My American Dream: A Journey from Fascism to Freedom

By Barbara Sommer Feigin

On August 4, 1940, the Seattle Times featured a photo of a toddler sitting on a dock, surrounded by suitcases and looking dazed. After a harrowing journey with her parents, she'd just stepped off a boat and into her new life in America. Barbara Sommer Feigin was that little girl.

 

Over seventy years later, Feigin made a stunning discovery: her Jewish father had kept a detailed journal that chronicled their family's escape from Nazi Germany. Her parents had never spoken of it, and she remembered nothing of their terrifying, death-defying passage three-quarters of the way around the world—from Berlin to Seattle by way of Lithuania, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan before crossing the Pacific.

 

Featuring three intertwining narratives, My American Dream is a memoir of resilience, grit, and grace. Feigin tells of her life as a young German-speaking refugee living in a small Washington town and yearning to become an "authentic" American. She details how she became a trailblazing executive in the advertising business in New York City—a completely male-dominated business in the 1960s—rising from the ranks and ultimately securing a seat in the executive boardroom. A devoted wife and mom of three sons (including one set of twins), she spent twenty-five years as a caregiver for her husband, who suffered two serious strokes, and remained fiercely committed to building strong family bonds during turbulent times.

 

Despite overwhelming odds, her parents' grueling journey to America has fueled Feigin's lifelong resolve to dream big, work hard, and never quit. My American Dream is an inspiring tale of love, dedication, and how uncovering the past and preserving history can inform your identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Five Star Press
• Release date: Jan 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988626121

Book preview

Part One

Chapter One

Before We Left Berlin

In the late 1930s my father had yet to fully realize he needed to get us out of Germany. The times were terrible. Jews were being persecuted; they were being sent to certain death in concentration camps. But my father was, almost fatally, a patriot. In World War I, when he was eighteen and serving in the German air force as an aerial photographer, he’d been in a crash and injured his back quite severely. He believed that since he’d sacrificed for his country, Germany would always look out for him. It took him a long time to realize what a dangerous situation he was in and that he and my mother and I needed to get out.

He had worked for Ford Motor Company after WWI, but in the late 1930s, as the Nazis escalated their persecution of Jews, he was no longer allowed to work there because he was Jewish. He was reduced to repairing typewriters in the apartment in which he and my mother, and later I, lived. I have no idea how he learned to do that⁠—or whether there were many typewriters to repair. My mother, who had long had an important job as the executive assistant to the head of a publishing company, became the principal breadwinner during these times. After I was born, my father looked after me. He took me to play in the churchyard across the street from our apartment, but he refused to sit on the yellow bench designated for Jews. He brought a chair with him from our apartment. This was a very risky proposition; it could have attracted the wrong kind of attention. He had a very strong belief in doing what was right, no matter the potential consequences, a powerful character strength but extremely dangerous under the circumstances.

Charlotte’s passport

When they finally realized how precarious their situation had become, he and my mother knew it was urgent that our family leave Germany. They were offered an underground railroad trip down through Italy and then a boat trip to Israel. But my father’s comment was, Why would I want to go to Israel? I want to go to America.

My parents had obtained very hard-to-get visas, but they were due to expire on July 26, 1940. My father was nearly insane with worry, trying to assemble the necessary documentation and the American money required for our passages before the visas expired. The main problem was that, because I was not considered a Jew, he had a great deal of difficulty getting the appropriate documentation for me. My mother was not Jewish; she was Lutheran. My parents had decided not to declare a religion for me, thinking I would choose for myself at a time when I could make that decision.

Eric’s passport

As the escape plan evolved, my mother did not tell her boss about it because she was not sure she could trust him to keep the plan a secret. She was terrified that if he knew, it was possible he might inform the Gestapo and our family would be sent to the concentration camps. That could indeed have been the outcome. But she held a senior position, and her strong sense of responsibility eventually compelled her to tell him. She waited and waited, and close to the very last minute she nervously disclosed to him what our family’s plan was, understanding what a great risk she was taking. He understood and wished her well. She was profoundly relieved and grateful that he was sympathetic.

As my parents prepared for the escape, they knew they would need to abide by the Nazi government’s very strict rules about what we were able to bring with us on the journey. The maximum amount of money allowed for our family for the entire trip was $10.50 (equivalent to $202 in 2021). Beyond that, we were only allowed the clothes on our backs and what we were able to carry. No one was allowed to take anything of value out of the country: no gold, silver, precious stones, or jewelry of any kind. My parents decided to bring their tent from their rowing club days. They had no idea if they’d be able to find a place to live in America and thought, if need be, we could live in the tent. My mother took the great life-threatening risk of hiding some silverware among our things, thinking she might be able to sell it to raise money in the US.

