Captain McGregor’s laughter surprises me. At first glance I thought he had a rather ascetic appearance, but now I notice how his eyes sparkle. I’m glad. The journey across the ocean is to take eight days. I prefer to spend it in the company of a man with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
Mommy is overjoyed. “Wonderful!” She embraces me, rubbing her cheek against mine. “So you did it, my daughter. You did it, again.”
Mommy’s praise unexpectedly brings tears to my eyes. Does she really believe I have become a competent adult?
Still laughing with relief, Mommy picks up the larger suitcase. “I’m ready. Let’s go to America! Show me the way to this captain’s office.”
With a suitcase in one hand and a small package of food in the other, I lead the way across the open square. Captain McGregor meets us near the flagpole. He shakes hands with Mommy and hands our luggage to a U.S. Marine. Then he directs us to board one of the U.S. Navy trucks lined up on the far end of the spacious quadrangle.
“Those trucks will take you to the ship. Johnnie here will show you to your quarters. I’ll see you aboard the General Stewart.” Captain McGregor gives us a smart salute, and we head toward the military vehicles.
Mommy and I cross the square, past the flagpole flying the American flag. It is so simple. You walk to the trucks that will take you to the ship going to America. You simply walk away from Germany. From Europe. From this cursed continent and its blood-soaked earth. Its mass graves.
There is no goodbye. There is only hello. To the ocean and its timeless, infinite majesty, which separates you from the anguished past. To the distant horizon.
To America, and the hope of a better future.
Epilogue
On April 7, 1951, on a sunny Sabbath morning, our boat, the General Stewart, docked in New York Harbor. My brother Bubi was waiting on the pier, his radiant face rising above the crowd. In our long, tearful embrace, four years of anguish melted. I knew I had arrived to a safe haven.
My uncle Abish and his wife, Aunt Lilli, were also there to greet us. The five of us walked out of the harbor, heading for their apartment in the vicinity. It was an hour’s walk on the homely, sun-splashed streets of New York’s Lower East Side—my first encounter with America.
In the years that followed, America was kind to me. During the first year I became both a teacher and a student. By passing exams for a Hebrew teacher’s diploma I qualified for teaching, and by passing a high school equivalency test I qualified for entering college. In time I moved from first grade to teaching higher grades, then high school, and eventually I became a college professor, learning all along from my students of all ages.
Teaching by day and attending college in the evening, it took ten years to complete my studies for a B.A. degree. By then I was married and the mother of two children. My little boy graduated from kindergarten, my little girl from diapers, and I from college all on the same day.
While my children grew I continued teaching and studying, in time earning a master’s degree and then a Ph.D. I also kept writing. In addition to the theses, I wrote articles, poetry, and the beginning of my first memoir. My children claim that the only lullaby they ever heard was the clicking sound of my typewriter, and whenever they reached for a snack into the refrigerator, all they fished out of the fruit bin were stacks of paper. (I had the habit of storing my manuscripts in the refrigerator for safekeeping against fire.) I am sure both claims are slightly exaggerated, and yet on reflection I can’t help but believe that my thirst for learning and urge to record all I have learned and remembered must have been taxing on my family.
My mother was our next-door neighbor and derived great joy from the company of her grandchildren, including the growing family of my brother Bubi, who came on frequent visits from his suburban Long Beach, where he served as principal of a Hebrew day school. My mother and I did attend his graduation and later his rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University.
On a brilliant day in July 1977, twenty-six years after we reached New York Harbor, Mommy and I landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv as new immigrants in Israel. By then my mother was in her eighties, my son was married, and my daughter was a freshman in college. I was facing a new marriage, and motherhood to my future husband’s teenage son and daughter.
During the twenty-two years that passed since that day, I continued conducting classes at my college, commuting between my new home in Israel and my old home in New York. This afforded me an opportunity to interrelate with my students and share in the lives of my children in America and my stepchildren in Israel, who in the interim have achieved successes as professionals and as dedicated parents. Participating in the lives of my grandchildren—their interests, talents, achievements, friendships, and aspirations—is a new, exciting chapter of my life. My brother and his wife recently sold their home in Long Beach, New York, where they lived for forty years, and moved to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, to live near their children and their growing families.
