Getting Here

I was four and a half when we were fleeing from the Nazis. Plunged from a comfortable upper middle class life into a primitive, freezing and hungry society, we found ourselves being sent in cattle cars as political prisoners to a Siberian labor camp. Home was a primitive log cabin and my parents were assigned to hard labor clearing forests and building roads. When the political winds changed, fate led us to Uzbekistan, equally primitive, but not as cold. My parents' hard work and positive outlook helped us survive the hunger and diseases that killed many of our fellows. A roof overhead, not to be separated, and not to starve were our main concerns. After the war, we were repatriated "home" to a hostile, inhospitable Poland, and in 1947 we made our way to the U.S. to start over.