Branches Book

BRANCHES

no time to rest. Tomorrow we leave for New York. We are going to find a larger Jewish community. Not many Jews have stopped in Baltimore anyway. It’s so much hotter here than in Bremen, it’s almost unbearable. When we first arrived, I had to keep my coat on because when we left we sewed all our money and jewelry into our clothes. This way, we could turn out our pockets and not get robbed of what little money we had. Not to say there’s very much left, we’ve already opened up three of the four coats with our jewelry sewn in. Now we have to spend carefully what we have left, so we can’t get nice food, but it is not like there are any Jewish delicatessens in Baltimore anyway. Once we get to New York I will have to find a job. I don’t speak any English yet, but maybe I can get a job using Russian or Yiddish. I wonder how our cousins still in Ataki fair… I hope they escaped as well. It was very scary when we left. It seemed like the pogroms were going to start again. When I was just a baby, my grandparents were killed in a pogrom, one of many attacks against Jewish minority communities occurring in Eastern Europe, by an angry mob. We were called all sorts of things in those pogroms. My papa says that he and his family were even called “Turkish conspirators”. He says sometimes he wishes that the Turks had never lost Moldova to Russia nearly a century ago in the Russo-Turkish War of 1812, and that the Ottomans were far more accepting of religious minorities like Jews. I, however, am hopeful for our new life. December 1st, 1916, New York, New York, America The line was incredibly long. I think there are more immigrants coming to America now than when I arrived. I waited to get my naturalization papers, to become an American citizen. I’m not going back to Ataki, or to anywhere in Russia. Especially now since the Bolsheviks are in power. There must be more pogroms than ever. I am certainly glad we escaped the violence. New York is also simply a great city! The streets are made of stone and concrete instead of wooden boardwalks like in Ataki. However we don’t have the money to live in a better home than in Ataki. We’re living in a one-room apartment with no plumbing or heating. I’ve suggested to Mama and Papa that we move to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. It’s got a Jewish community just like New York’s, and it’s a better life. For what we pay here, we could get a house in Pittsburgh, a house with heating and plumbing. It is a long way however, so we’ve been saving up for train tickets. Thankfully, American trains are much cheaper than those available in Europe. Thank goodness I’m finally getting my citizenship, the landlord has been raising the price of rent on our building, and threatens to turn us over to the Department of Immigration if we don’t pay it. Honestly, this would all be bearable if it wasn’t for those dreadful rats. I can’t even sleep at night. I’ll just be drifting off to

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