The Germans didn't take my mother or my father. They didn't get my sisters because they were hiding. They later told me they dug a hole under a barn, but the Germans destroyed it, so they had to keep digging. So every night they slept under the ground because the Germans would come at night and look for people to take away. So she said, “Maybe you're lucky that you went over there. At least you slept in bed.” And we did, for over five years. I went to Germany, and my brother went to a farm in Bavaria.
There was no heat where we slept. When you got up in the morning, you had ice on your featherbed because there was no heat. The bed was awful cold. During winter there was this much [gestures vertically with her arms] snow on the windows. And the German soldiers and farmers, they had special hot bottles they kept on the stove that they put in the bed before they went to sleep so they got some warmth. But we didn't have any, and you couldn't get any. They wanted work out of us, so they kept us alive. I mean, they fed us. We couldn't eat what we wanted, but at least you've got enough bread.
So we worked on this farm for over five years, and there was a farmer who had seven sons in the war. He was a friendly person, though, because the German people are cold, even to their own. But one son came back from the war briefly, and we asked him, “What's going to happen?” He said, “I shouldn't say this, but we [the Germans] are going to lose the war, and if we do, you'll never get out of this barn alive.” That's what he told us. He also said, “If somebody finds out that I told you, I'll be hanged, and so will you,” because they were hanging people.
We grew things on the farm for the German troops. They were very strict with the food. But we found a way to hide pigs so we had meat to eat. We wore wooden shoes. Wintertime there wasn't much work on the farm, so they sent us to the forest to cut wood by hand with a big saw, but it was below zero. We brought some food to eat, but the food was frozen. Still, we ate it because we were hungry. And we came back, and there was no heat whatsoever, nowhere except the barn, so we were lucky to come in the barn and warm up a little bit.
There were no Jewish women there. No Jews. Where I was working, there was eleven of us women, different nationalities, POWs: French, Serbian, Greek, Polish, Crimean, Byelorussian. We heard that there were Jews somewhere, but there was some kind of cover-up that there were not.
I remember near the end of the war somebody had a shortwave radio, and they said, “They're losing, they're losing, they're going to lose.” It was 1945, and the English came late one night with so many airplanes, the next morning you couldn't even see the sun. And the noise! The earth was shaking! Day and night they bombarded the Germans: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I remember it was April 27, 1945, when they came from the sky….
The German people were scared. They knew this was the end. We were happy that we were going to be free. The airplanes were flying very low, so when Germans were not there, we just waved to the English so that they knew that we were there. But when the Germans were there we couldn't do it. We had to lie down on the ground. Then the big tanks came in, and it was the first time in my life I saw a Negro. He was in one of the tanks. He was a big guy with big hands.
We were free! Some of the soldiers spoke Polish, German, but most spoke English, and they said we didn't have to work anymore, that we're going to be free, and they're going to evacuate us. They told us not to work in the barn, but the cows were making noise because they were hungry. They had to be milked. And we did, for the sake of the cows, you know.
The German farmer who owned the farm we worked on, he and his wife were worried for their sons. They were really afraid that something was going to happen to them because they didn't come back from the war. I felt sorry for the ordinary German people because they were Catholics, too. They were afraid. It wasn't easy for them either. They were free too now, but they still suffered as we did. They were afraid a bomb was going to come overhead and kill them.
When the farm was liberated, everybody was so happy. They hugged and shouted, “We are free! We are free! We're going to go home! We're free!” We were there until June, and they took us by truck to the military barracks. We were there for about four years. But after we found out the Communists were in Poland, we said, “We don't want to go home.”
The Russians we knew, just regular people, had told us how bad it was under the Communists. But at Yalta, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill made a deal that when the war was over the Russians got Poland. It was impossible in Poland until 1979, when I went back. But my father and my parents were already dead.
