ORAL HISTORY PROJECT OF THE MARIN COUNTY FREE LIBRARY Anne T. Kent California Room Original recording available at the Anne T. Kent California Room © All materials copyright Marin County Free Library. Transcript made available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the Marin County Free Library. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the: Anne T. Kent California Room Marin County Free Library 3501 Civic Center Dr. #427 San Rafael, California, 94903

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INTERVIEW WITH FRITZ BARKAN
by Carla Ehat & Anne Kent
April 27, 1977

INTERVIEWEE: Fritz Barkan (FB)
INTERVIEWERS: Carla Ehat (C.E.) and Anne Kent (A.K.)
DATE OF INTERVIEW: April 27, 1977
TRANSCRIBER: Marjorie Hoffman

CE: Today is Wednesday April 27, 1977. Continuing the Oral History Program of the California Room at the Marin County Library at Civic Center, this is Carla Ehat. And today we are going to have the privilege of talking with Mr. Fritz Barkan, and we are going to record this interview at the home of his daughter, Louise Salomon, at Number 1 Cloudview Circle in Sausalito. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Barkan at a memorial service given for Doctor Leo Eloesser last year, and it was a beautiful string quartet. And I think at that time, if I remember, Mr. Barkan, you told me that you played the cello.

FB: That's true.

CE: You still do. Well, tell us a little bit about your life. Now, where were you born, sir?

FB: I was born in San Francisco on Gough Street between California and Sacramento.

CE: On Gough between California and Sacramento. Is that house still standing?

FB: No, that was one of the many small twenty-five foot houses that were finally destroyed, and I think there is an apartment house there now.

CE: What were your parents' name? What was your father's name?

FB: My father's name was Adolph.

CE: Adolph.

FB: Adolph.

CE: Was he a physician?

FB: He was an ophthamologist, although in those days they did not specialize in eye but were generally eye, ear, nose and throat men.

CE: I see. Did he have his offices at his residence or did he have an office downtown?

FB: Well, as far as I know, originally he had, when he first came to San Francisco from his native Hungary, he had a little office above or near a drugstore in the Italian quarter.

CE: You are of Hungarian descent then?

FB: Yes.

CE: Do you remember what year he might have come to San Francisco? It was post-Gold Rush days, of course.

FB: I don't remember.

CE: Well, we can get that later. Now in addition to yourself, sir, you were born in what year?

FB: 1884.

CE: And the month and day.

FB: February 27, 1884.

CE: Are you the eldest in the family, sir?

FB: No, my brother, Dr. Hans Barkan, who is a very close friend of Dr. Eloesser, was born in 1882.

CE: 1882 and you had another brother I understand.

FB: I had a younger brother who was Dr. Otto, also an eye doctor, and he was born in --

CE: Well, he is the youngest?

FB: No, I had a sister.

CE: Oh.

FB: It must have been --

CE: Well, that's on public record

FB: Ah, yes '87.

CE: '87 and then you had a sister, sir?

FB: I have a sister. You want her name? She's still alive.

CE: Yes, what is her name.

FB: She's Mrs. Erich Offermann. She married a Swiss and has lived in -------- all her life.

CE: All her life. Well, tell me sir, I understand when I interviewed Dr. Eloesser in 1975 that the Barkan family lived each summer in Mill Valley.

FB: Yes.

CE: What brought your family over there? Just to have a summer home?

FB: Just to have a summer home and there were a good many people, mostly a good many of them were German families that moved over there for that reason. Dr. Eloesser's parents was one of them. Their house is still there.

CE: And then the Barkan's and the Eloesser's children then -

FB: We grew up together.

CE: You grew up together. You know I found him a fascinating man, Dr. Eloesser. Oh, he gave me some starts in the interview.

FB: Oh, you interviewed him?

CE: I interviewed him.

FB: This is not being recorded now is it?

CE: Yes. I interviewed him, and it was one of the times, I think twice a year he came up to see, as he said, his baby sister Helen LaPlant, and she arranged the interview. And it was fascinating, and I thought I understood that it was a Barkan who encouraged him to go into medicine.

FB: Yes, I remember ???

CE: He loved the violin and the viola, but he had taken a trip to Mexico, wasn't that the story, and got an eye infection and then went to sea.

FB: I was amused over it. In a write up - I don't know if it was in Palo Alto or not, it spoke of his being an outstanding violin player. He was not, he was a viola player, and he didn't play too well.