My immigration card

Finally, everything came together. Somehow my father was able to connect with a distant cousin he’d never known, Sydney Prager from Roswell, New Mexico, who agreed to sponsor our family. He provided the sponsorship documents, and we never heard from him again. My father’s sister Friedl, who had a job in New York City, sent him the American money for his passage. The money for my mother’s passage came from an American Lutheran group, and mine from the Quakers.

Although my father now had the American money and the appropriate documentation, he still hadn’t found a way to get us out of Germany. We had the keys to paradise, my father wrote in his journal, but we could not enter.

Passage across the Atlantic was unsafe because of submarines, so my parents were told that the only way out of Germany was by train via Moscow and the Trans-Siberian Railroad and then on to the Pacific Ocean. This was during the short time that Hitler and Stalin had a friendship pact, so the Russians were willing to allow this. At the very last minute on July 3, 1940, just weeks before our visas were due to expire, our family was able to get a train out of Berlin. We had to move fast; there was no time to eat and only a few minutes for my parents to say goodbye to their parents, all their other relatives, and their friends.

There were eighty-two refugees in our group. The oldest was eighty-one years old, and I was the youngest, at two-and-a-half. We were about to set forth, as my father wrote, on a journey three-quarters of the way around the world, into the unknown.

Chapter Two

The Journey

Our travels took us on a seemingly endless journey through Eastern Europe, Russia⁠—including Siberia⁠—Manchukuo, Korea, and Japan. The train stopped nineteen times during the trip, and at fourteen of these stops soldiers and guards entered the train demanding to inspect the refugees’ papers. At each stop my parents were nearly paralyzed with fear, wondering, Is this the last time? Will we be taken off the train? Will we be sent to the concentration camps? As we reached the German-Lithuanian border, my mother became so frightened that the Gestapo would search our bags, find the family’s hidden silverware, and arrest us for smuggling valuables out of the country, that she opened the train window and threw out all the precious silverware. The risk was too great.

Our many, many train rides were dirty, hot, exhausting, and terrifying, and our boat crossing the Sea of Japan was tightly packed with passengers, many of whom were seasick. The group had no idea where we would end up, how we would end up, and whether we would arrive someplace safely.

After the seemingly endless seventeen days of arduous train travel, we had finally made it to Yokohama. There, our refugee group got on a Japanese ship, the MS Hikawa Maru. It wasn’t terribly big, but our group thought it was beautiful: black bottom, white top, and a smokestack with red and white stripes. The trip across the Pacific took fourteen days, and as our ship approached Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, we were able to see the twinkling lights of the towns along the coast of Canada. We had only a small distance to go to reach our destination. Finally the Hikawa Maru docked in Seattle. At long, long last, our refugee group was in America. It was a joyous moment; my parents were enormously thankful. As my father later wrote:

We are glad now to live in a country which in a troubled world retains its freedom, where we can express our opinions and where we get our news through a free press and radio. We hope we will get our citizenship as soon as possible to be a part of this free, grand, wonderful country too.

When I read my father’s words long after his death, my eyes fill with tears. He’d never been one to talk about his feelings and emotions. In all the years I was growing up, he was focused on the practicalities of building a life for our family. I’d never fully appreciated the depth of his gratitude and his feelings of hopefulness about being in America and being truly free. I’d never thought about what this might mean to him or how his healthy defiance, and my mother’s deep sense of responsibility, could well have led us to being shipped to the concentration camps. As I think about it now, it’s ironic that their strong, positive qualities are exactly what could have led to the potential demise of our family.

Hikawa Maru

Reading his story helps me understand much more fully why he so firmly expressed to Carolyn and me the importance of being free⁠—to be educated, to pursue opportunities to be who we wanted to be, to do what we wanted, to live life as we wanted.

Chapter Three

The Story As Told by My Father

(With Interjections by My Mother)

It was a long way from Germany to this country and it was a very difficult way too. I will try my best to tell how it was and how hard it was to get everything ready so that we could start. March 26 was the first happy news we had in 1940 and for a long, long time after too. On this day we got our American visa for which we applied two years ago. The time we applied for this visa we didn’t think it would take such a long time before we would arrive in the USA. We had to wait for our quota number until March 26, 1940, the day we had to go to the American consulate. After the medical examination and after examination of all of our papers and affidavits, we got our visas. This visa was legal until July 26, 1940. On that day we found out which boat was going to the US and the day we had to be on a boat which was starting out to go to the USA . . . And we had a lot of new troubles.

