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32. The Voyage to the United States We boarded the boat on a Monday evening. There were about three hundred DPs in all. The women were put on one floor and the men on the floor beneath them. On the top floor were the captain and crew. After assigning us to beds, we were taken to the dining area, where there were tables set up, and told to sit down and eat. The food was delicious. There were delicacies like grapefruit that I had never seen. I had to ask the waiter how to eat it. We were supposed to leave the harbor that evening, but a dense fog delayed us until the next morning. The first three days were beautiful, like going on a cruise, until we left the English Channel, and then the boat started pitching. That evening, when we went into the dining room to eat, the tables and dishes were going up and down and a lot of dishes were broken. We couldn't eat, so we went back to our bunks. Since the men were on the bottom floor, each wave hit the side ofthe boat next to us and we thought the boat was breaking open. The whole night I couldn't sleep for the bouncing. The next morning I crawled down from my bed to go to the deck for some fresh air, but the boat was still pitching. My head started spinning and I fell down. I crawled back to my bed. All my friends were seasick. A few who reached the deck never came back to the bottom; they just covered themselves and sat on the deck until we reached New York. For me the seasickness lasted three days. After that, I felt a little better. My wife was seasick for the whole fourteen days of the voyage. 172 The Shadow of Death Several times the captain had us put on our lifejackets. Once a little girl ran up and started screaming, "The boat is sinking." A toilet on the women's floor had overflowed. That is the way it went until March 2. Because it was late, the ship anchored a few miles from the harbor. The moment the sick ones who had wanted to be thrown overboard heard that they would see New York the next day, their sickness disappeared. Everyone ran to his room and started shaving and gettingdressed up so he would make a good impression on the family that would be waiting at the dock. Genya and I got ready. We couldn't wait for the moment when we would meet my uncle. I didn't know what I would say to him. I remembered the clothes they used to send me when I was a child, very expensive things. All the DPs were nervous. We were running back and forth to the deck to see what we could. There were only a few searchlights. The last night on the boat no one slept. At 6:00 AM small tugboats started pulling the ship into the harbor. All the passengers were on deck waiting to see New York. They took us past the Statue of Liberty. Everyone stood with large eyes and open mouths as we came close to the dock and saw before us huge skyscrapers. As the boat anchored and we started getting off, we could hear screaming and crying-this time, of happiness as families met. We were finally free from the shadow of death. Here we would begin our new lives. ...

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