Ethel Sollogub
Ethel Sollagub was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1913 and grew up in a Yiddish-speaking Jewish family in Chelsea with four older brothers. After high school, she attended Boston University’s School of Technical Arts and Letters and worked in several secretarial positions before marrying Henry Sollagub in 1935. During World War II, while Henry served in the Navy, Sollagub worked in Washington, D.C., before entering the nursing program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1943. She completed her training in 1946 and returned to Massachusetts, where she and Henry raised three children, Peter, Anne, and Lucy. She later returned to nursing and became deeply involved with the American Red Cross blood program as a volunteer, per diem nurse, phlebotomist, and bloodmobile nurse.
In these interviews, Sollagub discusses her childhood and family life in Chelsea; her parents’ Jewish traditions, Yiddish language, and immigrant experience; education, friendships, early employment, marriage, and life in the Boston area. She describes her experiences during World War II, including Henry’s military service and her nursing education at Johns Hopkins, reflecting on wartime medicine, nursing practice, Christianity and spirituality, antisemitism, and racial segregation. She recounts raising three children in Newton, returning to nursing, and her extensive work with the American Red Cross blood program. The interviews devote substantial attention to Sollagub’s repeated travels to Israel, particularly her relationships with members of Kibbutz Ma’ayan Tzvi and the six months she and Henry spent there during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when she assisted with blood collection in Jaffa and elsewhere. Throughout the interviews, Sollagub reflects on family, friendship, volunteerism, spirituality, aging, memory, and her growing connection to Jewish history and identity.
The views expressed in these interviews are solely those of the speakers and do not reflect the positions of JWA or its affiliates.
