ask them, "Do you support the one in your community?".

Of course, they don't. I was given a list at that time,

and I remember being shocked at seeing all these names.

Not that there were a lot of them,

but certainly more than 20 or 30 names on the campus.

That was a surprise to me. I went around and people gave $1.00.

The biggest one was $5.00, but that was the normal for the regular community.

That was a big gift.

If someone gave $25.00 in those days in

Philadelphia, they were really a very big giver. So,

that was a very wonderful experience. At graduation

everybody had to go to the baccalaureate service the night before

graduation, which was a Christian service.

We didn't know it was a Christian service until we went there,

and that was intriguing. It wasn't my favorite part of graduation,

but I loved the regular graduation. Ms. McBride was a wonderful president.

She was a brilliant scholar. She was a psychology person.

She insisted that she would always teach a class,

graduates class, while she was president.

I think Pat McPherson also did that when she became

president, and I don't know about Kim Cassidy now, whether she still teaches.

But, that was the quality of leadership that we had a Bryn Mawr,

and from what I see, it still continues. It makes me very, very proud. Should I

talk some more about my childhood growing up? What would you like to know?

I have some questions just following up on things you've said if that's okay.

Yes, go ahead.

So, to start with, I guess we'll go back to your childhood.

Can you tell me a little bit more about your religious upbringing?

You said you went to Sunday school and that your father was a Jewish educator?

Oh, yes. Sunday, since my father had to be at Sunday school,

we drove with him and I brought some of my friends in the neighborhood.

We would go to Sunday school, which was all morning. In the afternoon,

I would go visit one of my two grandparents somewhere, and then

once I got to confirmation ... Well,

once I finished all of that,

I guess it was around that we started Hebrew school two days a week. So,

on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

I went from West Oak Lane from either elementary or junior ...

I guess it was junior high ... down for Tuesday and Thursday. Then,

when I went into Girls High,

which was then at 17th and Spring Garden Streets near center city Philadelphia,

we'd take the subway up, a whole bunch of us,

and go to Hebrew school from 2:00 to 4:00.

It was a wonderful time. At 16, we had our confirmation year,

and then we had post confirmation, which was all optional but we loved it.

I even taught one of the classes later on. I taught a class at [inaudible]

to confirmants that were just a few years younger than I was.

So, I always had that. I did not go to Gratz College,

which was in Philadelphia where most of the people went because

I wasn't confirmed until the end of my junior year,

and I only would have been at Gratz College for one year before I went away to

college, so I never got a certificate as later my children all did.

But, we were involved in all these. In our confirmation year,

all the synagogues, and they were mostly on Broad Street. The Reformed,

the Conserved. Not the Orthodox. No one had anything to do with the Orthodox,

and they didn't have anything to do with us,

but the Reformed and the Conservative,

we all had joint dances and joint programs together and that's how we met each

other. We would all go to Rodeph Shalom,

which is reformed and they would all come up to either Beth Shalom or Adath

Jeshurun, which were conservative and then they'd come to Keneseth Israel,

which was also in town. Adath Jeshurun,

which is now and has been since the late 50's up in Elkins Park,

Pennsylvania was at 2109 North Broad Street. Broad and Diamond,

so it was very close to Center City. So,

our Jewish young people in Philadelphia had all of this. The boys then had

their B'nai B'rith groups together and women had some

Junior Hadassah groups together. But, my home was such a devoted Jewish,

kosher home and educational,

I was exposed to so many of the most wonderful lecturers and Joan Wohls who

came to our congregation. I mean, I just

remember them with fondness. We were exposed to all of this.

I guess I was exposed, my family believes so much in education,

Jewish education, secular education.

We read. The

Philadelphia Orchestra was very important in my growing up.

Went to the children's concerts,

the youth concerts with Eugene Ormandy conducting,

and then I got married.

We went to the orchestra and I still had a series.

I'd go to the Philadelphia Orchestra. I'd go to the concerts.

