MARC LEE RAPHAEL
Oral History in an Ethnic Community:
The Problems
and the Promise
Oral history, whether viewed by
proponents or detractors, is rarely
taken lightly. Barbara Tuchman, for
example, has charged that "with
the appearance of a tape recorder, a
monster with the appetite of a
tapeworm, we now have, through its
creature, oral history, an artificial
survival of trivia of appalling
proportions."1 In contrast, Saul
Benison, among the ablest practitioners
of the art of oral history,
asserts that "the memoir that
emerges as a result of this process
[interviewing] is a new kind of
historical document. Although it has
been created by a participant in past
events, it is also the creation of
the historian-interviewer who has in
fact determined the historical
problems and relationships to be
examined."2 Benison, well aware of
charges like Tuchman's, knows too that
"this mutual creation
contributes to both the strength and
weakness inherent in oral history
memoirs."3 My own goal
in this essay is to touch upon the strengths
and weaknesses of oral history, and to
illustrate these with brief
excerpts from a few of the more than
fifty tapes (two hours each)
which now comprise the Columbus Jewish
History Project.
Oral history obviously involves much
more than tape recording
reminiscences and observations.
Initially, the historian must identify
those topics where eyewitness accounts
can contribute to our
understanding of the subject, and then
identify those persons whose
relationships to the topics were
intimate, whose memories are sharp,
and who are willing to discuss their
experiences. Such topics might
include the founding of an ethnic
institution, the visit of a
controversial personality, the
relationship of various sub-groups to
the total community (divorced persons,
faculty, organizations), crime
(Prohibition violations, gangsters,
petty thievery), the development of
Dr. Raphael is Associate Professor of
History at The Ohio State University.
1. Quoted in Larry Van Dyne, "Oral
History: Sharecroppers and Presidents, Jazz
and Texas Oil," Chronicle of
Higher Education Review (December 24, 1973), 10.
2. Saul Benison, "Reflections on
Oral History," American Archivist, XXVIII
(January 1965), 73.
3. Benison, Tom Rivers: Reflections
on a Life in Medicine and Science (Cambridge,
MA, 1967),ix.
Problems of Oral History 249
an ethnic business, day-to-day living
(suburban housewives), the
immigration experience, controversial
actions in the community,
changing premarital sexual
relationships, and decision-making within
small groups (families).4 Especially
useful are persons, trends, and
events largely described without benefit
of conventional
documentation. Such a program of topics
offers the historian an
opportunity to interview those "who
made history" as well as those
used in the making of history, the
leaders of communal organizations
and institutions as well as those
generally considered not worth
interviewing because they "do not
know anything important."5
Neither "anonymous" persons
nor unique topics, however, can
compensate for a well-prepared
interviewer. Skillful preliminary work
enables the interviewer to spur the
respondent's memory and to
probe sensitive areas with precision, to
resolve accidental
inconsistencies and to see relevant
historical relationships, to possess
a definite and vivid conception of the
problems that concern
researchers, and to so fascinate the
respondent that he is determined
to recall experiences. Preparation
should include extensive primary
and secondary source study, abundant
interview experience (both in
quantity and in the subjects to be
discussed during the interview), and
a preliminary or exploratory interview
(to inform the respondent of the
procedure, evaluate the range and depth
of his knowledge, and
determine his willingness to record).
The preparation for an interview is the
key to a successful
interrogatory. The time spent by the
interviewer inspecting the
written record, or lack of preparation,
is what differentiates a valuable
oral history memoir from uncritically
recorded reminiscences. It is
not always possible to imitate Professor
Arthur M. Schlesinger's
interviewer, who utilized over 20,000
letters as preparation,6 but it is
necessary to acquire a respondent's
papers and digest them prior to
the interview, to check with
corroborating witnesses who might
provide checks on what the respondent
says, and in general to learn
as much as possible about the subject
area and the respondent.7
4. For an analysis of a group project to
document, with oral history, a controversial
event, see Irene E. Cortinovis,
"Documenting an Event with Manuscripts and Oral
History: The St. Louis Teachers' Strike,
1973," Oral History Review (1974), 59-63. On
the application of oral history
interviews to the study of decision-making within small
groups, see Bulletin of Cornell
Program in Oral History, I (July 1967); Ibid., II
(December 1968); Ibid., II (July
1969); and Ibid., II (December 1969).
