Transcending Darkness: A Girl’s Journey Out of the Holocaust

25. Voyage to America

25 Voyage to America I n mid-July 1947, we finally gathered our few belongings and said good-bye to Max and David. They too had applied to go to America and awaited their turn. We were glad that they would follow us. We hugged and parted with our friends. Most of them I never saw again. We left and took a train to Munich and from there to the preembarkation camp in Bremerhaven. We stayed with Stefka and Fishel in Munich for one week. We spent a great deal of time at the American Immigration Office being processed for the voyage to America, and saying good-bye to our friends. We were inoculated, photographed, and given stamped identity cards printed in English. They were in fact issued by the Hebrew Immigration Society, but I did not know the difference. When I held my new ID, I felt strangely validated : I was “somebody” again. I possessed two other documents I had acquired during our stay in Hof that acknowledged my existence: a registration issued by the German police office, dated October 10, 1945, and a red cardboard ID with a stamped photograph and my fingerprint, dated April 1946. I guarded the red cardboard ID with utmost care. I thought that without it no one would believe that I was myself. At the same time, I felt diminished by it. It says in bold print, in English and German: “Legitimation for former political prisoners.” I was not a political prisoner! I had no political views. I had only hope—I was a child. I was a Jewish child with a missing identity, missing address of origin, and missing citizenship. In addition , my name is carelessly written on this red ID card. I do not like to look at the police residence registration. It reminds me that I was “Staatenlos” (stateless), without legal protections and entitlements. Still, I guarded these documents with great care until I donated them to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, with the assurance that they would be well protected. That happened after I had been an American citizen of long standing, with full and deeply appreciated privileges. On the day of our departure from Munich, we collected our cardboard suitcases. Stefka and Fishel escorted us through the city to a train depot designated for refugees heading for Bremerhaven, six hundred kilometers away. It was a large, fenced-in camp, cluttered My documentation card classifying me as a “former political prisoner,” 1946. Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Documentation reporting our arrival, Hof, 1947. Voyage to America 175 We spent, roughly, one bewildering week at the Bremerhaven pre-embarkation camp, a wide-open field with lines of barracks and an encircling wire fence. It had likely been a German military base during the war. We had no routine to follow, except to wait for daily directions. We were housed in barracks with strangers from all over Europe and shared with them a fevered excitement and concern whether we would find America as we hoped or pictured it to be. We took our meals in a common dining hall and watched movies shown for our entertainment. To overcome loneliness, groups with common backgrounds clustered under shady trees to share the latest gossip. I liked to observe the vivacious German GI brides who sat together and giggled with joy as they talked about their bridegrooms waiting for them. Their long, mascara-coated eyelashes, their attractive clothes, and the lightness in their laughter fascinated me. While we were in Bremerhaven waiting for our ship to come, someone from HAIAS with people, luggage, and friendly orderlies who calmed the tumult and directed people to assigned assembly points and then to the trains. Again we boarded a freight train that was not meant for human transport, which carried frightening associations. But this freight train ride, though not worry free, remains in my memory as a flight to freedom, entirely unlike the rides in those other freight trains that sped furiously into the end of life. Saying good-bye to our cousins, Stefka and Fishel, Munich, 1947. Next stop: Bremerhaven and then America! (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) came to visit us and gave us ten dollars. I don’t remember whether the gift was ten dollars for all three of us, or ten dollars each...