Helping my father clean out the basement, we came across many of his parents’ belongings, including old jewelry and personal belongings his mother brought with her from Poland. Shortly after, I stumbled upon a journal his mother used to document her journey on land and sea from Poland to America. Since most of it was in Yiddish, a language around which I did not grow up in, my dad remembered he had long ago translated it in a separate book. Most of the basement was cleaned out, so he let me take a look at it for personal enjoyment. It was one of the most intriguing and insightful narratives I had come across. It was a shame I had not come across it sooner. Curious, I found a few entries that really caught my attention.
January 25, 1925
The waters are cold and the tide unforgiving. It’s been almost five months, and only a few others and I have made the trip. Many had perished from malnutrition and harsh weather. I was used to such brutal winters visiting Warsaw, but I certainly hoped that would not be as pervasive in the Land of Opportunity, from which we were about fourscore miles away. I could see the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and, faintly, what I was pretty sure was the Brooklyn Bridge, not too far from where I planned to settle, in a small tenement on the Lower East Side. It is unfortunate my mother could not make the trip; as a fourteen-year-old I wasn’t sure how anyone my age could live by himself.
Taking a break, I pondered how dreadful the trip to Ellis Island must have been coming. We take it for granted that, in 2015, anyone can immigrate to the United States via many ports of entry, but in the early 20th Century ships were the only medium of immigration, where illnesses and malnutrition were not uncommon. Anyone who became infected along the journey was forced to turn back, rendering a six-month excursion moot.
March 3, 1925
I feel I have found a new life here. Many of those around here are also from Poland, some having arrived months or years earlier, and some just last week.
It was a simple way of life. For the last month we all gathered outside, bundled up, in a Sukkos-like house we used for hosting dinner. All the delicacies on which I grew up were all there, with as much in quantity as could serve twenty of us in a week. Things like gefilte fish, pickled herring, and lox invariably went the most quickly, so anyone who came to dinner late often missed out.
I did not have much of an education, but one Polish man, an immigrant himself, started up an umbrella company back in 1910 and his factory in the Lower East Side was looking for employees. Needing to make a living, and knowing education was not as feasible, I applied for and received the job, and I will officially start next Monday, March 9.
…
I had asked my father briefly about the Sukkos. Indeed, I am familiar with the holiday, but I do not remember it being constructed in January.
“It wasn’t an uncommon thing. While my mom kept kosher, a house of similar construction made a wonderful place to have dinner in the cold winter, since the tenements were often small and the heaters were usually broken.”
…
June 23, 1925
It has nearly been four months since my employment. But conditions were deteriorating, and my salary this week was cut from fifteen dollars a week to just three. The owner of the factory was forced to update the building to meet new federal and state codes. While I was making only a fifth of what I started out with, it could have been worse. Many were fired and forced to work in other factories under similar conditions. But I lucked out, since I had logged many hours of overtime and had enough stock in the company that I struck a deal: I kept my five stocks of the company (which I could sell at anytime, if the occasion were God forbid to present itself, for anywhere in the three- to four-figure range. In exchange, I accepted an eighty percent pay cut, figuring losing a job would have been worse since I would have had to start over.
My father had previously explained that she had been a chief buyer of this company, but I had no idea she started out immediately to improve conditions for her, even if it meant accepting an eighty-percent pay cut while keeping stocks that could just as easily disappear should the company have gone bankrupt the very next day. Indeed, I had long known about his communication acumen, having majored that in college, but I previously did not know that he got that from his parents. Sure enough, as the Great Depression ensued, the future became even more uncertain.