5. Thoughtful comments on the history of
anonymous persons are in Henry Glassie.
"A Folklorist Thought on the
Promise of Oral History," Selections From the Fifth and
Sixth National Colloquia on Oral
History, eds. Peter D. Olch and
Forrest C. Pogue
(New York, 1972), 54-57.
6. Benison, "Reflections on Oral
History," 73.
7. On the relationship between records
and recollections, see Charles T. Morrissey.
250 OHIO HISTORY
Background research takes many forms.
Prior to interviewing the
owner of the only remaining kosher meat
market in Columbus, we
located and spoke with the proprietors
of three kosher meat markets
which once had competed strongly with
the still operative market.
This enabled us to probe more deeply
than otherwise would have
been possible and to explore what
actions had led to the survival of
only one kosher market. In another case,
following a preliminary
interview with several immigrants who
had come from eastern
Europe before World War I (and prior to
the full-length interviews),
we obtained the complete passenger lists
of their ships from the
National Archives. Preparation for
another interview session involved
gathering, from the city directories,
the respondent's annual
addresses over the past sixty-seven
years. Thereby we were provided
with the opportunity to question the
respondent about rents,
mortgages, boarders, mobility, and
neighborhoods in some detail.
Yet another interview demanded our
compiling a list of a pugilist's
professional fights, a task requiring
the use of the local sports pages
over a twelve-year period. Such
research, of course, does not
guarantee that interviews will not be
disappointing, wasteful, or
occasionally frustrating. It does,
however, maximize the potential
inherent in the oral history technique,
and it minimizes the large
number of reminiscences recorded merely
on the assumption that
something preserved is equivalent to
something of value. In short,
there is no substitute for an
interviewer who has done his homework.
The art of conducting the interview
itself is mastered no less
tediously. One study of President John
F. Kennedy's press
conferences concluded that a lengthy
question calls forth a lengthy
answer, while a short question elicits a
short response-which
suggests that the length of the question
is quite relevant in one's
preparation.8 But the greater
danger is not that the interviewer will
ask a long question, but that he or she
will frame either a double
question or an imprecise question. When
one is listening to the
answer to a double question, it is
difficult to ascertain whether the
answer applies to the whole question or
to one part of it; when the
respondent hears an imprecise question,
the confusion is even
greater. A good rule is to try limiting
the question to a maximum of
two sentences-one sentence which states
why one is asking the
question and a second sentence, ending
in a question mark, which
asks the question. The only task then
remaining is to listen.
"Truman and the Presidency-Records
and Oral Recollections," American Archivist,
XXVIII (January 1965), 53-61.
8. "The Art of Interviewing," The
Third National Colloquium on Oral History, ed.
Gould P. Colman (New York, 1969), 23.
Problems of Oral History 251
This is easily said; it is not so easily
done. First, one must become
used to long periods of silence. Then,
one has to endure often lengthy
reflections on subjects of no interest
to the interviewer (but perhaps
of interest to other historians). Both
to pay attention (so as not to ask
about the same subject again) and to
keep from dozing can be a
grueling task. Third, even the most
suggestive questions often elicit
one-sentence answers. Here, an
occasional turning off of the
recorder, chatting informally, and then
attempting again to record the
discussion, usually relaxes the
respondent. Finally, if the interviewer
has not established rapport before
asking the tough questions, the
silence may be endless. Good rapport
will encourage candor,
minimize reticence, and even provide
enjoyment for the respondent.
