How Holocaust Survivors Differ from Other Immigrants

Holocaust Survivors Came Alone

After the murder of Czar Alexander II, his son Alexander III became emperor of the Russian empire, including Poland. Alexander III hated all Jews and forced Jewish boys to become soldiers in the Russian army for twenty years so as to remove them from their Jewish families. This and other forms pf persecution led 2.5 million Russian-Polish Jews to come to the United States. There were no American immigration laws until 1924, so that the eastern European Jews came here with their families. They settled in east coast cities such as the lower east side of Manhattan as well as Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and some cities to the west. This meant that the Jewish communities here included all the relatives known to each other in Europe. The same parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. now lived next door as had been the case in Europe.

The refugees who came as a result of the mass murders in Germany and eastern Europe between 1933 and 1945 were mainly single. Ignored by the Jewish community, these single survivors were not only living with the heinous memories of their lives in Nazi Europe, they were now also excluded from the American Jewish community. The fact is that from 1945, after he surrender of  Germany, until Israel’s great victory over the Arab Nazis who came to kill the entire population of Israel, American Jews never gave the Holocaust survivors “the time of day” for 22 years. This failure of the American Jewish community to welcome their European brethren led to truly catastrophic nightmares suffered by the survivors of Hitler’s empire, who now were also rejected by the American Jewish community.

There were three reasons most holocaust survivors came alone. The first were the so called “Kindertransports.” German Jews sent their children in groups to England and then to the United States. The parents knew they would never see their children again because America and England refused to admit adult Jews.  The children, once arrived in America, were distributed among American families, Jewish or not, where they were generally used as domestic servants. After the Second World War was over, these Jewish children became single adults. The European relatives had been murdered and here they were alone. The Jewish community rejected them, even going  so far as to tell the German Jewish immigrants “Too bad Hitler didn’t get all of you arrogant Germans.”

The second reason most Holocaust survivors came alone were the American immigration laws. After 1924, Congress passed laws requiring each immigrant to have an American sponsor who had enough wealth to guarantee that the immigrant would not apply for American relief. The sponsor had to furnish bank statements proving he could support the immigrant for five years, if needed. This meant that numerous American sponsors invited only the father and husband of a family to come here alone, with the assumption that once here, this man could find additional sponsors to bring his family to America.  However, on September 1, 1939, German armies invaded Poland. All borders and communications were closed. No one could emigrate to America anymore, so that the fathers of European Jewish families were left alone. Rejected by the American Jewish community, many of these refugees committed suicide. Many others married non-Jews, having learned that the American Jewish community viewed them with contempt.  

The third reason most holocaust survivors came here alone was that after the surrender of the German army, only single Jews emerged from the death camps. Almost all survivors were the only ones to still be alive after their families, including little children and the old, had all ben gassed to death. The single survivors, both men and women, sometimes met in Displaced Persons camps in Europe and founded new families there. My son-in-law Sam Balderman, MD, was the son of parents who both had survived the slaughter of their first families and who gave birth to him in Austria after the war.

Even these damaged souls were treated like “skunks at a picnic” by the American Jewish community, which finally recognized us holocaust survivors after Israel was almost destroyed in 1967, but miraculously and with tremendous courage, survived the Nazi Arabs who had come to kill them.

After 1970, The Red Cross announced that they had collected the names of all the Jews murdered in Europe by the Christian population. I sent a letter to Red Cross headquarters listing all my relatives and received a letter naming each person and the place where they were murdered. I wept all day.

Shalom u'vracha.

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