Allentown

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=110 BGCOLOR="#666699" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="04200840erlcjm.gif"> <div> <B>Head of the Line</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFFCC" FACE="Arial" ><B>     |    </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#FFFFCC" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Head of the Line"><U><B>Home</B></U></A></FONT></div> <div> back to<B>  </B><A HREF="id3.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Excerpts"><U><B>Excerpts</B></U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=190 BGCOLOR="#CCCCFF" TEXT="#080000" background="03c11c00egdysm.gif"> <div> <A HREF="id10.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Shtetl"><U>'Shtetl'</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id8.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Deportation"><U>Deportation</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id9.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Labor Group 104/108"><U>Labor Group 104/108</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Flossenburg"><U>Flossenburg</U></A></div> <div> <B>Allentown</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contents"><U>Contents</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="83" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#3333CC" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16 WIDTH="71"><div> <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering"><U><B>Order</B></U></A></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=370 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Allentown</B></div> <div> We sailed from the port city of Bremen, Germany on November 18, 1949. The vessel that brought us to the New World was the SS General S.D. Sturgis, a converted military troop transport whose namesake was a Union officer during the Civil War.</div> <div> Filled with mixed feelings of anguish, pain, delight and hope, Nina and I nevertheless were overjoyed to finally leave European soil that was saturated with the blood of our immediate and extended families. But we were apprehensive about arriving in a new land, not knowing the language (although Nina spoke a little bit of English already), having no trade and no relatives. The only family that we could expect was our co-religionists, the Jewish community. Young and full of hope, we were determined to overcome all the obstacles, the same as millions of other immigrants who came here before us and still do today.</div> <div> The Atlantic was not very friendly; we encountered angry and stormy seas typical of November. Nina had a bad case of seasickness. I suffered less, but was not completely spared. Finally, 12 days and 12 nights later, we reached the American coast. On the morning of November 30, 1949, we arrived at a Boston pier. It took a whole day to go through the immigration procedures. Those immigrants who had relatives in the US had an easier time with the immigration officers. Since we had no one waiting for us, we and a few others wound up being the last ones to get through the formalities. By then it was dark outside.</div> <div> A female representative of the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrants Association) worked with Nina and a few more people, as well as me. Although our papers listed our final destination as High Street, in Newark, New Jersey, the young woman recommended that we go to Allentown, Pennsylvania, instead - "truly a nice city," she said. This was the first time either of us had ever heard of it.</div> <div> "Where is Allentown?" we asked her.</div> <div> "It's between New York and Philadelphia."</div> <div> "Fine," we responded, "we have no uncle in New York, and no aunt in Philadelphia - so let it be Allentown."</div> <div> Around 9 p.m., she took us with another group to the rail station in Boston, and put us on a train to New York. "In New York, when you get to Penn Station, the HIAS representative will be there to take care of you," she assured us.</div> <div> We arrived in Penn Station in the early morning, but nobody was there to greet us. So we waited on the platform, not knowing where to go. Some of the immigrants were eventually met by their relatives and whisked off. But Nina and I stood there with our meager hand luggage and waited for a HIAS representative to come. Scared and bewildered, we waited probably no more than 50 minutes, but to us it felt like an eternity. Nina started to cry. Finally a man approached us, speaking in Yiddish and identifying himself as from HIAS. He apologized profusely for being late. Then he said it was very easy for him to recognize us. Why? we asked. Because, he smiled, only "greenhorns" would stand here on the platform instead of in the waiting room. Beyond that, our European clothing clearly gave us away.</div> <div> The HIAS agent led us out to the street where he had a taxi waiting. When we got in, he told the driver to take us to the Hotel Marseilles on 103rd Street. (Nina and I learned that immigrants called this place "<I>Avraham Avinu's </I>Hotel," because our patriarch Abraham was known for his hospitality.)</div> <div> My first impression of New York? Even though it was early in the morning and the streets were empty, I noticed how well lit everything was. And it was windy. I saw newspapers flying about the street. In Europe, even in 1949, paper was still very scarce, so I thought this had to be a very rich place for paper to be everywhere.</div> <div> At the hotel, the man from HIAS registered us, and we got a room somewhere on one of the higher floors, 20 or 25 flights up. This was the first time in our lives that we were in so tall a building.</div> <div> In New York, I had a friend named Max Steimetz, who had arrived a year earlier and lived in the Bronx. Between 1948 and 1949, we had corresponded. Max and I had been released from the sanatorium in Gauting together, and in Geretsried we were roommates. Now, so close to him again, I was very eager to let him know that we arrived in the Golden Land. Descending to the lobby, I asked at the front desk of our hotel how much it would cost to send a post card. Handing me one, the clerk said it costs one cent. I wrote to my friend Max that we arrived safely, and that I would try to come see him.