CE: Well, I remember his telling me that once a week, I think it was Wednesday night, he met with a little quartet in his home and the concert master of the symphony was one of the gentlemen. Could have been Naoum Blinder, I don't remember. But he loved music.

FB: Oh yes.

CE: And there is a beautiful portrait in his sister's home of Leo as a young boy. It's a portrait in oils playing the viola.

FB: I don't remember it.

CE: Well, did you know him fairly well, were you intimate friends or was it one of your brothers?

FB: No, I knew him very well, but he was primarily a pal of my brothers although I lived with his family one year when my parents were abroad, and I think Leo at that time was a freshman at Berkeley, U.C. Of course I wasn't much younger than he was but - I didn't know him nearly as intimately as my brother Hans, of course.

CE: Well I guess it was your brother then who interceded and got him an opportunity to study at Heidelberg.

FB: Well it must have been my father or my brother. No, no, it must have been my father.

CE: Your father.

FB: Because he had gotten his degree in medicine in Vienna and knew a famous eye doctor in Heidelberg, Germany very well, so that's probably how that came about.

CE: Well it's interesting to me, your father was a doctor and your two brothers and that profession never interested you, Fritz, you didn't want to study medicine.

FB: I didn't want to do anything.

CE: What did you want to do, have a good time?

FB: Mostly.

CE: How in the world did you ever get into the diamond business? Would you like to tell us?

FB: Yes, that was very simple. I didn't graduate with my class in High School. I went to the old Polytechnic High School before the fire when it was down on the corner of Stockton and Bush. I was a very poor scholar, no student at all, and didn't graduate with my class. I was banished to San Jose by my irrational paternal sire who had some patients down there who had a private school. The old gentleman told me that he was going to incarcerate me down there, if they would take me, for the holidays and make up my studies with some of the resident teachers, which I did.

CE: Was that a painful experience for you or did you weather it?

FB: Rather. When I finally graduated and looked for something to do, the only person who would give me a job was a very old friend of my father's who also had a place in Mill Valley,(and I think it's still there), who was a senior partner in a large wholesale jewelry business. He was the only one who would give me a job, so they started me there as errand boy at $4.00 a week, and I lived at home.

CE: Do you remember the name of the company?

FB: Yes, very well. California Jewelry Company.

CE: Where were they located?

FB: They were at that time at 134 Sutter Street.

FB: That was in 1902.

CE: And you started right in as an errand boy in the business?

FB: I started as an errand boy at $4.00 a week and gradually --

CE: You say a jewelry company. They carried everything?

FB: They carried everything.

CE: Were they a forerunner of Shreve's?

FB: Everything except clocks, I think.

CE: But fine jewels, everything

FB: They sold to retailers in the stores.

CE: Was Shreve's in existence?

FB: All sort of jewelry, chains, cufflinks, watches, clocks, diamonds, what have you.

CE: Did you stay with them - well, naturally you stayed with them.

FB: Well, I was really being groomed to finally be in the business, but it didn't work out that way, and I eventually started myself.

CE: You started your own business?

FB: A very small business with a little financial assistance from my Father and ended up having nothing but diamonds.

CE: And what did you call your concern?

FB: Just my name.

CE: And you were listed as just jeweler or how did -

FB: No I had it listed as Diamond Importer.

CE: Diamond Importer.

FB: In a very small way.

CE: Now did you take this step before or after the earthquake and fire in 1906? Did you take this step before the earthquake or after?

FB: Myself, no I put in three years in Amsterdam and Paris as a volunteer as they call it in a large diamond cutting concern.

CE: So you were out of San Francisco when the earthquake occurred?

FB: No, I left San Francisco in 1907.

CE: Well where were you on that fateful morning in 1906? Were you still working for that company?

FB: I was in San Francisco in bed. I had been to the opera, and I happened to be in San Francisco at my parents' home, which at that time was on Laguna Street facing Lafayette Square. And it was shaken up by the 1906 earthquake. The family were all over in Mill Valley already.

CE: But you were there because you were working?

FB: No, it was... I stayed in town for the opera that night.

CE: I see.

FB: And I used my room in the attic.

CE: Well then you were almost alone in the house.

FB: I was alone in the house.

CE: What was your reaction? How old were you? Let's see you would be --

FB: I was twenty-two.

CE: What was your reaction as a young man?

FB: My room was in the attic of ---

CE: What happened Fritz?