The decade Mommy spent in Israel were the happiest years of her life. Many years ago my husband and I had the privilege of fulfilling my mother’s last request and bringing the remains of her parents from Europe to be buried in Israel. A dam was being built on the Danube near the abandoned Jewish cemetery in Czechoslovakia, and my grandparents’ graves would have been submerged under the river.
Ten years ago, at the age of ninety-three, my mother died and found eternal rest in Jerusalem next to her beloved parents. The triple tomb has become a family shrine that, unlike every other trace of our past destroyed by the Holocaust, will remain a monument to our roots.
God blessed our long search with a home in Israel, where my family now has a permanent landmark for future generations.
Appendix A
Our Family After the Holocaust: Chronicle of Events
JUNE 1945 We return to Šamorín after liberation.
JULY 1945 We receive news of my father’s death.
SEPTEMBER 1945 I am back in school.
NOVEMBER 1945 A stranger returns Daddy’s coat.
DECEMBER 1945 I find out about Briha from Miki.
SPRING 1946 Miki and Barishna leave for Palestine.
JULY 1, 1946 I leave with the boys’ and girls’ camps for the Tatras.
JULY 7, 1946 Frieda leaves the Tatras. I am left alone in charge of the girls’ camp.
AUGUST 11, 1946 The children and I escape from the partisans in the Tatras.
SEPTEMBER 1946 I enroll at the teachers’ seminary in Bratislava.
MARCH 20, 1947 My brother leaves for America.
NOVEMBER 29, 1947 The UN votes to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish State; Zionist youths dance in the Square.
DECEMBER 1947-MARCH 1949 My involvement in work for the Briha.
FEBRUARY 1948 The Communists take over the government of Czechoslovakia.
MARCH 1948 My attempt to enroll in the Haganah camp is rejected; I am appointed school headmistress.
SEPTEMBER 10-22, 1948 My work in road construction above the Danube; I meet Vilo.
MARCH 8, 1949 Mommy and I are crossing the border to Vienna.
SEPTEMBER 1949 We leave Vienna.
SEPTEMBER 1949-OCTOBER 1950 Mommy and I are residents of Camp Feldafing.
OCTOBER 1950—FEBRUARY 1951 Mommy and I are residents of Camp Geretsried.
MARCH 19—30, 1951 Our last days in Germany.
APRIL 7, 1951 We arrive in New York.
Appendix B
Post-Holocaust Period:
Highlights of Chronology
MAY 7, 1945 Germany surrenders. The war ends in Europe.
SUMMER 1945 Displaced Persons Camps established in American and British Zones of Germany and Austria. President Harry Truman sends emissary, Earl Harrison, to visit D.P.s. His recommendation: 100,000 Jewish survivors be sent to Palestine immediately.
FEBRUARY 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommends that a binational Jewish-Arab government be set up in Palestine.
&n
bsp; NOVEMBER 1945–OCTOBER 1946 War crimes trials are held in Nuremberg, Germany.
APRIL 1947 General Assembly of the UN sets up eleven-nation board, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to deal with the Palestine impasse.
NOVEMBER 29, 1947 General Assembly of the UN votes to partition Palestine and establish sovereign Jewish and Arab states; beginning of widespread Arab attacks.
FEBRUARY 1948 Communists take over the government of Czechoslovakia.
MAY 14, 1948 Ben-Gurion reads the Declaration of Independence of Israel; seven Arab armies invade the infant state; Israel wages war of independence.
1949 First Knesset opens; Chaim Weizmann becomes the first president of Israel; David Ben-Gurion elected the first prime minister; cease-fire agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria; Israel becomes a member of the UN; 240,000 immigrants enter the country.