Curtis Institute of Music is right in our neighborhood here.

I'd go over there for concerts.

I still go up ever Shabbat to Adath Jeshurun.

My housekeeper drives me up on Saturday. I drive, but

I'd just rather not take long distances. She does that for me.

We had a very wonderful life. It's very interesting.

The neighborhood I grew up in, which is West Oak Lane,

it's near Broad and Olney. I was born right there at Jewish Hospital,

which is now Einstein Medical Center. At that time,

it was Jewish Hospital.

It was not until I believe the last 40's that the

three Jewish hospitals in Philadelphia merged.

Jewish Hospital was in the north, Mt.

Sinai Hospital was south Philadelphia and Northern Liberty Hospital was over

in northern Liberty. They were all Jewish enclaves.

That's where the Jews lived. I was born at a Jewish Hospital.

Lived just a few blocks on Nedro Avenue.

We had this trolley car that took us down to the subway and that's how we lived

all those years.

The friends that we played with were really all Jewish. I

can think of only one incident in my growing up days that

would be considered antisemitic now.

It's a very funny story, if you want me to tell you. I think it's funny.

It's rather peculiar for the family. Okay,

I was in I believe it was fourth grade.

Third or fourth grade. In those days, for the holiday season,

they would have pageants,

and our pageant was going to be Betsy Ross making the flag. So,

they had a bowl of crepe paper cut up all in white,

and a bowl all in blue and then a bowl in red.

There were three bowls. Somebody was to be Betsy Ross,

someone was to be George Washington. I was selected as Betsy Ross.

The other one, whose name I don't want to tell,

was a gentile boy that lived a few doors from me.

He was selected as George Washington.

We were to pantomime as the rest of the class behind was singing the song or

telling the story how they made the flag, and we were to dip our hands ... Oh,

there was an empty bowl there ... taking the red, putting the red in,

and then the blue in and the white, and we would mix it up.

Then, at the end,

we would just stand in front of it as the class is finishing its little poem and

just hold hands in front of it. Well,

two days before the pageant we found out that the young man who was

to be George Washington had been pulled out of the program because his family

said

that they would not allow him to be holding hands with a

Jewish girl. I was fourth grade. How old was I? Eight years old?

Nine years old? We all thought it was very funny, so silly.

It's the only time I can ever think that anyone did anything personally to me.

My family, looking back,

they must have been upset but they never let me know that it was pretty

horrible. I know the teacher was not happy, but that was fine.

I had no other incidents.

When we went to Hebrew school, our rabbi was Rabbi Max D. Klein,

who was our rabbi for 60 years,

and had graduated the Jewish Theological Seminary in one of the early classes

where he was taught by Rabbi Solomon Schechter, the famous Schechter.

But, our Rabbi Klein also referred to him as Schester.

He said that's what we always said, so we had to call him Dr. Schester. But,

Rabbi Klein gave us a wonderful ... He was a brilliant man, a brilliant scholar.

Never married.

This was his whole life, so when we came to our confirmation,

we had to know by heart at least 10 or 12 of the

prayers. I'm not saying the Amidah all the way through,

but we had to know the Kaddish and the Kiddush and the [inaudible] and the

Vayechulu. We had to know all of these without looking at anything.

We'd have to stand up in front of our peers and do it.

That has stayed with me all my life. People say,

"How do you know it?" I know it because I learned it. Well,

they learned it but they don't know it. Then, I had a friend a Hebrew school.

She was a year older than I was. She didn't go to Girls High,

but we were friendly because on Shabbat afternoons,

we would go to each other's home after services and play together. What

did I want to tell you about that? That must have been ... See,

there goes. Well, I'll think about that.

Why did I want to tell you about that? Oh, yes.

She and I decided that we were going to go to services and not open the siddur

at all. So, we challenged each other.

We were probably about 11 or 12 years old, and we did it.

For years, we just knew it.

We didn't have to look at the book. I had a very wonderful, happy time.