Generally, the longer the interview
lasts, the more easily the
respondent will communicate. By
beginning with the least sensitive
topics and gradually escalating to the
central subject, the careful
questioner will profit greatly. Early in
one interview, we asked a
respondent directly about Mr. X, the
president of a local synagogue
during World War I. The interviewee
refused to say anything about
the subject because "his family is
still here." More than an hour
later, however, the word
"bathhouse" triggered a comment about the
same gentleman:
Bathhouse. [Pause] The president of the
synagogue next door to the bath was
at that time a man who was a complete
ignoramous. He didn't know any
language whatever. He had a mixture of
half Russian, half English words,
half Yiddish words, but he couldn't read
or write. Complete illiterate but he
was apparently a rich man and therefore
he became the president. Rabbi G.
taught me in order to become a teacher
over here you've got to write your
application in three languages. I wrote
the application in these three
languages and handed them to the
president and the president took it and
turned it upside down, couldn't read it.
It was a wilderness, no question
about it-the cultural wilderness over
here.9
Similarly, a rabbi who served in
Columbus for more than forty years
agreed only at the very end of an
interview session to discuss his
predecessor:
Before Passover, rabbis at that time
[Prohibition] were given permission to
buy wine for Passover, and Rabbi X would
sign the applications of the
committee or people who said they were
members of the committee, to get
enough wine for Passover, and
unfortunately he signed certificates which
were more than applications for Passover
wine. It so happened that some of
this Passover wine was found in grills
and bars . . . bootleg wine utilizing the
Passover prerequisites as an excuse.
There was almost a Watergate scandal
in Columbus but as a number of other
incidents will verify, in the course of
9. Marc Lee Raphael, Oral interview with
Dr. Benjamin W. Abramson, 1974, Ohio
Historical Society, Columbus.
252 OHIO HISTORY
crises in the Jewish community in the
past, some of the finest leadership,
from all congregations, joined hands in
covering-up and in having that person
removed from town-and he left in a
hurry. We were always able to use the
good auspices of prominent people to
cover-up. So that covering-up is not
such a bad thing.10
Even with a carefully constructed
questionnaire and solid rapport,
an interviewer's biases can cause
problems. The most helpful balm is
for the questioner to know his
biases and to try hard to conceal them,
for respondents tend to
"size-up" the questioner-age, appearance,
sex, vocabulary, actions, and
credentials are all important stimuli
projected by interviewers-before
responding.11 For example, an
awareness that a respondent supported
Governor George C. Wallace
for President in the 1972 campaign led
to formation of a stereotype of
the person in our minds, so that we
tailored our inquiries to our
assumptions and failed to ask
significant questions. On the other
hand, excessive admiration for and
adulation of the person
interviewed may have its drawbacks, for
the interviewer often
becomes lured into the respondent's frame
of reference and finds
dialogue, disagreement, and gentle
confrontation impossible. Another
difficulty is that many questioners
provide the respondents with
subtle cues which keep the answers
within the frame of reference the
interviewer has established, and thus
they fail to consider alternative
answers. An interviewer may minimize
this danger by using the
language of the respondent whenever
possible and by creating an
environment which is neither highly
structured nor chaotic. It is
important that the interviewer develop a
self-consciousness about
what is affecting the respondent,
including the impact the questioner's
biases (verbal and physical) have upon
the interview session. The
perception of the interviewer by the
respondent will, in large
measure, determine the style, content,
length, and quality of the
responses.
One might be tempted at this point to
ask at least two questions: Is
not interviewing a remarkably expensive
method of doing research,
and is it reasonable to expect the
amount of skill and training
discussed above? While there can be no
complete substitute for an
interviewer who has done the requisite
homework and prepared well,
interviewers are made, not born. Any
reasonably intelligent person
10. Raphael, Oral interview with Rabbi
Nathan Zelizer, 1974, Ohio Historical
Society.
11. On stimuli projected by the
interviewer, see James E. Sargent, "Oral History,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the New Deal:
Some Recollections of Adolf A. Berle, Jr.,
Lewis W. Douglas, and Raymond
Moley," Oral History Review (1973), 92-109.