FB: Well , I was shaken out of bed. My room was in the attic floor of this stone mansion.

CE: All alone and your family away--

FB: I jumped out of bed and ran to the window and looked out, hung on the window sill and looked out towards the west and saw the chimney, mostly the chimneys going down on various houses in the neighborhood where at that time Cooper Medical College was, a predecessor of Stanford Hospital and Lane Hospital --

CE: I know about Cooper. Dr. Leo Stanley over here is a product of that --

FB: Pardon?

CE: Dr. Leo Stanley over here is a product of that school.

FB: Oh yes, yes the dachshund man.

CE: So, continue.

FB: It didn't take long to make up my mind to get out. So I started down the back steps, it was a four story house, and I remember quite well the hard time I had getting out as I was being thrown from one side of the stairway to the other. I went out through the entrance hall, the quivering and shaking was still going on, and finally ended up down on the sidewalk in front of the house. It took me that --

CE: That amount of time to do it.

FB: A minute and seventeen seconds to get out. And the next day or two I kept hiking downtown to see what was going on.

CE: Well you didn't go down to the Jewelry Company that morning did you?

FB: Yes, I went down.

CE: What did you find, chaos?

FB: Chaos and Sutter Street, Powell and Hyde was debris. I managed to get up to the second floor, so I couldn't be of much help.

CE: Well did your employer, was that all destroyed?

FB: Merchandise was - no the - one of them lived in Belvedere and managed to get over, and I don't remember how the old man got over there.

CE: Were you advised by your employer Mr. Barkan to go find your family and relocate or was any guidance given to you at that time?

FB: No I spent a good deal of that time trying to get - the girls wanted a ride out of San Francisco down to San Jose.

CE: So you knew your family were safe in Mill Valley and your number one priority was to get -

FB: My father finally got over from Mill Valley, being a doctor he was permitted to get in to San Francisco. My bosses got ahold of a wagon and we loaded it with two trunks of jewelry into that - they got some sort of a - I don't now remember how the got it across the bay whether they got a launch or what and he brought his jewelry that they could salvage over to the home of Mr. Levison, who was a partner -

CE: In Belvedere?

FB: Lived in Belvedere.

CE: Isn't that something?

FB: And then it was over there for oh three or four weeks I think.

CE: Inventorying?

FB: No just guarding -

CE: Guarding.

FB: Living there with some of the family and my family, of course, was all over in Mill Valley already. Once in a while I would hike from Belvedere over to Mill Valley to see them.

CE: Was your family home on Laguna facing Lafayette Square, was it devastated or did it just suffer that --

FB: Very little.

CE: Chimney's coming down -

FB: A few cornices were broken off, chimneys going down and very little interior damage. Some to the statuary and --

CE: But the fire didn't get to any.

FB: No, we were ordered out because of the fire - you want all those details?

CE: It's wonderful to hear it from somebody who went through it, sir.

FB: My older brother Hans came up from Stanford, now how did he get up? I don't remember. My father had gotten over the second day from - no the first day -

CE: From Mill Valley.

FB: From Mill Valley.

CE: By ferry I presume?

FB: Got up to the house, and we two and he took the last walk through his house of which he was very fond and then he told us to go back up to the trunk room in the attic, fourth floor, get a trunk bring it down to their front bedroom. He wanted to save what things he knew my mother would probably like to have because we expected the fire --

CE: To continue and spread.

FB: Yes. My brother and I swept that down a curved stairway about this wide, it was magnificent living hall which my mother hated incidentally and --

CE: And you got it downstairs.

FB: Got it downstairs, dragged it down beautiful curved staircase, living hall, out through the vestibule, down the sidewalk. My father had taken his last walk around his home.

CE: Where did you go?

FB: My brother and I had brought the thing down, this trunk down, the beautiful carpets on this curved walnut staircase and heard the old gentleman's voice, oh, trouble, "Couldn't you have been more careful bringing that trunk down? Look what you did to that carpet on the steps." There'd been a nail on the bottom of the - I'm just telling you, this is psychology --

CE: Yea, you're going to lose it ??

FB: He was reconciled to taking his last walk through his home, he was on his way out and noticed that a nail had torn the carpet. My brother and I sat down and laughed, it was so funny.

CE: So incongruous, well -

FB: And then we were told that the fire had been stopped at Van Ness Avenue and we ??

