Please welcome author Karen Wardamasky Borrow. Karen's written a book that I should write some day. The story of how my family came to America.
Hi, Karen. Please tell us about yourself.
I am a mother and grandmother, but I am also a child who never took the time to sit down with my father to hear about his past because I was too preoccupied with my own life. Then one day I looked at him and saw a tired old man with little time left on this earth. I decided to have that conversation, but it was too late. His memories were gone.
After he passed away, I became the daughter who would not let his death prevent me from discovering his story. With the help of diaries and letters I found among my father’s belongings, I began to learn about the ten years he spent in the Soviet Union.
Later, I discovered correspondences between the State Department, American Embassy and my family stored at the National Archives. I followed the winding trail of clues he left behind as well as uncovered my own as I sought to determine what happened to his family so many years ago after they left their home in New Jersey and later tried to return.
I am telling this story not only for my father but also to encourage other children to have that discussion with their parents and grandparents before their memories disappear.
What a great reason to tell your story, Karen. Where can readers find you?
Now we want to hear about your book.
On a December evening in 1931, a twelve
year old boy leaves his familiar life behind as he and his family sail out of
New York Harbor on the first leg of their journey to the Soviet Union. His
immigrant parents left their New Jersey home because they had been lured by the
promises of plentiful jobs in their homeland.
Years later that boy would tell his
children a few stories about his youth, but he never discussed the details. No
one asked how his family traveled to the Soviet Union to escape the Great
Depression or what it was like to return alone just months before the United
States became involved World War II.
After his death, his daughter began to
piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. She made it her mission to learn what horrors his family suffered in Russia
and the role he played in bringing them home. Genealogy research was the key to
unlocking the story of her unusual family history.
“Do Svidanya Dad” is the story
of that boy—Marty—written by his daughter, Karen. It means “until we meet again.”
Excerpt
Marty’s dreams of becoming a doctor were shattered by the sound
of a loud knock on the classroom door. No one spoke. Each student was fearful
of being snatched from the classroom by the uniformed officer of the secret
police who interrupted the lesson. One minute Marty was peering through the eye
of his microscope in biology class, and the next, he was pulled from class and
issued an ultimatum: renounce your American citizenship and become a Soviet
citizen or leave school.
While his family never intended to stay in Russia permanently,
Marty expected to live there until he completed his education and then return
to New Jersey as an American citizen educated abroad. That could no longer
happen. His life story, penned in his imagination, suddenly had to be rewritten
and the characters recast.
When he and his five siblings refused to become Russian
citizens, they were exiled from Leningrad and forcibly resettled in Novgorod.
They immediately began planning their exodus from Russia. They needed to secure
travel documents from the embassy and find enough funds to pay for their
transportation home. Raising the money would take time. They found employment
in Novgorod and wrote to their friends back in New Jersey asking for financial
assistance.
One year later, Marty found himself peering out the window of
the Trans-Siberian Railway as it chugged across the barren expanses of the
Soviet Union. Ten years after leaving New Jersey, he was finally returning
home, but this time he was alone.
Marty was not afraid to travel by himself, but his stomach
churned with uncertainty and guilt at having abandoned his family. His face
drained of color when he learned that he was the only one in his family
permitted to leave Russia. Anxious conversations and gut-wrenching
soul-searching resulted in the final decision. There would be more
opportunities to secure the others’ return to the United States once Marty was
safely home rather than from within the confines of the Soviet Union. He could
not look back or continue to carry the burden of guilt.
He took a deep breath and surveyed his surroundings. The train
was brimming with Jewish refugees–men, women, and children–many escaping Poland
after the Germans stormed into their country during the autumn of 1939. Some
were also traveling solo, separated from the security and companionship of
their families.
As endless forests of pine trees whipped past him, he couldn’t
help thinking how he, a young man from New Jersey, ended up alone on a train in
the Soviet Union. Before the move halfway around the world, he had been a happy
twelve-year-old boy who loved to caddie at the local golf course and play street
games in the neighborhood.
Back then he lived on a quiet street in the small town of
Rockaway where the biggest news in town was the annual Halloween pranks or the
arrest of someone’s dad for making moonshine in his basement. Oh, how he longed
for those days now!
After the stock market crash, his father lost his job at the
steel mill, but his parents were skillful at concealing their troubles. Pa
found odd jobs around town, and his twin sisters, Nancy and Helen, went to work
at the hosiery mill with his uncle Mark.
Marty heard the tales of families who lost their homes and of
children in tattered clothes forced to beg for food in the streets. But this
did not happen to his family, so he was shocked when his parents announced
their intentions to sell their house and move to Russia. The explanation was
that the Soviet Union, unlike most of the world, was isolated from the effects
of the Great Depression. Jobs were plentiful there, and his parents had family
back in “the old country.”
There was no arguing with his mother and father—just sad acceptance by Marty and his five siblings.
Within months, his parents sold their house, and they made arrangements to move
in December.
Marty wondered how different their lives would be if they never
left Rockaway. He would have a job, his sisters might be married, and he could
be an uncle by now, but he could not dwell on what may have been. All he could
do now was to focus on getting home to New Jersey and then helping his family
join him there. The enormity of the task was overwhelming, but he was
determined to succeed.
The compartment Marty rode in consisted of a long narrow
corridor down the middle, with clusters of wooden bunk beds on each side of the
aisle–two upper and two lower. Military officers patrolled the train,
constantly pulling the window shades down whenever they felt the view needed to
be concealed.
What could they be hiding, wondered Marty, but he
could not waste time on useless speculation. He needed to concentrate on
planning what to do once he arrived in Japan, where he would board a ship for
the next leg of his journey home.
Every day Marty found himself lost in his thoughts as he stared
out the window at the ever-changing landscape. It was hypnotic. Many of the men
on the train passed the time playing chess with each other. Marty was happy for
the diversion and companionship.
One day, his spell was broken by the excited cries of the
passengers as they passed Lake Baikal. This lake, the oldest and deepest in the
world, was reminiscent of the ocean which Marty recalled from the journey to
the Soviet Union. So much had happened since then–the worst being the death of
his brother.
He closed his eyes and recalled that December day in 1931 when
his family left their carefree world in New Jersey behind them. None of them
realized how much their lives would change.
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Thanks for sharing your story, Karen. Wishing you all the best.
