Post-war Europe was devastated economically and socially and for many Jews who survived the Holocaust, it was
not a friendly place. Surviving Jews
struggled to get out of Europe and still faced many hurdles. Palestine was difficult to enter because
Britain controlled it and established blockades to keep immigrants out until Israel's independence in 1948. DP (displaced person) camps, some run by the American government, were established in Austria,
Germany, Italy and other countries to house many of the millions of war
refugees.
Many of these “displaced persons” were Jewish
concentration camp survivors who wound up behind barbed wire and faced harsh
conditions and continuing challenges finding countries that would accept them.
President Eisenhower relieved General Patton of his command largely because of
his indifference and the squalid conditions at the camps he commanded. The US
allowed some immigration of these refugees but there was considerable
Congressional opposition to those coming from central and Eastern Europe and to
Jews. This was due to the growing
communist scare and ongoing anti-Semitism.
Six months after I was born, my parents had been in France long enough to qualify to become naturalized citizens. My mother, of course, was a forced immigrant to France because of her deportation by the Germans to Gurs, a French concentration camp. My father certainly paid his dues to France by serving in the French Foreign Legion and his incarceration as a POW. My grandmother was sent to her death in Auschwitz by the French Vichy government and SNCF (French National Railways). Our parents' citizenship then qualified my brother and I to become French citizens. My birth (and my brother’s) in France did not automatically grant us citizenship as birthright citizenship does in the US. Even with French citizenship, my parents still always considered themselves refugees and wanted to leave Europe.
My father had family
in New York and wanted to immigrate to the US, which was enjoying a post war
economic boom. Of course to many Europeans at the time, US streets were still “paved with gold.” He initiated the process of obtaining a permanent
entrance visa from the American Consulate in Paris. Unfortunately, he
encountered one of America’s many discriminatory immigration policies.
What follows are highlights of America’s immigration laws and is not a comprehensive accounting.
In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. It was the first law to target a specific ethnic group and was not repealed until 1943.
In 1924 and again in 1952, the US passed immigration laws limiting immigration from Eastern Europe (and Southern Europe). The 1952 law abolished racial restrictions but still permitted quotas for nationalities and regions, thus still allowing discriminatory immigration.
The rationale for these laws in public and congressional debates is almost identical to the current debates. These immigrants are different; they are not assimilating; they will be a burden; and they are a threat to our jobs. I believe that these laws were fundamentally racially based, as the underlying concern was the threat to White America. It’s ironic that the definition of “White” has been constantly changing. Southern Europeans, including Italians, Greeks and Spaniards were at one time not considered white enough and their immigration to the US was restricted.
Countries,
including Romania where my father was born, that had been terribly oppressed
and conquered by both the Germans and Russians, had limits on their citizens
entering the US. The Russians and
Germans each murdered millions of civilians in Eastern Europe from the 1930's - 1940's.
My father was
repeatedly rejected for family visas to the US until a friend of his suggested
that he re-apply under my mother’s German birthplace. American immigration policies post-WW 2 were much more
open to German immigrants, including Nazis, than to Eastern European
immigrants. Even though she was never a German citizen,
our family was able to obtain visas to come to the US under the German quota. (American immigration policies were based on
country of birth-not citizenship)
We arrived in
New York by boat on the SS Flandre after a stormy voyage in December of 1953.
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| SS Flandre |
Ellis Island was no longer operational and we
landed somewhere on Manhattan’s west side. We must have passed the Statue of
Liberty like countless refugees and immigrants before us, but I have no memory
of that.
Our first home
was provided by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) at their dormitory on
Lafayette St. near Cooper Square in Manhattan. Today that dormitory is the
Joseph Papp Public Theatre. HIAS no longer focuses on Jewish immigration and its mission is now to rescue "people whose lives are in danger for being who they are."
http://www.hias.org/
http://www.hias.org/
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| Our first home in US - HIAS - now Joseph Papp Public Theatre |
Our family spent
a few weeks at the HIAS dormitory until we moved to our first apartment on Throop Ave in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. After about 6 months we moved to
Williams Ave in the East New York section of Brooklyn and I attended PS 174
from Kindergarten through 5th grade.
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| Polak Family - Brooklyn, NY - pre-chic era - circa 1956 |
My family arrived in the US with about $300. Except for the brief support from HIAS, there were no other government services available to us as immigrants. We were on our own. My father worked in New Jersey for Manischewitz making matzos, and my mother worked in a Brooklyn factory sewing labels into sweaters on a piece work basis. Her working conditions improved significantly when she joined the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and was able to get benefits including an hourly wage and health insurance.
East New York
was a diverse working class neighborhood.
My elementary school was excellent. In NYC, public schools were funded
through broad five borough taxation. There was a powerfully strong and effective
tradition of immigrant and working class children quickly moving up the
economic and educational ladder due to public financial commitment to
education. Far Rockaway HS, the local public school I attended, has 3 nobel laureates among its alumni. The support for public
education that my brother and I benefitted from extended to free college for
both us in the City University of New York. My parents had not even gone to
high school and as first generation Americans we both graduated from college
(and graduate schools).
I learned
English very quickly but many of the children I played with taunted me because
I was an immigrant. These children were
from families likely one or two generations away from being immigrants themselves.
In 1960, my
family had been in the US long enough to qualify and we became naturalized
American citizens. I went from being stateless at birth to having dual
citizenship. This is allowed under US law. My parents, like current
applicants for American citizenship, had to pass a civics test. It’s likely that many native-born Americans
would not be able to pass this test.
In 2004, with
France part of the European Union, my French citizenship allowed me to reside
and work in EU member states. To date, I have not taken advantage of that.
Dual citizenship
is psychically critical for me. I can’t forget how many Jews struggled to get
out of Europe during WW 2 but were turned away from all countries, including
the US. Although it’s not entirely
rational, if I ever needed to flee I want as many doors open to me as possible.
The US did not
respond adequately to the humanitarian crisis of European Jews and only allowed
132,000 Jews into the US between 1933 and 1945. The lack of a suitable empathic
response to the Jewish refugee crisis was the result of a nasty strain of anti-Semitism
that has continued to exist in the US. Even European children at ultimate peril
from Germany’s genocide of Jews were not immune to American anti-Semitism. When a special exception was proposed to allow them into the US, the wife of the US Commissioner of Immigration
remarked at a cocktail party: “20,000 children would all soon grow up to be
20,000 ugly adults.” (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History).
One of the most
shameful acts of FDR’s administration was the turning away of the ship St. Louis
with 908 Jewish refugees fleeing Germany in 1939. They were originally going to
be allowed into Cuba, but when Cuba denied them entrance as they moored in Havana Harbor, they pleaded with the US government to be allowed into America. They were
denied refuge and the boat turned around and went back to Europe where
approximately one quarter of those aboard was murdered in Nazi death camps.
Thank you for doing this Marcel! It is so interesting and so timely. Joel's father came from Apsa, where you grandmother came from.
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