CE: And take that trunk up those stairs. Did you have to take that trunk back up?

FB: With the torn carpet.

CE: Well, that's a charming story. Alright, then your family comes back after the summer from Mill Valley -

FB: Yes.

CE: And life resumes. And the next year, is it, Mr. Barkan when you decide that you are going to apprentice yourself and volunteer in Belgium in the diamond business? Is that when you go to Europe?

FB: Yes. A friend of my father's, who was the main boss where I was working, suggested this. He thought it would be a good experience acquired - by that time - after the fire they gave up everything but diamonds, you see.

CE: This company you worked with?

FB: They got part of their insurance and didn't go back into the jewelry end of it. I thought that would be good experience for me and probably get me a volunteer job in some big diamond cutting company abroad. I would acquire more of a knowledge. At that time they were just beginning to cut these fancy shaped diamonds. Up to that time it was practically all round stones, and they were beginning to cut baguettes and marquises and heart shapes and all that sort of thing.

CE: Well now we're talking about 50 - 70 years ago almost. Amsterdam? Where did you go? Hasn't Amsterdam been considered a-

FB: My younger brother was at school at Oxford, and he suggested, I not knowing any French, that it would be a good idea for me to go down to the country where with he and some other Oxford students had been going on their long vacations. You probably know that most British University ------- but at the time they were mostly on their own. They didn't have to come to class or anything else. They had to pass the examination at the end of the term. So they spent their long holidays down in a place down in the country, along the lower Loire Valley, and he knew of this very noble but very impecunious French Count who took boarders. And he suggested if I thought I could stand that sort of living -

CE: To go down there.

FB: To go down there.

CE: Did you?

FB: I did, and I was down there for, oh something like six or seven months and got a start on French. Then I went to Paris, but I couldn't get this job I wanted, even as a volunteer. This concern had just had a young Canadian there for a year or so and they didn't want anybody else around.

CE: So?

FB: So what was there to do? Here I had come six thousand miles. So the man said, tell you what you can do, though. If you want to, you can go to Amsterdam to our cutting plant.Well I didn't care about that, but I thought well better than nothing. So I went up there and saw what they did up there, I couldn't do anything but watch what they were doing and put in a winter there. And when the next spring came along, the boss in Paris, there were five brothers in his concern, and they had the biggest finest cutting plant in the world. In fact they were the people who cut this famous Cullinan diamond for the British Crown. I was fortunate enough to see that cleaved -

CE: What a thrill !

FB: And all the work done on it. It's a long story which I'll tell you off the record sometime. And I stayed up there longer than necessary, but I had just gotten through this miserable Dutch winter and tulips were coming out and all that sort of thing I asked if I could stay longer and they said stay as long as you want, so I stayed half the year and then I went down to the Paris office and that's where I really got the education I wanted.

CE: Mr. Barkan. after you left Amsterdam you returned to Paris, didn't you?

FB: Yes.

CE: Then what happened?

FB: In Paris I worked I worked for the same people I worked in Amsterdam. They had their selling office in Paris and their grading office.The people in Amsterdam just did the cutting. They didn't do any grading or ------------and they sent all that down to the Paris office and that was graded down there and sold from there.

CE: Alright. Tell a lay person what you mean by grading of stones.

FB: Assorting the various qualities.

CE: The qualities, the size, the color, the cutting.

FB: The color ,the size, everything connected with it, the shapes.

CE: Now did you get involved in this then when you were in Paris,did you do some of the grading then?

FB: yes, that was all I did.

CE: I see.

FB: I didn't do any selling. I didn't do - I just graded the diamonds that had been sent down from where I had been and seen them cut were sent down to the grading and selling office and from there the salesmen went out on trips in Paris and all that sort of thing.

CE: Would you care to comment, Mr. Barkan, on why Amsterdam has remain the cutting center of -

FB: Why it has?

CE: The diamond industry. Now we're talking of 70 years ago, it still is considered that. Why?

FB: Well I don't think - I haven't kept track of it at all but Antwerp was also a big center, both cutting and - and, of course, I understand - I haven't paid a bit of attention to it since that naturally Palestine, the Jews -

CE: Israel?

FB: Refugees from these war-torn countries have established themselves in Tel Aviv and in various cities, they do a great deal now I think. But I am not at all posted because I have no interest in it anymore.

CE: Alright. How long did you stay in Paris, a year or two?

FB: Paris I stayed for a year.