I was married in 1945 in September in Germany. His name was Jacob. My first husband. Once a month they [Allied Forces] allowed us to go to church. Not the regular church, but a chapel beside a hospital. That's where I met him. He was Polish, too. Then Genny, our daughter, was born at the military installation in November 1946….
We had to have a sponsor to come to America. My husband had family that lived in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. My husband's uncle. They were our sponsor. But the uncle died suddenly, and we didn't want to be a burden, so we were transferred to my husband's distant cousin on a farm in Richfield Springs, New York.
We took a boat from Bremenhaven, Germany, the General Harry Taylor. It was a nice boat; especially because I had a baby, they gave us the officer's cabin. So we were lucky. But the men had to stay with the privates and soldiers upstairs. My first time on a boat, and it was a big boat. From Bremerhaven we stopped in Cherbourg [France], then New York. The ride lasted about ten days. We arrived at one o'clock in the morning at the Statue of Liberty. By eight o'clock they started to process us. We came with very little.
But we felt very safe and very happy to be in America. We had heard so much—that America is good and free, with opportunities for the people who care, who work and save. Some people thought dollars grow on trees. But I knew that you have to work and you have to save, otherwise you'll be poor again.
After inspection on Ellis Island they told us where to go because the sponsors were there to meet us. And they served us donuts [laughs] and different things to eat. We were there all day until seven o'clock at night, and then a mini-boat took us to the train station [in New Jersey], and they put us on the train and told the conductor to keep an eye on us because we didn't understand English. We each wore a tag. And then we took the train to Utica, New York. We arrived at twelve o'clock at night, and a farmer was there waiting for us and brought us to the farm [in Richfield Springs].
We slept in an attic, which wasn't my American Dream. Believe me, I cried all night like a baby. Somehow I was shocked. I expected America to be different. It was hot, and that May it was awfully hot—so much so the farmer even sprayed water over the roof to cool it down so we could sleep. At the same time we were grateful that they were good enough to bring us over here. They gave us milk, and things like that, and a roof over our head.
We stayed from May till the following February. Then we moved to Herkimer, New York, and we worked in a furniture factory. There were many Polish people there. My husband was a finisher and I was an assembler. So I put furniture together with a hammer and electric drill and hand drill. I was happy just to make some money. When I got my first check, I said, “Oh, I kiss him, I'm going to put it in a frame.” But I couldn't, because I needed money.
In the factory, American people worked there. We were not welcome. You could feel it. They didn't say much, but we were not welcome. Some people, they were already jealous of you, or something. I really don't know. They were not our own people.
When we worked, we got a babysitter for our daughter. She was four years old when we started to work. Then she went to school, which was right there, so there weren't any problems.
I should speak better English. I didn't go to school because I couldn't, because you've got to work, you know? In the home we spoke Polish all the time so that Genny would learn it.
For me, being in America the freedom was the thing: that you can go to church, you can speak, you can write, you can talk…. In Poland, pe
ople from the cities didn't respect ordinary people from the country, even the priests. Our priest thought he was the Almighty. I found it's not like that over here; you can go to your priest, shake hands, talk freely like I talk to you or to anyone. But in Poland you couldn't, and it was a free Poland when I grew up. But there's freedom—and then there's real freedom….
Several years ago, I went back to Poland to visit for about a month, and when it was time to leave, my sister said to me, “Aren't you sad to go back to America?” I said, “No, I'm not sad. I know I was born here, brought up here, but America is my country now, my adopted country. America is first and Poland is second because America is my bread and butter now and I am happy. I don't complain. I just say, ‘God bless America!'”
This decade saw America make great strides to restore itself as a haven for immigrants. The Refugee Relief Act of 1953, like the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, allowed many refugees, displaced by the war and unable to enter the United States under regular immigration procedures, to be admitted. With the start of the Cold War, Congress passed the Hungarian Refugee Act of 1956 and the Refugee-Escapee Act of 1957, offering a new home to the “huddled masses” seeking freedom, opportunity, and escape from tyranny. The drawback to America's open heart and outstretched arms was public concern that America's postwar policies were too open and let in Communists, subversives, and organized crime figures along with legitimate refugees, which only fueled the paranoia of McCarthyism, characterized by heightened fears of Communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents.
