REMEMBERING THE GOLDSTEINS

She would always be swarmed by kids at 3:10PM. She would be standing just in time for school dismissal underneath a makeshift tent of an old bedsheet whose four corners are knotted to nylon ropes tightly tied around tree branches and the house's front wrought-iron gate. Two tables with food stuff she sold to kids lined the front of her fairly big house. The house had obvious signs that it was had seen some of the town's high-profile parties. All that's left were signs of faded glory.

A kaing (a big basket) of santol (wild mangosteen) stood beside a table in front of her around which kids moshed to pick their santol. Kids handed her their pick, and in matter seconds have the fruit peeled with her over-used paring knife. Her daughter

Her freckled arms looked so strong as though she worked in a contruction site for years. They looked like the arms of a muscularly stocky German beermaid appropriately named Helga! Her hands had perpetual brown stains as though she soaked them in a basin of varnish each night. Her hair was always pulled back which gave everyone a good view of her face. Her pointy nose, stiff upper lip, and her grey eyes and prominent cheek bones all suggested that she would not pass for a native Filipina. She had the physical features of a European but her use of the vernacular and the accent that came along with it hinted otherwise! Well, she was Filipina, in fact everyone living on that narrow mile-long B. Mariano street knew her to have been born in that same house in the mid-40s. Her then 70-ish-looking mother with apparent Spaniard/Castillian physical features sat on the porch in her rocking chair while her daughter sold santol, guava, sliced mangoes with bagoong (shrimp paste), buko and pineapple juice, and kakanin to school children.

Her husband, who too possessed some strong European features and ran business of his own would sometimes help out in her little business. Their two beautiful daughters went to the school across the street. The eldest graduated three years ahead of me, the other, a year.

I was on the fifth grade when I learned their last name and the story that always tagged along with it! They were the Goldsteins.

It was said that their both Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein's great-grandparents were among the influx of American Jews (from which Mr. Goldstein's father came) that moved to Manila to set up shops in the early 1900s when the US opened the Philippines to business. These young Jews enjoyed some success. Furthermore, during the Philippine Commonwealth (1935-1946), Jewish refugees from Europe (from which Mrs. Goldstein;s parents come) sought a safe haven in Manila escaping what would be the Holocaust by way of China. The alliance of Germany with Japan which set up a puppet government brought danger to the freedom of Jews in Manila. The war then pushed the Goldsteins into hiding in the sleepy town of San Mateo, Rizal, becoming Catholics, and pretended to be "Spaniards."

Temple Emil, the only Jewish synagogue in Manila

These Ashkenazim (German Jews) eventually lost their German citizenship during the war but were granted US residency status when the Philippines was gained independence from the Americans in 1946.

The Goldsteins never left the Philippines. Last Christtnas, I rode my bike to check out my old school up in San Mateo. The old Goldstein house was still there standing across the street. It looked like there were still folks living there. There was no makeshift tent, no store in front. I am not sure if it will ever see glory similar to it once had. I wish it would.