As most of you know, I am a child of the Holocaust. After the war we were taken to a displaced person’s camp in Switzerland. For more than two years we waited for documents that would grant us the right to go to Eretz Yisrael.
The British were in control of our Holy Land and anxious to please the Muslims who opposed Jewish immigration. Anyone who arrived without proper papers would be deported to a displaced person’s camp built by the British in Cypress.
My parents did not want to subject their children to any more trauma.
“Enough camps, enough suffering,” they told us. “It’s time for us to live like a family again.” So one day my parents decided we would go to the United States. My mother had a sister living in Brooklyn and they had invited us many times to join them but my father’s priority was always to go to Eretz Yisrael. Conditions in Switzerland, however, had become unbearable.
So we embarked on a sea voyage to the America. We took the first ship available, a cargo freighter on which we endured an indescribably rough journey in the midst of a bitter winter on the turbulent Atlantic.
Finally, after two horrendous weeks, our ship docked in Norfolk, Virginia. We had no idea where we were.
We wandered around, not knowing where to go. Soon someone called the police. Talk about culture shock – here were uniformed men with guns who treated Jews with such kindness and compassion. It was something I never would have believed possible.
The police called the president of the local synagogue and the community took charge of us. Patiently they explained where we were and how we could get to New York. They bought us train tickets and soon we arrived at Grand Central Station in Manhattan.
My father in his black rabbinic hat and long black coat, my mother wearing something on her head that was supposed to pass for a sheitel, and we children dressed in ski outfits provided by the Jewish charity organization in Switzerland attracted much attention. We didn’t speak a word of English. Where to go? What to do?
So once again the police were called. New York’s Finest were just as eager as the Norfolk police had been to reassure and help us – and a Yiddish-speaking officer personally delivered us to the home of my uncle and aunt, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Kohn, in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
Actually, culture shock was not an adequate expression to describe our feelings. We had just come from Europe where police were identified with the torture and killing of Jews and now we were meeting policemen who were sympathetic and helpful – and one of them was even Jewish and spoke Yiddish! Were we dreaming? No, it wasn’t a dream; it was all so gloriously true.
My mom had a flair for the dramatic and told my older brother to knock on the door of my aunt and uncle’s home while we hid under the staircase. My mother instructed my brother to simply say, “I bring you regards from the Jungreis family that survived Bergen Belsen.”
Somehow my aunt figured out who my brother was and fainted. She quickly recovered and with joyous prayers and thanksgiving we celebrated our miraculous survival. We invited the policeman to celebrate with us. To this day I regret we did not have cameras to record that incredible moment of exaltation.
I relate this story so that you can understand what we experienced when we came America and metpolicemen in Norfolk and then in New York – men in blue who served with compassion, devotion, and commitment.