KEY HISTORIC EVENTS
1950:
The Korean War starts; the Internal Security Act bars admission to any foreigner who is Communist or who might engage in activities “prejudicial to the public interest, or would endanger the welfare or safety of the United States.”
1952:
The Immigration and Naturalization Act makes the quota system even more rigid and repressive, except for a token quota granted to those from the Asia-Pacific region.
1953:
The Refugee Relief Act rescues more than two hundred thousand immigrants who live in Communist countries in Eastern Europe, including granting visas to more than five thousand Hungarians after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
1954:
Ellis Island closes its doors, a symbol of the ending of mass migration; the federal government declares the island “surplus property.”
1959:
Fidel Castro becomes dictator in Cuba, his army rolling victoriously into Havana, shortly after which he declares, “Power does not interest me, and I will not take it.” Emigration from Cuba spikes.
MIGRATION FLOWS
Total legal US immigration in 1950s: 2.5 million
Top ten emigration countries in this decade: Germany (576,905), Canada and Newfoundland (353,169), Mexico (273,847), United Kingdom (195,709), Italy (184,576), Austria (81,354), Cuba (73,221), France (50,113), Ireland (47,189), Netherlands (46,703)
(See appendix for the complete list of countries.)
FAMOUS IMMIGRANTS
Immigrants who came to America in this decade, and who would later become famous, include:
George Voskovec, Czechoslovakia, 1950, actor
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Poland, 1951, political scientist/statesman
C. L. R. James, Trinidad, 1952, historian
Ted Koppel, England, 1953, broadcast journalist
Patrick Macnee, England, 1954, actor (The Avengers)
Elie Wiesel, Romania, 1955, writer/Holocaust survivor
William Shatner, Canada, 1956, actor
Andrew Grove, Hungary, 1957, chairman/CEO of Intel
Rita M. Rodriguez, Cuba, 1957, international financier
Gene Simmons, Israel, 1957, rock bassist (KISS)
Derek Walcott, Saint Lucia, 1958, poet/playwright
Kevork S. Hovnanian, Iraq, 1958, real estate entrepreneur
Benoît Mandelbrot, Poland, 1958, mathematician
Itzhak Perlman, Israel, 1958, violinist
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Switzerland, 1958, psychiatrist (On Death and Dying)
Fred Hayman, Switzerland, 1959, Beverly Hills retailer
Gloria Estefan, Cuba, 1959, singer
Jacques Pépin, France, 1959, chef
From an affluent Jewish family, hers is a dramatic story of a mother and daughter and their flight to freedom from Russian Communism during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Today, she lives in Miami Beach and serves as the executive director for the Center for Emerging Art, a nonprofit arts organization. Divorced, she has a daughter who lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York; a son who lives in Forest Hills in Queens; and four grandchildren. “Am I happy?” Her voice cracks with tears. “I am happy. Well, I'm crying now, but I'm happy.”
I was born the day Germany bombed England. I emigrated from Budapest, Hungary, in 1956. I was fifteen years old. We came to the United States by plane. It was a military aircraft, part of the US Air Force that was bringing Hungarian refugees to the United States. We escaped from Budapest to Vienna, Austria. Then we got the notice that we were coming to the United States, and we went from Vienna to Munich and were put on an air force plane to Camp Kilmer, which was an air force base in New Jersey. That's where they were processing the Hungarian refugees.
I lived with my mother. I came from an affluent Jewish family, but everything had to go during Communism. With Communism, you're not allowed to be affluent. My mother didn't have to do anything, work, I mean, until 1954, when the Communist government was cracking down on all the Hungarians and if you didn't have a job you were put away somewhere. You had to have a job. So she got a job as an administrator. The Russians confiscated our home. The Russians took everything. Even when we moved into Budapest, it was into a smaller apartment. The Russians divided the apartment into two—because it was too big for a mother and daughter.