Problems of Oral History 253
can become an adequate interviewer with
only moderate amounts of
time and practice. At worst he or she
will play the role of a recorder
rather than an interviewer, for many
respondents know what they
want to relate and what they do not. If
this happens, and it will, let
the novice interviewer-recorder sit
forward, keep moving, and avoid
dozing off, for respondents chosen to
fill gaps in written records have
much to tell even without a dialogue.
Finally, the cost of transcribing
ought not to be allowed to loom too
large. The tape itself has
tremendous value and can be utilized
adequately even without
transcripts. The unavailability of
transcripts, no more than the
impossibility of the ideal interview,
should never deter an oral history
project.
In any serious oral history program,
interviewee responses are
transcribed and edited, a process which
can produce additional
problems. The goal of transcribing
should be a faithful reproduction
of the oral record; any deviation from
this record is an error. Yet
good transcribers find it difficult not
to "improve" the record while
transcribing. They are, for example,
eager to insert periods in the
midst of run-on sentences (few
respondents pause at the end of a
sentence), change verbs that do not
agree with their subjects, and
omit "meaningless" words and
phrases (such as "you know").
Stylistic attractiveness in a
transcript, however, should always be
subordinated to accuracy, even when, as
in the following selection,
the transcript almost cries out to be
"improved":
Q: You were, then, thirteen when you
came over here. Did you go
immediately into business or did you go
to school?
A: Mrs. Katz took me over to Fulton
Street School that September when
school opened and she registered me and
she named Harry and when they
asked me what my name was my Yiddish
name was Herschel and of course
Yiddish names were, you know, she
wouldn't think of giving the principal my
Yiddish name and she translated it right
away and she named me Harry. And
so I registered at Fulton. In those days
public school was up to the eighth
grade so in about two years I, they put
me in the first grade got me a bridge
table and a chair and I was sitting with
those little kids in the first grade with
six-year-olds and within two or three
weeks they discovered that I belonged
someplace else. And the way they
discovered it was that they were beginning
to teach the kids two and two is four,
you know, stuff like that, on the
blackboard so the teacher put down
several figures and I went over to the
blackboard and added it up in Yiddish
and I might have have put down the
total on the bottom and she was shocked
that I knew that much coming out
from the wilds of Russia. She then went
ahead and put on a larger problem
and I added that up in my mind in
Yiddish to myself and put down and she
gave me an exam right there in front of
the class for addition and subtraction
and by that time she went to the office
and called in the principal and the
principal stood there with her hands
folded up like this watching me do my
math on the blackboard and I was already
at division and doing it all in
254 OHIO HISTORY
Yiddish and they didn't know it so I
went to the fifth grade right there, the
next week, but I could not speak yet and
of course I couldn't write .. .12
The best protection against over-anxious
transcribers is the
preservation of the oral history tapes
in public archives. Not only are
the original words preserved, but the
historian can utilize the voice,
age, articulateness, style, and speed of
response of the respondent as
additional clues to the value of the
interview. One warning: voices
eventually disappear even from tapes!
Voices recorded on the finest
tape at the slowest speed (1 7/8) and then stored
in a file drawer or
cabinet will disappear completely in a
few years. The best antidote is
a fast speed (thus more tape and greater
expense), proper storage (at
a proper temperature), and the guidance
of a professional oral
historian or historical society.
How does the historian weigh the
veracity of this new kind of
historical document jointly created by
the participant and the
historian-interviewer? Forrest C. Pogue
anticipated this in his study
of General George C. Marshall,13 so
when Marshall asked him how he
could be sure that what he was telling
Pogue in 1957 was not
something he had made up recently, Pogue
replied, "about every
tenth question I give you is on
something to which I already know the
answer from your testimony in the 1940s
or letters you wrote at this
particular time."14 Still
other interviewers provide internal checks
and clues for historians by including
questions which test a person's
memory, asking whether the accounts
being given are from direct or
indirect evidence (was the respondent an
eyewitness?), and returning
to the same subject, from different
angles, repeatedly.
