Russian Immigrant Betty Garoff

"When the soldiers came to look for us, we were hidden in a closet.  She fed them food and drinks until they were intoxicated." (Betty Garoff)

Shoemakers making army boots circa 1903 to 1905 courtesy http://www.thehistorialist.com/2012/11/at-museum-northampton-museums-art.html

In 1913, Betty's Garoff's father immigrated to the United States to avoid being drafted into the Russian Army during the First World War.  Her mother, still pregnant with Betty, sold salt illegally to put food on the table.  At the age of four or five, Betty and her brother were separated from their mother when their town was invaded by the enemy.  The children slept during the day in barns and travelled by night.  Eventually, a couple who knew Betty's grandfather, took them in and raised them as their own grandchildren.  "When the soldiers came to look for us, we were hidden in a closet.  She fed them food and drinks until they were intoxicated.

Reunited with her mother, her father had saved enough money to buy the family tickets to America. The family, with just the clothes on their back, made it as far as Amsterdam when Betty's brother developped an infection from a nail, thereby failing to pass the physical exam.  Their original visa had been for a particular ship on a particular day.  Now it was rendered null and void.  Betty's mother took her two children to Poland to apply for another visa.  They stayed with relatives in a Warsaw ghetto apartment.  Betty remembers the curfew that everyone had to observe; no one was permitted to leave or enter the gate after a certain hour.

In December of 1921, the Carmania set sail for America.  Betty and her family, staying in steerage, survived on hard boiled eggs and raw potatoes.  The Russian farm girl was bewildered by the sheer number of people coming and going at Ellis Island.  Betty waited and waited for her father to come and get her; all of her shipmates had already left when he finally arrived.  It was the first time he had laid eyes on her.  Her mother suggested:  "Stand up and show your father how tall you are."  The first time Betty saw New York's lower east side, she spotted immigrants huddled around metal drums filled with fire, warming their hands.


Betty and her family got a furnished apartment with an outdoor toilet in New York City.  Within a year and a half, her father opened a shoe repair business in the Bronx.  Because Betty only knew how to speak Yiddish, and not English, her classmates would help her to converse with the teacher.  Ten years after immigrating, Betty's mother gave birth to another girl, followed five years later by a boy.  Betty married a doctor, moved to Chicago and "lived a wonderful life."

The Bronx circa 1930's courtesy

http://urbanareas.net/info/resources/neighborhoods-bronx/fordham-bronx-history/.

Ukrainian Immigrant Esther Rosenbaum

"We both cried -- cried like never before to see each other, and that he was released.  It was a joy..."(Esther Rosenbaum)

Jewish wedding photo in Poland courtesy http://www.bh.org.il/jewish-community-zelechow-poland/.

Esther Rosenbaum, one of eight children, was born and raised in a small railroad town in the Ukraine. One of Esther's earliest memories is of a pogrom in her village.  Her brother, Yasha, was getting married when a train of bandits raided the town.  Esther's mom had the presence of mind to tell the bride to change out of her wedding dress.  She hid her in the basement.  The bandits, demanding to know the whereabouts of the bride, threw eggs at Esther's mother.  They turned their wrath on three musicians present at the wedding whom they hanged.  

Esther's mother put the rest of the family members in a wagon and covered them with straw.  They escaped the village and travelled 200 kilometres to Esther's grandparents house.  About a week later, the grandparents town was also raided by a pogrom.  Esther remembers her aunt being raped by Polish bandits.  

The family got back into the wagon and headed for the Russian border.  "We had to pay someone, what you would call a contraband to take us across the border.  We crossed and we all landed on the Romanian side  I remember walking up to our knees in mud.  I remember my father carry my brother, he was five, six years old...on his back."

Esther and her family lived in Romania for two years until they secured American visas.  Esther's mother was forced to stay behind to nurse her sister Tanya who had tuberculosis.  In 1923, they sailed across the Atlantic on the Byron.  Staying in the hold of the ship, Esther recalls everyone being sick.  They ate nothing but sardines for three weeks.  

Esther's aunt and uncle met them at Ellis Island.  The family settle din an apartment in the Bronx.  Esther's father followed her uncle into the banana business.  Esther and her siblings enrolled in school.  Being one of the older girls, it fell to Esther to cook and clean for her six siblings.  When Esther was 18, her father remarried.  "I was delighted.  I liked her.  She took a burden off my hands."

"The day I met my husband, I was taking a walk [with] a friend of mine.  It was the Fourth of July, and the two of us took a walk to Katonah Park, and there was my husband sitting there on the grass in the park..." Esther considered him to be handsome and ambitious.  It was the start of a marriage that would last 36 years.

Esther returned to Russia in 1958 to visit her brother Yasha, the one whose wedding had been interrupted by the pogrom.  However, when she arrived she was disappointed to hear that she couldn't see him:  he was in jail.  Yasha, who had fallen on hard times in his secondhand merchant business, was accepting help from his workers.  Someone squealed on him and he was arrested.

Finally, eight years later, released from prison, Yasha was reunited with "his little sister".  Esther pointed out however that she was no longer his little sister, she was a grandma.  Yasha maintained however that she would always be his little sister.  Esther recalled:  "We both cried -- cried like never before to see each other, and that he was released.  It was a joy..."

Banana docks circa 1906 courtesy https://www.pinterest.com/pin/248120260693484161/.

Note:  All of my September posts are taken from Ellis Island Interviews:  In Their Own Words by Peter Morton Coan.