But you can imagine how it made us feel about finding a German doctor for Cecilia.
Finally we did find a female German doctor whom we both felt we could trust. We asked her for some medication that could keep Cecilia’s symptoms in check while we were travelling. She prescribed some pills and ear drops. She also told us that sometimes a change in climate … crossing the ocean to a new continent … could be very beneficial in chronic cases. And in that she proved to be right.
So we went by train to Bremerhaven with our group. We had to wait for some days for our ship to arrive. During that time we rented a room with a German family and kept Cecilia on the medication, trying to get her as healthy as possible for the voyage.
The embarkation date was 29 August 1949. We arrived at the dock expecting to see a big ship. We had been told that the name of the ship was the General Taylor, a U.S. Navy ship with a U.S. Navy crew—all of which sounded big to us. When we finally saw the General Taylor, we couldn’t believe our eyes.
ROCHELLE
It was a little thing, little and old. In the past it had been used to transport ammunition and supplies, not people. When the ship sounded its horn and left port in the early morning, of course we were happy. But as soon as it was out on the open sea, it started rolling and shaking … like a toy on the water, not a ship!
JACK
It wasn’t a passenger ship and so there were no passenger rooms with bunks. Instead, they set up four different areas within the baggage holds. There were folding cots and blankets provided for the passengers—about two hundred in all, with fifty or so in each sleeping area. There were not only Jews but also refugees from all over Eastern Europe. Meals were served in group shifts in a small galley.
By evening on the first day of the voyage, Rochelle and I were both very seasick. Julius was holding up fairly well.
ROCHELLE
Fairly well! It didn’t bother him at all. He was the only one of us who didn’t miss a meal the entire voyage. Jack and I basically stopped eating after our first meal on board. We were mostly lying on our cots. We were dizzy and could barely bring ourselves to move. When we did, we held on to the ship railings for dear life. And we were constantly throwing up.
I became so sick and dehydrated that I began to wonder if I would survive the voyage, which would be twelve days long. And then things took an even worse turn. Cecilia’s ear infections acted up again—something about the voyage aggravated her illnesses, even with the medication.
I was too sick to take care of her. So it was left to Jack.
JACK
There was a naval officer who was serving as ship’s doctor, and I was determined to see to it that Cecilia got the treatment she needed. But as it turned out the doctor had a very inadequate supply of medications and no real knowledge of how to treat a small child. What the doctor did do was to isolate Cecilia—who was two years old at the time—in the ship’s infirmary. That was so she would not infect anyone else on board.
Cecilia was the only patient in the infirmary, which was no more than a small room with a couple of cots. And they told Rochelle and me that we couldn’t visit her, not even for a few minutes at a time. Occasionally the ship’s doctor would try to feed her, but otherwise she was just lying there, often crying from the pain in her ears and throat. It was terrible for us—we couldn’t stand the thought of leaving our daughter alone like that. So I set my mind on trying to figure out a way of seeing her.
I found out that the ship was looking for volunteers from amongst the passengers to help with the mopping and cleaning. The usual reward was increased food rations, but that was not my motivation. I couldn’t hold down the food they gave me. But I thought that by cleaning regularly I would find opportunities to clean in the infirmary. And that proved to be so.
The first time I came in, I was carrying a mop and a pail. When Cecilia saw me coming she started to cry, maybe out of surprise and happiness. I remember that they had dressed her in a man’s pajama top. She was starting to speak and said to me in Yiddish, “Tate [Daddy] look! They gave me a shirt to wear just like yours!”
I was carrying with me the medication that the German doctor had prescribed, and I was giving it to her every time I visited. I also talked and cuddled with her, just trying to spend as much time with her as I could so she wouldn’t feel alone and abandoned. That went on until we reached New York harbor. Each time I visited with Cecilia, I would tell Rochelle all about it—reassure her that her baby daughter was alive and well. Rochelle worried constantly that Cecilia might not live to see America.
ROCHELLE
I was lying there in my cot, so weak and dehydrated. It seemed like the voyage was going to last for a year.
Then I heard from the people around me that the ship wasn’t moving anymore. And that if I went up on deck, I could see the Statue of Liberty.
So somehow I picked myself up and went up on deck. The ship was anchored and stable and the fresh air that I breathed in was the first fresh air for me in days. It was nighttime, but the Statue of Liberty was lit up, and all of the city of New York seemed to be lit up as well. An amazing sight! People talk about the Old World and the New World. From where I was standing on board ship, it really did look like a new world. A world on which the bombs had not dropped. A world in which you could live in peace.
The next morning—12 September 1949—the ship docked and they set up the gangplank for us. We thanked God for letting us off that ship. Finally we were in America!
JACK
It was like having lived with a noose around your neck for years—and then suddenly having that noose cut off and feeling free.
Happy as we were, we also were wondering, of course, what would happen to us in the new country. We didn’t know a single word of English. We knew that we were heading for a place called Minnesota, but we had no real idea where that was or how things would be there. We were certain that it would take a long time for things to develop for us in that new land—and that was exactly the case.
