Florence Flaks papers, 1890-1975

Scope and Content: Tape-recorded interview with transcript covering 1939-1941 and conducted by Meta Kaplan and Jeanette Schrieber on July 16, 1975.

The interview concerns the work done with refugees coming to Seattle beginning in 1939. Also covered is the work the Council of Jewish Women did in meeting boats, finding places for refugees to live and generally helping and providing for them. Mrs. Flaks speaks of Roosevelt's blanket affidavit and how only two homes could be found in Seattle, and it was the same throughout the U.S. The affidavit would let children come from Germany if homes could be provided for them. The Flaks took a child, Gerda. She tells of the investigation of her home by a Seattle adoption agency, and the contact with the child's natural parents. Mrs. Flaks also covers her own parents, how her mother ran a restaurant-boarding house, and her father's dreams and investments. She speaks of the mining interests of that time, which her father and uncle were in.

Scope and Content: Family tree (n.d.), marriage certificate (1890), program (1920).

Marriage certificate: marriage of Mrs. Flaks' parents (Phillip A. Silberstein and Sarah Weinberg). The marriage certificate has been photographically reproduced. It is signed by Rabbi Hirsch Genss, an early Bikur Cholim rabbi.

Family tree: includes Bridge family.

Program: commencement exercises, Religious Education Department, Temple De Hirsch, 1929.

February 1981 addition: Sociology term paper, 5/30/25, of L. E. Silverstone regarding family. L. E. Silverstone is Florence Flaks brother.