Joshua Gortler was born in Poland in 1936. The Gortler family survived the Holocaust by living in Siberia and then Uzbekistan. At the end of World War II, his family lived in a displaced persons camp in Germany. In 1951, the Gortler family was sponsored to emigrate to the U.S., where they settled in Arizona. He was educated in the Yeshiva High School in New York and also took classes at the public high school. Gortler continued his education at Yeshiva College and then the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University where he earned a Master's degree in Social Work. He and his wife Sarah later established the Joshua H. Gortler and Sarah B. Gortler Scholarship in Geriatric Social Work at Wurzweiler. He served for 38 years as the Executive Director of the Caroline Kline Galland Home in Seattle from 1969 until his retirement in 2006.
Michael Cohen, originally from Minnesota prior to coming to Seattle in 1953, has served on the Kline Galland Board of Directors from 1980 to the present, including as president of the Board.
Oral video history and transcript of interview with Joshua H. Gortler and Michael Cohen conducted by Howard Droker and Cora Miller on April 16, 2018. Gortler and Cohen talk about the history of the Caroline Kline Galland Home and their experiences with the successes and challenges as it expanded over many decades.
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