1951 Second Knesset is elected; tension on borders increases; mass immigration continues.
Glossary of Terms
Affidavit—a-fah-DAY-vit—a voluntary, sworn declaration in writing—LATIN
Briha—BRI-ha—flight, or escape—HEBREW
Bunker—BUN-ker—underground barrack—OLD SWEDISH
Burg—BOORG—castle—GERMAN
CARE (Cooperative American Remittances Everywhere)—nonprofit organization begun after World War II to send food and clothing overseas
Diaspora—die-AS-pa-ra—the dispersion of the Jews outside their homeland—GREEK
Eretz—EH-retz—land-—HEBREW
Fräulein—FROY-line—Miss—GERMAN
Ghetto—GE-toh—a part of a city or town where Jews were forced to live—ITALIAN
Gymnasium—jim-NAE-zee-um—classical secondary school—LATIN
Haganah—ha-ga-NAH—defense, voluntary fighting units, later to become the Israel Defense Forces—HEBREW
Halakhah—ha-LAH-kha—Jewish law—HEBREW
Hanukkah—HAH-noo-kah—Jewish holiday (usually in December) celebrating the successful revolt against Greco-Syrian occupation and liberation of Judea from religious oppression—HEBREW
Havera—ha-VEH-rah—friend if)— HEBREW
Kibbutz—ki-BUHTS—collective settlement, commune—HEBREW
Kuchen—KOO-khin—a yeast-dough coffee cake—GERMAN
Maccabees—MA-kuh-beez—Jewish patriots who led a successful revolt against the overwhelming might of the Greco-Syrian empire—HEBREW
Mizrachi—miz-RAH-khi—religious Zionist organization—HEBREW
Nazdar—NAH-zdahr—greeting—CZECH and SLOVAK
Nie nada—NEE NAH-duh—“Nothing doing”—RUSSIAN
ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation and Training)—network of vocational schools
Pan—PAHN—Mr.—CZECH and SLOVAK
Pharaohs—FAR-ohz—ancient Egyptian monarchs who enslaved the Jews—EGYPTIAN
Prater—PRAH-ter—famous Viennese amusement park
Raison d’être—rae-ZONE de-TRE—reason for being, rationale for existing—FRENCH
Riesenrad—REE-zen-rahd—giant wheel—GERMAN
Schmaltz—shmahltz—chicken fat—GERMAN, YIDDISH
Shaliah—shah-LE E -ah—emissary—HEBREW
Slečna—SLECH-nah—Miss—CZECH and SLOVAK
Talmud—TAL-mood—body of Jewish civil and religious law—HEBREW
Torah—TOHR-ah—the Pentateuch; the sacred text of Jewish law and teaching—HEBREW
Učitel—UCH-it-yel—teacher—CZECH and SLOVAK
UNO—The United Nations Organization
USSR—Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
White Papers—decrees the British government issued restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine
Yeshivah—yuh-SHEE-vuh—institution of Jewish learning—HEBREW
LIVIA BITTON-JACKSON, born Elli L. Friedmann in Czechoslovakia, was thirteen when she, her mother, and her brother were taken to Auschwitz. They were liberated in 1945 and came to the United States on a refugee boat in 1951. She received a Ph.D. in Hebrew culture and Jewish history from New York University. Dr. Bitton-Jackson has been a professor of history at City University of New York for thirty-seven years. Her previous books include Elli: Coming of Age in the Holocaust, which received the Christopher Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award, and the Jewish Heritage Award. Dr. Bitton-Jackson lives in Israel with her husband, children, and grandchildren.
About the photo on the front cover:
This picture was part of a family passport photo taken of Elli, her mother, and her brother in the winter of 1946. It was attached to an application form for an American visa. Elli proudly sports a permanent wave, a popular hairstyle at the time, and a hooded coat made by her mother from an army blanket. Although the American visa was not granted and her Czechoslovak passport has long lost its validity, the picture has remained in Elli’s possession.
My Bridges of Hope Page 21