A Jewish Refugee in New York: A Novel

By Kadya Molodovsky and Anita Norich

“This novel invites the reader inside the mind of a Polish Jewish woman who has recently arrived in New York just after WWII began in Europe.” —Jeffrey Shandler, author of Anne Frank Unbound

Rivke Zilberg, a twenty-year-old Jewish woman, arrives in New York shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland, her home country. Struggling to learn a new language and cope with a different way of life in the United States, Rivke finds herself keeping a journal about the challenges and opportunities of this new land. In her attempt to find a new life as a Jewish immigrant in the United States, Rivke shares the stories of losing her mother to a bombing in Lublin, jilting a fiancé who has made his way to Palestine, and a flirtatious relationship with an American “allrightnik.”

In this fictionalized journal originally published in Yiddish, author Kadya Molodovsky provides keen insight into the day-to-day activities of the large immigrant Jewish community of New York. By depicting one woman’s struggles as a Jewish refugee in the United States during WWII, Molodovsky points readers to the social, political, and cultural tensions of that time and place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780253040770

Book preview

My First Day in New York

December 15, 1939

I arrived on a beautiful day. Perhaps this was a sign that things would go well for me in America.

My aunt looks just like my mother, may she rest in peace, but her smile is not as nice as my mother’s was. My uncle is silent and doesn’t seem so happy that I’ve come. Selma is exactly my age and height. She spoke a few Yiddish words to me today: How are you feeling? and You’re my cousin. She says that she doesn’t know more Yiddish than that. Marvin is eighteen years old. All he said was hallo and then he left the house. My aunt looked over my things, and she and Selma laughed at my stockings, shirts, and dresses. In Lublin I was well dressed. Will I always be laughed at in America?

My aunt picked up all of my dresses and said, "Rags! We need to buy her a dres and a het." I could barely keep from crying. They greeted me as though I were some poor relative. Maybe it would have been better if I had stayed at home. I don’t know what I’ll do here. They all speak English, and I don’t understand a word. I think they’re talking about me, and it’s as if, at the age of twenty, I’ve suddenly become deaf.

This evening, some neighbors came over to hear about the old country. They all had painted cheeks and painted lips. It’s not a nice thing to say, but to me they all looked like loose women. Even forty- and fifty-year-old women wear makeup here. Every one of them talked about her home, asking me very little. It seems that they were interested in me only so that they could have an audience for their own stories about the old country.

One of the neighbors, who my aunt calls Betty or Mrs. Shore, told a story about how she lost her fiancé on the way to America. She spoke lightheartedly about being on the ship with her fiancé and a family from Bessarabia. The family had been traveling with a lot of hard cheese and shared it with their ship brothers and sisters. Her fiancé didn’t like the cheese at first but then he became very fond of it, and from time to time he would disappear, finding his way to the Bessarabian family with the tasty cheese. The woman in that family was a twenty-eight- or thirty-year-old widow whose husband had died in America, and she and her two children were going to join her father-in-law there. She liked to laugh, and she liked to treat Betty’s fiancé to cheese, calling him the nosher, the cheese-snacker. She promised him a cheesy paradise. Betty used to laugh along with her Bessarabian ship sister, but in New York it became clear that her intended bridegroom had become restless. He often went off on his own, and he finally told Betty that he didn’t want to get married just yet; he was too young and unsettled. In the end, he married that Bessarabian woman! Mrs. Shore told the story without bitterness. I wondered about that a lot. I would certainly have been too embarrassed to breathe a word of it if such a thing had happened to me, but Betty just bragged that her former fiancé was as poor today as he had been then and that she had escaped from a bad situation.

The women talked a lot about themselves and didn’t give me the slightest opportunity to tell them how I came to be a refugee. Mrs. Shore’s story really upset me. I think it can’t be a good sign that the very first story I heard in America was about cheating and misfortune. Who knows what will become of me here?

Some People’s Sweetness

December 20

Today I noticed, quite by accident, that my aunt was watering down my orandg juws. I was standing opposite the mirror and saw how she added some water into one of the glasses and then handed me that very glass. Drink, she said, orange juice is good for you. But it certainly was not good for me. I could barely swallow it. My mother, may she rest in peace, used to say that the bitterest things that come from God are better than the sweetest from people. So, today’s orange juice really was my taste of someone’s sweetness.

I have one more thing to write about today: Marvin can speak Yiddish, but I can’t figure out what kind of Yiddish it is. Yesterday, he left his shoes near my bed, and when he came to pick them up this morning, he said something I couldn’t really understand: "Dos iz a khazeray." It’s a mess. What could he have meant? Did he think I would shine his shoes? Whatever it was that he meant, he said it in some sort of incomprehensible Yiddish. My aunt answered him in English. I heard the word shee several times. Marvin and my aunt kept shee-ing. "Shee and shee and again shee." I’ll ask Mrs. Shore what shee means. I thought they were talking about the shoes and about me because after their conversation my aunt turned to me and smiled, saying Rivke, go eat something.