That morning, in a kind of mental daze, we went through the station that had been set up to check in new immigrants. They checked our documents, stamped them, and then pointed to where our luggage was being unloaded. We were officially allowed into America.
No, we didn’t have any idea what to expect. But at least we were away from Germany, away from Poland, away from our past, away from our misery. That in itself was a blessing.
XI
Life in America
ROCHELLE
We were picked up at the immigration center by Shirley and Larry Greenberg. Shirley was the daughter of my uncle Herman Schleiff. They were there to help us find the train to Saint Paul, which was leaving at four o’clock on the afternoon of our arrival. So we had barely arrived in New York harbor and we were immediately due to take a train ride across half of the American continent. It was a bit dizzying.
Shirley and Larry explained to us that we would have to change trains in Chicago, and that Uncle Herman and his wife Rose would be waiting for us at the Saint Paul train station when we arrived.
To pass the time until the train left, Shirley and Larry took us all to the home of some very wealthy Jewish friends of theirs. We had a nice luncheon. Then Cecilia had to go to the toilet, and our hostess showed us where the bathroom was and then showed me how to flush the toilet—she assumed that I had never seen a flush toilet. The same with the elevator in her building—she started to explain to me what it was, without even asking if I already knew, which of course I did.
At that point I realized that those American Jews thought we were like their parents, the Jews who arrived in America in the decades before World War I. Those Jews had been mainly rural shtetl-dwellers with no experience of city life. Julius, Jack, and I saw ourselves as intelligent and modern Europeans. But that was not the way we were treated, by and large, by the American Jews whom we met in our first years in America. We understood that they were not intending to hurt our feelings. But that was how it was, and at time
s it was a barrier.
We had been given a twenty-dollar bill for travel expenses. It was explained to us that it was a lot of money and that we should be careful with it. I didn’t yet understand American currency. I tried to buy the cheapest things on the menu in the snack car on the train. I also tried to emulate the Americans around me who would leave a little tip with the waiter. To preserve our money, I thought I would tip with the smallest coin—the dime—which I assumed must be worth the least. So for one of our meals I left three dimes—which by the prices of 1949 made me a big-time tipper. I’m sure the waiter, who had been sizing up our immigrant clothing and the sick daughter on my lap, must have been very surprised by what was left for him.
Somehow we managed to change trains in Chicago without getting lost. But on the second day of our trip, as I looked out the window at the midwestern prairie and saw only trees and fields and rivers and lakes, I started to wonder where we were heading. Was there really a civilization located out here in the midst of all this empty land?
Uncle Herman and Aunt Rose were there to meet us when we arrived, and for our first month or so in America we were guests in their house. Early on Aunt Rose decided to call a reporter from the local newspaper, the St. Paul Dispatch, to interview us about our Holocaust experiences and our feelings about coming to America.
JACK
In that article I was quoted as saying that I hoped one day to write a book about what had happened to us. And now, forty-five years later, that is coming about.
ROCHELLE
The article appeared on the front page on 22 September 1949, along with a photograph of the four of us—Julius, Jack, Cecilia, and myself. Unfortunately, the reaction to that article—or at least the reaction that we personally encountered—was very negative and hateful. The article included the address of Herman and Rose’s house, and immediately after it ran we started receiving nasty letters and phone calls complaining about dirty Jews being let into America when there wasn’t enough to go around for real Americans. Those letters and calls were always anonymous. We kept one of the letters, as a kind of a reminder to ourselves of that experience.
JACK
A few weeks later, the Schleiffs found an apartment for us on the corner of Grand and Dale streets in Saint Paul.
During that time we met with a number of American Jews, and I have to say that it was extremely difficult to talk with them about the Holocaust. Not because we were unwilling or afraid to speak, but because they simply could not understand. Especially when I started to tell them about our time with the Jewish partisans; I had the feeling that they didn’t believe what I was saying. Rochelle had the same sense as well. So we decided that we would stop talking about our experiences.
ROCHELLE
It just didn’t register with them at all. The horror of it, the magnitude of it—we could talk and talk, but it didn’t finally sink in. My uncle Herman asked me once about my parents and other close family members, “How do you know they were all killed? Maybe they’re still living there.”
There was nothing I could say, not after what I had seen and lived through for all those years.
It wasn’t just talking about the Holocaust in particular that was difficult for me. I felt a real difference between myself and the American women of my same age—in their twenties—whom I met. They had sent their men off to the war, but the war hadn’t come to the American mainland, to the American cities and streets. And so to me the women seemed like little children in terms of experience and maturity. They were very sheltered, giggly, easy-going … they had never been forced to survive under difficult conditions and they didn’t know what life could be like. I felt more like their mother than their contemporary.
JACK
Meanwhile, I was looking as hard as I could to find work to support our family. My first job was with a local clothing manufacturer who asked me to work later in the evenings and on weekends. He saw that I was an ignorant immigrant ripe for the picking, and so he cheated me out of the overtime pay that was given to all the American workers who did what I did. When I found out about that I left there immediately.