We were always a very Zionist family. We supported everything in Israel.

I can think of something interesting that I haven't thought about in a long

time. I know I'm going back and forth,

but that incident with the young fellow that wouldn't hold my hand when I was 10

years old, after I graduated from Bryn Mawr,

I had a classmate ... I don't want to use names ... A very wonderful girl,

married to a very wonderful fellow. They were Quakers.

They were very prominent and they went to all the Quaker meetings.

They did not live in Pennsylvania. They came to a national Quaker meeting,

and they stayed with me and my family.

I put my children in the other room, and they got the other kid's room.

They were there about three or four days,

and I was very interested in their agenda. So,

this was when Israel was already a state,

and I was just shocked when they came back and told me about all this money they

were allocating for this Augusta Victoria Hospital,

which I remember seeing where it was.

They told me in no uncertain terms that that was because the Israelis were not

giving any medical care to any of these other people.

I thought that doesn't make sense. So, they were helping out at that hospital,

and I asked them, "Well,

do you also help out Hadassah Hospital if there are different hospitals for

different people?"

I remember she understood what I was talking about.

He took great offense at it,

and tried to tell me how wonderful the Quakers were and everything,

but I knew very well that the Quakers had not

been very supportive of diversity certainly in the

early 40's and during the war. I knew that from other people. So,

although I went to a Quaker institution,

and my husband also went to one being Swarthmore,

and I have so many friends who are Quakers when I know what some of their

polices are,

they were very divergent to what I felt as a Jewish-American where everyone

should be

treated equally and shouldn't have prejudices against anybody.

My father was very involved with the Jewish community relations,

and he had meetings with the ministers in town.

This was quite interfaith work.

I always grew up in a family with interfaith work.

Maybe that's what's kept me in my volunteer life.

I always was active at my synagogue in the women's association. In those days,

it was the women's association. I ran the adult classes for women.

They'd never had it before. In those days,

most of us were at home mothers or we worked part-time.

I never worked at the law office more than three days a week.

I always wanted to be home with the children. So,

we had 75 or 80 women every Tuesday studying. Then,

I became active in the Jewish Women Organization in the city,

and then I spent most of my volunteer work with Jewish Family and Children

Service, where I've been on the board. I've headed long reach planning,

I've headed home worker services, services to older

persons, resettling the Russian immigrants in the 70's. I really

can attribute that not just to my family and my synagogue,

but Bryn Mawr was so inclusive of everyone.

I never felt any difference there.

Nobody treated you differently.

Maybe some of the girls were cliquish, but you get that in any field.

It could be in any institution.

I've always felt Bryn Mawr gave me a background on which I could build a really

good moral life. It was a very, very wonderful education.

The camaraderie, the closeness with the faculty.

Their doors were always open to us. Always open.

Even if it was in the evening, we'd get over to their homes on Faculty Road.

It didn't matter. One of Dr. Well's daughters was in my class, Elsa Wells,

and one of his other daughters, Lois,

was in my sister's class which is coincidence.

But, they were available to us. And, of course, the infirmary.

What could we do without the infirmary? We were always getting infections,

always getting sore throats. Maybe we talked too much.

Maybe we didn't eat as well. I don't know, but we really had a

wonderful, wonderful time. People got along well.

The faculty relation was good,

and I never heard the word Jewish quota until it was

my

25th reunion. I was one of those,

a group of four or five of us, that ran the reunions every five years.

I was doing major gifts, and I traveled around to the

west coast and the southern states meeting with some of our classmates to try

and get some major gifts for this anniversary.

That was the first time when one of the members said to me, "Joan,

how did you always feel about the Jewish quota when you were there?" Very

innocently ...

Let me think how old I was at that time? 40's or something? ...

I said,

"What Jewish quota?" That's how naïve I was.

I subsequently then found out with research with people at other colleges and

other people that yes, we had the 10% quota.

Other people seemed to know about it. I didn't know about it.