So on this day now started in a hurry for us with a lot of new troubles. Telegrams were sent to my sister in New York asking her to send us the tickets for an Italian boat because Italy was the only European country with normal traffic to the USA. We could not buy these tickets in Germany because the Italian line did not take German money. The tickets had to be paid for in American dollars. We waited and waited for an answer from New York and it took for us an awful lot of time. At last my sister wired us the money. She could only pay for the ticket for me at the Italian Line and not the rest of my family. She was a refugee too and had been in this country for one and a half years. It was a wonderful thing that she could pay the $200 dollars for my passage . . . but what happens now for Mrs. Sommer and with our little daughter, Barbara?

We had known that the Christian churches in America and the Quaker organization had spent money to help people like us. After many visits here and there and many conversations finally our request for a ticket for Mrs. Sommer and Barbara was honored. You cannot imagine what that meant to us.

In a hurry I went to the Italian Line to book for May 5, 1940, for a ship called the Rex. The ship was leaving Italy on May 28. Visas . . . We waited from one day to the next to the twentieth. We did not get the transit visa to Italy. Today we know that Italy went into the war too and the big ship Rex never left Italy for the US. What can be done in such a case? I’ll tell you that it is impossible for you to realize our feelings during these days. We had only the keys to paradise and we could not enter. At that time we didn’t know anything . . . how we could start to America and knowing that our Visas would run out on July 26 and be canceled. All morning I went to the different countries consulates which worked day and night to find a way out of Germany to the US. One week followed the other without any result. One day they told us that they would try to find out a way across Finland. Another day they had us going by airplane across France and Spain to enter on a steamer in Portugal, and all that in war time. One day we got a call and we were informed that the only way for us to leave would be through Russia and Siberia. This day was June 26, and one month later our American visas would be canceled. So we had to start quickly.

We had to be ready for our trip from Berlin on July 3. There was only one week to get the passport from the government⁠—a very difficult thing. And then we had to get all of the transit visas through Lithuania, Russia, Manchuko, China, Korea, and Japan.

I cannot tell you what that meant. I had more than a thousand things to do. I had to go to Hamburg for the Japanese visas because it was impossible to get them in Berlin at that time. In Hamburg I had to wait two days and two nights and both nights there were terrible air raids and I had to spend both nights in a basement. Lotte had to during this time, clear all these troubles with the customs officials.

We had no time to eat and only a few minutes to say goodbye to our parents, all of our friends, and all the other relatives. At twenty minutes sharp before the starting time of our train (the last train we could catch without losing our visas. Otherwise we would have had to wait for an indefinite time to get new visas). I got out our passports and we caught the train. I got very excited and when I think about it I remember it all.

It wasn’t easy to think about our trip. There would be thousands and thousands of miles across three-quarters of the world and with a child only two years and seven months old and with only $10.50 in our pocket for the whole family. You know there are numerous laws for people leaving Germany. What is allowed and what we should take and what should we leave. No silver, no gold, no jewelry, no more money than three and a half dollars [each] for the family was allowed. That meant nothing of value at all.

We had known in Germany that we could get only third class tickets on the Japanese boat. But even before we had said we would go by this boat, even if there had been a fourth, sixth, or seventh class the main thing was we could go.

The train tickets which we bought in Berlin went to Moscow. And after that from Moscow to Hauchouli until Yokohama, Japan. For eight days we would be without food even though our tickets included coupons for meals in the dining car. We had with us a cake, a few cans of fruit, some fresh eggs, rye crackers, some boxes of cereal and tea. You will see that this tea (peppermint tea) was the most important thing.

In our group we were eighty-two persons. The oldest was a lady of eighty-one years of age. The youngest was our daughter Barbara who was two years and seven months old. The train in the station started with us and our daughter. After all the excitement we tried to relax, but there were so many new people and all of the people were asking What will happen next? The compartment was dark since the whole of wartime Germany was in full blackout. It wasn’t possible to rest.

After fifteen hours of traveling we came to the German and Lithuanian border and we had our first customs examination. We had on the whole trip fourteen customs examinations. All that was very difficult, with all of the luggage as we had ten pieces and our Barbara. At one border the examination was very exact and we had to unpack all of our things while at another border it was not so exact and we could easily pass the customs inspection very quickly. Don’t forget that we could not hire a porter because we were all very short of money. The young men had to help all of the elderly people from the third border on and by the third border this service was very well organized.

The people in Lithuania speak a language like Russian and we couldn’t understand one word. We tried to speak to them with the German word for greetings. Then we tried a few words of English. But no conversation would start. We had to look carefully at all of the stations to find out where we had to change trains.

