LITMIR.BIZ

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at an amazing pace and his reading skills are—or were—far above the other children.” She apologizes over and over that I can’t stay in her classroom. I am to be sent to a special school for special children.

      When the HIAS lady hears “special children,” she reaches over and removes my patch. “Give me a week.” She says lots more stuff to the teacher but I only understand that I can’t go to this school with my eye patch and the HIAS lady is planning to figure something out. They negotiate lots of mystifying plans that I don’t understand in English or in German. The outcome is that I have a one-week grace period in the school—without the patch. Hooray!

      The HIAS lady fishes a notebook out of her fat briefcase. She writes really fast. Mutti keeps insisting that not wearing the patch will set my progress back. The teacher insists that there has been no progress and that with the patch I am both blind and unhappy. The HIAS lady ignores my mother and just keeps writing. Then she snaps her notebook shut and walks out, leaving Mutti and the teacher arguing in different languages.

      A few days later we’re in an eye clinic that has several doctors who are “specialists.” I practice saying the word over and over while I sit in the waiting room. I visit with several of the specialists, sometimes one after another and sometimes in pairs. They aim their little flashlights into my eyes until I see pretty dots floating by. Everyone seems amused that the dots only float past my left eye. When the examinations are all over, two tall doctors wearing white coats sit with my mother. The older one speaks German. He tells Mutti that he was raised in Germany and came to the United States as a boy, “Just like your son.”

      “Oh doctor, I’m so happy we can talk,” Mutti bubbles.

      Then the doctor who momentarily brought joy to my mother changes the mood. Bluntly he announces that my right eye is blind, that it will always be blind, that I am not lazy nor is my eye lazy and that Mutti is to stop torturing me. My mother tries to argue by reviewing what an earlier doctor said about the need for a patch. The younger doctor explains very slowly and scientifically in English that the earlier doctor was wrong, that my left eye is almost perfect, that I’ve already made great progress toward living with one eye and that I will continue to adjust.

      The HIAS lady is translating like mad. When she catches up, the younger doctor adds, “The boy’s right eye will never improve. Blind!” We all watch as he throws the eye patch into a waste basket. With that, he and his colleague stand up and leave the room.

      As my mother starts to reach for the patch, the taller, stronger HIAS lady grabs Mutti’s arm and guides her out the door. I follow. When we reach the sidewalk, the HIAS lady points us to the nearest subway station and tells us that she has other business in this neighborhood. On the subway train home, it is Mutti’s turn to sulk. I’m overjoyed and I know that tomorrow kindergarten will be wonderful. I start to sound out some words on a red, white and blue advertising placard: U-N-C-L-E S-A-M.

       XII. MY FIRST SEDER IN AMERICA

      MUTTI DISLIKES HER JOB making fabric flowers in a factory. One day she describes to us how she twisted green paper around wire to make stems. On another day she reports that she attached yellow petals to green stems for the entire day. Her hands hurt. She hates work—any kind of work. “In the good days, before Hitler,” she tells me, “I didn’t have to work. Women of my class didn’t work.” She looks at my face, “Do you remember Grete? That was the maid who took care of you. When you napped, she cleaned the apartment. Then came Hitler and he took all that away.”

      I do remember Grete, a skinny girl who lived with her parents in a Hannover suburb and had a long bus trip to and from our home in the center of town. One day I overheard a conversation between Grete and Mutti. There was some talk about how Christians could no longer work in Jewish factories, shops and homes. Grete never visited again. Instead we had those scary visits from the Gestapo.

      Mutti often explains that she’s from a different class and hopes that soon she’ll be able to stop working. I’m a bit confused. Am I also different? Different from Papa? Papa loves to work.

      Papa finds work in a bakery on the east side of Manhattan. It’s a long subway ride to and from the Strauss apartment in Washington Heights. Papa comes home covered with a white powder. He tells us that he breathes flour all day and that the ovens are hot and the bread smells good. Papa is happy to be working. Each Friday he receives an envelope filled with money—his pay for working. Mutti spends some of the money on groceries and Papa gives some to Mr. Strauss for rent. And Papa starts saving. One penny at a time. One day he will be self-employed again. He has a dream. He tells us about it at almost every dinner.

      For Papa, the subway ride is a time to read. He picks up newspapers abandoned by other commuters. Papa’s fourth-grade education did not prepare him to be a sophisticated reader. And unlike Mutti, he had no courses in English. Like me, he has to sound out the letters and guess at the words. The subway is his classroom. And the newspapers help him keep up with events in Europe. After all, it’s the spring of 1940 and the European war is picking up momentum.

      At the end of March, Papa is offered a second job. The bakery owns a tenement right next door. The manager has been unable to find a janitor. Would Papa like this opportunity? It would mean free rent and Papa could walk to the bakery.

      On the first day of April, we move to the East Side with our few possessions and start buying a few pieces of furniture—used furniture when we can. The bakery manager is so happy to find someone to do this dirty work that he throws in a few dollars to help buy dishes and towels and a couch. The previous janitor left a huge brown icebox and a metal kitchen table with a bright red ring around the entire top surface. We buy four used straight-backed wooden chairs, perfect for our kitchen. They’re painted green to go with the paint on the kitchen wall.

      Papa’s job as janitor is to take the garbage cans out each morning in time for the daily pick-up. Several times each week he mops the hallways and the steps from the third floor all the way down to the cellar. Mutti makes clear that she doesn’t mop floors or dust railings or touch other people’s garbage. However, with her modest English skills, she’s in charge of collecting rent and showing empty apartments to prospective English-speaking tenants. Thanks to the bookkeeping courses she had in high school, she becomes the bookkeeper for the building.

      It is April 22, 1940, a warm spring day in New York City. We’re sitting in the kitchen of our first American apartment. The table is set for our first Passover Seder in the United States. No more Gestapo. No more hiding. No more fear.

       Haggadah brought from Germany

      We’ve lived in this dark, poorly ventilated New York tenement for just a few weeks. The kitchen has no window. However, if we leave the oversized door to the adjoining bathroom open, we can see the outside world from the kitchen table. The bathroom window looks out on a shaft of air surrounded by bricks and more windows. The courtyard, perhaps 30 feet square, allows for minimal light and fresh air. New York City is warm and humid this April. Sounds from many open windows echo in the three-story shaft. Neighbors have few secrets. Fights in the Hennessey household and parties at the Francos became public news. Laundry lines allow soot-gathering underwear to dry. Smells from courtyard trash containers waft into our first-floor apartment window.

      I daydream often about our two-week long sea voyage that I spent mostly with crew. Perhaps I’ll become a sailor. Right now I’m thinking about the last morning when Papa held me up to see the Statue of Liberty. I remember that Papa talked about the meaning of the statue—about freedom and a new life and about the Promised Land.

       Else Nussbaum (Omi)

      We are free! An appropriate insight for our first American Passover. The Seder table looks festive with candles lit and almost-new Passover dishes provided by my Uncle Max, who came to the United States a year before we

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