Various post-war documents from Refugee camp in British Zone, Transit papers,”Green Card” etc.

      My parents were both born in Poland, but as Jews they were never quite “Poles” but kind of outsiders. I was born in Kyrgyzstan but I was never “Kyrgyz”. I never even had a birth certificate. Being born in Kyrgyzstan was a sort of accident of war. I never lost my homeland because I never had one.

      We were one family of many thousands who escaped Poland into Russia, and were sent to Siberia, to the area of the Archangel Forest, ”Arkhangelsk”.

      We were eventually released…only to be sent into Kyrgyzstan, one of the Asian Republics. The USSR needed workers in the cement factories and the oil fields.

      There’s a 2007 documentary film you can see on youtube.com, about the Jews who were ”Saved by Deportation” from death in the Nazi camps of Poland like Bergen Belsen, Auschwitz and Majdanek.

       “In 1940, a year before the Nazis started deporting Jews to death camps, Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of approximately 200,000 Polish Jews from Russian-occupied Eastern Poland to forced labor settlements in the Soviet Interior. As cruel as Stalin’s deportations were, ultimately they largely saved Jewish lives, for the deportees constituted the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews who escaped the Nazi Holocaust….it retraces the path traveled more than 60 years ago from Poland to Siberia to the former Soviet states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia”

       www.imdb.com/title/tt1260395/

      After the war, our family documents said we were “stateless” and in Belgium illegally. My aunt and uncle arranged for us to be smuggled out of Germany where we were in a German Refugee camp in the British Zone. Pretending to be German Jews was how my family managed to get out of Poland, which by then had turned Communist. My parents were desperate to return to my sister. They were able to pull it off because they both spoke German well.

      After the war, my family and I were “stateless”. We were displaced persons, and in Belgium illegally, and were only allowed there in transit to another country. We were granted only three months temporary residency in Belgium while we made transit arrangements to go somewhere else. We were there for five years.

      On paper, we claimed to be supported by my aunt and uncle who mailed us a monthly check. In fact, my father worked for a cousin on his mother’s side who owned a leather purse manufacturing company, Traksbetryger’s. He periodically paid back my aunt and uncle who supposedly supported us. This state of affairs went on for five long years, until we got a Visa to come to America. The absolutely last extension that the Belgian Government authorized was until July 1952.

      I remember worried conversations between my parents whether the fact that I was born in the USSR could keep us from being approved for entry into the U.S., and the certainty that being caught in a lie about my birthplace most certainly would.

      Remember, this was the time of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in the U.S.

      The visa came through for April.

      On the beach in Belgium, dad, mom, Mark & me at 5 or 6

      COMING TO AMERICA

      The Ship Italia

       We arrived in New York Harbor April 10, 1952 on the ship “ITALIA”

       The ship 609 feet long, 78 feet wide, was built by Blom & Voss of Hamburg in 1928 for the Swedish American Line SAL and named the Kungsholm. She was requisitioned by the US Government during World War II and renamed “John Ericsson”.

      

       During the war she operated as a troop carrier and took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944.

       She was sold to Home Lines in 1948, refitted and renamed “Italia”. She served until 1964, used as a floating hotel, the Imperial Bahama, by Freeport Bahama Enterprises for a year and was then sold for scrap in 1965.

      

      When we sailed on her, she was a one-class ship. No first class, but no steerage either. I don’t think cruise ships had stabilizers like they do today. I remember one very stormy day, the crew placed wooden frame-like contraptions around each place setting at the table, so the plates, glasses and silverware wouldn’t slide off the tables. People were trying to dance in the ballroom and having a time of it keeping their footing…and I made a green faced dash for the railing that evening, and just barely made it. Felt a lot better afterwards.

      It wasn’t until I became an American citizen at eighteen that I really “belonged” somewhere and had a country. Had we not been granted an American Visa in 1952, I would have emigrated to Israel and had an entirely different life. Not too many countries accepted, let alone welcomed, Jews either during or right after the war. Israel was one country that did.

      That’s me “Coming to America”

      Here I am with my mom and dad aboard ship

      Here I am with Mark

      FROM LOUISVILLE TO LOS ANGELES

      1952 was a very special year. We landed in New York 10 days later than expected because the ship was slightly damaged on route and had to sail into a harbor in Newfoundland briefly, for repairs. We had spent Passover at sea. The Italian Captain and Crew put on a memorable Seder for the Jewish passengers.

      Originally, we were slated to go to Pittsburgh. Because of the delay, the quota there was filled and we were told we could stay in New York or we could go somewhere else. My parents picked “somewhere else”. That turned out to be Louisville, Kentucky.

      I remember the first American song I learned “Hey, Good Lookin” by Hank Williams…can you picture it…little Russian girl from Belgium singing a Hank Williams song? When I learned to speak English, it was with a decided southern accent.

      It was now late April. My parents took me to the local school. Because I didn’t speak English, the school planned to put me in first grade. In Belgium, I had been near the end of fifth grade. I’m not sure who explained it to us, because no one there spoke French. Maybe a member of the local Jewish “Joint” was there as a translator.

      The Joint Distribution Committee helped new immigrants get settled in. I think maybe they helped get us our first place to live in Louisville. I also think they promoted a few pieces of used furniture. I recall an old gas refrigerator with a round thing on top. I think the brand was Servel. It must have been quite old and probably donated to the organization…but it worked.

      We asked that the school test me so I could be placed in the proper grade. I went home and tried to prepare for a

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