We found it out and caught the train ’til Moskau. This part of the trip was awfully hard. The train was old and very dusty and dirty. When I complained, the porters on the train told us to go home. No compartments here had been reserved and we did not get clean sheets and pillow cases for this trip until Moskau. Don’t forget it was July and so with the dirt we also had awful heat. It was impossible to open the windows, because in this part of Russia there is a kind of dust and sand like in the Sahara Desert in North Africa which even comes through closed windows. All of our clothing looked dusty gray and we had the dirt in our mouths and ears too. We could not breathe in all this dust and dirt and when I saw Barbara sleeping I was afraid she would catch pneumonia. Thank heavens when she awoke she only was very hoarse and dirty too. We had not enough water to wash and nothing to drink because we had to save our $10.50 for our arrival in Seattle. At that time we could not know how nice and helpful people in the USA would be to us.

In that dust ’til Moscow, often we asked how would be the big trip from Moscow through Siberia when it was so dirty in the first two days and in the European part of the country. But Russian people always told us that on the Trans-Siberian Express it would be very nice and clean and that it would be the finest train in the whole of Russia. Today I know it. Let me talk about this train a little later. We arrived in Moscow after fifty-five hours on the train . . . nine hours too late. It was a poor and monotonous country. We were tired, thirsty, and dirty. Our ticket included a stay in a hotel for one night, and to have sightseeing and full board. We got a room with a bath and you will understand that the first thing was to jump in the bathtub. The second thing was that Mrs. Sommer had to wash each of our laundry because we had nothing to change into. I forgot to tell you that we had to send our big luggage from Berlin to Yokohama by freight. It was not allowed to take so many trunks with us as we would have liked. So we could take with us little things and because we had our little child with us, we first took for her the things she would need. It was a funny sight to see Mrs. Sommer washing our odds and ends in the bathroom of a very fashionable hotel and elegant hotel in Moskow. We had a night in a bed without the sound of the wheels. The city was illuminated. Traffic in the Avenues, but all this we saved for the next day because we fell asleep at once. In the morning we had a breakfast like in the good old days. We had not had coffee for two and a half years. We had butter and ham and eggs. All these things we did not have in Germany or only in small quantities on ration cards.

And then the sightseeing . . . It was a very interesting thing for us. I had heard so many interesting things about Moscow and the Russians that we were curious to see it for ourselves. I can tell you only a few things.

A funny matter is, that you can smell the minute when you arrive in Russia and you smell it at the time when you leave this country. I don’t know what it is but it is a distinct fetid odor in the air. And as I said before you can smell exactly where Russia begins and where it ends.

I try to be as objective as I can. We saw brick and wonderful houses, and next, wide and wonderful avenues, big new high and modern buildings standing next to small and narrow old block houses. We asked our bus driver a lot of questions and I could feel it that many questions from us weren’t very agreeable for him. He told us that all the old houses will be wrecked in the future to build there a wonderful new hospital. He showed us the Kremlin Palace a little town with ministry buildings behind a high wall, the Lenin mausoleum, and the famous Red Palace. We tried to see more than all the kings he showed us. We strolled through the city. We saw a station of the newly built subway and I must tell you that it is the most beautiful subway I have ever seen. It was built with marble and with escalators going about 125 yards down. There were streamliners and chromium finished trains, indirect light effects and big fast traffic.

Otherwise we saw the contrary too. People in rags, with incredibly dirty hands and faces, covered very often with pox.

Russian women aren’t dressed nicely, but they go heavy on the cosmetics and it is depressing. The combined effect of using a lot of rouge and colored fingernails in all shades of the rainbow. The best dressed people were in the hotel.

We could see on the quay of the Volga river people resting and sleeping during the daytime. I suppose they were awfully poor people . . . it looked like that. Our driver told us that in Russia there are no unemployed people. Russia wouldn’t have people enough for all the work. Maybe he told the truth . . . but I don’t think so. I think only one time I could see a laughing man. People in Russia don’t look contented or happy. The standard of living is low and not to be compared with the European standard of living.

And the following is about our start on the Trans-Siberian Express. We didn’t see any difference with the train which we had taken to Moscow. It is all right, we got pillowcases and sheets, nearly clean, but we did not get blankets. We couldn’t understand what the conductor talked to us if we asked for blankets. Later on this trip if we had known that on this trip we would never need blankets because the coach was so terribly hot. We were lucky to get a compartment in second class where four people were supposed to live and to sleep for ten long days and long nights. Men and women sleep in the same cabin. We had another refugee couple in our cabin. But some people had to share with Russian soldiers or Mongolian people, not a nice feeling. The majority of travelers have been Russian soldiers, and here I would like to tell you that Russian women also can be soldiers and officers too. When a Russian officer has to go to Mongolia or the far North East of Russia, so they go with the whole family.

The dining car is a paragraph in itself. Without regards to the dirt and to the terrible smell we never tried to take a look into the kitchen. I guess we would not feel very good for the next meal.

The worst of all was early in the morning. There were always people in rank and file outside the lavatories and frequently there was no water at all for hours and days. Shaving was