If my parents knew about it, they never said a word.

They were just happy that we had this wonderful education.

We did not have a Hillel there at the

time. We really missed it.

I never went to anything at Haverford.

There were never any joint Jewish holidays.

I went back to my own synagogue and I took many of my friends with me.

They could stay overnight and my parents would drive us. I didn't have a car.

Nobody had cars.

I don't think we were allowed to have cars because nobody had a car.

You went on the train and the lantern man followed you from the

train up and back. You know about that? So that you were never alone.

II have some friends that have lasted through these years,

there's a group of our class of '51, who all live in the New England area,

and for many,

many years they have been meeting every autumn on a certain Saturday.

All those that live in Maine, New Hampshire,

Connecticut, Massachusetts getting together for a lunch.

I'm living in Philadelphia, and I was always so jealous.

My husband would always say, "Why don't you go up?" I'm not going to go,

but once he died, which was in 2015,

I got a call from our classmate up in Massachusetts,

"All right, Joan. You have no excuse now."

So, I've been going up and it has been wonderful.

We are about seven or eight people that meet every year,

and they are a mix.

I think the hostess and I are the only Jewish ones, and the others are all very

[inaudible], and they're all very big givers at Bryn Mawr and they've kept up their involvement. We got the stories out about them. So, up to me, I've been involved with the alumni association, with reunions, with fundraising. I've gone back to several things. I've seen things in the city, when Kim Cassidy has spoke here in Center City, and I was at one in the fall. My sister and I are usually the oldest ones there. Can't find people that are classes ahead of us don't seem to be around. But, Bryn Mawr has been a very important part of my life, and it was an integral part of my life as a young Philadelphia, American, Jewish committed person.

Bryn Mawr was just part of my whole life,

and I think it's made me pretty much what I am today,

and I hope I've gotten good things from it.

I really have only good memories from the education that I got.

What it enabled me to do and the doors that it opened for me in social justice,

which merged with my Jewish interests.

I remember going and studying about Appalachia.

I remember going to the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed

mothers.

I remember we were doing something with the poor in south Philadelphia with the

sociology department.

It just reinforced the kind of world that my parents raised me

in, and Bryn Mawr just gave me more of it.

Maybe other people didn't avail themselves of it, but I did.

I thought it was wonderful. We had great lecturers all the time. I mean,

Eleanor Roosevelt and people like that that. Estes Kefauver. I loved it.

You can't tell with

my voice, which is going the last few years,

but I sang in our synagogue's choral society for 36 years and loved it.

Choral music is very important to me.

One of the things they did freshman week at Bryn Mawr was they sent you down

to the chorus master. I forgot what his name was.

He married one of the students. I forget.

They tested you to see what voice you were. They came to me.

They threw me out, so I never sang at Bryn Mawr,

but as an adult I sang all the oratorios and

things like that. But, Bryn Mawr, no. Singing,

which is so much a part of my life,

forget it.

Were you disappointed?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes,

because the other girls were singing and they were going down to sing

with the chorus with the Philadelphia Orchestra and they were singing with the

... They didn't call it by colleges. Haverford.

I don't remember much of Swarthmore at the time. Swarthmore was involved,

I know with the library, things like that. Yeah, I was

very disappointed because I love it, but it probably gave me more time to study.

Oh, I can tell you a funny story about passover at Bryn Mawr.

I told you that I had had to make very painful

but a realistic decision about eating chicken and

beef. I still separated milk and meat as best I could.

It came passover my freshman year. What am I going to do?

My family's going to bring me out food. So,

they're going to bring me out matzoh and they were going to bring me out gefilte

fish and a horseradish, but I don't have a refrigerator.

We didn't have refrigerators in those days. But, my window,

which is a bay window on the outside had a ledge,

and I used that as my refrigerator.

Well, a couple days later,

I look up at my room and the horseradish must

have spilled, and the ivy was red all the way down to the ground.

