Alicja Fajnsztejn posing with friends from the Foehrenwald displaced persons camp in the port of New York after her arrival aboard the SS Marine Jumper, 1948; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy Alicia Fajnsztejn Weinsberg

Making a Home in Los Angeles

In comparison to Jewish life in San Francisco, the Jewish community in Los Angeles was less integrated with that of the city's business and political elite. Still, Jews had established their own institutions and were leaders in the Hollywood film industry. Unlike San Francisco, where Jews were dispersed throughout the city, Jews in Los Angeles congregated in specific areas: first in Boyle Heights on the city's east side and later the Crenshaw District, where Jews, sometimes excluded from Anglo neighborhoods, lived alongside Latinos and blacks. Some Jews settled along Fairfax Boulevard in midtown, and, more recently, on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

Today San Francisco is home to about 50,000 Jews, while approximately half a million live in Los Angeles.