About This Item

  • Call NumberBJHP_0190
  • Summary(00:1) Martin is brother of Madeline and Howard Gottlieb -- (00:50) Born on Lower East Side, moved to Williamsburg in first year, then to Borough Park, large apartment, 1157 43rd Street. Father died when he was 10 -- (4:40) Played stickball in the streets with friends. Recollects youth in Brooklyn -- (10:25) Attended yeshiva school for 8 years. Had a Jewish life. Went to a shteibl [prayer and study room] every Saturday with his father -- (11:35) Prepared for his bar mitzvah at synagogue. Bar mitzvah party at home of aunt with kosher Eastern European food -- (13:30) Children spoke only English. Parents spoke Yiddish at home so children would not understand -- (14:30) Attended yeshiva, Brooklyn College, studied dentistry for four years in Philadelphia. With first pay check, he moved to Manhattan. "And that was it for Brooklyn" -- (15:30) Brooklyn was a good place to grow up. "I knew we were poor from day one" -- (15:50) Remembers listening to Dodger's games at his father's store. Playing ball is his link to Brooklyn -- (18:00) "I love that I came from Brooklyn, I am a proud Brooklynite" although he is now "Manhattan from start to finish".
  • Date2020-01-13
  • Physical Description1 audio file (19 minutes) : digital WAV
  • CreatorGottlieb, Martin
  • CollectionBrooklyn Jewish History Project
  • Cite AsBrooklyn Jewish History Project, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History
  • Formatsound recording-nonmusical
  • Genreinterviews
  • NoteTitle supplied by cataloger. Audio interview conducted on January 13, 2020, by Ariane Loeb at at New York Public Library. Collected through the Brooklyn Collection Jewish History Project of Brooklyn Public Library. This project is funded by the David Berg Foundation.
  • SubjectAshkenazim ; Orthodox Judaism ; Jewish day schools ; Jews--Identity
  • PlaceBrooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
  • RightsThis work is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Users are free to share and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes as long as appropriate credit is given to the source and new material created with this work is shared under the same conditions.
  • TitleThe Gottlieb family. Oral history interview with Martin Gottlieb conducted on 2020 January 13.
  • Biographical NoteAlexander and Regina (Rivka, nee Kanner) Gottlieb, originally from Poland, survived the concentration camps, respectively Dachau and Auschwitz. They met in a displaced persons camp in Naples, Italy where their eldest child Madeline was born in 1946. In 1947 they emigrated to the United States to join family who had arrived before World War II. They first settled on the Lower East Side where Alexander opened a haberdashery store. Soon after the birth of their son Martin in 1948 they moved to Brooklyn, where their youngest child Howard was born in 1953.