</div> <div> The next morning, December 1, Nina went to the Bronx to visit a very good friend of her mother's. Flora Adin came to America after the war, but earlier than we did. It was only after Nina left our hotel that I decided to go see Max. I was about to have my first experience on a New York subway. Along the way, I somehow managed to find people who could speak Yiddish and give me directions. In the middle of a workday, I arrived at his apartment; understandably, Max wasn't home. So I knocked at his neighbor's door. A woman opened it a crack, saw me - this tall man in European hat and long overcoat - and instantly slammed the door in my face. Calling through the door in Yiddish, I announced that I just arrived from Europe and that I'm looking for Max Steimetz. To my luck, she understood. She opened the door and now graciously let me in. Mr. Steimetz comes home between four and five o'clock, she said, so I asked her to please give Max the message that I was at the Hotel Marseilles on 103rd Street. Instead of simply taking the message, she became very concerned. She lived in New York all her life, she said, and never went on the subway alone! She was concerned about my traveling back to the hotel. I guess I was too naïve to be nervous about it. And I did manage to get back okay. Later that evening, Max came to see Nina and me. We were extremely comforted to see and talk with someone whom we knew from before - even though he cautioned us that life for new immigrants is not a bed of roses.</div> <div> The next day, Nina and I left New York City by train and arrived in Allentown in the afternoon. At the station we were met by three ladies from an informal refugee aid committee responsible for housing new immigrants, including Mrs. Sadie Cohen, who would become a lifelong friend of ours. These women brought us to the Jewish Community Center and introduced us to the Director, George Feldman, who told us that they have a room for us in the apartment of another immigrant family. Mr. Feldman felt this would help make our adjustment here easier.</div> <div> He also advised us to change our last name from Jakubowics to Jackson. "It would be a good idea," he said, "because 'Jakubowics' is hard to spell, let alone pronounce." Here we were, two bewildered immigrants, and we thought that this man probably knew best: changing our name would be beneficial to our livelihood. "Jakubowics" literally means "son of Jacob," so "Jacobson" would have been a possible choice, but Mr. Feldman suggested Jackson, "because it's shorter."<B> </B>So we accepted his advice, and he had Mrs. Cohen escort us to the local refugee administration office. There, she spoke on our behalf to an official that we wanted to change our name. All this took place within our first few hours in Allentown.</div> <div> A year or two later I began to regret our decision, but by then it was too late. I thought about it a great deal. I was the only survivor of my martyred Jakubowics family and I had agreed to a name-change. At least I kept my Jewish name, Michael, given to me by my parents when they brought me into the covenant of Abraham. When one is called to the Torah, it's done by one's given Hebrew name and father's name. Hence I'm known in Jewish circles as Michael <I>ben</I> (son of) Avraham Zalman. Ultimately, I came to terms with this name issue. I realized that Slavic-sounding family names often were forced on our great-great-grandparents when they lived in Slavic-speaking European countries. Although I struggled with my name-change decision originally, I can say now that I am happy I discarded a name forced on my family, and adopted, of my own free will, an American name.</div> <div> The first 10 years in America were physically and emotionally very hard. We experienced the normal process that millions of immigrants went through in a new land, without a trade, without knowing the language and working at jobs that were not very fulfilling. In Yiddish there is a very appropriate saying for this process: <I>pok'n in muslan</I>, chicken pox and measles, meaning that everyone has to go through it. At the same time, despite the difficulties of those first years, they were also the most exalted and happy years in our lives here in America.</div> <div> Here the sun rose for us again, and Nina and I were blessed with a son Jacob (Ya'akov, named for her father), who was born in 1954. One year later we were able to put a down-payment on a beautiful home. Three and a half years later, in 1958, our daughter Renata (Rivkah, named for my mother) was born. There's no way to take out an insurance policy with G-d to have physically and mentally capable children. We were lucky and very grateful that both have grown healthy and strong. Having able-bodied children lightened the load of the already heavy concerns any couple has in building and supporting a family. Nina and I worked very hard at a number of jobs until we were able to start and build our own manufacturing company, Nina Sportswear.</div> <div> Thank G-d we could afford to give our children a good education; most importantly, we were merited to create a new Jewish generation, to continue the chain that started with Abraham our Patriarch and has continued unbroken for nearly four millennia.</div> <div> I know that Nina and I were probably overprotective with our children, and they may have resented this. When they were young, most likely they couldn't understand why we behaved the way we did. Unfortunately and indirectly, they too were victims of the <I>Shoah</I>. They never knew what it was like to have a grandmother or a grandfather, aunts and uncles and cousins.</div> <div> Nina and I differed, in general, about mentioning the <I>Shoah </I>to our children when they were very young. Understandably, Nina to this day has difficulty talking about that dreadful time. I feel, on the other hand, that we dare not conceal from them what happened to our families. They needed to know why they didn't have any close relatives, where their Mom and Dad came from, and what transpired before they came into this world.</div> <div> Jewish history is replete with tragic chapters. If my <I>Shoah</I> recollections contribute something worthwhile to our recorded history, part of the thanks must go to my children who over the years pushed and prodded me to jot down notes and write about our great martyred family, so gruesomely cut down. </div> <div> But today, with Nina at my side, I am once again at the head of the line - our family line. We survived the Holocaust. We witnessed the birth of not one but <I>two</I> new generations of Jews, our children and then our grandchildren. Thank G-d, my family, nearly exterminated, thrives anew.</div> <div> <A HREF="id30_m.htm" TITLE="Allentown"><U><I>Back to top</I></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="469" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#0000FF" BORDERCOLORDARK="#FFFFFF" FRAME="VOID" RULES="COLS" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16 ><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Reviews"><U>Review</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Photo Gallery"><U>Photo Gallery</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="27"><div> <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Map"><U>Map</U></A></div> </tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Holocaust Resources"><U>Holocaust Resources</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Giving Testimony"><U>Giving Testimony</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering"><U>Ordering</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>