Very embarrassing because you could see where it came from.

The ledge is on a slant. It wasn't flat. I didn't know that,

but that's how I've served passover. Oh, yes.

I ate only my own food.

Was that your freshman year or every year?

No, every year. Oh, I did that every year.

I didn't put it out over the ivy though.

Did you share with other Jewish students or just for yourself?

Well, I know that I took students home for the Seders to my family's house.

That, I did all the years. There were three of them,

four of them.

Some of us were bridesmaids for the others when we got married afterwards. Yeah,

but they came back to me for passover,

and also they came back to me for the high holidays because school

always started by early September, so we

always did that. Always did that.

I continued after I was married and living in Germantown and Mt. Airy.

There was an organization run by the B'nai Brith women at Beaver College,

which is now Arcadia College, but it was Beaver College then. It

was a program that connected Jewish students with families in the

area that would be their hostesses during the year. I had many,

many students for several years from Beaver. We got them tickets and they

came to us for the high holidays. We had them for Shabbat meals,

but it was very interesting that after a few years, they didn't want it anymore.

I found that after usually two years they weren't interested in

coming to my house. They were busy at the college. We tried,

we tried. What else can I tell you that you'd like to

know? It was a very happy childhood.

I'm wondering about you brought up the Jewish quotas again,

and I haven't come across much about it,

so I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about the research you did

and how you determined it was 10%?

Word of mouth. Our parents generation knew all about it.

I see.

I knew about it. My husband was a physician,

and he went from Swarthmore College ... This is in the war years,

etc etc, but he went to Temple University Medical School,

and his father was a physician. Brilliant physician, author of many books,

and he never made full professor.

Never made full professor because he was Jewish. At that time,

Temple University Medical School, which is now the Lewis Katz Medical School,

but back in the 40's and 50's, there was no ...

Until the 50's,

there was no Jewish.

We knew there was quota in terms of faculty.

The reason that we had Jewish Hospital and the others is that Jews could not get

on the staff at Hahnemann. Jefferson, there were some who had graduated

there earlier. That's

why the black community opened Mercy and Douglas Hospitals,

which is now Mercy-Douglas,

because they could not get privileges to take their patients anywhere.

So, there were quotas all through the medical hospitals. We knew about that,

and we knew about it at the universities because Jews were starting

in bigger numbers to go to Harvard, and to go to Yale,

and to go to Brown. It wasn't just one or two. You might

know a dozen in your community going to any one of those. They would say, "Oh,

we just made it under the quota.

We just make it under the quota." People looked around and they looked at

numbers, and they figured it out.

It was exactly the same every year practically. You

looked at the number of the class,

and you looked at the number of Jews and it was right there. 10%.

You might find something at 11% or 12%, but it was never more than that. Bryn

Mawr had it. Everybody must have known it at the time.

I'm sure all the faculty must have known it.

I don't know about faculty appointments.

I remember one Jewish professor at the time.

I don't know, but with the students, that's what it was.

We just didn't know it, but this was just normal. It was like the old movie,

The Gentleman's Agreement,

which was a movie probably in the '40's or 50's with Jews traveling

around the country not being admitted to hotels and restaurants.

You couldn't find anything in writing. You couldn't prove it in writing.

It was a gentleman's agreement. People

just knew it. Apparently,

Bryn Mawr had nothing to be proud of whatsoever,

and it just has nothing to do with M. Carey Thomas.

It's just the way the world was, and certainly during the '30's,

which was a terrible time in America ... It was an isolationist time,

and Father Coughlin on the radio every Sunday with his vitriolic sermons against

the Jews and all of that. It was a terrible time.

Jews held back. They didn't talk about other things.

You lived in the world you could live in. If you couldn't live in that world,

you didn't live in that world. After my father became the department head,

other people became department heads. Slowly, very slowly.

That's the way things were. What are you going to do

about it? It

goes on today.