CE: A year and then did you come back to the states or did you tour? Did you take a trip or travel abroad?

FB: No I didn't do - unfortunately didn't do any touring at all.

CE: Did you visit your brother at Oxford?

FB: Yes, in fact we went to the Olympic Games together in 1908.

CE: And where were those Olympic -

FB: In London.

FB: After that I came back to - I'd been over there as long as I had, I came back to San Francisco and went to work again for the same people with whom I had been. And they finally- oh the senior partner retired and they wanted me to buy in the business. Of course I only could have done it with my father's financial assistance, and he was quite right insisting that I not do it because of the setup, and I started in for myself in a very small way with a little assistance from my father.

CE: And did you have a shop? Where was your store?

FB: I had no store I just had one room there in one of the buildings and stupidly left the family and traveled, most of the time.

CE: In business?

FB: Yes, importing diamonds myself and selling and going out and selling.

CE: How would you import diamonds? Would you actually go abroad and, say, back again to Amsterdam or Paris or Antwerp.

FB: Sometimes I would go, and sometimes I didn't and had a representative. There were brokers over there who were reliable and who'd do that for you for a small commission.

CE: Yes.

FB: The trip took so long. It took - the fastest I ever made it was nine days. It was long before airplane days you see. It was nine days from San Francisco to Liverpool. Three days over land, on the Overland Limited, and extra fare if you were lucky enough from New York to catch a fast Cunarder, five days to Liverpool. Nine days was the fastest.

CE: Well, did the brokers ever come to New York with their diamonds and offer -

FB: The smugglers - oh,oh.

FB: Forget about the smugglers.

CE: But I was wondering if they ever did that, like merchandising is done today. They'll have a suite of rooms at the Waldorf Astoria and notices are sent out -

FB: Not that I can remember, no.

CE: They didn't do it in those days.

FB: NO. There were any number of large manufacturing jewelers in New York who did their own importing and their own manufacturing of jewelry.

CE: Yes. Your career in the diamond business is fascinating.We'll talk about that further some other time perhaps, but let's us go back to Doctor Eloesser and some of your reminiscences of that gentleman and Mill Valley. Did he - well his family had a home in Mill Valley as well as your family is that correct?

FB: Yes.

CE: And his boy's growing up together. Did you share his love of sailing?

FB: His what?

CE: His love of sailing, he loved to sail boats.

FB: No, it was his brother primarily.

CE: Well he had a sailboat, he had a sailboat called the "Flirt".

FB: Did he have?

CE: Yes. Do you want to share any anecdotes about Leo Eloesser? I understand that you went to visit him on his ranch in Mexico.

FB: Yes.

CE: Down at Tokumbara. Could you tell us about that experience.

FB: That came about through Leo and his friend having been in Russia and stopping over to see my sister in Zurich (?) on Leo's way back to Mexico

CE: I see.

FB: And they suggested that she come with them and visit them in Mexico, which she did. Well, when I heard she was going to be there I invited myself - I wrote to Leo and asked him if he minded if I came down. And he said no, come and stay as long as you want. So I went down too.

CE: What year might this be, roughly?

FB: Huh when was it - ten years ago.

CE: Ten years ago.

FB: I don't think that long. Was it that long ago?

CE: Well tell me Mr. Barkan, is it a working ranch? Was it a working ranch?

FB: Not really.

CE: Not really.

FB: No. He had about 40 acres, I remember, some planted to fruit trees and vegetables and all the produce that they could use for themselves and he did most of the work. He had one man, a Mexican couple, who lived in the basement of the house, and he did most of the work himself, fantastic.

CE: I understand when I talked to him --

FB: This little guy at his age, he was at that time --

CE: And he was teaching native women how to be midwives, I understand.

FB: Oh that was the very end of his life.

CE: Yes.

FB: Not when I was there.

CE: Not when you were there.

FB: No. He was seeing patients.

CE: He was.

FB: He only was allowed to see, I don't know how many, and he had a little room in the basement of his house and they would come early in the morning - sometimes before his breakfast, sometimes after - and he'd see about seven or eight. And I don't think he charged anything at all if I remember right. But he was not supposed to interfere with the medicals in the little village down below. His place was up the most gosh awful road that you ever heard of.

CE: Was he in the high country?