If only I wasn’t a refugee!

Eddie

December 25

I saw Selma’s boy today. He’s tall and thin, and his pants are very neatly pressed. When we were introduced, he said a few words in Yiddish: How do you like America? (Everybody asks the same thing.) He talks like a gentile, just like Pan Stefanovski, who used to come to my father to discuss business matters and would try to start a Yiddish conversation with me. I started laughing when I remembered Pan Stefanovski. My aunt said, Better you should learn English, Rivke, and not laugh like that. You’re not in Lublin. Here everybody speaks English. Selma’s boy defended me. I didn’t understand what he said, but I saw that he kept looking at me and smiling. I really liked that, and I was sorry when he and Selma left to go to the moovees.

My aunt said that she would register me in a skool so I can learn English.

I met Mrs. Shore on the staircase today and I asked her what shee means. She told me that a girl is shee, a boy is hee, and iy refers to me. So they really were talking about me, and Marvin really did want me to polish his shoes. No, I won’t do that! Who does he think he is? He’s putting on airs, but he can shine his own shoes.

The New Year

January 1

Last night everyone went out to hev a gud tiym. My aunt and uncle went to play cards at Mrs. Shore’s apartment. Selma and her boy went off to dance. Marvin went to Times Square. I didn’t want to go anywhere. It’s a dreadful day for me. A year ago my mother was alive. She made potato pancakes for us, but not because it was New Year’s Day. We never made a big deal about New Year’s. She made them because Uncle Zaydl had come to take us out on a sleigh ride. Mama, may she rest in peace, didn’t want to let him go without some food. Food? Uncle Zaydl said. If we’re talking food, then let’s have some potato pancakes. So . . . we ate potato pancakes. In the end, we didn’t really have such a good time. As soon as we got onto the broad street, our sleigh was attacked by snow. At first we thought we were being stoned, but then it turned out that they were snowballs thrown by some hooligans, may a plague strike them, who were cursing and whistling at us. We turned back home all wet and dirty. Uncle Zaydl wished them a miserable end, and I nearly cried out of disappointment. But still, there was a home with a mother, with Lublin, and also with Layzer. I never imagined then that within a year I would be in a strange house, alone, living on charity, or that I wouldn’t even know what happened to my father, my brother, or my home. I never imagined that I would be a refugee. What a horrible word: refugee. The word is a curse. It probably comes from refuse, garbage. A refugee is truly cursed, discarded, and worthless. In any case, I didn’t go anywhere today. For me, this New Year is not a time for celebration. It would have been better if the last New Year had never ended—or perhaps had ended for me as it did for my mother, may she rest in peace.

A Comfort

January 5

For the last few days my aunt and uncle have been talking to one another in English and often using the word shee. I already know that they’re talking about me: Shee. Shee. It seems that they’ve decided to dismiss the colored girl who comes every day to do housework. Today my aunt gave me some washing to do—dresses, slips, and socks that belong to her, Selma, and me. She helped me, but I felt as if I were becoming a maid in the house. The work wasn’t hard, but my heart felt as heavy as a stone. My aunt said that the girl was ill and it was impossible to know when she would be able to return to work. I would rather have washed the cobblestone streets back home than be here washing Selma’s dresses. And often I think about the fact that I have no idea what’s going on at home now. Maybe being here and washing dresses using something called Lux is really a paradise because my home in Lublin is now a hellish place. My one comfort is that I’m going to skool. The teacher there often comes over to my desk to look at my writing. I think she must be a Jew, but I can’t ask her that. Other than a few words that we learned in skool, I still can’t speak English. It’s such a hard language to learn. Who knows if I’ll ever be able to speak it?

Mendl Pushcart

January 8

The cleaning girl still hasn’t returned. She’s sick, and no one knows when she’ll be well. Yesterday there was a kard partey here. My uncle becomes a totally different person when he plays cards. He talks and makes jokes. Maybe he was in such a good mood because he won a dollar. I served tea because my aunt said, Since you don’t play cards, you can at least bring tea to the table; a person has to do something. Mendl Pushcart bothered me more than anyone else. (I’m using his name on purpose; let there be no mistake about who I mean.) He drank at least five or six or even more glasses of tea. He poured it in as if into a well, and every single time, he winked at me to signal that I should bring more. He treated me as if he was paying me a salary, and I started to hate him as much as I hate even the thought of pork. I came to understand that you never know what a person can turn