Eventually, Uncle Herman found for me a job working on the loading dock for a Saint Paul department store called the Golden Rule. People were very nice to me there, even though my knowledge of English was weak early on. I worked hard, and I took the classes they offered in the after-work hours on sales and marketing and other business subjects. I was very interested in those, because I had a dream of starting my own business someday. I even managed to come up with some improvements to the loading operations that increased efficiency and saved the Golden Rule substantial money.
Uncle Herman also found a job for Julius during that time—working as a “spotter” on a graveyard shift in a dry cleaner’s. Having the two paychecks was a big help. Julius was supposed to make sure that no stains had been left on the clothes ready for pick-up. He would work all through the night, and then come home and pitch in with housework and child care during the day as well. In our home life, Julius was not only a father to me, but to Rochelle as well. And she treated him with as much kindness as she would have her own living parent. That remained true through all the years to come.
ROCHELLE
In early 1951, I became pregnant with Larry. He was born on 12 October 1951. A gorgeous big boy. We named him Lawrence after my father Lazar and his middle name is Stanley, the closest we could come to Jack’s mother Sarah. So with Cecilia named after my mother Cila, we had given our children the names of all three of our parents who had died. And after having lost a baby boy back in 1945, it was such a blessing to have again a chance to raise a boy.
But when I brought the new baby home, I was feeling weak. Unlike the situation with Cecilia in Germany, where my aunt Ronke was there to help, I felt more alone in Saint Paul. Jack and Julius were both working long hours. Cecilia, who was four and a half, was as good a baby sitter as she could be—she really helped, even though she was disappointed to have a brother instead of a sister. But winter was coming and it got very cold in our apartment at night—our landlord was not generous with the heat. And Larry was waking up and crying for bottles every two hours. I was running barefoot back and forth between the kitchen and the crib, filling the bottles and then washing them with boiling water.
I started to have a cough and for a month the cough went on and then got worse. Finally, one night I couldn’t catch my breath—it was as if knives were being stabbed in my back. They called an ambulance and took me to the hospital. It turned out that I had double pneumonia. I was there for over a week. Jack had to take time off work—which meant a drop in pay we couldn’t afford—to take care of the children. Because Julius was helping as well, Jack could pay me visits in the hospital. He would bring flowers, hug and kiss me, and sit by my bedside feeling very distraught, worrying that I wouldn’t recover.
Finally I came back home. The first few days I had to hold on to the walls to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen, I was so dizzy. It was a horrible time, but somehow we lived through it.
Also during that period, the Korean War made it necessary for the U.S. government to begin drafting combat-age men. I was afraid that Jack would be drafted and killed and I would be left alone in a strange new country to take care of two children. But even beyond this, I thought that the Korean War would expand into a World War III. And I didn’t want to bring a new baby into a time of world war.
I know I wasn’t the only wife and mother in America frightened for her husband and her family during that time. But in my case, my anxieties were obviously aggravated by what I had been through during the last war. I was still having nightmares in my sleep—people would come for us, would start beating me, and I would run. Or they would take us away somewhere, even send us back to Europe. During the day, when I was awake, I had peace of mind that no one would come knocking at the door. But at night it was different.
Aside from those horrors, there were the daily difficulties of figuring out how things
worked in America. Learning—and really understanding—the language was an ongoing difficulty. For example, I would take Cecilia to the doctor now and then—Julius would stay home and take care of baby Larry—and while I was waiting for the bus someone would start up a conversation with me. And I would have no idea what they were saying. So whatever they said, I would smile and say, “Yeah.”
I felt dumb, as if I didn’t belong. I couldn’t read the newspaper, couldn’t understand the radio, couldn’t converse. For Jack, working at the Golden Rule helped him progress in English more quickly. I was at home where we spoke Yiddish. But it was hard both for Jack and for me. We used to go to the library and check out books in Polish and in Russian, just to keep our minds going.
That doesn’t mean that we were nostalgic for Poland. We weren’t. We were not like other immigrants to America, who had ties to the Old World and were sentimental about what they had left behind. How can you be nostalgic for a place where everyone you had known was either dead or had fled for their lives? Where Jewish life itself had been extinguished?
JACK
I wouldn’t want to pay a visit there for even a day.
ROCHELLE
We weren’t yet fully at home in America, but we felt safe. We were grateful for that, and for food on the table. The difficulties we faced were minor compared to what we had been through, but sometimes they could hurt deeply.
Cecilia was then at the age where she could go out in the neighborhood and play with the other children. But she spoke very little English, and spoke it with an accent. After all, she had been born in Germany. Her first words had been in Yiddish, and we still spoke Yiddish at home. The other kids would hear her accent and decide not to play with her. I remember that in her kindergarten class, the teacher explained to the class that Cecilia had just come over from Germany and didn’t yet speak proper English. But that didn’t help. They called her a Nazi because her accent sounded German to them. Cecilia used to come home and ask me, in Yiddish, what a Nazi was. I couldn’t tell her then what Nazis really were. I said only that the children didn’t like Germans because the Germans had started the war.
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