Alice Bloomfield interview and transcript, June 10, 1990

Alice Stern was born in Berlin in July 1902. Her father had a wholesale food business. Her mother died when she was 8 years old, and her father remarried. She married Herbert Blumenfeld (1899-1957), born in Leszno in Posen, in 1925, and they lived in Berlin. They had two children: Irene (1929-) and Ernst (1937-2013), and a business in ladies’ hats.

Herbert was arrested before Kristallnacht and falsely accused of molesting a child, but eventually released. The family sailed on the “Giulio Cesare” of the Lloyd Triestino line on 20 April 1939 and arrived in Shanghai on 15 May. They lived in Hongkou for 6 weeks, then moved to 333 Cardinal Mercier in the French Concession. She designed ladies’ hats and owned the Salon-Chapeau-Chic. Herbert worked as a night watchman.

They were able to leave Shanghai on the Japanese ship “Tatu Maru” and landed in San Francisco in November 1940. They opened two cleaning stores there. After Herbert died, she moved to Walnut Creek to be closer to her family, and later to Laguna Hills. She met Paul Feitler (1904-1999) there, who appears in the interview. Alice Bloomfield died in 2006.