Additionally, almost every answer by a
respondent provides at
least one piece of specific information
which can be verified, so that
the entire response can be judged in
terms of the correct or incorrect
facts. The existence of Judge Samuel L.
Black's court on Scioto
Street more than seventy years ago gives
added credence to the fol-
lowing response:
Q: What was your first job in America?
A: Selling newspapers. I had a stand on
the corner of State and High Streets.
I couldn't speak a word of English, you
know, and I was yelling, I had a
pretty good voice, and I hollered so
loud, in those days you weren't allowed
to holler like that, of course, I didn't
know anything about it, so all of sudden
there was a whole circle around me,
trying to listen to me and all of a sudden
I see a big beautiful wagon come over,
and that was the patrol wagon, a horse
12. Raphael, Oral interview with Harry
Schwartz, 1974, Ohio Historical Society.
13. Forrest C. Pogue, George
Marshall: Education of a General (New York, 1963).
14. James MacGregor Burns, "Keynote
Address," Selections from the Fifth and
Sixth National Colloquia, 37.
Problems of Oral History 255
wagon in those days, and they came over
and tried to tell me something and
there was somebody right next to me
trying to explain it to me what it was,
that they want you to sing the way you
sang before, so I tried to sing it in
loud voice, you know, and they put me on
the wagon and took me to the
police station. I didn't know anything
about it, what it meant, I said, "Gosh,
what wonderful country the United States
is, you sing and then they give you
a buggy ride." The police station
was on Scioto Street, I remember distinctly,
and the judge was Judge Black and they
took me before the judge and they
asked me the same thing, that I should
perform the singing, the same that I
did over there, and I did that and I'm
telling you I'll never forget that, Dr.
Raphael, and that judge laughed and
laughed and told the police, "Tell him to
go back and peddle his papers."15
The historian who makes use of oral
histories must be aware not
only that people do forget, but also
that they lie. Sometimes a
respondent is more anxious to say what
he thinks the interviewer
wants to hear than to report what
actually happened; other times to
deny behavior which was socially
acceptable then but not now (or, to
claim actions honorable now but of no
consequence then);
occasionally to perform for an
invisible, future audience as well as to
magnify, distort, and exaggerate his own
role in an event (one
respondent took credit for founding the
Columbus Torah Academy
Day School-two years before he had
arrived in Columbus!); and
frequently to present a coherent picture
which, however, does not
correspond to reality because the
respondent had reconstructed
enormous amounts to fit in with what was
remembered.16
How can the historian sort out coherence
from correspondence,
reconstruction from remembrance, fact
from fiction?17 To a large
degree, this is the task of the
interviewer, who must have the
potential historian in mind as he
prepares the interview, and must
attempt to test the validity of the
evidence through preliminary
research, use of internal clues and
open-ended questions, and the
querying of several individuals about
the same subject. One must
treat the oral history transcripts as
raw source material which needs
to be examined with the same care as any
other source. Therefore,
the historian must seek to discover how
the report's reliability was or
was not checked, correlating and
cross-checking it with more
conventional sources, and remaining
continuously aware that an oral
history consists merely of the
perception of the informant. Under no
15. Raphael, Oral interview with Jacob
Pass, 1974, Ohio Historical Society.
16. On remembering and reconstructing,
see Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering
(London, 1932), and Ulric Neisser, Cognitive
Psychology (New York, 1967).
17. On separating fact from fiction, see
David F. Musto and Saul Benison, "Studies
on the Accuracy of Oral Interviews," Fourth
National Colloquium on Oral History, ed.
Gould P. Colman (New York, 1970),
167-81.
256 OHIO HISTORY
circumstances should the historian
suspend any of the normal critical
canons of historical research.
Furthermore, folklorists have reminded
us that far more than the
"facts" are of use, especially
since most respondents have less
interest in what the interviewer is
seeking than in relating, and
amplifying, what is relevant to them.