The Hungarian Revolution started October 23, 1956, against the Russian Communist occupation and the government. I was in my second year of high school, and me and my friends were gathered near this famous statue on the banks of the Danube River when suddenly university students and Hungarian revolutionaries took over a nearby radio station, which was about two or three blocks from where I lived.
Then that night and the following day, the Russians came in with tanks and all the military, and there was a lot of fighting and Molotov cocktails. Many people were shot dead on the street. I remember I wasn't allowed to go out until four or five days later. My mother didn't let me go out. And then my girlfriend and I were talking. It was always a dream, a fantasy, to come to America because my mother had sisters in America and my grandfather used to travel back and forth to America in the early 1900s because he was importing and exporting paprika and spices before I was even born. He brought one daughter to America in the 1920s and another daughter came to America in the early ‘30s, so for me it was always a fantasy to come to America.
My mother's sister used to send all these beautiful clothes and packages filled with things. To me America was the land of fantasy, the land of wealth. One of my mother's sisters lived in New Jersey. They had a 120-acre farm. The other sister lived in Miami Beach, and they had apartment buildings and orange groves. So I told my girlfriend, “Let's escape, let's go to America,” and like a good little girl I went home and I told my mother that my girlfriend and I are going to escape and go to America, and one thing led to the other, and my mother wouldn't hear of it. Not that way. She wanted to come, too! She had always wanted to come to America, ever since World War II, when we had to live in a ghetto.
So my mother, my uncles, and cousins arranged for a guide to help us escape. We took a train to a border city near the Austrian border, where we checked into a hotel under the guise that we were going to a pig roast in a nearby town. That night when the train stopped in the town, Russian guards interrogated us, and we said we were going to the pig roast. We checked into the hotel, and after midnight, the Russians came again. They knocked on the hotel ro
om door and wanted to know who we were, what we were doing in the city, and again we told them the same story: we were going to the pig roast.
The following day, we actually did go to the pig roast. It was at the home of a family who had arranged everything for us, and we met the guide there who was hired to take us across the Austrian border. We had to take another small train to a small village on the border, and when we were sitting on that small train, a Hungarian peasant woman with a black dress and black scarves was looking at my mother and me, and she said, “They're walking to their deaths.”
Apparently some people were shot in the forest the night before. Of course, my mother's face went white, but nobody said anything. We just sat there, and then when we got off the train, the Russian guards were there again with questions, so our guide had us go to the back of the train and then under the train in the dark to nearby houses and gardens. We were hiding and walking in the dark through gardens and gates until we got to this forest on the border. We were still in Hungary. The Russians set flares to catch the escapees because Hungary was occupied, a Communist country at the time, and the Russians were looking for Hungarians trying to get out. Each time a flare went up, we hit the ground so they wouldn't see us, and the only thing we had was the clothes on our back, and my mother was carrying a man's attaché case which had watches and vodka in it in case we got caught—the Russians always wanted watches and vodka. We were walking a long time through the forest, hitting the ground each time a flare went up. It was me, my mother, her boyfriend, my father's cousin and his wife, and two little kids—I think they were eight and ten years old. I was already a big girl. I was fifteen years old.
My father had died in Siberia. He was in the Hungarian army, and then suddenly Jews were not allowed in the Hungarian army, and all the Jews were carted off to the eastern front and put into labor camps by the Germans. This was 1943–44. And that eastern camp was captured by the Russians, and it didn't matter to them whether they were Hungarians or Jews or Germans—a prisoner was a prisoner—and all the prisoners were taken to Siberia and so my father was in Siberia until 1948, when they had an agreement to let the prisoners go, but he had died. His best friend came back and brought my father's ring to my mother and told us that he was dead.
Toward a Better Life Page 13