Sitting in front of the window, 80 years have gone by, Vermont’s green mountains that were out in the distance moments ago are gone: transformed as if by magic into the city where I had once lived. My eyes close, my mind travels back in time to the place that long ago was my home.
My memories of my earliest years are vague, fractured, shadowy, flashbacks. What I really know of those years are the bits, pieces and stories my parents and grandmother Sara told him. Together they form the story of a refugee family fleeing the Nazis with their infant son. Their good fortune was that someone of great influence helped them get visas when the British government stopped issuing visas to Jews trying to leave Germany and Austria. That person was the Dean of St. Paul’s in London who pulled the strings needed to get the family out of Austria.
It was on the 3rd of September 1939, their escape from Austria i had my first birthday in London with my parents. That same day France and England both declared war on Germany for invading Poland, World War Two had officially begun. A week later my father Wolfgang was in an internment camp on the Isle of Mann. He was there with hundreds perhaps thousands of other men that had fled the Nazis. The British government put them on Mann because feared that some these men could be a potential 5th column saboteurs and spies for the Germans.
There was little that he could do to help my mother and me other than write to her as the mail flowed without interruption to and from the mainland. At some point my father started a class in the camp teaching English. He earned enough to send money to support my mother and me in London. Teaching took him out from the depression he was in caused by separation from me and my mother: and, not knowing what was happening to his family and friends in Austria.
My mother in her later years was able to talk about the time we alone in London during the German bombing campaign. When the air raid sirens sounded my mother carried me into the underground station that served as a bomb shelter for civilians. The bomb shelter was over crowded, damp, cold, and smelled of urine and excrement: her English shelter mates became quite unfriendly when they heard her German accent. Like my father she too was depressed and for the same reasons he was. After that she refused to go down into the air raid shelter: instead, when the sirens sounded, she would turn the lights off draw down the opaque curtains and lock the door. After she heard the first explosions, she picked me up in her arms and went out onto the balcony of the apartment to watch London burn. I suspect that she lost hope and was suicidal. When the bombings intensified the British government, ordered all women and children evacuated from London and resettled in the countryside for their safety
After almost two years in the internment camp Wolfgang was desperate to be with Hanna and Joshua. He realized the only ways for him to get out of the camp was to either drop dead, wait for the war to end or, immigrate. Deciding the best option was immigrating so he wrote letters to members of the American side of his family asking if they would sponsor his family. Germany and America were not at war his letters were received by his relatives. Months passed before my father got a response from his cousin, Leo, a postal clerk. Leo and his wife Fanny agreed to sponsor my family. The couple had two kids and at best were of modest means took on the responsibility. Sponsoring immigrants was a big deal it required the sponsor to take financial responsibility for them. At the time there was no support for immigrants from Federal or State government if they became indigent. With the help of the HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society) the family got approval to immigrate to the USA.
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My father was released from the internment camp and was reunited with my mother and me: we left England on the ship Samaria in a convoy headed for New York. The Atlantic was rough and the ever-present threat of German U-boats made the voyage unpleasant, and stressful for everyone on board. The voyage took longer than usual as the ships had to travel in zig zag patterns to make it more difficult for the German U-boats to aim their torpedoes. In the mid Atlantic the convoy came under attacked by a U-boat and one of the ships sank with all on board.
Many days later in New York Harbor at the sight of the Statue of Liberty a spontaneous wave of relief, joy, tears and celebration swept over everyone on The Samaria. My parent’s felt fortunate to have arrived safely in the United States of America. They left the ship on the 3rd of September 1941 it was my birthday I was three years old.
The Golden Land America proved a hard place for Wolfgang and Hanna. Their first home was a small apartment in a run down, vermin infested building. The two windows of their apartment faced and were only a few yards away from the 3rd Avenue Elevated Train tracks. They could see the passengers in the trains as they rumbled past their windows. The noise and vibrations from the trains of the El stressed the couple. That, the roaches and their poverty caused major arguments between Hanna and Wolfgang. They told me the glue that held them together was me. The strain was eased when both finally got jobs and I went into day care at the Daughter’s of Israel Center for Children.
My father a teacher of English in Vienna started his working life in the America sweeping the floors of a factory. Hanna a skilled seamstress found work in a sweatshop as a piece worker. They were not alone in their immigrant poverty the lower East Side’s slums were home to poor Americans as well.
After the United States entered the war, its’ economy improved dramatically. Jobs and opportunities in war time industries exploded exponentially. The country came out from the poverty caused by the Great Depression of 1929. As the War progressed my father advanced from floor sweeper to a production manager at the Norton Bomb Sight Factory. As Germans were not popular at this time, he changed his first name from Wolfgang to William. My mother’s work situation improved as well, her outstanding skills elevated her to sample maker: and she like my father also changed her first name rom Hanna to Ann. With their increased income we moved to a sunny apartment in Manhattan’s East Village. Anna and William were urbanites that had lived in the ancient city of Vienna until uprooted by the Nazi terror: they had set new roots in Manhattan.
The Eisen family’s early years in Manhattan are the foundation for the complex and interesting story of Joshua’s life. Some people and events in that story came into his life for an eyeblink in time: others stayed until death did them part. There were even some that lived and died without Joshua ever knowing of them or they of him. As peripheral as their existence was, they are still an integral and important part of Joshua’s story.
it is best to begin Joshua’s story when he was on the verge of leaving childhood, the time when he was old enough to roam the streets of Manhattan by himself. There was so much for him to see and experience on those streets: it prepared him for much of what he encountered throughout his lifetime. Gang violence and crime in the city were endemic in mid Twentieth Century New York City, violent encounters would change the direction Joshua’s life would take.