Legends, romantic memories,
exaggerations, anecdotes, family sagas,
jokes, and folklore of all
kinds, are rich sources of information
in and of themselves, and after
they are enjoyed and utilized can be
peeled away to expose
underlying truth, to provide a
self-portrait of the respondent, or to
compare with more "factual"
data.18 The following are examples of
responses which might provide
information for the folklorist-historian
as well as the traditional historian:
At the end of Yom Kippur there was
always a hassle as to what time to blow
shofar. Those days, our shut, as well as the other two orthodox
synagogues,
were within a two minute walk of each
other, and I can recall toward the end
of Yom Kippur each year a person would
come in and say "Still davening
[praying]? The other shuls have
already blown shofar." Whereas, it turned
out, these same people went to the other
shuls and said to them, "You still
davening? Beth Jacob has blown shofar."l9
According to the information passed down
among the old-timers, the
congregation was founded following a
Jewish service on Yom Kippur at the
old Agudas Achim sometime in 1901, when
a number of Hungarian Jews were
congregated on the steps of the
synagogue while services were going on. One
of the officials of the congregation
came out and began to chastise them for
congregating, and talking, and making
noise, and he used the phrase, "You
hunkies, will you either get out, leave
the premises of the synagogue, or come
in and sit like men should." Now
this, of course, antagonized the Hungarian
Jews, and they founded the Tifereth
Israel Congregation, known then as the
First Hungarian Hebrew Church.20
My brother arrived in Columbus and, not
being used to toilets, started to use
the fences. It didn't work out as he was
always chased away. So he went to a
house and knocked on the door to ask
where he should do it. The woman,
hardly awake, thought he was the milkman
and handed him a bottle. He took it
and filled it; she took the bottle and
gave him a dime. He ran home and wrote
to me in Russia, "Come here fast,
Jacob, a fortune is being pissed here. It's a
golden land."21
18. See Richard M. Dorson, "The
Oral Historian and the Folklorist," Selections
from the Fifth and sixth National
Colloquia, 40-49, and William Lynwood
Montell,
"The Oral Historian as Folklorist,"
Ibid., 50-53. On the general ethnography of
communication, see Dell Hymes,
"Models of the Interaction of Language and Social
Setting," Journal of Social
Issues, XXIII (1967), 8-28.
19. Tape recording from Jack Greenwald,
Denver, Colorado, 1974, Ohio Historical
Society.
20. Raphael, Oral interview with
Zelizer.
21. Raphael, Oral interview with Pass.
Problems of Oral History 257
Sam [Levinger] went to Spain in January
of 1937 and the news of his death,
which actually occurred in September, reached the
family in October 1937.
Something probably went out of mom and
dad's life with the death of this
oldest son. Elma kept close touch with
many of our high school friends as a
way of still trying to recreate the days
when Sam had been his most
exhuberant, and the house was always full
of noisy, articulate,
politically-minded groups of high school
students. One of the hardest things
for her was when Sam's dog became so old and feeble he
had to be killed.
The dog had sensed Sam's going away and
death as different than many other
absences. He had become quite senile and
yet would wander back to the high
school and wait there until the children
came out to see if Sam was still there.22
Those who attempt to write local ethnic
history cannot overstate
how fragmentary the written records
might be and how useful
interviews can be in both supplementing
what does exist and
replacing what does not exist. Saul
Benison's thoughts provide us
with a final reminder not of the
problems, but of the promise which
resides in this very new and fragile
source:
As a result of new sound and visual
communication, much of the detail of
human experience, which was previously
put to paper because of the
exclusive nature of print and writing
communication, has today been sapped
from the record and become fleeting and
ephemeral. Such experience, if
preserved at all, is only to be found in
the memory of living men. It is this
paradox of simultaneous plenty and
scarcity in contemporary records that in
large measure defines the tasks of those
who work in oral history.23
22. Tape recording from Leah Levinger,
New York, 1974, Ohio Historical Society.
23. Benison, Tom Rivers, ix.