Joe Portaleki PDF

The owner of the Ace Hardware store in Roslindale, Josef (Joe) Porteleki was born in 1947 in Hungary, son of Gertrude Gerersdorfer, an Austrian national, and Joszef Porteleki, a Hungarian. Joe and his family were among the more than 900,000 war refugees from many different countries who lived for years in Displaced Persons (DP) camps before they were resettled elsewhere. By 1946 there were hundreds of DP facilities in Germany, Austria, Italy, and other European countries. The following is an edited transcript from a 2016 interview with Joe. He talks about growing up in a DP camp in Austria, coming to the US, and settling in Jamaica Plain and Roslindale. If you’d like to listen to the interview, click here.