FB: Yes. You could only get up there with an old war time jeep. It took about half an hour to get up there. Unbelievable ! And the little town was a place of about six or seven thousand natives but he was way up on the hillside. What he did himself was fantastic, physically. I remember him----- down there and sawing - a metal type with a saw and all that sort of thing. You wouldn't think a little fellow like that -He was strong in spite of being all doubled up in his old age.

CE: I know.

FB: In the evening in his place he would write letters. I remember him sitting there and he was always corresponding still with medical people in the east or somewhere.

CE: Well you know his sister has a vast collection of his letters which she treasures and she plans to turn them over to Bancroft Library.

FB: The actual hand written --

CE: Oh yes.

FB: Every,every evening.

CE: Prolific writer.

FB: Yes. Joyce and my sister and I would be doing something else, and he'd be off by himself writing. And he worked around the place. He was busy all day doing physical labor. We went away for a few days. They wanted to show me some things, and he didn't want to come, he just stayed, he wasn't interested in that. But he had these people come and take care of them -I wonder if I told you about one, whether it would be of interest, to show his humanitarian interest, which existed down there.

CE: What was that sir?

FB: I know of one that I witnessed personally, it happened here. I don't know if that will be apropos.

CE: Yes, sir, it certainly would.

FB: We had a friend, a viola player, who lived down in Los Altos. I was away on a trip, I remember I went to Stockton. We knew him very well, I played quartet with him. Leo didn't know him. I came back, the trip was three or four days, the wife told me something terrible happened. ______What in the world was going to happen, what is it all about? And she told me that this man had gone down in the basement of their house in Los Altos, this viola player, and the furnace had exploded. He could hardly get out. He managed to get upstairs, but he was practically burned to a crisp. They took him to Palo Alto____clinic and said to the wife who was Russian said, if you have anything in the world - he'd heard of Doctor Eloesser and they would give anything in the world if they could have Doctor Eloesser take care of this man. So I said, what about it? You said you could do anything, I said, well --

CE: I'll ask.

FB: Go up and see Leo. And Leo had just taken care of a man by the name of - He's still alive, viola player, Molanar. I don't know whether you remember him or not. He's over in ________. He'd broken something or other, and Leo took care of him. So I went up. Leo was in his office. _______went in. "Oh, Fritzy boy! How are you?" Here he was back of his desk. And I wasn't alright - but I didn't take. "I want to ask you something" "Well, shoot." So I said I hear you specialize in broken down viola players. He had just taken care of this man. He said, "What do you mean?" I told him, "I've got one for you." So I told him the story. I said these people are trying to live, and if they could only have Doctor Eloesser. He started to shake his head, and my blood pressure went down, and he said, "I can't take anybody away from there. " "Leo, away! That gang down there will kiss you if you take him off of his hands." This was Palo Alto Clinic, a Doctor Lee.

CE: Did he agree?

FB: He didn't say anything, takes down the telephone, and I hear him talking. "Hello, this is Doctor Eloesser, and I hear you have a patient name of so and so." (I can tell you the name, Daniel Wall). "Can I talk to Doctor somebody? I would like to come down tomorrow morning with an ambulance and take Mr. So and So to San Francisco and take care of him. And the next thing I heard him say, "The ambulance will be down ." I've forgotten when they picked him up whether it was at -

CE: But he took him back to San Francisco

FB: "Send an ambulance down for him, take him back to San Francisco, and I'll take over." He sent the ambulance down. Oh, then it started with the man's wife. She said, "I don't want to leave my husband." I said, "Listen. You said you'd do anything under the sun if only you could have Dr. Eloesser take care of him. He's going to have him now." Leo sent an ambulance down, got this naturally all on his own.

CE: Yes.

FB: He has three or four donated beds at St. Luke's, happened to have one or managed it somehow. Took the man up there, operated on him, plastic surgery time and again and again over a period of eight months, and that was it.

CE: And he saved that man. He saved that man. That shows the humanitarianism of it.

AK: At his own expense.

CE: At his own expense. Well, Mr. Barkan, I certainly want to thank you so much for letting us..

FB: I asked Louise if she thought I should tell you that.

CE: Well, it's a wonderful story.

FB: Because we lived through that, and we knew it. And I saw him the other day. Of course, the surgery was not perfect because this was before the big war when they learned so much about plastic surgery.

CE: Well, Mr. Barkan, I want to thank you again for allowing us to come into your daughter's home this morning and record your reminiscences for us for the Oral History Program of the California Room at the Marin County Library at Civic Center.