You can find antisemitism from the brightest people who come from the brightest

colleges, and they still don't realize that they're hurting somebody else.

They're probably good people that are not even aware of it,

or aware of it and they think they can get away with it. But,

I never knew the actual word, I say,

until I was out of college a couple decades.

Never even knew about it. It puts so much into perspective.

We knew about the rumor, the suggestion from my high school

principal and the head of the faculty that the reason that I was turned down was

because I was Jewish. They never used the word quota. They never said that,

but it was clear to them that the connection with my not going and taking a

scholarship and turning me down had to do with bringing this other young,

Christian girl in.

They knew it, and they wouldn't go along with it,

which I'm very, very proud of to this day.

I don't know, there must be quotas now. We have affirmative action.

That's a quota in another way, but putting

quotas to try to make things diversified. Well, then other people are left out.

We had very few international students.

We had some people,

one was the daughter of the Iranian ambassador.

Someone else tells me about somebody had a chauffer pick her up

every weekend and take her to Washington. I was totally unaware of that.

I must have been in another world. I didn't know about that.

We were a very close group.

I think we had two Asian girls.

I think they both became doctors. All their family is doctors. One

of them has three daughters, who then went to Bryn Mawr,

but that was the only Asians that we

knew.

I come from a high school where we had black girls and white girls,

but not that many black. That was just the time.

The 30's and the 40's. The 50's, I got out in '51,

so I had all those 40's there. That's what Bryn Mawr.

We had a fabulous education, fabulous faculty.

If they discriminated in terms of admission with other people, I have no idea.

I only know my story.

I never told my story to any of my

classmates ... any of them ...

until Mrs. Broughton had died a few years ago because I didn't

want to cast aspersion on anybody.

I know her comments to my father. They were not pleasant. I knew that,

but I stuck with it. I took the exam. I took the SAT's a second time.

I didn't have to do that, but they had to save face somehow.

I don't know where they got pressure from. Somebody.

Somebody must have said something. I don't know,

but I took it. I don't remember if I did as well or not as well. I have no idea.

The phone call came and there I was. I'm in.

That was a very happy day for me.

All right,

you mentioned that you had to go to baccalaureate before you

graduated and that was a Christian service.

We all did. It is.

Yeah, tell me a little bit more about that experience.

Well,

the Joan Wohl was a wonderful Justice Hand from

New York who happened to be the grandfather of one of my classmates,

my dear classmate, Sue Savage Speers,

who became president of the Alumni Association. She's board of trustees,

she's just retired from. That was her grandfather, Learned Hand,

I guess. There were two brothers, but he was the Joan Wohl at the baccalaureate.

I just remember I really probably didn't know what

it was that I was going to. We just knew that it was a baccalaureate,

and I always know that when you see diplomas,

it has the word baccalaureate somewhere in there,

but I don't know what that means. It was just what we had to

do. So,

I guess it was actually a service. Even to this day,

I don't know of a program or anything. I don't know,

do they still have a baccalaureate service?

Mm-mm (negative).

We had it. It was the night before,

and I know my husband-to-be,

who was at that time a resident up in Wilkes-Barre,

Pennsylvania getting some general surgery before he did his full orthopedic

surgery, he couldn't get away for the ... He came down.

He was there for the baccalaureate, but he couldn't be there for graduation.

We had a procession. We came in. We had two processions,

but we didn't have our hats on and we didn't have the hoods.

Just the regular gowns as I recall. Just the black gowns. Yeah,

that was interesting.

What was your reaction like when you realized it was a Christian service?

Well, we all were very puzzled by it,

but we were thrilled that our classmate's grandfather, this very famous Justice,

was there. I remember being very proud of him. Then,

we graduated a day or two later, and our lives changed.

You don't think about it again. It's gone, it's done, it's finished.

It wasn't as if it was something we had to do every week

like other schools that make you do things.

There was nothing forced Christian, even Quaker.

I don't even know if they had Quaker meetings on the campus. I don't know.